| December 07, 2008
You are welcome to reflect on this message
Fate has a way of engraving a place that marks it with a permanent image. It’s hard to think of Providence without Roger Williams and the Baptist principle of religious liberty. Lots of places in the world have been imprinted historically. In San Antonio, we “remember the Alamo.” Waterloo speaks of Napoleon. Auschwitz reminds us of Hitler’s holocaust. Dallas makes us think of John Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. In Jonestown it’s a preacher with grape cool-aid and mass suicide. Katrina’s not a city, but it makes us think of: New Orleans. Since 1941, Americans have interrupted the peaceful Advent Season every December 7.th Even as time moves on, the nation hasn’t forgotten Pearl Harbor, because it’s the anniversary of a great battle.
Like so many of the cities we recall are the atrocities of war, assassinations, natural tragedy, and religious quackery, as we’ve developed a habit of immortalizing devastation and destruction. Except for one: Bethlehem; the place of a great birth, observed on Dec. 25.th Pearl Harbor has continued to “live in infamy,” as President Roosevelt put it so eloquently, because it was a decisive.
Christmas is also decisive. But for a different reason: “Unto us a child is born.” As we continue our trek to the City of David, I’m struck by how much more decisive Mary’s Baby was than any strategic battle. When Jesus was born in a barnyard, so many decisive elements were already in place in the world. Caesar reigned in Rome, where her legions trampled over every road of the empire. And people got out of the way!
Any realistic assessment of what really counts, would point to military power as the most decisive force on earth. Yet in the face of raw power, St. Paul declared, “In the fulness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” How on earth could a newborn infant possibly stack-up against the might of Rome? Rome was decisive because of Rome.
How decisive Jesus was, depends on us, not him. Born of a lowly Nazarene adolescent, in an obscure village on the far fringes of the empire. It would’ve been madness to even contemplate that two millennia afterward, millions would be singing in the context of worship, celebrating His birth. While the Roman empire fell long ago to the Hun. Now people name their dogs “Caesar,” and their sons “Jesus.” It’s amazing how something so unpromising, vulnerable and common could be so decisive. Even more than famous battles. It’s happened before.
Long ago, an Egyptian slave girl cradled a baby in her arms, for whom there seemed to be little hope. Out of the bulrushes of the Nile, she weaved for him a floating crib and shoved him out for the crocodiles. Only in retrospect can we understand the momentous impact on the world that went gliding among the reeds. As baby Moses grew up to become one of the decisive leaders in history.
In our own country during the mid-1800's the forces of disunion threatened to pull the “united” states apart. Out of the back woods of KY, a frontiersman and his bride built a rough cabin on Nolan’s Creek, where a son was born, named Abraham. Who can imagine what America would be like without President Lincoln? Another decisive baby, towering over the great and terrible slaughter in the Civil War battle of Gettysburg.
Nobody took special notice of a Baptist preacher in Atlanta, GA named King, who fathered a son with a dream, who was to open the door to the most amazing civil rights accomplishments in history. A birth, far more decisive than a puny sniper’s rifle in Memphis, TN.
And it isn’t just boy-babies, but little girls too. Hillary Rodham Clinton stands out, who almost broke the “glass ceiling” this year. She lost. But she’s now joined with her opponent in the best interests of our country. It speaks volumes about our election process. How decisive it is, remains to be seen. But I wouldn’t bet against her!
Male or female, decisive babies are far bigger than decisive battles. Because battles are predictable: there will be a winner and a loser. But no matter who “wins” there’ll always be another one. Jesus knew what he’s talking about when he said, “There are wars and rumors of wars.” Always wars. And always babies. Except with babies, you never can tell what might come out. Even now in some crib, may be a tiny hand that’ll grow-up to push open the door of a new era. War is predictable, inevitable. But with babies, you never know! Think of how transient are the effects of the world’s decisive battles. Contrast that with the permanent effects of the world’s decisive babies. December is the month Americans commemorate two decisive events: Pearl Harbor and Christmas Day. World War II is in the past. Christmas? It’s always ahead of us; this one then the next, year after year. Which one is decisive for you? The past or the future?
Everything great starts out small. Not the least being the kingdom of God. Growth is acceptable with God, to whom the future belongs. So we keep searching for something, anything to fix the mess we’ve made! A Messiah to make the world work right, who can make the world work right, perhaps even now growing. Someone with the stature of Copernicus or Columbus. It may even be somebody bi-racial or a she! Whatever it is, we long for it.
That’s the role of Matthew’s story of the Magi. They bet the future on something unlikely, not the palace. King Herod relied on brute force and the power of the sword. And what a little man he was! By contrast, the Wise Men believed in an infant, and some would call them fools. They did not give in to Herod; or go looking for Caesar, or salute Rome’s warriors, which won great battles. They bowed the knee in worship before a lowly manger. A willingness to worship something other than ourselves is still the mark of wisdom: refusing the obvious, the popular, the image-makers, yet with the faith to “follow a star” until it rested over a stall where something wild and free lay.
Folks come to church at Christmas to hear the Bible read, that says people matter, in case somebody thinks they don’t. I’m not worried that anybody here will deny the truth of Christmas. But I am concerned that somebody may deny the fact that it applies to you. It’s understandable, if we overlook what makes any baby decisive. Nobody can do it by himself, not even Jesus. Jesus needs people, or he wouldn’t have called 12 of them, who were far from the world’s brightest lights. But those, along with many others helped to make Jesus decisive. Before he could be the Messiah, lots of plain ol’ folks had to come first. Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, to “prepare the way, to make the crooked places straight.” 600 years before John, Isaiah the prophet preached about “the lion lying down with the lamb.” And farmers “beating their swords into plowshares,” a time when we commemorate babies more than battles.
Think of all the ordinary people who helped make Christ decisive. Joseph spoke not a word in the entire Christmas drama but was a righteous man. What if Mary had not said, “Let it be unto me according to Thy word?” Or the scholars in the temple when Jesus was an inquisitive lad, his friends in Bethany, the twelve disciples? Even Judas and Pilate. Jesus couldn’t have been Jesus without them. We know what it took to make God’s Son decisive: lots of ordinary men and women, behind the scenes who came before, to “prepare the way,” so the messiah could show up and say “Here I am.” We all matter; personality counts. That’s the Bethlehem message.
But Jesus isn’t just one of the world’s decisive babies. He’s THE decisive baby of all time. He’s done his part. How decisive he is depends on us. It’s difficult because there always seems to be “no room for him” in the Inn. Lord knows we make room for everything else! Is there room in your life to make Christ decisive?
Before we moved to Rhode Island from Portland OR, I had to put my 17 year old puppy down. It’s the hardest thing I ever had Libby do, because I couldn’t. And I’m still not over it. That creature was decisive for me. Critters have a way of worming themselves into your heart, till it breaks your heart when they have to depart. Anybody that’s lost a beloved pet knows what I’m talking about. It’s a lonely kind of pain. But “Little Man” was decisive for only a few people in all the world, mostly me. For the rest of the world, she might as well have never existed. And that’s not unusual. Because whether something is decisive or not depends on the level of your relationship with it. We’re the only ones who can make anything decisive.
The same holds for Jesus. It’s sad that a lot of what he did is wasted on so many today. “Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, if he’s not born in thee, thy soul is still forlorn.” Don’t let the cross be squandered on you! Or the birth. The angels were privvy to how significant it was, but the revelers at the Inn who crowded him out, were oblivious to it. At least the shepherds left their flocks to pay a visit to the manger.
But I don’t see how people in Providence any more than the citizens of Bethlehem, can say Jesus is a decisive influence in their lives, when we can’t even get them to give one hour a week out of 168 in the worship of God! When Christ is decisive for Providence, we won’t have all this room in The Meeting House. When Christ is decisive, we won’t have to beg members to include the church in the family budget. But Christ becomes decisive only to those who allow him that role.
This is where the fat hits the fire folks. 2008 is no year for the frills of Christmas. Our world is as dark today as it was on that “Silent Night,” still suffering in Iraq, Mumbai, even pirates off the coast of Africa. Wherever battles are glorified. It’s been going on for a long time.
While Rome was busy making history, God slipped through the back door and pitched his fleshly tent on the silence of straw, in a cave with the animals, under a star. This old world didn’t even miss a lick, much less slow down. The engines of commerce kept clicking along, reeling from the wake of all the “greats.” Alexander the great, Herod the great, Augustus the great. While the world ignored Mary’s little Lamb. Mostly, it still does. Pastoral Prayer (12/7/08)
Believers in the Christian faith today are caught between the rational and mystical dimensions of human expression, warring over words like “contemporary,” and “traditional.” Some are invested in getting God right, others in getting God real. Some are content to believe in God; others want “to know God, and Him whom he has sent.”
Make ours the kind of congregation that invites rather than hinders faith: faithful and cooperative; generous and compassionate; venturesome and joyful. After the manner of our Lord, keep us close to those who need us. Champion all who suffer from violence, illness and grief. Be the arm of justice to those who abuse the little people. Eradicate what is evil in us, and incline our hearts toward the good.
We thank Thee for friends who care; for ways that open when the door is shut; for major purposes that make life’s minor irritations bearable; and for Thy love, that no apathy can diminish and no need exhaust.
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