Christmas: A time for Recognizing God With Us

 

Isaiah 52:7-10
John 1:1-14

So, for us in the church, this is the Fourth Sunday of Advent – a time for us to contemplate why we celebrate Christmas anyway.

Again, this year, during these weeks before Christmas, we have been looking at the very earliest documents we have to ascertain just how those earliest Christians celebrated Christmas –
hoping to find clues as to how we might have a better understanding and actually experience a better Christmas this year.

The first week of Advent, we looked at the very earliest writings we have –
the letters of Paul and some of the writings that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammurabi and other places in the desert country of Egypt and Syria and Palestine,
and the very earliest Gospel in our Bible:
the Gospel of Mark – which was published around the year 70.

We actually have several texts now that were published during these early  years – during the first 75 years or so after Jesus was killed.
And, look as we may, it is obvious that none of these texts say anything at all about the birth of Jesus.  
It just was not important to those earliest believers.

Yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their history,
yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their faith,
yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their life experience –
in their understanding of who they were and what they to do.
Clearly, they each articulate a faith that in Jesus, they saw God incarnate – God in the flesh –
for them,  Jesus was Emmanuel – God with us.

The second week we looked at the second Gospel of Matthew, published some 15 years after Mark, and intended for a somewhat different audience.
Matthew begins his Gospel with a detailed genealogy setting Jesus firmly in the Jewish camp – a descendent of King David,
and even Father Abraham, himself.

In the 15 years between Mark and Matthew an interest in birth stories had developed.
Matthew’s community wanted to believe that their Jesus was no less a god than the mighty Caesar or any of the other gods they encountered among the cosmopolitan culture of the Roman Empire.
Every other god had a miraculous birth story to show their specialness, so, Jesus should have one, too.

The Gospel of Luke is the third Gospel of the collection in our Bible.
It was published some 15 years after Matthew.
And, again, it was intended for a different audience than Mark or Matthew.

Again, we are reminded that during these early years, indeed, for the first 100 to 150 years, there was no separate Christian church.
They were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and revered as Emmanuel – God with Us – and they would meet as small groups –
sometimes even sharing meals and resources and living arrangements –
but, when they worshiped, they went to the Temple.

We see Luke being addressed primarily to a predominately Gentile audience to show that belief in Jesus in Emmanuel conflicted in no way with their ability to serve as good citizens of the Roman Empire.

And, we see that each of the Gospels have a very different starting place.
Matthew starts very differently than Mark does – again with that long genealogy.
And Luke starts differently than either Mark or Matthew does with that miraculous birth story – not of Jesus, but of John.

And, here in the Gospel of John, we have an even stranger beginning.

Most scholars agree now that this Gospel of John was published no earlier than 110 years after the death of Jesus.
Clearly this Gospel was addressed to people under stress –
there was a conflict between the communities of believers in Jesus as Messiah
and the communities of believers in John as Messiah;
and there was a widening rift between these communities of Jesus believers
and the other believers of Judaism.
The break that we know today was occurring by the time John was published.
And this Gospel is written in that context.

Again, dwelling on establishing the specialness of Jesus with stories of his birth was not important to these people.
What was important, was how their faith in this radical new religion based on Emmanuel –
based upon the Incarnation –
based on God now being with us instead of dwelling from on high –
how life based on this new faith fits into the cosmic scheme of things –
and how it is different from the old ways of doing.

Curiously, we know from the writings of a Jewish Greek philosopher from Alexandria, Philo, that this concept of God as the Doer, the Speaker, the One who Acts, the Word
was emerging in Alexandria some 50 years before the Gospel of John was published.

Here, Jesus is remembered not primarily as a specific man at a specific time in history, but
as the embodiment of a wisdom, a sophia, that pervades all things and all people.

The Word has existed from the beginning, and the Word came and dwelt among people, “they knew him not.”

Here, John tells the story in a radically new way.

Jesus is identified with the Logos – the Word of God –   and becomes something other than a man from Nazareth born of flesh and blood –
but nothing less than a construct of God –
a part of Almighty himself –
a very part of the cosmos itself.

Like I concluded last week,
I think it is important for us to ask why each of the Gospels treat the birth of Jesus differently.
And to remember that the story that you and I have learned and could tell on a moments notice, actually does not occur in any of our gospels.

The story you and I learned,
and the story you and I tell,
is really a composite of the stories we see in the Gospels.
We tend to take a part from one and combine it with a part from another and a part from another, and lo, we have our story.

But, if we actually did what those early Christians did, we wouldn’t revere any of the details of any of these stories;
but, we would come up with our own story –
like they did.
A story that begins with an experience with Emmanuel –
an experience of God being with us –
and then coming up with an explanation as to how special that experience is.

For you and me to fully understand and celebrate Christmas, we have to seek out and identify times of Emmanuel for us:
times we have been in the presence of God,
times we when we have been absolutely convinced that God is with us.

And, so we say Where or where is Emmanuel today?
And we are on the lookout for signs of Emmanuel in our times:
for some, like the shepherds in Luke’s Gospel, it is in celestial music;
for some, it will be in coming to the Lord’s Table;
for some, it will be in helping feed the hungry at the food closet;
for some, it will be in sharing special time with loved ones;
however and whenever and wherever;
this Christmas will be the best you have ever had when you open yourself to the presence of Emmanuel and recognize God with us.
Amen.

The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, experienced this sermon during a worship service December 24, 2006

Discovering The Risen Christ Along the Road You Walk

For us, Easter was three Sundays ago, and we're still talking about it!

Like most of us, the Disciples put their faith in a specific person or thing that they had hopes for, and promises of dreams come true.
And they saw the man die.
Their hopes, their dreams, their faith, began to fade.
All of these things were caught up in the visible presence of this man from Nazareth, they knew so well.
And now where was he?
He was gone.
And where were they?
They were going - away, to Emmaus.

What the disciples did after Easter, was much more important than what they had done before Easter.

And what we do after Easter is of much more importance than what we did before Easter.

Easter is the one event in history that explains and gives meaning to Christianity.

Friends, there were no Christians until after Easter . . .

Cleopas and his unnamed companion on the road to Emmaus thought they were "well-informed".

They were amazed that this "stranger" who had quietly joined them while they were "deep in conversation," – or as Phillips puts it, "absorbed in their serious talk and discussion," –
[they were amazed that this stranger] knew so little, or nothing at all,
of the events in which they were so completely engrossed.

"How can you possibly have been in Jerusalem during these last few days without knowing what happened?" They asked the stranger.

And he replied, "What do you mean?"

"All this about Jesus of Nazareth" and they went on to spell out the facts they knew so well.

Friends, I really believe this story is of crucial
importance for each of us –
in order to understand about Christianity,
in order to understand about Easter,
in order to understand ourselves.

Of all of the stories that have great importance to our faith, I would have to pick this one as having the greatest significance upon my personal life and understanding.

For me, the first to keep in mind is that
We can be equipped with all of the facts in the world, and we still may not know what happened. We may be blessed with a wonderful Christian education,
We may know a catechism as well as our own name,
We may be able to recite the books of the Old and New Testaments and spout Scripture passages like a fountain,
We may be very proud of our knowledge of Bible names and Bible facts, and Bible history,
And someday, we may suddenly be brought to the realization that it means very little, if nothing
at all, if we have never grasped the true meaning and significance of those facts and events for ourselves and for others.

Cleopas and his friend blurted out their knowledge of the things they had seen and experienced while being with Jesus.
At the same time, they demonstrated that now they really doubted the whole business,
and that they were deeply disappointed in the Prophet from Nazareth, who had failed them so miserably.
"We had been hoping," they said, "that he was the man to liberate Israel."
"What is more," they went on, "today three days after his crucifixion, some of the women in our company have astounded us, telling us that they went to the tomb and found it empty.
They failed to find his body and returned with a story that they had seen a vision of angels who told them that he was alive.
Then others went and found things just as the women had said; but him they did not see."

You see, they were sure of their facts.
They had been personally involved with this Jesus of Nazareth.
They had even been granted the privilege that morning of hearing the good news for the first time. And they were sick about it.
They were sad.
As J.B. Phillips gives us the story, "their faces were drawn with misery."

You see, they still just didn't get it.
Oh, they had all the facts, – but no understanding of what they meant.
They had enjoyed the best opportunity for a Christian education ever granted to anyone.
They had lived with Jesus.
And now, it was he, still un-recognized, who made it clear to them that they actually knew so very little.
That they had almost no understanding of the true significance of what had happened.

So, I imagine, with a smile on his face, this "stranger" said, "You are so dense!
You are so slow to believe all that the prophets said!"
And then he proceeded to reveal to them the true meaning of the facts they knew so well
and the events in which they had been personally involved.

"This is your Messiah," he told them, "and beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he explained to them the passages which referred to himself in every part of the scriptures."

It was a Bible class five or six miles long on that road between Jerusalem and Emmaus.

By the time they reached the village they were so engrossed that they couldn't bear the thought of parting with the still-unknown stranger who was doing so much for them.

So they invited him to stay over and have dinner.

And it was at that time, at supper, when he took the loaf of bread, and blessed it, and broke it,
just as he had done in the upper room not many nights before, that "their eyes were opened and they suddenly recognized him."

Suddenly, everything was changed for them.
Suddenly Easter made sense.
Suddenly the whole message came clear.
And now they understood a whole new way of religion and a whole new way of living.
No longer sad and sick and miserable,
without a moment's hesitation,
they returned to Jerusalem,
crossing those seven miles in a fraction of the time they had spent in coming.

They immediately found the other disciples and, with great excitement, they heard that Jesus had appeared to Simon.
They then shared their own experience with the others that evening of Easter Sunday.
And the next words are startling to us, and tremendously significant. "As they were talking about all this, there he was, standing among them."

Understand where they were and what they were needing: having followed him to Calvary, they needed disparately to know the significance of the open and empty tomb,
having seen him die,
and having been shocked by his death into a kind of stupor of unbelief,
they needed to know and to understand what it meant for him – and for them – to be ALIVE AGAIN.

And this begins to get at the center of Easter and Christianity, and us (what we believe, and what we do, and how we live!).

For us, Easter was three Sundays ago, and we're still talking about it!

You see, what the disciples did after Easter, was much more important than what they had done before Easter.
And what we do after Easter is of much more importance than what we did before Easter.

Easter is the one event in history that explains and gives meaning to Christianity.

Friends, there were no Christians until after Easter –
until after these things started happening,
that those closest to him – the disciples –
finally understood [and believed and understood] a faith – a whole way of living –
that was indeed about liberating Israel!

Again:
We live and move about and be within certain boundaries, or human limitations.
We are obviously bound between points of time in space.
We experience a beginning and an end.
There is a point when we are born, there is a point when we die.
And even with all of our tremendous technological expertise, we have no way of transcending time – of getting beyond either point in time.
We have no time machine wherein we can go into the future or into the past.
We humans are pretty well limited to the time we have been given to experience.

And it's within this framework then, that the early Christians began to see that Easter was an event through which God breaks the chains of human limitation,
moves beyond the points of birth and death,
and expands the whole concept of life itself.

The early Christians saw, experienced and understood that a life for others breaks out of the
personal, the egotistical, the selfish, and transcends the limits of birth and death.

And, they say that Christ showed us the way of totally giving of yourself –
living for others –
giving of yourself so others may live –
that puts us in the company of the saints that have gone before,
and places an eternal, hopeful quality for future generations.

The Easter event liberated Israel from being slaves to the idea that their God must be restricted to a particular person,
bound to a particular time period,
or a given space in history.

Now, note, that like most of us, the Disciples put their faith in a specific person or thing that they had hopes for, and promises of dreams come true.
And they saw the man die.
Their hopes, their dreams, their faith, began to fade.
All of these things were caught up in the visible presence of this man from Nazareth, they knew so well.
And now where was he?
He was gone.
And where were they?
They were going - - away, to Emmaus.

There are two points of discovery in this story – and there are two points of discovery each of us must make before we know what life in Christ is all about.

The first point of discovery occurs at supper – when the bread was broken
(the story says, their eyes were opened)
they suddenly realized they were in communion with the presence of Christ through this "stranger".

And the second point of discovery was quickly made as they recognized the presence of Christ wherever they went.

You see, they understood Easter as taking the Presence of Christ, the idea of God working in history,
the idea of God-with-us (Emmanuel),
and separating it from the physical confines of the body of Jesus,
separating it from the limitations of time and space,
and placing it in the on-going process of life –
wherever life is lived.

Talk about liberation.
Talk about freedom.
Talk about redemption and salvation.
Brothers and Sisters as they found out on the road to Emmaus, Easter did liberate Israel (and liberates us)
from IDOLATRY.

In all of the stories in the New Testament,
no one ever believed until they had an awareness of the Presence of Christ.
Until they became aware that Christ was present and God was acting in their midst,
belief made no sense.

So, look again at your faith, and read this story again – at first, the disciples were totally
unaware of the presence of Christ as they walked along the road to Emmaus.

They were totally insensitive to that stranger in their midst that seemed to know so much.
They were so caught up in their own despair, their own struggle with their faith, that they couldn't recognize Christ was with them as they walked.

Friends, today the words of the hymn,
"Open my eyes that I may see,
open my ears that I may hear,
open my mouth that I may speak",
informs our task as Christian folk.

As we celebrate this communion today, we participate with a fellowship of saints from all the
ages, and we come to grips with the source of life itself –
through the images of the bread and the cup – symbols of sustenance and life itself –
where communion becomes a celebration of illumination,
where in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, our eyes and ears are opened,
to see and to be aware of the presence of Christ among us [in our neighbors along our road] and the significance of a life literally poured out for others.

My sincere prayer is for each of you to make some discovery about how Easter affects your faith and find some special significance in communion this morning. Amen.

These thoughts were presented to the congregation from the pulpit of The Connecting Place: Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, April 18, 2010.