[Sarah]—christmas Time

Several years ago I had the opportunity to be at the birth of a dear friend’s daughter. This was before I had my own daughter, and have never seen a baby be born, so I was quite excited. My friend Dawn is a small person, just 5 feet tall, so when she is pregnant, she is really pregnant. Her whole body is baby. Every time I would see her in the few weeks proceeding the birth of the baby, I would ask her, “Is it time?”. “Is it Time?” Of course, I didn’t mean what time of day is it according to your watch on your wrist, what I meant was, is it The Time. The time for the baby to be born. The holy moment that chronos time (the kind on your calendar and on your wrist) and kairos time (the deep time, the fulfilled time) intersect. Every year at Christmas I think about Time, as the calendar days click off telling me it is Christmas, but my soul often seems much more slow to move into real Christmas time--the kairos kind of Christmas time. I can check things off a to do list and mark days off a calendar and “get ready for Christmas”, but to move my heart into the mystery of the Incarnation: that somehow the God of the universe took on flesh and bone and became a little baby, there is no to-do list can get me there.

[Gregg]

I think if Elaine and I had ever birthed a boy, we would have needed an angel to give us the name.

In that sense, I envy Joseph.

Naming a child is not an easy task, especially when Elaine spent years as a preschool teacher and I spent years as a children’s pastor. Every time one of us would throw out a suggestion for a name, the other one would say, “Oh, NO. That reminds me of so-and-so, can’t do that.”

We love our girls’ names. But we never, ever did agree on a boy’s name. So if WE would have had a boy, we would have needed an angel.

The angel gives Joseph a name for the baby in Mary’s womb.

Name him Jesus–which means in Hebrew “the Lord saves”. Name him Jesus, because he’s going to save his people from their sins. Now that’s a name to live into! This baby will save us from the guilt and the stupidity our wrong actions bring to our lives.

But in the book of Matthew, this story of the angel giving Jesus his name is matched with words from the prophet Isaiah, who spoke and wrote hundreds of years before the angel visited Joseph. In Isaiah, another name emerges [READ Matt. 1:23].

Emmanuel, God with us, has become my favorite name for Jesus.

I’m notorious for the ridiculous nicknames I bestow on my children. Most have absolutely nothing to do with anything. I call them Charlie, Joe, Josephina, Lu-lu belle…anything and everything comes out of my mouth.

But Emmanuel is more than a nickname for Jesus. It’s a name that means something incredibly important, a name that speaks the deep truth of why Christmas is worth celebrating.

God is with us.

God is not out there, away, distant, far off. God is with us.

 

[Sarah]

 

How can I get my mind around the mystery that the God of the universe formed himself into a vulnerable child? Yet it is in this mystery that our faith is rooted and centered.

 

[Gregg]

This mystery isn’t because of anything we’ve done.

It isn’t because our technology has broken the space/time continuum and we have somehow found God in the heavens. It isn’t because we’ve become so wise and virtuous that we have earned the right to be in God’s presence.

God is with us because of God’s action, because of God’s love, because God refused to let us be separated from him forever. In the supreme kairos-time moment, God took on flesh and blood in Mary’s womb… and Joseph was to give him the name “Jesus”. Because this is how the Lord saves. This is what happens when God comes near. Jesus, the baby, is born into a small family of relationships…to make relationships with everyone in the whole world possible.

 

[Sarah]

 

from before birth...

I have this idea that before we were born, before our individual lives started officially with a birth date and a hospital wristband, that we were as close to God as we will be until heaven. Before birth there is nothing that separates us from God, no veil that prevents us from seeing clearly--we are formed in the amniotic fluid of the Holy Spirit, buoyed and immersed in the presence of God. It is this intimacy with God that leaves a mark in us and keeps us looking for God for all the rest of our lives. There is something in us that tells us that we were created for intimacy with the Divine. It is as if God whispers Eden in our ears reminding us that we were created for something far different than the injustice, pain, and death that we see around us. We were created to walk in the cool of the day with our Creator. Whether we know it or not, all of humanity waits with advent expectancy for deep relationship with Jesus Christ.

[Gregg]

What are you waiting for? What are you truly longing for?

 

[Sarah]

 

Simeon had waited a lifetime to see the promised Messiah. In Luke 2 it tells us that Simeon had been told by the Holy Spirit that his eyes would see the Messiah before they closed in death. Simeon lived in perpetual advent—always anticipating Christmas. Simeon and the expectant Jews of the day were not waiting around for an ideological system a theological treatise. If Jesus had been only the bearer of religiosity, we would know his name inasmuch as we know the names of the leading Pharisees of his time. Jesus instead brought flesh and blood relationship. The Jews were looking for a rescuer, a hero, and in a very unexpected, unconventional way, the “God is with us” came, as the culmination of the story of Israel.

 

So as Simeon and then prophet Anna held Jesus in their arms on that day in the temple and spoke words over Jesus: that he would be destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be the redemption of Jerusalem, they welcomed the rescuing, death-defeating God in the form of a baby. God is with us...the most revolutionary words in the story of this planet earth.

 

The revolutionary incarnation calls us into a relationship with Jesus in such a way that...

our minds and hearts should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

 

It doesn’t say that the that God exalted a caped superhero that leaps over tall buildings in a single bound or in a half-human, half-machine bionic man who in slow motion stops a speeding train with his shoulder. Instead, a Savior who came as a child—who disarms us with his defenselessness and stops us in our tracks with his innocence. A child who was born with a mission to die, to bring about the fullness of time and the completion of hope through death on the cross. Our faith is wrapped in the birth of the Child-King, the Humble-Savior, the Turn-the-other-cheek Warrior, the baby Jesus.

 

God came wholly human and wholly divine to show us how to be human. It’s holy work being human, it means that we are made for relationship with God.

[Gregg]

We ARE made for relationship with God!

And relationships are about knowing the other. We sort of know intuitively that to really know someone, you have to walk in her shoes.

In movies and stories, we often watch others come to understanding and compassion when they get a glimpse of what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

And this is one of the most beautiful pieces of the incarnation: God walked in our shoes.

How might you finish this sentence? Let me ask for your help.

“If you really knew what I was like, you wouldn’t…” [ASK]

I’ve heard many people use these words to tell me why it is impossible for me to accept them and love them. Many of us carry things around with us that few others see. We feel horrible about them, and we become absolutely convinced that if others saw us as we really are, with all of our faults and fears and failures, they would reject us.

God knows everything, but the funny thing is, many times we try to act like he doesn’t.

We try to hide things from God, hope that he won’t see them, hope that somehow we can put one over on God and still have him like us.

It’s probably a carry over from how we were as kids. As kids, we try to keep our mistakes hidden from parents and other adults, try to maintain that façade that we’re cute, adorable, loveable children who would never even DREAM of, say, filling the sugar container with salt, or putting the cat in the microwave.

It’s hard to convince kids that you can love them and accept them…and still want to tan their hides.

But it IS possible.

And what’s even more amazing is that God is absolutely the best at knowing all the wrong that we have done and still accepting us and loving us.

God DOES know what you and I are like. Every good and bad detail. And he still loves and accepts us!

He knows what it is like to walk in our shoes, to face pain and loss.

God became one of us!

And listen to how it affected him! Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 2 [READ 14-15]

Becoming a human being and choosing to die for us was the way that Jesus lived into his name. It’s the way he saved all of us from our sins, from what Eugene Peterson calls being “scared to death of death!”

But he didn’t just become a human being to die. No, there’s much more! [READ 16-18]

Because Jesus walked in our shoes, he became our “merciful High Priest”.

He found out what it was like to be human, and far from rejecting us, he was moved to mercy. He was compelled to compassion.

Jesus became like us in every way, and it made him love us that much more! His journey of life, where he fought betrayal and jealousy and rejection and hunger and longing and suffering means that he understands EXACTLY what you and I are going through in our worst moments.

He is our source of help, our strength, our merciful advocate before God!

His life as a person mattered. It makes a difference in how we experience God now, as a compassionate Father who has walked in our shoes in the person of Jesus. It means that Christmas matters to each of us, not only Easter…because Christmas is when God became one of us, and it moved him to mercy and compassion.

This is one of the ways Jesus is Emmanuel.

 

[Sarah]

 

When Joseph heard the words, “He will be called Emmanuel—God is with us,” he still had no idea of who Jesus would become and how Jesus would live into the name of Emmanuel. When Mary was visited by the angel and agreed to allow her own time to be intersected with the time of God, she hardly knew what she was signing up for. Both Joseph and Mary stood amazed as Simeon uttered the words over their son as Simeon held him and said, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples! A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel!” Nothing could fully prepare them for the depth of meaning that Jesus’ name held.

 

“God is with us” are the words that not only speak of the incarnation, but they speak to all of us today. They are words of an invitation to relationship that has been with us since before we were born, when we existed in the arms of God. We belong to God, it’s in our human DNA. “God is with us” are the words that remind us who we are and whose we are. “God is with us” is the name that has changed the fabric of human history and changes our personal history as well.

[invite to stand]

What time is it in your life? What time is it in our church? What time is it in the world? It’s Christmas holy time. God is near. God with us.

 

[Gregg]

When we say “Merry Christmas!” as believers, what we are really saying is “Life is good because God is with us!” So today, as you go out from this place and say Merry Christmas, remember what you are celebrating is “God with us!”. Merry Christmas!