“What's In A Name: Saviour”
Who has packed your parachute?
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Text: Luke 2:1-11>
The dawn was just beginning to break at around 5:30 yesterday morning as I flew out of Greensboro, North Carolina, after having been stranded there for an extra 24 hours due to a snowstorm. (It seems that every time I travel bad weather follows me. Have you noticed that? I no longer believe it is a coincidence. I believe I am responsible.) However, it was a beautiful morning - finally, when the snow had passed the cities on the Eastern seaboard and the planes could fly, and the sun was hovering on the clouds below as we began to ascend.
I began to chat with a young man sitting next to me, for I realized from his uniform that he was from the Third Airborne Division of the United States Marines. It was a tan colour, so I knew he must have been coming from a warm climate. He told me that he was on his way home from having spent three months south of Baghdad. Never one to miss the opportunity to find out a little bit more about somebody, I asked him about what he'd seen. Naturally, he was wary of giving a stranger any details, and rightly so. But it was obvious that this young man was really glad to be home - safely - in time for Christmas.
He told me that what he'd seen he couldn't describe, where he'd been he couldn't divulge. I then asked him: “When you were there, who was the most important person in your life?” He thought about it for a while, then smiled and said: “I realized that the most important person in my life was the man who packed my parachute.”
Here was a young man who had clearly seen life's dangers and, with the Airborne Division, who knows where he had landed. But he knew that his life was fragile. He knew that every time he jumped out of a plane his life was dependent on someone else - the person who'd packed his parachute.
Very often, my friends, while our lives may not be as dangerous as that Marine's, we need someone to pack our parachute. No matter how successful we may be, or how well things are going, or how wonderfully our lives might be evolving, the fact is we as human beings are very fragile. I realized that last week, when I heard what happened to Ben Heppner during his musical performance. I've always held Ben in high regard. He is a very devout Christian who has taken part in several prayer breakfasts with me over the years. And my heart was broken to hear that his voice had failed. I was glad to hear that a couple of days later in Vancouver he picked up and the normal Ben almost, almost came back.
Even the greatest people, those you appreciate and admire the most, live on a knife's edge. When I was watching the downhill skiing in British Columbia I though of my hero: Kerrin Lee-Gartner, and how excited I was when she was skiing towards victory at Val d'Isère a number of years ago, only to miss the last gate by about an inch and be disqualified. We're on a knife's edge no matter how good we are, and the line between success and failure, the line between pride and degradation, the line between life and death is a very fine one.
No one knew this more than the shepherds in the Gospel of Luke. The shepherds lived in a vulnerable age and time. They weren't quite the poorest - they had a job, working on the hillside. But nevertheless, they were living in a country run by the Romans and as a people, they were oppressed year in and year out. They were on a knife's edge - waiting for a saviour. They waited for someone to come along and pack their parachute, that they might be saved from the turmoil around them.
When this great theophany arrived and the angel said: “Today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord,” this was the greatest news to people living on a knife's edge. This was something that all of Israel had waited for. The Lord, the Messiah, was the coming to redeem His people, and not only His people of Israel, but the whole world.
They had been looking in many different places. Some of them looked to redeemer figures from mythology to help them. Some had even looked to the Roman Empire for their salvation. In fact, Caesar used to say, “Dominus et dues noster” it is the reigning monarch who is like God. Some had been looking for another Alexander to come along and re-establish an empire, with Israel as its centre. They'd been waiting for a saviour, but the saviour that came was the Christ child.
Ever since that time, those who have believed that Jesus is the saviour, those who have seen in Him God's redemptive work in humanity, those who have seen Him save people from their sins, those who have seen Him as a source of peace in the midst of conflict, of support in the midst of danger, of life in the midst of death - and then those shepherds, when they heard that voice - knew that the saviour they'd waited for had finally arrived, but a saviour like no other. And so, I ask myself this question: “Is the saviour of those who lived on a knife's edge 2,000 years ago, those who were unsure and uncertain about where their future would lie, is that same saviour of Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Judea our saviour? Is the Christ child who came to those waiting so anxiously for a Messiah also the One who is our source of life?”
Well, I answer that, of course in faith, with an unequivocal, “Yes!” But I do so by looking at the nature of the way he saved. When we talk about salvation, people tend to get a bit “squirmish” (that's a good Bermudean word). People are always going around asking whether you've been saved. I was once asked that question at a bus stop in Bermuda when I was about 13 years old, and I said: “Well, let me think about it for a moment. Umm, yes I am.”
The man got all excited and raised his hands and asked: “When were you saved?”
Now, that was a more problematic question and I paused for a moment - the man went on to tell me when he was saved but I wasn't really listening, I was still thinking of my own answer. Finally it dawned on me, and without sounding like a smarty-pants I said: “I was saved 2,000 years ago.” We do not save ourselves, the Saviour saves us. We believe in and appropriate what the Saviour has done in our lives, but there is no need for us to be squirmish about this notion of a Saviour. It is Christ who has done it, it is the Christ child who is the Saviour, and the way in which He saves is wonderful.
The Saviour stands between ourselves and our sin. When we can't save ourselves, when we are fragile, when we are mortal, when we are fallible, no matter how great we are, we need a spiritual parachute that saves us from ourselves.
Dr. Robert Tuttle, an American preacher, tells a beautiful story about a little boy who in school one day, after having written a long exam, realized that the stress and tension had caused a problem: There was a little puddle on the floor and his pants were a little wet. He was so ashamed of this, he thought: “Oh, God, what is going to happen to me? I am going to be ridiculed and mocked. No one will talk to me ever again.”
Realizing his dilemma, a little girl in class named Susie carried a goldfish bowl up to him and dumped the water in his lap. Everyone started to make fun of Susie and called her a fool and an idiot for what she had done. This boy became the object of sympathy from everyone in the room. She became the object of ridicule: “You're an idiot, Susie. You're clumsy, Susie.”
Finally, the boy said to her: “Why on earth did you do that?”
She said: “Because I have been embarrassed like that, too.”
This little girl understood what the boy was going through and because she understood, in her sympathy she decided to step in and take the ridicule that he would have taken.
My friends, I liken that to Jesus. I liken that to the Babe of Bethlehem. He comes into the midst of our lives and our fallibility and sin and says: “I know, I understand what you are going through. I understand the embarrassments that you face. I understand the difficulties you endure. I know when you're not as successful as you want to be. I know when you fail even morally but I am going to stand between you and that sin and ridicule and be one with you.”
That's the message of Christmas. That is the message of a mediator who stands between our problems and ourselves. This is a saviour who comes generation after generation and saves us, even from ourselves. This is also a saviour who can take the discord in our lives and transform it into the harmony. I love the message of Christmas: Glory to God in the highest and on earth good will amongst people with whom He is pleased. This was a song of joy, of rejoicing, of life in the midst of the suffering of these shepherds, in the midst of the oppression of the people. Good news was proclaimed: The Saviour had come, a song had been sung, a tune had been written that people could hear in harmony for all the days to come.
In the May/June edition of Faith Today magazine, John Stackhouse, a Canadian writer, talks about a recent visit to a New York City jazz club, for John Stackhouse loves jazz. He went into an almost basement-like, 60s-type place - a coffee house, almost - where jazz was being played. The performer that night was none other than Wynton Marsalis. He was playing a piece that had been well known during the 1930s, “I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You.” Everyone was enraptured. He got to the moment of the great refrain: “I don't stand a ghost of a chance...” and someone's cellphone went off. It had one of those little tunes on it, one that nobody really knows what it is, just a tune - and in the middle of a Wynton Marsalis performance. Stackhouse said: “As the journalist, the mood was broken.”
But, you know what Wynton Marsalis did? He picked up on the tune that was being played on the cellphone, and took it to different levels, harmonized it and syncopated it and made it beautiful. Everyone started to hum it and finally he went back to, “I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Change With You.”
John Stackhouse said it was the most beautiful musical performance he had ever heard. Because what Wynton Marsalis had done was take the discordant sounds and transformed them into a beautiful melody, by the power of his ability.
Jesus of Nazareth does exactly that in our lives. He takes the discordant notes and through the power of His grace and saving love He transforms them. That is the power of the Mediator who comes between the discordant and the harmonious and changes it.
There is one last thing that the Saviour does: He comes between what we are and what we can be. When you talk about salvation you often get a lot of arguments in theological circles. Is saving an individual from death all Jesus is concerned about? Or, is Jesus concerned with the transformation of society? Is Jesus wanting to be the Saviour of the whole world, to bring about a new order where things are done by the righteousness and the grace of God? Well, this is a silly argument and only theologians like me can make such arguments, for the Gospel message is simple. It is both - Christ is, as the Greek term says, sôtêr - saviour. How can Jesus be the Saviour only of individuals and not of the society in which individuals live? How can Jesus be the Saviour of a society if He doesn't change the lives of the people who live in that society? He is sôtêr, He is Saviour and He stands between what the world is now and what it can become.
There's a lovely story that I read months ago in the newspaper about a father who got up early one morning. He was tired of having all the children around and decided he was going to have three hours to himself. So, he got up a five a.m. put on the coffee and made himself a great, big, cholesterol-laden breakfast (something that all men deep down really, really, really want - or maybe I'm just speaking about myself - I'm just fed up with high fibre and high vitamin content. I think that's why I liked this article so much! My doctor's going to kill me, I just know it. If I don't kill myself, right?) He was really enjoying himself and suddenly his daughter decided to join him and he though, “Oh, no.”
She started to talk to him and said: “Daddy, I just want to be with you.”
He said: “I know that honey, but Daddy just wants to be on his own. I just want to read the newspaper.” He saw a picture of the world in the newspaper so, trying to keep his daughter occupied, he cut up the picture of the world and told her to go away and put the world back together again with some tape and glue. The little girl went and returned five minutes later with the whole world put back together just right. He said: “How on earth did you do this? This is incredible.”
She said: “Well, on the other side was the face of a man, and once I got the man right the world then followed.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is putting people right - the world follows. There is no distinction. He puts it right by the power of His love if we will just let Him, if we will just, even in faith, take baby steps, if we will just allow Him to pack our parachute that we might live and live without fear, for the Saviour has come. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.