12/19/54

Scripture: (Read Luke 2: 22-40).

We all love Christmas Eve. The small child can hardly wait until the time comes, nor rest until the dawn of Christmas Day when, at last, he will welcome gifts placed for him about the Christmas tree. Grown folk as well, share in the eager anticipation. We know that on that day there will be granted to us the joy of giving and receiving. But each of us may also know the joy of accepting anew the original Christmas gift. In the darkness of night, centuries ago, in an out-of-the-way spot on the edge of a Palestinian village, God gave His astounding present to His people. He sent one to be our Savior, to the everlasting joy of all who will receive. The very remembrance of that stupendous event is enough to make one stop, for the moment, the mad rush of this season, and rest in glad assurance. Through the gift of our Christ at Christmas, we can enter into a joy that surpasses every other gift we may receive.

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A mile or two from the little town of Bethlehem is a spot that is commonly known as “the shepherds’ field.” According to tradition, it was at this spot that shepherds were watching their flocks of sheep through the night when they became aware of the announcement that the Prince of Peace was born. It seems that there is a cave at one edge of the field where shepherds and sheep alike could have found shelter on the more chilly or inclement of nights. The site may not be authentic. But that does not matter deeply. For the news of great moment comes to those who will hear, wherever they be. It comes to us anew, at each Christmastide.

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It does not even take a holiday atmosphere to bring the great news. The word came to those shepherds as they went about daily, common tasks. There was nothing exciting to them about “keeping watch over their flocks by night.” They were submerged in the struggle to live, just as folk are today. They fought drowsiness, probably took turns napping and watching, struggled with chilly (and sometimes stormy) nights and the hot days. No one of us would vie with anyone to take their place.

They had to ward off losses from prowling wolves and other hungry wild animals. They had to meet staggering taxes from Rome, and endure ruthless tyrannous rule from the same source. Too many of their flocks had too little pasture and water. They probably wondered, like countless folk of today, if they were getting anywhere for their toil to make ends meet. They suffered the same anxiety endured today by all who are visited by disease and by reverses. But the miracle of joyous news happened to them right where they were. It was as though morning stars sang together, bringing news out of the very heavens: “Behold, we bring you good tidings of great joy.”

One wonders if God did not vouchsafe the news to shepherds because they had so little of anything for themselves.

In any case, God must have wanted to make it clear that He always comes to those who are struggling and in need of Him. Wherever men and women are meeting strain, fighting against odds, trying to make ends meet, and to rise above hurts and hardships, God gets into the drama. He is not far from us, with a great and joyful word of assurance.

The music of His mercy and His tremendous compassion, His limitless bounty, comers in the experience of tranquil beauty and in the midst of life’s ugliness as well. Do you recall these lines of Ralph Waldo Emerson?

Let me go where’er I will

I hear a sky-born music still:

It sounds from all things old,

It sounds from all things young,

From all that’s fair, from all that’s foul.

Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose,

It is not only in the bird,

Not only where the rainbow glows,

Nor in the song of woman heard,

But in the darkest, meanest things

There always, something sings.

‘Tis not in the high stars alone,

Nor in the cup of budding flowers,

Nor in the red-breast’s mellow tone,

Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,

But in the mud and scum of things

There always, always something sings.

God’s finding us is not a matter of geography. Jacob found that out when he left his homeland, supposing that he would be beyond the jurisdiction of his family’s God, only to discover that the Divine presence was more vivid for him where he slept on a stone in the wilderness. Jonah discovered that he could not escape God by taking ship for another shore. The great moments of spiritual insight and power come “any place where God lets His ladder down.” It can happen on a bus or train, in a garage or office, on a plane or in a subway, in Washington or in Tokyo. I suppose it could happen in Peiping or in the Kremlin, and I wish it would. It happened to James and John when they were fishing, disillusioned and troubled after the crucifixion.

It happened one day when Woodrow Wilson was making a speech in February of 1919. What he said at that time of world upheaval was not in the script of his address. But quite simply he remarked: “I do not understand how any man can approach the discharge of the duties of life without faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A little boy was given to spinning tall tales out of his imagination. And he could put some pretty fancy embroidery on his adventures! He said he had met a lion, a tiger, and a bear on the street, one after the other. Having exhausted his list of fierce animals, he paused for a breathless moment. Then he remarked: “And then along came God!”

Well, there is more truth than fiction in that observation. Along comes God, and meets us on any road we travel; and often so far as we foresee, in unexpected places and circumstances. It may be one the sea, in the field outside of Bethlehem, at the factory; it may be night or day; is may be in life’s tranquillity and elation, or it may be while we struggle through deep waters. And it is joy to know that “The Lord is come” to us.

Halford Luccock says that “Men can face literally anything if they have faced the music of ‘He shall reign forever and ever.’ Handel, expressing his emotion during the composition of the Hallelujah Chorus, describes an experience that could come only to him: ‘All heaven was spread out before my eyes, and I was overpowered with awe!’ But an experience, just as genuine, exalted, and uplifting may be had be everyone who takes into his soul the enlivening faith of Christ as the Overcomer and Redeemer of the world. It is a tragedy when men do not face that music and allow it to set every chord of their being into vibration. Without it life becomes mere dreary, desolate prose.”

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Christmastide is a good time to remind ourselves of the joy in Christianity. We are acquainted with the picture of our Lord in terms of sorrowful self-sacrifice. “He was despised, rejected of men” as described in the ancient prophesy. [Isaiah 53: 3]. He came to his own and his own received him not. Mobs hailed him one day at the nation’s capital and four days later howled for his crucifixion.

But the weight of his message was, and is, joyful. “Be of good cheer,” he said repeatedly. [John 16: 33]. Consider the power of that attitude to make people happy!

A Boston newspaper once printed this item: “The day was dark and gloomy, but Phillips Brooks walked through Newspaper Row and all was bright.” The Christian gospel is good news!

Jesus enjoyed friendship and social life, nature and health, best reading that made him at home with the prophets -- the same places that we look, if we are wise, for joy in living. He learned that there is more joy in sharing than in getting; in seeking God’s approbation through heeding conscience; in trusting the highest, greatest Good; in savoring the mercy of things at they happen to one. It is this grown and experienced Jesus to Whom we need look if we are to know the lasting joy of Christmas. We become mellow with the sentiment of folk looking again upon a newborn babe lying in a manger. But if the joy of Christ’s birth is to last in our hard-bitten lives, we must look beyond the Babe, to the youth and the Man-Christ.

We remember not only the advent in Bethlehem, with joy for shepherds and wise men, but we recall the joy of Simeon in the temple when Jesus was brought there according to the custom of his people. Simeon knew that something vital was happening in his life. “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people, Israel.” [Luke 2: 29-32].

Any Christian church misses the gospel if it is concerned only with its own prestige, and has no burning missionary desire to make the gospel of Christ reach out with redemption to all life everywhere.

The gospel of Luke is the one usually associated with Christmas as the festival of the child Jesus. We do thank God that the festival of the Holy Child dignifies and makes precious all childhood. But we err if we fail to carry forward our thinking to the youthful Jesus and then to the Jesus of responsible maturity. And this latter is of sterner stuff.

Nobody but Herod would have wished to kill the baby Jesus. But a sizable group of men in influential places could not tolerate the grown Jesus, found nothing but disturbance in his illumination of their sinfulness, and plotted and accomplished his crucifixion.

Jesus comes not only with the child’s appeal, but with the everlasting man’s authority, to force us to decisions which may be very difficult, but right. He compels us to review and reshape the values of our living, to renounce the self-concern and pride, the lust of power and the greed that plague us and our fellows; and to accept the imperatives of his law of service.

But, doubt this not, that there is joy in the discipline of the grown Jesus. And life becomes solid for those who accept Him and His way for them.

May you know the joy of that acceptance now and through this Christmastide, and throughout the year ahead, and forever.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 19, 1954.