Sermon for
December 19, 2004
4th Sunday in Advent
“Emmanuel: God is with us!”
Isaiah 7:10-16, Matthew 1:18-25
The prophet speaks to
King Ahaz of Judah, the angel announces to Joseph, and the Biblical texts
declare to you today,
Look, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and they
shall name him Emmanuel; which means “God is with us.”
King Ahaz hears these words while he
finds himself in a precarious and potentially dangerous political
situation. In 734 BC, two neighboring nations were about to join forces
to invade Judah. How will this small country survive and sustain itself
against two allied nations? Perhaps it is not possible. Isaiah tells us
that the heart of Ahaz and the heart of the people of Judah shook like the
trees of the forest which shake before the wind. They wonder whether God
is with them.
Joseph was engaged to
Mary. When it is discovered that Mary is already with child Joseph,
fearful, mistrusting, and feeling betrayed, planned to dismiss her quietly
since, as the text says, he was a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace. Joseph, too, is shaken. He wonders whether God
is with him.
You and I gather on
this fourth Sunday in Advent with the experience of the season all around
us. You anticipate the holiday and its message of good news to all. You
know how you want this Christmas to be—the best ever, perfect, just like
it used to be. That way you will really know and experience Emmanuel, for
you, too, wonder whether God is with you.
What do these texts
say to us today, 6 days before Christmas?
A king in the midst of a dangerous situation where there is no good news
at all.
Joseph about to cancel Christmas altogether.
Look, all we want is
a good Christmas. Let that peace on earth good rest with us if only for a
little while. Is that too much to ask? You just don’t let anything take
that away from you. Just let us have a good Christmas—that way we’ll
really feel, really feel God is with us, not just at Christmas but really
with us.
Ahaz and Joseph knew
the fear that comes when you wonder whether God is really with you. Do
you, too, know that fear in your own heart in wondering whether God is
with you? Has the Christmas confidence of Emmanuel found a deep and
secure place in your heart or does your heart this Christmas keep you
wondering?
Are you afraid that
you won’t have a good Christmas? That you won’t really experience God’s
presence in your life? That that announcement of Emmanuel—God with
us—will be nothing but an empty promise? You wonder whether God is really
with you.
In the midst of Ahaz’
fear Isaiah tells him that a child is to be born soon. Those neighboring
countries that threaten Judah will be no more. God gives Ahaz a sign—the
child is a reminder that in a frightening and confusing world there are
visible signs of hope from a God who is present with us—Emmanuel. But
this sign is not enough for Ahaz. He doesn’t believe God is really with
him.
As you face your
fears this Christmas, do you react just as Ahaz did? Do you let your fear
so overwhelm you that you fail to see the sign of Emmanuel, you fail to
accept the great gift of God with us. For God is with us. Right now, in
the midst of all our fears.
(c)
Harriet Ritchie tells the story of her
family’s late night breakfast at a truck stop late one night following the
midnight Christmas Eve service. Her husband was hungry so they stopped
there to eat:
“There must be some place open,” he
muttered. We piled in the car, and our son quickly placed an order for
three hamburgers. After driving around for a while we headed down the
interstate and finally found a truck stop, which was almost deserted. By
now the children were sleepy. My husband led us to the door.
The jukebox was
playing something like “When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards So I’ll Think
You’re Coming In.” The only suggestions of Christmas were the
multicolored blinking lights strung around the large window. The air
smelled of coffee, bacon and stale cigarette smoke. At the counter a
one-armed man in a baseball cap was drinking Pepsi from a bottle. Two
other men sat around a table talking, eating and drinking. At such an
hour I couldn’t help wondering where they had come from or were going.
We chose a booth
beside the window because the children wanted to see if the lights would
make our faces change colors. A thin woman named Rita came to take our
order. She looked like any waitress would look who had been unlucky
enough to draw the late shift on Christmas Eve. Old for her years, I
guessed—she wore her hair tucked behind her ears the way I do when mine
won’t do anything else. Rita managed a weary-looking smile as she handed
us the menus. Our son was holding the salt shaker upside-down, spilling
salt into his hand and licking it. I gave him a stare and looked up in
time to see Rita wink at him.
“No hamburgers,”
we told the children. “This is breakfast.”
They moaned and
ordered pancakes with sausage. They defiantly at the sausage between the
pancakes, hamburger style.
This wasn’t my
first breakfast at 1 a.m., but the others had been on somebody’s china.
The snob in me was enjoying feeling out of place. Years from now, I
thought, we’ll laugh and say, “Remember the Christmas we ate breakfast at
that truck stop? That awful music and those tacky lights?”
I was staring out
the window thinking such thoughts when an old Volkswagen van with Texas
license plates and an overload of luggage drove up. A bearded young man
in jeans got out. He walked around and opened the door for a young woman
who was holding a baby. They hurried inside and took a booth near the
back.
“Where you
headed?” somebody asked them. I couldn’t near the answer, but I imagined
grandparents somewhere anxiously waiting to see their grandchild for the
first time.
As Rita took their
order, the baby started to cry. The father lifted the baby to his
shoulder, but it didn’t help. Rita poured them coffee. The mother took
the baby and began rocking it in her arms.
“Why doesn’t the
baby stop crying?” our daughter asked.
“She probably
wants something to eat,” I told her, remembering all the times I’d tried
to drink a quick cup of coffee before a feeding. As if on cue, the baby
would demand immediate attention.
The mother picked
up the diaper bag and started to leave. She held the baby’s head against
her neck as if she could muffle the noise.
Rita reached over
and held out her arms. “Drink your coffee, hon. Let’s see what I can
do.” There was something about the way Rita took the infant that made me
think she’d raised half a dozen of her own. She began talking, walking,
playing with the baby. Rita showed her to the man in the baseball cap.
He began whistling and making silly faces, and the baby stopped crying.
Rita showed her the blinking lights and the lights on the jukebox. She
brought her over to us. “Just look at this little darlin’. Mine are so
big and grown,” she said.
The one-armed
fellow took a pot of coffee from a burner and started waiting on the
tables. As he finished refilling our mugs, I felt tears in my eyes. My
husband wanted to know what was wrong.
“Nothing. Just
Christmas,” I told him, reaching in my purse for a Kleenex and a quarter.
“Go see if you can find a Christmas song on the jukebox,” I told the
children.
When they were
gone, I said, “He’d come here, wouldn’t he?”
“Who?”
“Jesus. If Jesus
were born in this town tonight and the choices were our neighborhood, the
church, or this truck stop, it would be here, wouldn’t it?”
He didn’t answer
right away, but looked around the place, looked at the people. Finally he
said, “Either here or a homeless shelter.”….
As we tucked in
the children (that early morning), I picked up a Bible and read, “Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are
those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for
they shall inherit the earth.” Then I found the Christmas story in Luke
just to be sure it really did say, “I bring good news to all people.”
Many Christmases
have passed since that night. I still believe that Jesus would be born in
what I’d call an unholy place. But rich, poor or in between, we are all
poor in spirit. We all have more unhappy memories than anyone would guess
and burdens that we never share. In the endless, sometimes meaningless
daily grinds, in the comings and goings of our lives, our souls are often
far from home whether we know it or not.
In the places
where we are broken, in the dark holes where something is missing, in the
silence of unanswered questions, the wondrous gift is given.
(c) Copyright 1995
CHRISTIAN
CENTURY. Reproduced by permission from the December 13, 1995
issue of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Subscriptions: $49/year from P. O. Box
378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054 1-800-208-4097
No, there is no
“Grinch” that steals Christmas, because it can’t be stolen. Christmas
cannot be taken away from us for God is with us. If you don’t believe
that then consider that first Christmas when, except for the word of the
angel Joseph would have stopped it altogether but it came anyway.
Brothers and sisters, the first Christmas was just like that. If you want
a formula for fear and defeat then have Emmanuel born of a single mother
who travels a long distance on a donkey at the very end of her term, with
no place to stay, and have this child born in a stable with a cattle
feeder for a first crib and then flee to Egypt to escape the threat of
certain death by a king’s hand.
What kind of
Christmas was the first Christmas? If it all began in these broken places
then that is surely where it is today. Christmas comes in creation’s
broken places, among the poor, the suffering, the grieving, the lonely.
Christmas comes in your broken places. No, life’s brokenness will not
steal Christmas from you because it can’t be stolen. The message of
Christmas is God is with us.
Where would Jesus
come if he were born today?
In the places where we are broken, in the
dark holes where something is missing, in the silence of unanswered
questions, the wondrous gift is given.
Cheryl’s and my
theology professor at Duke, Robert Cushman, was a very scholarly
academician and devout Christian. Despite all the deeply philosophical
treatises he assigned us to read and tested us on, he found the most
profound statement of the truth of the Christian faith in the simple
Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem:
The
hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Emmanuel—God is with
us.
