Who’s Waiting for Who?
Luke 2:1-20
Well, we’ve been waiting for this night for a long time, haven’t we? We started the Sunday after Christmas with hope. And then we had joy and peace and we were supposed to have love, but love got snowed out. That’s what advet is right, getting ready for Christmas. Actually many of you probably started getting ready for Christmas with the day after Thanksgiving, black Friday as they call it. Shopping is a very important Christmas tradition, true? If you don’t believe me, how many of you got through Christmas without shopping.
The statistics of Christmas shopping are unbelievable. Over $500,000,000,000 is spent each year on Christmas presents. Only 20-25% of presents given to children will still be around next Christmas. We are told that our retail economy would collapse without the tradition of Christmas spending. Now I am not against gift giving. Who doesn’t like to give and to recieve. The issue for us is when this becomes the purpose, the reason for celebrating Christmas. Santa Claus is not the god of Christmas and The amount of presents under the tree does not determine the level of our faith. If we say that it is not about the gift, it is about the relationship between the giver and the receiver, then we need to make certain that we are worshiping the real source of all gifts. And if it is not about the gift itself but if it really is the thought that counts, then maybe we should really think a little harder about what Christmas is all about.
What if God really were coming tomorrow? What would you be expecting? You’ve waited for this day for a long time. What evidence would you be looking for to show you that God really did show up? We know Santa shows up because there are presents under the tree and because the cookies and milk are gone but how do we know that God shows up? What a conundrum! What a problem to figure out? We were expecting God and we got . . . a baby. A baby. Maybe this is why there are people who have such a struggle with Christianity and ultimately with God? They find it hard to accept that in this little child has come the one who would free his people from all that oppresses them. For you see a baby, as special as it is, is nothing until it has become an adult. People, especially women, ooh and aah over babies. They don’t ooh and aaah over adults, unless they are something special. Adults have to prove themselves. Adults have to be something. Special babies have to grow up to be special adults. So what were you expecting? There is the baby lying in a manger. He does not appear to be anything special. We come to church knowing what we are going to find. We aren’t concerned about what the baby will be because we already know. We know that the baby will grow into an unbelievable man. We know that he will become something beyond reckoning but yet someone who must be reckoned with. But What if all you had was Christmas? What if all you had was this? The report of a few shepherds, a few crazy shepherds at that. What if after the angels announcement and the visit of the magi, Jesus disappears and we hear no more about him. The New Testament would be a lot shorter. It would be much easier to memorize scripture. You see the problem here,
For Christmas really to mean anything, you need the whole man. The baby’s great and it’s a wonderful beginning. Everybody starts off as a child but what good is that . . . if the child does not grow and become a man and the man perform his mission. Babies are born every day and we think they’re cute and cuddly and we wonder what they could be, maybe what they will be, but we really don’t know anything until they are. A criminal does not go to jail as an infant. That sounds absurd doesn’t it. A newborn is not celebrated as president. Foolishness. Yet, in this infant, in this baby born to Mary so long ago, we celebrate the creator, savior, and absolute deity of the universe. That’s because we know the rest of the story. We oo and aah over the baby. And. . .we do our best to worship and to follow and to ooh and aah over the man. That is the problem with Christmas. Christmas, as it has come to be celebrated throughout the world, does not want to know the man. Infants don’t insult us. Infants don’t challenge us. Infants don’t ask to change. Truth be told, we change them. If you want to know what this infant is really about, you can’t stop with Christmas. If you want to know who this life changing, world altering, destiny determining baby really is, you have to know the man.
The baby calls to us, as children do. They cry in the night and we hear them. They call to us and we respond. And so this child calls to us at Christmas. In the glitter, in the presents, in the Christmas cookies, and the brandied egg nog, the Christ child is heard. We cannot help but hear the cry of the Christ child. We cannot help but see the shepherds worshiping at the manger and angels hovering all around. That is the vision of Christmas.
That vision needs to lead us some 33 years later, directly to a man, struggling up a steep hill outside of Jerusalem. He can hardly stand. Yet he climbs this hill to his death. His death that would mean our redemption. His death that would mean our release from all that oppresses us.
Dietrich Bonheuffer wrote that this is the one great question that Advent puts before us. Do you want to be redeemed? Do you want what the Christ child is really offering?
Redemption is drawing near. Only the question is: Will we let it come to us as well or will we resist it? Will we let ourselves be pulled into this movement coming down from heaven to earth or will we refuse to have anything to do with it? For either with us or without us, Christmas will come. (2 Bonhoeffer A testament to freedom)
The Christ child will be born. And that child waits for you tomorrow in the manger. Embrace the baby as do all who celebrate Christmas but remember, he will grow into the life changing, world altering, destiny determining man.
