"Words to Live by IV: Love"
God became one of us so that we might know His love.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 22, 2002
Text: Matthew 1:17-25
As I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, a report on the year that was and all that has happened in the world since we last met on Christmas of 2001, I couldn't help but wonder.
I couldn't help but wonder, for example, what the mothers of the young men in our armed forces who were killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire would be feeling as they wrap their gifts and meet with their families this Christmas.
I couldn't help but think of the mothers of the men and women who were dancing in a nightclub in Bali as it exploded and killed many of them. What must they be thinking this Christmas?
I couldn't help but wonder what the feelings are of the mothers of the suicide bombers in Palestine, whose children are heroes in the minds of some and pariahs in the minds of others, as they celebrate near Bethlehem.
I couldn't help but wonder about the grandmothers who are having to look after their grandchildren because their sons and daughters have died of AIDS in Southern Africa, and who probably face the fact that they will even outlive their grandchildren. I wonder what they think on these hot December days, when they prepare for Christmas.
I wonder what the women who gather at the Street City shelter here in our city of Toronto will be like when they open their gifts on Christmas Day: Only five of them that are left as residents in that poor and decrepit building - what will be on their minds this Christmas?
You see, I think that of all the times of the year and of all the seasons and all the ages, Christmas is the time when we think most of all of love and of family, and maybe of what might have been. There is nothing quite like it. It stirs up the sentiments and the souls of people and is more emotive than any other thing that we do. In fact, Christmas is the time of both the greatest joy and often the greatest pain in people's lives.
The great minister E. Stanley Jones once told a very touching story of students at a school for missionaries' children. One Christmas about five children were left in the school because their parents were too far away for them to be able to visit. And so the principal of the school and Stanley Jones went around and visited the students in their rooms and in their dorms. They came to one young boy who was sitting at his desk looking forlorn. The principal said to the young boy: "What would you like for Christmas?"
The boy picked up a picture frame and in it there was a picture of his father. He said: "What I want for Christmas is for my father to step out of this frame." That is the power of Christmas. That is how emotive it is.
The good news of the Gospel, however, is that to those mothers and to those who feel like them, to those who have had the grandest of Christmases, and also the saddest, to those who have had the most wonderful of years or the most awful, the Christian Gospel says this: At Christmas, God stepped out of the frame and visited us.
It is no coincidence that Matthew, in the beginning of his Gospel, gives a rather strange chronology. He says for 14 generations, from Abraham to David, for another 14 generations from David to the exile in Babylon, and another 14 generations from the exile to the arrival of Jesus, the people of Israel waited, expectantly. They lived in a covenant relationship with God and they knew God did great and wonderful and glorious things in their presence; but they also knew that there was more light and truth to come from God's revelation, more to support the covenant, more to make the life of God real in their midst.
And so for those early Christians, for Matthew who wrote that Gospel, there was this profound belief that now, at the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth, God had stepped out of the frame: God had come and dwelt amongst the world; God had come to be with His people Israel; God had come to be a light unto the Gentiles; God had come and visited as they had hoped and prayed. They were so overwhelmed by this, so convinced that this was true, that there was a sense of awe and wonder and joy in this Christmas message.
So what I want and what I pray for us this morning is that we may capture the wonder and the awe and the glory of the celebration of that very first Christmas this day: that regardless of the state of the world or what we have suffered, or the challenges that lie before us, we might take the power of that good news and live it in our hearts and in our lives like never before; that we might celebrate this Christmas with joy and with passion.
The first thing that we celebrate is actually a name. Shakespeare did not have it right when he said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Names, for Jewish people, are vitally important. You can see that as you read the names of the Old Testament: the great character Elijah, which literally means "Jehovah is my God;" or whether it in the name "Nathaniel," God is my gift; or even the beautiful name of Ruth, which means "my companion." Jewish names throughout the ages were to convey a message, a message about God, a message about God's covenant relationship with those people and so when they gave a name to someone that name said so much about what they believed to be true.
The passage from Matthew's Gospel this morning, gives us two names. The first is the name Jesus. Joseph is given instructions: "You shall call his name Jesus." Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua and Yeshua means "God's salvation," "God's great gift." This is the name that they were to give their child and for the rest of his days his mother and his father would have used the name Jesus as we would use the name Bob or Sue: "Jesus, be quiet; Jesus, take care of your brother; Jesus, bring in the wood. Jesus, do all these things." Jesus was the name that Joseph and Mary were to give to their son. It was a sign, it was a symbol of God's salvation. The name Jesus was to be important.
It took on greater importance, of course, later on in the life of the church after the resurrection, so much so that Paul said that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That's how important the name Jesus was.
The name Jesus to a large extent has become commonplace, though. The name that Joseph and Mary were to give to their son seems to roll off people's tongues with little or no thought of its importance or the fact that it means "God's salvation." In fact, when I went for my routine walk on Friday night on Millwood, it was dark. There was a car coming towards me and, as I was crossing, I realized that he wasn't going to stop at the stop sign. I screamed at him: "Stop! Stop! Stop!"
He wound his window down and said: "You know the problem with you? You should be wearing lighter clothing."
I said: "This is a stop sign."
Then he invoked the name of the Lord.
I said: "Yes, and his birthday is on Wednesday. Come to my church."
Now, are you here, the driver of the car, this morning by any chance? It just sort of rolls off the tongue: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." Yet, we forget it means "God saves" and when Joseph was told to call his child this, it was a sign of what he and Mary believed to be true.
But there was another name and that is the name Emmanuel. In quoting Isaiah 7, Matthew gives an example that this child shall be given a name, a name that goes right back into the heart of the Old Testament and prophetic literature. Matthew gets it right. Emmanuel means "God with us." The message, then, that this Jesus was to give, the sign, the meaning of his coming, was God's actual presence with us.
Emile Brunner said: "Of all the names that are given to Jesus, the name Christ is the one that we do not give. It is the name that God gives." Whether it is Emmanuel, or whether it is Messiah, or whether it is the name Christ, the names that come after Jesus are names which God declares His Son to be, not us. It is not we who call Jesus "Emmanuel:" It is God the Father who calls Jesus "Emmanuel." It is we who call him Jesus.
That is why this name is above all names: not just because it is Jesus, but because it is Jesus Emmanuel. It is God with us. The problem is that over 2,000 years, we have lost not only the power of the name of Jesus, we have even lost the awe and the wonder of the name Emmanuel. It has become ordinary and commonplace. In fact, with all the different discoveries that we have in science, in all the different things that we are discovering about the human genome, about DNA, about the new stars and the new galaxies in the sky, we have become overwhelmed by things that are new and beyond our comprehension, and so something that was declared 2,000 years ago by a Jewish writer in the Bible just seems to have lost all its shine, and all its amazement, and all its glory and wonder. It has become commonplace. Yet for those early Christians, there was nothing commonplace about the fact that they saw in this Christ Child the presence of God with us.
Now I read books these days that tear apart the Gospel of Matthew and look at its inconsistencies, and question its language and its structure, and every power that is within it is denuded and taken away as people strip it apart. But do you honestly believe that when Matthew wrote his Gospel he was trying to write a scientific document for 21st-century men and women to be able to make clear and definitive statements based on their reasoning and their science? No. He was a Jew and, as a Jew he believed that God was present amongst them in the risen Christ. Matthew and those early Christians believed that God had done something unique and so powerful that even the language they used to describe it was inadequate. It was inadequate because what had happened was so wonderful. He was Emmanuel. He was God with us, not something to be seen at a detached level, not something to be analyzed from a distance, but God's presence, God alive, God in our midst.
I believe, my friends, that we need to rediscover that sense of awe and wonder; but we live in a day and age that wants instant gratitude, instant answers, everything spelled out nicely and neatly for us, before we believe. The Christian message is quite simply this: that God incarnate, in a Jewish child called Jesus, was in fact Emmanuel. And that is mystery and awe and wonder and revelation, all at the same time. I believe we need to ponder that and dwell on it with celebration.
There is also a sense in which this is a celebration of love. It is a celebration of love. As I said, Christmas, is one of the most emotive and memorable times of the year. It is a time when we remember our childhood Christmases, even if we have forgotten the other 364 days of the year. Isn't it amazing how Christmas burns itself in our minds and in our memories like no other time of the year.
This was brought home to me a couple of days ago when I received an e-mail from a man I often think of as a child. He's now about 46 years old, but I still remember him as a child. We used to spend every Christmas together, as he lived next door to my uncle and aunt.
Mark had been hunting for me on the web. He didn't know where I lived, and had done a name search and my name had come up and so I got this e-mail: "If you are the Andrew Stirling who eats too much Christmas pudding, please reply to Mark."
So, being that Andrew:
Dear Mark,
Pudding is still being eaten.
Love, Andrew
Now we have touched base. The next e-mail came back to me, recounting all the stories of the childhood memories that we shared and how his heart was beating for joy at the fact that finally he had found me. He was so overwhelmed. I remember Mark well, because every Christmas time we had to give a prayer around the table for all the things for which we were thankful. (You see, we put Thanksgiving and Christmas together in England.)
I'll never forget Mark's prayer in 1966, it was: "Dear God, I'm just glad I don't have the weight problem that Andrew has. Amen." You know, I want to see him now. I want to see whether, in his forties, he could still be so chipper and glib.
You know, what's amazing is this morning he is actually listening on his computer to this service, aren't you Mark? He is in Aberdeen, Scotland and his family is with him this morning. Mark, Merry Christmas. I miss you.
Christmas brings back amazing memories, but it is not a memorial. Let me say that again: Christmas brings back memories but it is not a memorial. It is not just the recounting of what happened in the past. It is not just Emmanuel in some other time and place. Christmas is a living thing, and the message of God with us is a living reality. It is the message that in Jesus Christ, God has come and dwelt among us and in so doing, has revealed the love and the truth and the grace that is in his heart.
A few years ago, I saw the movie "Gorillas in the Mist," starring Sigourney Weaver. It is the story of Dian Fossey, the Californian zoologist who in 1963 decided to live among the gorillas in Africa. Rather than study them from a distance and write down notes about them she decided that she would actually go and live with them. For 18 years she lived with the gorillas in Rwanda. On the slope of a volcano of some 14,000 feet high, she lived every day with them, alone.
After a few years, she realized that she had sat at a distance and written notes about them, but the problem was they weren't receiving her. They were still keeping their distance from her. And so she decided that the only way she was going to be able to relate to them was if she took on their behaviour. So she started to stoop down rather than stand up, and she beat her chest and she imitated their sounds and she followed them closely. After a while they warmed up to her, so much so that when one of the gorillas lost her little gorilla child, the two of them cried together.
On December 27, 1985 poachers came to kill some of the gorillas and one of them took a knife and killed Dian Fossey. She died in their midst. This woman who had shared in their joys and their sorrows, had lived with them in good times and bad, had now actually died with them.
How much more then, it seems to me, is the Christmas story: a message of God doing that with us but in an even more profound way. God came and identified with us in his Son and dwelt among us, and mourned when we mourned, and cried when we cried, and laughed when we laughed, and loved when we loved, and when we sinned, forgave us. This one came among us and died among us when we were in danger and, out of that love gave of himself completely. For where the story is different is that, while he was killed, Jesus, unlike Dian Fossey, through his resurrection remains.
And so to the young boy who picked up the picture and wanted his father to step out of the frame, the Christian message is that God has stepped out of the frame but has not gone back in again. He came and lived with us and still lives with us, not as a memorial but as a living presence.
And so to those mothers who mourn the loss of their children this Christmas, and to those who celebrate great joys, accomplishment and new life, it makes no difference, the celebration of God's love is an eternal thing and Jesus, the name that is above all names, shows us this. For he is Emmanuel, God with us. We need say no more.
Hallelujah. It's his birthday on Wednesday.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.