Sermon: "The Christmas Promise"

3rd in the "Something to Celebrate" series.
Delivered December 17, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

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Well Christmas is supposed to be a perfect time. Christmas worship services are supposed to be perfect. We are not supposed to have microphone problems on Christmas. Candles are not supposed to be crooked. Everything is supposed to be in the right place. Think about the movies that we watch around Christmas: A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is all messed up and everybody hates him, but by the end everything is wonderful. Everything is worked out. Miracle on 34th Street, a very different kind of Christmas story, a secular one, but still it all turns out perfectly. It's a Wonderful Life, it all works out. That is the way it is supposed to be on Christmas. Even Christmas with the Kranks, a newer movie ends up that way, because that is the way that Christmas is supposed to be. It is supposed to be perfect.

Think about the pictures that we always use around Christmas. Oh, I love those pictures. The family is assembled and everything is perfect with the family. Everyone is at peace. Everyone is together and no one is left out. There is just the right amount of snow on the ground, right? And people aren't driving through the slush with their SUV's. No, on Christmas you are riding in a sleigh and you are not cold, you are wrapped up in a blanket and just have a beaming smile on your face because it's Christmas and everything is perfect.

Our children think that way don't they? I mean that is the way we thought when we were children. Christmas is that absolutely spectacular day when everything works out just right and you get just the things you wanted and they are going to work perfectly and last forever and its going to fulfill every desire of your heart. That is what Christmas is all about. That is what my Christmases' were about. Christmas is a time when things have to be perfect so we go to the mall and we shop for that perfect present. Since we can't find it we go back again and on the 15th time we find that present that we think is perfect and then we wrap it up so that it is just right, because it's got to be perfect, it's Christmas.

Think about all the stress we put on ourselves because we've got to have a perfect Christmas. The decorations have to be right. All the plans have to be right. The presents have to be right and so we get all stressed out. But that's not the worse problem with Christmas. The worse problem is that underneath it all we know that it's not perfect. It hasn't been perfect during the year. Things haven't been always working out right and just because it's Christmas doesn't mean that all of a sudden it all is working out right now. And that's the bigger challenge. There are wounds that still aren't healed from the past. There are relationships that are still broken that we struggle with; people who won't be at that table. There are things in ourselves that we don't like and those things remain. We have unfulfilled dreams and we have unanswered prayers and folks that's the facts. That is where we live. And then Christmas comes and seems to make it all worse, because Christmas is supposed to be perfect. It is a time of big celebration.

Christmas is supposed to be like this (holds up perfectly wrapped present). Beautifully wrapped perfect. This is what Christmas is supposed to be like, but when we actually get there it is more like this (holds up poorly wrapped present). Duct-taped together, dirt on the outside, that's life. And so at that point we have a choice. We have a choice to believe only what we see or we have the choice to believe in God who keeps his promises. Believe our eyes or believe our God, that's our choice.

Mary and Elizabeth faced the same choices. The passage we read today is a moment of incredible celebration. Elizabeth is no longer barren. Mary comes in with incredible news that she has met an angel. Even the baby inside of Elizabeth's womb dances for joy. It's an incredible moment of celebration. Something is going to happen through Mary that's going to tear down oppression, tear down false rulers, raise up the poor and bring honor to Israel and bring salvation to God's people. This is going to happen through Mary and her child. But it's only a moment of celebration. We've got to remember that. This is a celebration, but their whole lives were not a constant celebration. Elizabeth had years of being barren before this moment in her life. Years where she had to bear the stigma of being childless in a society where being childless was something that was considered maybe almost an act of judgment from God.

And Mary. Mary had some hard things ahead of her, because Mary is going to carry a baby that people are going to think is illegitimate and they are not going to believe her explanation. She is going to bear that child in a stable. She is going to be a refugee and then later in life she is going to watch her son be rejected and executed as a criminal. It's not all going to be fun for Mary. Life wasn't perfect for either of them, if what we mean by perfect is flawless and easy, beautiful and inviting, everything always working out right protected from sorrow and hardship. If that's what we mean, then it wasn't perfect. Hard times were coming. Times when the very promises that Mary sang about here, the promises about the fact that he has blessed her and scattered the proud and brought down rulers and raised up the poor and filled them with everything they need. There were going to be moments in Mary's life that those very words would seem to be hollow. And so at those moments she faced the same choice that we face today. Is she going to believe her eyes or is she going to believe her God? That is her choice.

Just a few months later she is going to be in Bethlehem, not in Nazareth. She is going to be in Bethlehem and there won't even be a place for her to stay and at that point she is going to have questions, God this isn't the way it is supposed to be. What happened? What went wrong? Did I hear you right? And she will have a choice. Does she believe her eyes or does she believe in God? A little while later her husband Joseph is going to come up and say, Mary we've got to leave. We've got to go to Egypt. Egypt, the enemy of Israel, a people that has always oppressed and hurt Israel. To go to a place where we don't know the language, to stay who knows where. How are you going to earn a living? God, can this possibly be your plan? What went wrong? How are we wrong? She's got to believe her eyes or believe her God.

Years later when Jesus begins his ministry, what a wonderful moment. All that they have been waiting for: now Jesus is in action, now Jesus is going out to the people. Yes God, here is the moment, the fulfillment of the promise that you gave me 30 years before and then Jesus as he steps out and does this ministry he is rejected by the leaders and controversy happens and Mary has to wonder, what is Jesus doing wrong? What's wrong with God's plan? Did I hear God right? She has a choice, does she believe her eyes or does she believe her God?

And then the crucifixion happens. And that's the moment when all human hope is over. There are no more answers that we can drum up. The promise, the promised person is dead. Cursed of God by being hung a tree and at that moment too, Mary had to ask the question and make the choice, is she going to believe her eyes or is she going to believe her God and the promises that he made.

We face the same struggles because we also have received promises from God. Let's take a very general one. God will bless us in Jesus Christ. That is a promise that we can all hold on to and yet as we hold on to that: "God you said you would bless me in Christ and yet I am still not married and I want to be." "You said you would bless me, but I am sick and I am not getting any better." "You said you would bless me, but I am still depressed." "You said you would bless me, but my wounds from my past still plague me." "You said you would bless me but my job... but my child..." "You said you would bless but my life is so hard." And so at those moments too, we just like Mary and just like Elizabeth have to ask the question, have to make the choice, are we going to believe our eyes or are we going to believe our God?

Mary and Elizabeth understood something that I think we need to understand, because when is comes to the promises of God, when it comes to the action of God in this world, when it comes to the work of the Holy Spirit in this world, something they understood that we need to understand as well is that there is an "already" and a "not yet" when it comes to God's plans in this world. There are things that God has already done. There are things that he has not yet done. That is what Advent is all about. We celebrate that Christ has come, but we celebrate that he is coming again. We are in-between. There is an already. We are already children of God and yet, 1st John, Chapter 3, Verse 2 tells us that we don't yet know what we will be like when Jesus comes again. We are already children, but we don't know where that leads to, what that even leads to being for ourselves. We are already turned from darkness to light if we believe in Jesus from the power of Satan to the power of God and yet we are not yet at a point where we don't struggle everyday with the reality of sin in our lives. We are not yet fully free. We already experienced the power of the spirit, but we are not yet at the point that we are always a clear winner, always healed, always powerful. We are not there. We are already in a relationship with God, but we are not yet in God's presence. We are already in a state where Jesus has won the battle against sin and hatred and injustice, and yet we still live in a world that is dominated by hatred, sin and injustice. Already invitations are going out for God's eternal party and even right now we have a taste of it. We taste the power of the age to come. We experience the changes inside that are a fore picture of the age to come and yet, we are not yet at the moment when God himself hosts the table and wipes the tears from everyone eye. We are not there. We have so much, but we don't have it all.

And so, what that means for us is that what we see through our eyes is incomplete. The Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 13 put it this way; that we see as in a poor reflection, like we are looking into a mirror that's dirty and it's in poor light and it's distorted. That is our current view of reality. Anybody who has driven long enough has had an experience where at some point or another you are in a car and one of the side view mirrors is broken and so maybe it's cracked and a piece is missing and the pieces that are there are not aligned right and you can't get the little thing to make it work right, and so as you are driving you look over and you see something, but you can't trust it, so you have to look over another way. That's what our view of reality is like now. It's broken. It's distorted. It's incomplete and can't be trusted, because inevitably our viewpoint now is going to be narrower than it should be. We don't have any knowledge of the future and what we see now is blurred and distorted by our own emotions and by our own selfishness and its blurred by our tears. What we see now isn't really all that clear. Think about how much eyesight is worth; think about the day between the crucifixion and the resurrection on that Saturday, what would have eyesight told you on that Saturday? Eyesight is incomplete. So we have to make a choice to trust in this limited kind of eyesight or to trust God and his promises. Eyes or God?

We are going to trust God in this sort of imperfect world where we not yet, we don't yet own it all and we are going to have to learn some things about dealing with sorrow and disappointment in a relationship with God and let me suggest three ways that we can deal with that. The first suggestion that I would like to make is that we have to learn how to turn sorrow in to prayer. Sorrows and disappointments can push us from God, but if we learn how to pray about them and admit our feelings about them, and go to the Bible and get God's promises about them and wrestle with that and pray about that, then we can come to a point where we can be thankful in the midst of it, not thankful for all of the details, not thankful for some of the aspects of it, but thankful to God in the midst of it, because we know that God is in control, we know God cares and we know that somehow God will take even these terrible things and somehow bring good from them. So we need to learn how to pray.

The next is learning how to release those things we can't hold on to, to give some things up. There are some dreams that have to die, because they are never going to happen and at some point or another we have to give those up. Our health is one of those things. We come to a place in life, hopefully its when we are old, old, old, old, old, but we come to that place in life where health goes and that is something else we have to release. There are people in life that we have to release because of death, because of divorce, because of distance. In an old movie, Ordinary People, the whole plot revolves around the fact that a young son died and the family never ever dealt with the reality, never ever released that child and because of that, the living child was estranged and pushed away, and so they ultimately lost two because they couldn't deal with releasing one. This is not easy. It's not happy. It's not joyful, but its part of dealing with life as we live in the already and not yet.

There is one more thing we can do. There is something that we need to give up, but there is something we need to hold on to and what we need to hold on to is God's bigger promises, that in the midst of this life the part that's not yet is still sure, the parts that not yet will come. What we see is not what we get. So we need to hold on to the promise. The problem is that eyesight can let us down.

In Japan we used to get some exquisitely wrapped presents and I can remember in our very first year there around New Year we got this amazingly, wonderfully wrapped present. We opened it up and what's inside? Soap. Not special soap, the kind of soap that you buy at the supermarket. Soap, beautifully wrapped in a nice box. Soap. I still feel disappointed. I mean I like soap and all, but come on, as a present. My children would open up these presents from their friends on their birthday, open it up to find out there were pencils inside. Now they are nice pencils, Hello Kitty pencils, you know pencils with decorations on them, but they are pencils. But while we were living in Japan there were presents that didn't look nearly as nice: the ones that were shipped overseas and were all beat up and they were dirty and sometimes mashed down at the edges, but those were sent because someone had promised that they would send something to us. It was a care package from friends and inside were the very things that we were hoping for and waiting for, the videos, the Cajun spices, all those things that we were longing to have. Ugly box, great great present.

Which box really holds what's valuable? Because with eyesight all we can see is the outside of the box. We can only see the superficial. What's inside is the promise that counts. The church cannot make the promise to you that everything is going to always work out right, that it's all going to be easy, that there is not going to be pain, that there is not going to be suffering, there is not going to be times that you question God is the promise real? We can't make that promise to you. Sorrows and difficulties will come and we will not be happy all the time and sometimes that will be around Christmas and if you are not feeling happy around Christmas that's okay and we want to be the body of Christ around you wherever you are, to love you where you really are, and not to pretend something that isn't real.

But there is a promise we can make as the church, a promise that has already begun, but not yet complete; a promise that God will deal with grief and loss and sorrow, that God will punish injustice, that God will give mercy, that God will heal and deliver, the promise that Mary sings about in her song where God turns over all the injustices of the world and makes it right and makes it right for us individually as well. That's a promise we can make, a promise that a world is coming that's more wonderful than any world we could possibly imagine, a world with God at the center. We can make that promise. We can make that promise because God made that promise first.

So we have a choice, are we going to believe our eyes or are we going to believe our God? This needs to be decided not once, but again and again, eyes or God, eyes or God? We have to make that choice every day in our own hearts.

Let's pray. God you know our weakness and our brokenness and so even now wherever we are in our walk with you, whether we are overjoyed or whether we are hurting, we pray now for the grace to have our eyes increasingly on you, for we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

© 2006, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org