Christmas A

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt once published some very intriguing data on what he calls “elevation,” which is the opposite of disgust. We all know that there are any number of things that disgust us or cause us to feel revulsion. When we witness hypocrisy, cruelty, betrayal, and the like, we recoil–there are even certain physical sensations we experience when feeling disgusted, such as a tightening in our chest, a clenching of our jaws, and perhaps even a flutter of indigestion in our stomachs.

Happily, however, witnessing acts of moral beauty also has an effect on us: it elevates us, moves us toward wanting to perform acts of morality ourselves. On one level, you might at first think that watching one stranger help out another stranger would not necessarily affect you much. For instance, on September 11, 2001, many of us watched the news and saw an image of a fireman from Brooklyn helping a bloodied Manhattan securities broker hobble down Wall Street after the attack.  None of us who saw that had ever met either person and likely we never would. The injured person may even have been someone whose lifestyle on the glitzy end of New York City’s upper crust makes that person vastly different from us. So why would seeing one stranger helping out another stranger affect us?  Yet Dr. Haidt has discovered that it most assuredly does. Here, too, there is a physical response that includes a feeling of warmth, a tingle down your spine, tears in your eyes, a lump in your throat. More importantly, seeing acts of great moral beauty elicits in us a desire to do likewise, to be that kind of person ourselves.

What’s more, this kind of elevation is contagious. It rubs off on others. If a story of courage is told well, it can elevate an entire auditorium of people. Indeed, the Christian community has known that for a long time, which is why testimonies to God’s grace have so long been a hallmark of believers. If someone can stand up and tell his or her own story of “I once was lost but now am found,” it moves us all.

The shepherds of Luke 2 may well be a good example of this kind of elevation. They had witnessed something of profound moral beauty and had heard a message of radiant hope. The events of that long ago night quite literally elevated the status of these otherwise despised and dirty men of the fields–two millennia later we still remember them with honor and are only too happy if our child gets to dress up as a shepherd for a Christmas program at school or church. But even at that time, the message of the angels and the things the shepherds saw in Bethlehem elevated their own hearts into a realm of hope and joy. They wanted to be different people in the wake of what they saw and heard, and they were. They became the first evangelists, the first witnesses to start telling the gospel story.

Luke tells us in verse 18 that everyone was amazed at “what the shepherds said.” Their sense of moral and spiritual elevation was contagious. It quickly began to spread, to wow and to startle a great many people. “What the shepherds said” did all that.

But have you ever wondered just what it was they said?

We’re not told.

Of course, on one level this is an easy blank to fill: what did the shepherds say? Well, everything we read in Luke 2 starting at verse 8: they told a tale of angels and of a message of peace and hope. They told a story about a baby in a manger, a baby who was right where the angels said he would be. They used words like “Savior” and “Christ.” Luke didn’t need to tell us what the shepherds said: it’s obvious. It’s the same thing we’ve been saying and repeating this whole Advent season, same as every year when Christmas approaches.

But this Christmas morning I want to suggest that the shepherds may have said some things we don’t always think about. To see what those other things may have been, we need to go back over a few of the verses we read a few minutes ago–verses that are so familiar to us, we can hardly even hear them anymore. But we need to hear them afresh.

In fact, there is just one line from the angel that, if we can hear it the right way, may well suffice to get at what I have in mind today. At one time or another, most of us have received a birth announcement in the mail or maybe have gotten a phone call about a friend or daughter who has just had a baby. In such cases, there is a small batch of standard phrases we use.

After our two children were born, my first phone call was to my parents. “It’s a girl!” I said the first time, “It’s a boy!” I said four years later. In the days before fathers were allowed in the delivery room, a nurse might come out and say, “You have a son!” Since our daughter was born on a Sunday morning about three hours before church was slated to begin, I didn’t make it to work that morning. Instead the vice-president of our Council stood up and announced, “Scott and Rosemary’s daughter was born this morning!”

But wouldn’t most of us be taken aback if someone put it this way: “Dad, this morning there was born to you a grandson!” Or what if some Sunday morning I announced that a young couple of our congregation had had a baby but said, “There has been born to us a new child at Calvin Church!” By now you can clearly see where I’m going with this: why did the angel say, “There has been born to you a Savior”? In the Greek of that verse the personal pronoun “you” is in the plural and is in the dative case. English doesn’t have a dative case, but many other languages do and if so, the dative is reserved for things that come directly to another party. So the dative would be used when I give a gift to you or if I pull you aside so that I can say something directly to you.

In any event, the dative is personal in the sense that something is being directed quite specifically your way. If you are celebrating the birthday of one of your children, perhaps another child will ask, “How come nobody is giving any presents to me!?” Your answer will likely be along the lines of “Because it’s not your birthday.” We direct gifts at specific individuals for specific reasons. Similarly, if someone interrupts a conversation you are having with another person by asking a question about something you just said, you may respond, “Right now I’m not talking to you so please don’t interrupt!”

The angel tells these lowly shepherds that a Savior had been born. But far from some generic birth announcement, this particular occasion is personalized: this Savior has been born to you, which could also be a way of saying that Jesus the Christ had been born for them. There is a very specific purpose behind this birth, one that will end up affecting these shepherds and untold numbers of others in a quite personal way. This Savior came to them and for them. They were involved in this person’s birth in a way far more dramatic than simply hearing the announcement. If you tell me that you and your wife had a baby the day before yesterday, I may well be delighted to hear it and will, in some small way, share your joy. But that is a quite different matter than having my whole life changed because this child who has been born is going to involve me personally.

“Today a Savior has been born to you.” Those last two words get swiftly repeated in the next verse when the shepherds are told, “And this will be a sign to you.” We all know what that sign was: a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. A “sign” is something that points to something else like an arrow showing you the way to a wedding reception or a party you are attending. If so, then to what did the sign of the baby in the manger point?

Typically we tend to think that the main thrust of this particular sign was to back up what the angels had said. In case the shepherds thought that maybe that whole angel thing had been a hallucination brought on by some bad wine or something, their actually finding this baby in a feed bunk would let them know for sure that the angels had been no dream. And certainly that is partly what this sign meant and partly why it was given.

But then again, look at verse 15: the shepherds say, “Let’s go to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened which the angel of the Lord has told us about.” Notice how they put that? They didn’t say, “Let’s go to Bethlehem to see if this is really true” but said right up front that they believed it had indeed happened. Further, the reason they seem to have that confidence even without yet having laid eyes on the baby Jesus is because they already believed they had been visited not by a ghost and not by a dream but by “the angel of the Lord.” So they didn’t need a sign to prove they hadn’t been hallucinating.

So to what did this sign of a baby in a manger point? What truth did the shepherds see when they trotted over to the stable and found Mary, Joseph, and also that baby, who was lying in a manger? The truth they saw was that indeed, this Savior who is Christ the Lord had been born to and for them!

After all, suppose the scenario on that long ago night had been different. Suppose that those same shepherds had been drowsing on those same fabled hills keeping watch over their flocks by night, same as every evening. But then suppose that instead of an angel in the sky, what roused them from their sleep was a Roman centurion on a stallion shouting out through cupped hands, “Hear ye, hear ye! There has been born this day, in the city of Rome, a son to Caesar Augustus, and he shall be the heir apparent to the throne of the Empire.”

Now I’ll ask you to set aside for a moment the fact that a band of shepherds in Judea wouldn’t be able to trot over to Rome very easily. But suppose these musty-smelling keepers of mutton had said, “Let us go over to Rome to see this thing the centurion has made known to us.” If they showed up at Caesar’s grand palace in Rome, do you suppose they would have been let in? If they said, “We’ve come to take a gander at the emperor’s new son,” would the palace guards say, “Sure, come on in, the nursery is to the left”?

Of course not.

Yet Someone vastly more important than any earthly ruler was born, and the likes of grungy shepherds had no difficulty gaining access to this one whom the angels hailed as the Savior of the world. He really had been born to and for them. The sign the shepherds saw in that stable was this: the Savior and Christ of God had been born right on their level. The little guy was only a few hours old and he already smelled like a barn, same as the shepherds smelled most days. For this little Lord Jesus, as the children love to sing, there was “no crib for a bed,” but the shepherds could relate to that, too: they couldn’t remember the last time they’d slept in a real bed.

A sign is an arrow that points to something. The sign in the stable pointed to the truth that for the shepherds and everyone else like them in the world, past, present, and future, the birth of the Messiah was for them. Luke tells us that people were amazed at “what the shepherds said.” The story of the angels lighting up the night sky was part of what the shepherds said, and it properly amazed people. Probably the fact that the shepherds found in Bethlehem exactly what they had been told they would find was part of what the shepherds said, and it, too, properly amazed a few folks.

But the single most amazing thing the shepherds said is also the one thing we tend to forget about in our own focus on the glitter and brilliance of the angels: and that is that the Savior who is Christ the Lord was born to and for those shepherds. If the shepherds said, as likely they did, “This Savior came for us!” then that was a message so full of wonder, joy, and above all of holy hope as to burst the boundaries of everything we know or ever thought we knew.

And it’s because of that portion of what the shepherds said that I can declare on also this Christmas Day all these years later that this Savior was born to also you. A great many of the people in this room this morning I know on a first-name basis. But even if I can say your name at the door in a little while at the end of this service, that doesn’t mean I really know you. I can’t see the hidden pain or shame or guilt you may have dragged along with you into the sanctuary today or every week. Of course, there are some of you who are guests with us today whom I don’t know at all.

But that’s a small matter: because the Gospel according to Luke lets me declare that whoever you are, whatever you’ve done in the past and whatever greasy little sins you may commit before this week is out; however piously you’ve lived or however miserably you have failed in trying to live a Christian life; whether you come from a family that is economically prosperous or one that frets about getting the bills paid every month: whoever you are, hear again the angel’s clarion voice that there has been born into this world a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And above all hear that this Savior was born to you and for you.

We opened this sermon thinking about how our witness of an act of great moral beauty can change us, elevate us, make us aspire to be better persons ourselves. And we said that this can happen to us even if the thing we observe doesn’t involve us at all but involves only strangers. How much more elevated wouldn’t you feel if you not only witnessed a firefighter’s courage but were the one rescued by that courage?

In the history of the world, what act has ever been more beautiful than the birth of God’s only Son? The Son’s condescending to our human, earthly level–indeed, his willingness to come down to not just earth but to an impoverished corner of this earth at that–is a sacrifice of stunning power. But this central moment of Christmas is not something we observe from afar and it’s not something that involves strangers. As it was for the shepherds, so for all of us: this Savior involves us personally because he was born to you, to me, to everyone. Witnessing that yet again changes us fundamentally and forever.

As at least some of you know, a common complaint that is often lodged against contemporary Christian music is that it’s too individualistic with song lyrics that are all “me and Jesus” sentiments–songs that use the personal pronouns “I, me, my” at the expense of the corporate “we.” There is something to that critique, although were you to look at the index of hymns in the back of most any traditional hymnal, you might be startled to discover that the titles to nearly 25% of those hymns contain the first person pronouns “I, me, my!”

The truth is that to a certain extent there is no escaping the personal dimension to faith and salvation. Jesus is indeed the cosmic Christ who died to redeem the whole creation. We cannot over-estimate the scope of Jesus’ saving work.

Still, there remains the vital dimension to Luke 2 that we’ve been thinking about this Christmas Day: the Savior whose birth we celebrate was indeed born to you and for you all. If you can hear and believe that part of what the shepherds said, then no matter what happens the rest of today or this holiday season, you will be able to join those shepherds in glorifying and praising God for all that you have seen and heard. In the light of that, merely to say “Merry Christmas,” seems weak.

Let’s try instead a “Hallelujah!”  For there has been born to you and for you a Savior.

For you.

For you.

Amen.

(This is a sample sermon for Christmas).

Note: Our specific Advent and Christmas Resource page is now available for you to check out sample sermons and other ideas for the Advent Season of 2016.   You can view that material here: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/advent-2016/

I’ve seen the feet of a few preachers and teachers who proclaim the gospel’s “good news.”  Some are big, others are fairly small.  Some are quite flat.  Preachers and teachers’ feet can even be pretty smelly.  But I’m not sure even their closest family members and friends would call them “beautiful.”

Yet no one who brings the good news of the gospel needs to hide our feet.  Isaiah and Paul, after all, in fact, call them “beautiful.”  Yet when they describe the feet of those who bring good news, they’re not literally referring to their physical qualities.  No, the prophet and the apostle seem to be talking about the beauty of the good news the gospel’s teachers and preachers bring.

Certainly Isaiah’s first hearers desperately needed some good news.  They’re, after all, part of a people who have been slaves to cruel Egypt and Assyria.  Now the people to whom Isaiah sends beautiful messengers are likely in exile in Babylon.

So they’ve watched pagan armies invade and defile their holy city of Jerusalem. Oppressors have wrapped the yoke of slavery around the necks of the Israelites to whom these messengers bring good news.  Their enemies have sold them like so many head of cattle into captivity.

What’s more, Israel’s enemies have also shown themselves to be God’s enemies.  They haven’t, after all, just harmed God’s beloved Israelite people.  The Babylonians also blaspheme God’s name constantly.

In linking this Isaiah passage to Luke 2, those who organized the Lectionary recognize that Jesus’ contemporaries needed a healthy dose of good news as well.  After all, in verse 10 an angel tells Bethlehem-area shepherds, “Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (italics added).

Those shepherds as well as Jesus’ other contemporaries lived under the heel of not Babylonian, but Roman authority.  They desperately needed the angels’ “feet” to carry to them the good news of a Savior who would rescue God’s adopted sons and daughters from our sins.

Yet the situation of some of God’s children today is little better, even on Christmas morning, 2016.  People have wrapped some of us in the chains of oppression.  Poverty, neglect and racial prejudice have also tried to claim some of us as their captives.

Others have, sadly, sold themselves into a kind of slavery to things like debt, materialism and the relentless pursuit of a pleasure.  Advancing age, sickness, loneliness and grief burden still others.

On top of that, some of our family members, friends and acquaintances act as though they’re God’s enemies.  They engage in false religions or the puny gods they’ve created for themselves.  They use God’s name only in frustration or attempts to enlist God in their own selfish causes.

Those whose feet carry them to preach and teach the good news that is the gospel announce, in a sense, bad news first.  We announce that we’ve made not peace but enmity with God by our sins.  We’ve, in fact, made ourselves strangers to God by both what we’ve done and failed to do, by both what we’ve said and neglected to say.

So the good news’ preachers and teachers call God’s adopted sons and daughters to make peace with God by confessing our sins and receiving God’s grace with our faith.  God, after all, wants to adopt all of us as God’s children.  You and I simply need to faithfully receive that grace.

Yet their beautiful feet carry the preachers and teachers of good news to make peace not only with God, but also with each other.  They call us to be reconciled to each other.  We bear good news that is “for all people” (Luke 2:10).

After all, God has not just reconciled us to himself through the blood of Jesus Christ.  By God’s grace, Christ’s blood has also broken down the walls that once separated people from each other.  God has graciously freed us to live and worship together in peace.

The good news’ preachers and teachers proclaim that even the most wretched sinners need only respond with our trust that Jesus died for our sins.  We bring those glad tidings to people saddened by advancing age, sickness, loneliness and death.  In sad places like hospitals, funeral homes and gravesides, we bring good news to people who desperately need some.

Yet that good news of salvation through Jesus Christ that beautiful feet carry is so good that it needs lots of “feet.”  The good news needs many messengers.  So together, pastors and deacons, elders and board members announce the good tidings of salvation to both Christians and those who don’t yet believe.  Together we proclaim God’s peace to our various neighbors who are still strangers to God.

You and I bring good tidings to our family members, friends and co-workers who so desperately need the good news of Jesus Christ.  Together, after all, we can shout for joy.  We can burst into songs together, celebrating God’s great grace.

After all, we know, as Isaiah ends our text, we don’t do any of this alone.  The Lord will go before us.  We won’t go anywhere God hasn’t already, by God’s Spirit, gone.  The Lord promises to go ahead of us.

What’s more, we won’t have to worry about a sneak attack from behind as we bring the good news.  The God of Israel, after all, promises to be not just our escort, but also our rear guard.  God, to use a common phrase, “has our back.”  So we can move forward into a future we don’t know, but that God’s already got all mapped out for us.

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 In his Christianity Today October 23, 2000 article, “Beyond Self-Help Chatter,” David Neff describes a couple of preachers whose “feet” weren’t particularly “beautiful.”  He writes, “I took a vacation last summer, and of course I visited a church. It was a mainline church, which meant (among other things) that the Scripture readings for each Sunday were prescribed.

In the best of circumstances, set readings motivate preachers to dig into a Bible passage not of their own choosing and to listen there for the voice of God. In the worst of circumstances, preachers discover some phrase in the text that reminds them of something else they’d rather talk about – a joke, a favorite scene from a movie, some therapeutic insight from a self-help book, or some political agenda.

The first Sunday I visited that church was among the worst of circumstances. It was the Sunday of the church year devoted to celebrating the Trinity. The Old Testament reading from Exodus 3 told the story of Moses at the burning bush. There God reveals to Moses how he plans to fulfill the pledge he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by using Moses to liberate their descendants from slavery. God not only renews his pledge in this story, he also reveals his ineffable name. This is a pivot point in the Bible, a hinge on which the door of sacred history swings.

But the preacher trivialized it. He talked not about the doors of history but of life’s stages. Moses was afraid to walk through the door set before him, the preacher said, but he walked through it anyway. We too face doors that we must walk through. End of message. No God. No divine plan revealed. No theophany. Just stages in the life cycle.

The bulletin promised a different preacher for the next Sunday, so I came back. The next Sunday’s Old Testament lesson recounted the voice of God speaking out of the whirlwind to Job. In Job 38, God asks Job if he knows who ‘shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb’ and where he was when God ‘prescribed bounds for the sea and said, “Thus far shall you come … and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”

The Gospel lesson was from Mark 4, in which Jesus stills a storm on the lake and the awe-struck disciples wonder aloud, ‘Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?’ The Scripture leaflet in the church bulletin placed this title over the Gospel story: ‘Jesus stills the storm and shows that he is Lord of all creation.’ Mark took this event as a theophany.

But the preacher took it as a story about our anxieties when we travel, and offered us a lame joke about a woman who was not comforted by knowing that three bishops were flying on her airplane. The sermon may have soothed some fears, but theologically it crashed and burned. I didn’t come back the third Sunday.” Neff goes on to mourn that some evangelicals trivialize texts too, especially when they have happiness and wealth in their sights.

Today is one of the many times I get a bit irritated with the Revised Common Lectionary, but then, upon further reflection, I repent of my pique and learn from its sometimes frustrating choice of readings.  I was irritated this time because once again the Lectionary selects a passage that it focused on just a few months ago.  The Psalms for Christmas Eve and Day in this liturgical year are Psalms 96 and 97.  But I just wrote on Psalm 97 on May 2 and Psalm 96 on May 23.

If you didn’t preach on those Psalms back in May, however, you may find them to be a helpful alternative to the traditional Christmas readings from Isaiah 9, Luke 2 or Titus 2 and 3.  Rather than focusing on the historical fact and doctrinal implications of the Incarnation, these Psalms simply call the whole world to unbridled praise.  Using these Psalms will give your Christmas sermon a doxological purpose.  Indeed, I can envision a Christmas Eve or Day service that consists entirely of singing, a service of praise to the King who has come.  After calling all nature to sing, Psalm 96:13 gives this reason: “for he comes, he comes to judge the earth.”  On this day, we sing, “Joy to the World, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king.”

As I mentioned in my May postings, these are enthronement Psalms, trumpeting the audacious claim that “the Lord reigns,” in spite of appearances to the contrary.  Placed as they are at the beginning of Book Four of the Psalter, they are designed to counter the undeniable reality of the Exile that occupies so many of the Psalms in Book Three.  And Psalms 96 and 97 contradict the reality we can see so clearly in our day, when there is so much unrighteousness and injustice in the world.  This is the day to shout with the saints of old, “The Lord reigns.”

That claim gives us an unusual angle on Christmas.  He was such a little baby, born in such poor circumstances, attended by the lowest of the low.  Philippians 2 says that in his incarnation, the Son of God emptied himself.  The King of the Universe left his throne to be born in a manger as a helpless baby.  But the use of these enthronement Psalms in this season remind us that his humble birth was, in a sense, a coronation.  The Lord has come to his earth, in disguise to be sure, but as King nevertheless.  In his humiliation, the Lord of all received his highest exaltation, for he is God who has come to save his broken world.  There is no more majestic and regal deed a King could ever perform.

These Psalms give us an alternative way to explain his salvation.  Jesus came not only to forgive us our sins and get us to heaven, but even more (?) to set all things right in the world.  Psalm 97 declares that righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.  So, of course, when he comes to his world in person, his agenda is to bring righteousness to the earth and justice to all.

All the talk about justice and judgment in these Psalms is probably not a reference to “The Great White Throne Judgment” at which punishment will be meted out to the wicked.  That would hardly call forth the kind of world-wide joy we hear in these Psalms.  The proclamation of judgment in these Psalms is seen as good news, as the promise that at last the King will make all things right in the world.

There are many ways to think of such a prospect, but Psalm 96 puts it in terms of our ultimate longings as human beings.  It says that because the Lord reigns already, “the world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.” That is, we can rely on the stability of nature because the Lord is in charge.  Chaos does not reign.  The Lord does.  And because the Lord reigns, “he will judge the peoples with equity.”  We can count on justice in the world.  Aren’t those the two great longings of the human heart?  All humans yearn for a predictable and just existence.  The heavens and the earth, the sea and the land, the fields and trees sing for joy because of the present reign of the Lord.

And now at Christmas, the present reign of the Lord has become even more evident to the eye of faith.  The Coming One has come, so the “hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”  There is more to be done, and it will be done when the King comes again.  But the angels knew what they were singing when they rhapsodized about peace on earth—not just peace of mind, nor even peace among people, but that comprehensive Shalom promised by the prophets, when all shall be absolutely right, exactly at the Lord intended at the beginning of his earthly reign.

In a world filled with unrighteousness and injustice, the message of these Psalms will give your Christmas sermon a sharper, more powerful, more real-world point.  This little baby has come to fix this mess.  Though it is still messy, he does reign. And when he comes again, he will establish justice on the new earth.  No more abuse of power, no more moral corruption, no more arbitrary justice, no more exploitation.  Back in May I quoted J. Clinton McCann: “In a world weary of old patterns of injustice and unrighteousness, the best possible news is that God is still at work, creating new possibilities for life that are properly welcomed, celebrated, and facilitated by the singing of a new song.”

So, we can and should sing his praises today with strong faith, deep hope, and soaring joy.  That note of joy runs through all of Psalm 97.  It opens with a call to the ends of the earth to rejoice, because the Lord is King.  That universal note is prominent in these Psalms.  Christmas, then, is not just for Israel, or for those who currently believe in the Little One who is Lord of all, but for the whole earth, for “the distant lands” who don’t know or believe yet. But Psalm 97 ends with a special call to the righteous ones to sing for joy over his just reign.  Verses 8-12 of Psalm 97 remind us that the reign of Yahweh over the whole world is a source of comfort and joy for those who love and trust him.  We must be the choir that leads the entire creation in this song of joy. Let this day be a time for choir rehearsal.  This sad world desperately needs to hear that song. “Joy to the World, the Lord is come!”

There’s one more thing you might preach on here.  Psalm 97:8-12 are a theophany, a once-in-a-lifetime appearance of God in all his glory.  That’s what Christmas was, but it didn’t impress many people.  That’s why so many have mocked the story as unlikely and the work of the Lord as ineffective.  I mean, the world seems basically unchanged, in spite of the triumphant shout and stout promises of these Psalms.  So it might be a good idea to show your people this theophany in Psalm 97.  In words that must have reminded ancient Israel of their first theophany at Mt. Sinai, God comes in or out of “clouds and thick darkness.”  When God renewed his covenant with Israel on that mountain, Israel felt the earth shake, saw fire on the mountain and in the skies, and were overwhelmed with terror at the God who hid himself in deep darkness.

Here in Psalm 97 that’s exactly how the universe responds to the coming of the great King.  “Fire goes out before him and consumes his foes on every side.  His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles.  The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, the Lord of all the earth.  The heavens declare his righteousness and the peoples his glory.”

On that first Christmas, the multitude of the heavenly hosts sang his glory.  Yes, he was just a little baby, but when the shepherds heard the news of his birth from the angel, they were “sore afraid.”  Of course, the angel said, “Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good news of great joy which shall be to all the people….”  But the shepherds knew this is not a God to be trifled with, “for he comes, he comes to judge the earth the earth.  He will judge the world in righteousness and the people with justice.”

Note: Our specific Advent and Christmas Resource page is now available for you to check out sample sermons and other ideas for the Advent Season of 2016.   You can view that material here: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/advent-2016/

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As familiar and comforting as the promises of forgiveness and heaven are to us, those dimensions of salvation might seem a bit ephemeral and otherworldly to some of your listeners, especially those who are in touch with the world situation.  It should be relatively easy to highlight the need for justice and righteousness by simply reading the headlines from your local paper on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning.  Or better yet, get a copy of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, or any other major investigative newspaper.  They will be filled with stories of the very situations the Lord came to set right.  The multitude of such horrific situations will show the beauty and relevance of the salvation Jesus has accomplished and will complete one day.  “No more let sin and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground….”

Yes, this text is aptly Christmas-like enough, being all about the “appearing” or Epiphany of God’s Son into our world.  It’s all about God’s “indescribable gift” to the world and so has plenty of Advent and Christmas Day resonances. Yet in a real way this is the Christmas story for the day after Christmas, the week after Christmas, and basically ALL THE TIME in between celebrations of Christmas.  Because this is a text that reminds us that those who celebrate the indescribable gift of the Christ Child are then obligated to become a whole new people leading a very different kind of life on account of having encountered God’s Messiah.

And, of course, that’s why a lot of people would just as soon not hear this text and, let’s face it, it will be the rarest of preachers who on Christmas Morning 2016 will bypass this or that section of Luke 2 in order to focus on Titus 2.  This may be the most under-read Epistle sermon starter I will post all year!

Too bad because this year more than ever we could use a passage that—like so much of the Pastoral Epistles and Titus in particular—focuses on the need for good spiritual hygiene and, in particular, on the spiritual virtue and the spiritual fruit of self-control.

Titus worked on the island of Crete and, reading between the lines of Paul’s letter, Crete was a tough row to hoe.   The residents there were notoriously lazy, self-indulgent, gluttonous and cruel.  They lived by their bellies more than their wits and, like so many in the ancient world, they very much had a “If it feels good, do it” mentality that led to an out-of-control form of riotous living and partying.

The Greek word Paul uses all through Titus for “self-control” is sophroneo, which is a curious little word that literally means “to be in your right mind.”  The opposite of self-control, then, is to be out of your head, nuts, out of control or, as my mother used to put it when my brother and I did something particularly stupid or reckless, “Are you out of your ever-loving minds!!??”

Doing whatever feels good whenever it feels good is a crazy way to live because it means you are cut off from sensible, normal, creational limits—the stuff God put into place to protect us and to ensure our flourishing.  To be out of your right mind usually means you are endangering yourself and probably you will take a few others down with you before it’s over.  One need only witness spectacles like binge-drinking on campuses, wild sexual orgies, the broken human wreckage left behind when sex is treated like a causal indoor contact sport to understand what those who lack self-control can do to themselves and to others.

But not so for those who follow the Child of Bethlehem whose appearing, Paul writes, teaches us to say “No” to such living.   Years ago Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign was caricatured as being too facile by half to combat the serious scourge of drugs and of addiction.   Truth is, though, the idea was right.  It’s just that most people need some outside help and motivation and energy successfully to say “No” to drugs or to anything else that might prove harmful.

But followers of Christ have that—it’s called the indwelling Spirit of Christ.   God’s own power both motivates us and equips us to say No to bad things so we can be level-headed, self-controlled, and in our right minds on things that matter to us and to those around us.   What’s more, Paul says this makes the whole Gospel more attractive—literally he says that self-controlled living applies “cosmetics” to the Gospel, from the Greek kosmeo, which, yes, is the root of our “cosmetics.”  (You have to back up to Titus 2:10 to see this but it flows right into the Lectionary passage.)

It’s not enough to celebrate Christ’s birth once a year but then walk away from the manger unchanged.  We have a whole, great big, beautiful Gospel story to tell to the nations and we tell it best when we adorn that Gospel with attractive living that shows how in touch we are with the goodness of—and the proper limits in—God’s creation.

It has been a crazy, upsetting year in the United States.   The presidential election brought out the worst in lots of us and much of the year was a frenzy of out-of-control passions, rhetoric, rancor, and other unhappiness.    The church was not immune from getting caught up in all that—neither was I.   Alas and mea culpa.

But now it’s Christmas and it’s a season of peace and so on Christmas Day, we can perhaps all agree to set this aside.   But if we manage that for Christmas Day only and then march into 2017 out of control and out of our minds, then we have not properly received the gift of Christ and of his Gospel.   Despite what some people say, we really cannot “make Christmas last all year long.”  Who would want to?   But we can make Christ and his appearing last all year long.  We must.   The grace of God has appeared to help us to say “No” to all ungodliness and wild living so we can spruce up the Gospel and make it attractive.   THAT kind of living is the best way to show that we really do know “the reason for the season.”

Note: Our specific Advent and Christmas Resource page is now available for you to check out sample sermons and other ideas for the Advent Season of 2016.   You can view that material here: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/advent-2016/

Illustration Idea

“I must have been out of my mind!” “Oh dear, it looks like she’s lost it!” “I don’t know what came over me!” “I don’t know why I did that but all I do know is that all of the sudden I was insanely jealous!” “Whoa, I need to get a grip here because I feel like I’m losing touch with reality!” These phrases reflect various ways by which we try to explain the terrible things we occasionally do. And over and again when doing this, we find ourselves claiming some kind of temporary insanity. We claim we are losing our grip, out of our ever-loving mind, overwhelmed by something that takes control of us.

Probably most of us know both what it is like to witness another person’s descent into irrational behavior and what it is like to act that way ourselves. Often this is seen best in fits of furious anger. Some years ago I read a woman’s account of what happened to her one day when her kids pushed her too far. The children had been difficult from the moment they got out of bed. They had been crabby and oppositional, had been bickering and fighting almost constantly. The mother tried to keep her cool but was rapidly losing the battle. Finally the kids hopped into the car in the driveway and insisted their mother take them to the swimming pool. They refused to get out of the car when told to do so and even started laying on the horn to coax their mother to get behind the wheel and do what they wanted. And she snapped. As she herself describes it, “I lost it. I lost myself. I jumped on the hood of the car. I pounded on the windshield. I could not stop pounding on the windshield. Then the frightening thing happened: I became a huge bird. A carrion crow. My legs became hard stalks; my eyes were sharp and vicious. I developed a murderous beak. Greasy black feathers took the place of arms. I flapped and flapped. I blotted out the sun’s light with my flapping. Each time my beak landed near my victims, I went back for more. Finally I had to be forced to get off the car and stop pounding. Even then I did not come back to myself and when I did, I was appalled. I realized I had genuinely frightened my children. Mostly because they could no longer recognize me. My son said to me, ‘I was scared because I didn’t know who you were.'”

 I didn’t know who you were. If you have ever had someone say something similar to you, then you know how devastating that is. And it is all the more withering because you sense that this is an accurate way to put it. You know deep down that for a little while, you didn’t know who you were, either. You were in the grip of something so powerful that you did feel out-of-control. You were out of your mind, out of sorts, irrational. You could not be reasoned with because your reason had fled.