CHRISTMAS EVE: "BECOMING LIKE US"

Christmas Like Us (Luke 2:1-20) (12/24/15)

INTRODUCTION

One of our favorite Christmas passages.  Have you ever wondered where Luke, a gentile who probably grew up in Asia Minor got the details of this story?  After all, Matthew a disciple, focuses on Joseph.  Mark doesn’t have Christmas story at all.  John has these soaring words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Only Luke has the birth narrative and we love to hear it.  But where did he get the details of the story?

Luke wasn’t an eye witness.  But then only Joseph, Mary and maybe the Shepherds were.

The disciples weren’t there.

Paul, who wrote most of the books in the New Testament wasn’t there.  Actually, did you know that Luke wrote more verses in the New Testament than any other author, more verses, but where did he get this story?  Where?

Or is the story made up of whole cloth to give mystique to a man named Jesus?  Let me quickly say, without equivocation, that I believe these stories are true and I hope before we finish tonight that you will believe them too.

But have you ever wondered, wondered where these stories came from?

Luke tells us that he set out to write an “orderly account” of the story of Christ.  My hunch is that Luke was a bit of an historian, maybe even a compulsive historian, and probably interested in these kind of things from a young age.

Last Christmas Eve, I stood here in costume as Elias, a 70 year old shepherd who told of a man named Luke who had come out to the hillside to ask if anyone had been around 60 years earlier when a special baby was born.  My hunch is that Luke sought out and asked as many eye-witnesses as he could find.

So if Luke had included in the back of his book, author’s acknowledgements or faithfully footnoted all of his sources, who would they be?

I think part of it can be found right in the narrative, verse 19, “But Mary treasured all of these words and pondered them in her heart.”  Who but Mary could tell these things?  In the story of Jesus in the Temple at 12, also in Luke, it concludes with “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”  Who but Mary could tell these things?

Mary, who on this first Christmas night might have been 13, or 14 or 15.  Let’s say 15 for round numbers, would have been 45 when her baby boy was crucified.

Certain things are seared into our memories aren’t they?  Great joy and great tragedy.  There are some synapses that are never broken.

Our boys were born 50 odd years ago.  You want to know the details?  Details, we have treasured those things in our hearts.

You want to know came to visit?  When Rosemary was in labor with our Jeff, my aunt, she could be known now as Rosemary’s Elizabeth, came to sit with her in labor.  We treasure those things in our hearts.  The details are seared there forever.

And the journey?  We didn’t have a flight into Egypt, but when Jeff was a week old, a week old, we did begin a trip from South Dakota to Michigan in a car in July with no air conditioning.  We were on our way to what was to be our first job out of college.

Now, Rosemary got to sit on one of those foam rubber donuts.  Mary, Mary, I don’t imagine they had such a thing for donkeys, but I’ll bet it was necessary.  Baby Jesus, probably didn’t have a problem on the journey.  Mary another story, a story seared in her memory.

We remember these things.  We treasure these things and ponder them in our hearts.  Mary could have told you all of them.  And I think she did through Luke.

Now, let’s think about the Christmas 30 ad., the first Christmas, the first birthday anniversary that Mary experienced after the cross, after she had lost her baby boy. Our children are always our babies aren’t they?

O, for Mary there had been excitement that year, the Resurrection, Pentecost, the stirrings of the early church, but when we go through those anniversaries the first year of grief, the memories are excruciating.  Excruciating, a word we get from the cross. You treasure and you ponder every detail of the life of the one you lost.  And on birthdays your remember the birth.

Mary would have remembered every detail of the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem; of the edict to register in the home town, David’s town, David’s city.  Of arriving and finding even the houses of even Joseph’s relatives full, no guest rooms, even the inadequate traveler’s inn full.  Probably finding a cave in the hills on the outskirts of town that was being used as a stable.  On that first Christmas of grief, she would have remembered the details.

Maybe by five years later, 35 ad, she was sharing the stories.  She was living in Jerusalem with John, Jesus youngest disciple, and she saw James her other son and leader of the fledgling church frequently.  Maybe they gathered with Mary on Jesus’ birthday and these things that she treasured and pondered in her heart she shared with them.  It was important to them, because the impact of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus had been incubating in them and they were coming to comprehend who this Jesus really was.  Every detail of his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his Spirit among them was important.  Mary was the well spring of those stories.

It was in this timeframe that the creeds of the early church were being developed, even hymns to be sung in worship and in the understanding and comprehension of who Jesus was.  One such hymn written then and written down much later by Paul goes like this:
Christ Jesus,
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.
⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

One of the first creeds, first hymns, first Christmas carols (and being born in human likeness) of the church.

By ad 45 the precursors of the Gospels were coming together.  But even then, if you wanted to know the stories, you went to Mary.  It was during this time that that along with Jews came new Christians (there weren’t any old Christians) from all over the known world to the festivals, Passover, Pentecost, others to Jerusalem.  And do you suppose that it might have been during this time that a young, new convert named Luke, a person driven to know and write down the story, came to Jerusalem and found about Mary and talked to her?  Mary would have been 60 about that time.  Catholic tradition would have her living about three more years.  But what if Luke came to Jerusalem in 45 ad and being a compulsive historian that he was, found her and talked to her.  Wouldn’t you have liked to have been there when that took place?

GOD

He might have asked, “What do you remember most Mary?”

She would have told all of the details, of the angel, of Elizabeth, of the journey, of the shepherds.  But of the infant narrative, I think she would have told most vividly of the visit to the Temple, of the prophet Simeon who would say to her, “and a sword will pierce your soul, too.”

Or how she understood the humanity of Jesus as he entered his ministry and how one time went to try to stop him, fearing him to be in danger.

But of course she might tell of the amazing things that Jesus came to do.  She might tell of time she went to her niece’s wedding in Cana.  What a shock it had been to her.

Jesus was also there with his disciples. There were so many guests and the wine gave out.  O how the bride and groom would be embarrassed.  She would say, I simply said to my son, “They have no wine.”  He said, “Woman, what would you have me do?”  He said, “My hour has not yet come.”  And then I turned and told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you to do.”  I was amazed, everyone was.  He turned water into wine, and his disciples believed in him.  I was coming to understand him.

And there so many things.  On my trips to Capernaum, I heard the story of him healing Peter’s mother-in-law, of casting the spirits from Mary Magdalene, of the feeding of the people on the hillside.

But it was on each birthday anniversary, Christmas, that family and friends would gather around Mary, and I’ll bet just as we do she told the story once again, of the angel Gabriel and her amazement, of her hurried trip to see her cousin Elizabeth, of the joy the two felt, of how during that time she created those words, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  About the goodness of Joseph.  Of course she would tell to how wonderful a father that Joseph was to Jesus during his short life, God rest his soul.  But then she would tell of the painful and stressful journey to Bethlehem and being so alone during the delivery of the baby.  But then the joy!  Of course the visit of the shepherds too and how they told her that the sky had been filled with angels singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace and good will to those he favors.”  And the flight into Egypt.  All of this would be told as they gathered to celebrate the very human birthday of Jesus, who would become known as the Christ, the Messiah.

So, what would I like you to come away with?  I want you to believe this story.  No, I want you to not only believe it, but to internalize it.  And not only internalize it, but let it change your life.

This is the story of God becoming like us.  Not visiting us.  Not coming near to us.  But of becoming like us.  “Being born in human likeness, and finding himself in human form…”  Becoming one of us.

Formed in his mother’s womb just as we were.  As a baby, just as each one of us were.  Held to the warmth of our mother’s breast as each of us were.

He grew to adulthood, just as we did.  He experienced the pain of life as we have.  He grieved at loss as we have.  He eked out a living by the work of his hands as we do.

He was rejected by those he thought loved him as some of us have..

Yet He had told them, there is no greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  And he did.

Christmas is the story of the incarnation.  Of God becoming flesh, being born in human likeness.  As Andy Stanley says, “God in a bod.”  The incarnation.

Believe it, internalize it, let it change your life.

CLOSE

There was a time in my life when I believed in God, but didn’t think he had much to do with me.

Twenty-five years ago, our son Curt had confronted me about this.  A few weeks later he climbed in his car and headed back to college.  He had left a note for us.  In it he had scolded his mother for some of her vices, but he said to me, “I’m really worried about you Dad, because you don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

I took it to heart.  I thought about it.  I worked on it.  It took a few weeks, a few months actually.  Suddenly it clicked into place, it all made sense.

God exists.  It takes a lot more faith not to believe than to believe.

And it makes sense that if God created this universe that he would want to reconcile it to himself.

And it made sense that he would do so by becoming like us; and do so by the greatest act of love one can do another, giving up his life for them.

And it makes sense that if he would do that for me, that he is a very personal God indeed.

The Incarnation.

It wasn’t that God visited us, or came near to us.  It was that he became like us, just like us.  He became one of us.

Mary knew that as she carried him.  Mary knew that as she gave birth to him.  Mary knew that as she heard Simeon tell her that a sword would pierce her soul too.  Mary knew that as she stood at the foot of the cross and saw her son agonize in his humanity, agonize in his human passion, agonize in his human sacrifice, demonstrating the greatest love that only one human can do for another.  Something only an incarnate God can do.

It is love that came down at Christmas.

A very personal kind of love came down at Christmas.

An incarnate love came down at Christmas.

A kind of love that will change us, not just tonight or tomorrow but for a lifetime.

Merry Christmas!  “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which is for all people.  For unto is born this night in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord,” the incarnate Jesus.  Merry Christmas!  “And this will be sign for you, that you will find the babe wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger,” the incarnate Jesus.  Merry Christmas!  “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, the sky was filled with angels, singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, good will to all,” good will to you.  Merry Christmas!  The Incarnate Christ is born!  Amen.