Glorifying the Greatest Gift

Christmas Eve 2014

It’s so good to pause here together tonight.   We really need to recover from the push … the push from the retail world that birthed all kinds of pressure for us to purchase “perfect” Christmas gifts.    Since September (perhaps even sooner!) we’ve gone into stores and been encouraged to buy back-to-school binders, decorative black cats and bats, fake cornucopias for Thanksgiving tables, and then whatever high-ticket items our loved ones have apparently wanted their whole lives long.    Three plus months of it.   And, of course, now we’re already seeing heart shaped boxes of chocolate and shamrock chotskies!   

Are you as utterly exhausted by it all as I am?

            
All the more reason, actually, to check in with ourselves about what we believe is the true purpose of giving and receiving gifts.   At its core, Christmas gift giving is about joyfully acknowledging, appreciating and celebrating our most caring relationships.    And above all, it’s about honoring the very greatest gift and the most caring relationship of all -- the gift of God’s intimate, tangible love in the flesh of Jesus, the whole and holy world changer whose birth we are gathered here to honor tonight.   How do we exchange gifts and keep our focus foremost on glorifying Emmanuel, on God with us?

            
 When an Illinois pastor by the name of Bryan was a boy, he was taught how to use a crosscut saw by his father.   He recalls one time sawing through a log that had a rotten core.   It was mostly worthless wood.   Yet after one of the log pieces fell to the ground, this fledgling preacher saw something new.    He decided it looked just like a horse head.    So he took it home.    And then, in celebration of the close relationship he had with his dad, he decided to make a gift of it.   He did so by taking a solid two-by-four and attaching it to the horse head.   Then he added a rope tail as well as sticks to act as legs.   Having created a brand new body, Bryan next hammered a dozen or so nails down the length of the “horse.”    He then wrapped it in butcher paper, put a bow on it, and presented it to his father.   The dad, of course, wore a big smile while unwrapping it and as he said, “Thank you, it’s wonderful.  But, um, what is it?”

“Dad,” came the reply from Bryan, “it’s a tie rack!   See, you can put your ties on those nails going down the side of the horse’s body.”    The father kept smiling and saying thank you as he leaned it against his bedroom closet wall.   The rather ugly yet endearing gift hadn’t faired too well on its stick legs.    For many years, it was used for the purpose it was gifted.   

Bryan reports how in his childish mind he thought he’d created something worthy of displaying at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   As he matured, however, he came to realize his work was not very good at all.    The more he realized this, the more he came to deeply appreciate that ultimately, his dad had used the gift not because of its goodness but “out of his goodness.”   Its value was measured by the love of and for his son.[i] 

Whatever gifts you exchange this Christmas, I pray their worth is measured by such unconditional, relationship affirming love ...

Love that sees something special deep inside despite any rotten character flaws.    

Love that imaginatively recreates something that’s been cut and cast off.     

Love that leans for support when just one person can’t quite make it stand up.  

Love that exists to beautifully display life’s most precious ties.    

Love that reminds us of the goodness we all do have within us, the goodness God calls us to actively abide in all year long.

The goodness of which I speak is not naturally engrained in us.    It was at the beginning of all Creation, back when humankind ever so briefly lived in pure, perfect harmony with everything holy.   But the gift of free will that was given at that time of Genesis was rebelliously abused.   The God-breathed lives of Adam and Eve (as the sacred old story goes) decided glorifying themselves was the most eternally important thing.   Any peek deep inside -- down in the soul -- of any and all of God’s children ever since then has revealed the decomposing work of sin.    We’ve been plagued throughout the ages by rotten, God-defying thoughts, words and actions.  

             
Which is what’s so very remarkable about the great gift of Jesus given to us so long ago and afresh in our hearts tonight.   God the Father didn’t give up on us, did not abandon us.    God the Father instead came to us as the Son, bearing our frail human flesh.  

            
Not as a newborn cradled by human prestige and power, but as a newborn nestled in a dirty cattle trough made from cut tree.  

             
Not as a newborn heralded by world rulers, but as a newborn glorified by outcast shepherds and bleating lambs. 

            Not as a newborn breathing in the air of privileged spaces and practices, but as a newborn crying out in a barn for his poverty and scandal stricken parents.  

            
 And crying for -- on behalf -- of us all.  

            
For the grinding grief that cries for God to heal our hurt.  
For the steadfast fear that cries for God to counter all that terrorizes and causes tragedies.    
For the lamentable loneliness that cries for God to build compassionate and just community within and around all humanity. 

             
Following the crying of the infant Messiah came the innocent, comforting cooing.    The gurgling and the grinning.  The soft and blessed look of true love beaming from tiny eyes like stars piercing the most saturating darkness.   The incomparable joy of holding your own flesh and blood while being held by tremendous hope in return.  

            
 None of us is the person who has everything.   So God had no worries about what to give us that very first Christmas.   God gave us what we truly need.  There is no greater, no more perfect gift than our Emmanuel, glory be to God!   
  
We glorify this greatest gift each time we humble instead of exalt ourselves.

We glorify this greatest gift each time we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind and soul.   

We glorify this greatest gift each time we love all of our neighbors as we ourselves desire to be loved; each time we come as the faithful to softly sing of a sacred, silent night as well as to loudly proclaim joy to this whole deeply wounded world; each time we hark and herald like angels as well as each time we confess just how human we are.  

             
O holy night, we, like sacred stars, are brightly shining by the light of our Savior!   Amen.

           

           

           

           

           

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[i] Bryan Chapell, Fallen: A Theology of Sin (Crossway, 2013), pp. 274-275

Beholding Hope

Psalm 33:13-22; Mark 5:25-34

The 3^rd Sunday in Advent 2014

            She was ignored, as if utterly unseen.   Thoroughly unclean and impure in the eyes of her society.   Diseased.   She’d placed a lot of faith in the physicians of her day.  But they’d all come and gone, unable to stem the tide causing her such constant physical, emotional and social suffering.  Twelve years of it.   4, 380 horrible days of hemorrhaging.   No hope to behold anywhere.      

            Until, that is, she one day heard a word.   A word about Jesus of Nazareth.   His name had been sounded out around her town with all the buzz of a beehive.   This one of kind holy healer and teacher was flowing into her neighborhood.  

            How could she … how dare she … get his attention?   Even at a point of last resort, she was too embarrassed of her cruddy condition to openly cry out to Him.   And she was quite aware of the logistics of getting through the great crowds pressing in all around him.   Sheer desperation and a determined faith in this man’s reputation, however, prompted her to stealthily give it a go.    Wonder of wonders, like the Red Sea parting, a channel opened up. She managed to slip in and simply reach out, believing just a touch of a tassel on His rabbinical robe would restore her health.    

            Her faith bore good fruit.  A miraculous healing happened!   Her joyful astonishment, however, quickly came to an awkward halt.   Before she had had a chance to slip away from the scene, Jesus called her out.  Her stealthy touch had not gone unnoticed.  He stopped, looked around, inquired.   He insisted on publically identifying the person who’d tapped into His healing power.  

            Before the encounter, she would have felt mortified.    But the incredibly spiritual experience had emboldened and engrafted her to Jesus.   She no longer felt invisible.   So she stepped forward, fell prostate at his feet, and humbly spoke up.  She confessed, “It was me!  I did it!  I beheld you near me, slipped in through the crowd that has so long despised me, hoping to touch even just a thread of your holiness.” 

            This reverent admission deeply pleased Jesus.   He turned and blessed her in the presence of all the people who’d previously been disgusted by her.   He praised her simple and faithful act of reaching out, of believing in God’s saving grace smack in the midst of her suffering and social estrangement.   He let it be known that she was a beautiful child of God, whose faith had helped to make her well.

            At the start of our Advent journey together this year, we remembered that the light of salvation shines brightest when we acknowledge all the darkness within and around us.    Last week, we moved on to asking ourselves if there is room in our hearts to welcome a new arrival of our Emmanuel.  Today both of my previous messages come together as we meet this remarkable woman from the 5^th chapter of Mark’s Gospel.  

            She is an inspiration for the ages!  She is truly an ambassador of Advent, of waiting to behold and to be held by the Light of Christ.    The Bethlehem in her heart gladly made room.  And not in any kind of institutionalized or ritualized way.   She hadn’t been socially allowed to express her faith in those ways.   It was a blessing that Jesus hadn’t been standing still in a stone sanctuary waiting for the next person to come before him with a prayerful petition.  He’d been bustling about amidst the big and curious crowds when He did not fail to notice that ever so slight finger-tip touch upon the tassels.  

            The power of this woman’s witness to us is summed up well by the Bible scholar Tom Wright when he wrote that her action highlights “the intimate nature of the contact between the individual and Jesus that Mark expects and hopes his readers to develop for themselves.  When life crowds in with all its pressures, there is still room for us to creep up behind Jesus – if that’s all we feel we can do – and reach out to touch him, in that odd mixture of fear and faith that characterizes so much Christian discipleship.”[i]

            As I was studying this passage, I wondered exactly what Mark meant by the word “touch.”  I naturally assumed the Greek word he used was a reference to physical contact, but I also wondered if there was any more significant or symbolic shade of meaning.   I especially wondered this as I contemplated what might have become of this woman’s life after that healing encounter.    We aren’t told the impact of this amazing physical and social restoration.    Did she go about rebuilding her life, fondly remembering that miraculous moment with Jesus, but otherwise not taking time to continue following, serving and worshipping Him?  Or did she become a devout evangelist, making herself seen and heard in all the places where people had unabashedly shunned her?   Or perhaps she went on to live a quiet life of humble devotion to her Savior?

             The Greek word Mark used to reference this woman’s touching of Jesus robe is indeed telling.    It can be translated as “to fasten or adhere.”    So when she reached out through the crowd, it wasn’t just for some quick healing connection.   It wasn’t just to get something personally beneficial out of Jesus.   Mark tells us it was an act of fully adhering her life to the Lord.  This healing was not just a restoration, it was a total reorientation!   Through hearing about, beholding, and reaching for Jesus, this child of God was forever and firmly fastened to Jesus.   

            And I also believe Mark – who was a ministry partner of both Peter and Paul -- wants us to know that this helped spread the Good News.   My favorite part of studying the ancient word we translate as “touch” is that it can also be interpreted to refer to as to kindle a fire.    All throughout the Bible, reference to fire is about divine revelation.   It speaks to how God, through the Holy Spirit, actively refines and refuels human faith.   By beholding the Light of Christ shining in our darkness, faithfully adhering all of our lives to it, and bearing witness, we each become blazing beacons of holy hope and healing!

            For the sermon on the 28^th of this month, I’ll will be showing and leading discussion about a video called “Ed’s Story.”    It’s the story of Pastor Ed Dobson (no relation to James Dobson).    The heart of that story I’ll save for then.   But for today, let me introduce Ed just a bit as I find him to also be an inspirational Advent ambassador.

            For many years, he was a nationally known fundamentalist preacher hitched to the wagon of Jerry Falwell.   Over time, however, he became disillusioned with the Christian Right’s train of thought.    He moved on to pastor a mega-church in Grand Rapids, Michigan (as a quick side note, it was during that time he became a mentor to Rob Bell, who has influenced me).

              In 2001, Ed was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).   Physicians predicted he’d have two to five years of life left, most of which he would spend suffering through disabilities.   Shortly after receiving this diagnosis, he reached out hoping to connect with people who deeply believed in prayer and holy healing.   One person who responded was a Pentecostal preacher.    Here’s what Ed had to say about their time together –

            “It was one of the most moving evenings of my entire life. He began by telling stories of people he had prayed for who were miraculously healed. He also told stories about people he had prayed for who were not healed and had passed away, receiving that ultimate and final healing.”    Before this fellow preacher prayed for Ed, he offered some inspirational advice.  He said, “Don’t become obsessed with getting healed … If you [do], you will lose your focus.”   Then he advised Ed on what to keep focused on – “Get lost in the wonder of God, and who knows what he will do for you.”[ii]   

            How do you need healing today?   Expect and behold the wonder of Jesus, God with us.  Reach out and adhere your whole self to Him.   Your faith will bring blessing and well-being.   Amen.

           

           

           

           

           

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[i]

[ii] Ed Dobson, Seeing through the Fog (David C. Cook, 2012), page 110