12/22/57

Scripture: Read Matthew 2: 1-12.

Last Sunday, I read the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke. It is told there from the viewpoint of the doctor who addressed himself to Greek-speaking Gentiles. Luke tells of the Roman decree that all of the world, that is everyone in the Roman Empire, should be taxed, following a registration at the place of his birth. Joseph took his young wife, Mary, and made the long trip down from Nazareth in the north, to Bethlehem, which is a bit south of Jerusalem, to register. While there, the child, Jesus, was born. Shepherds visited the stable where Jesus was born, and wondered. Later, the child was formally named and presented, according to the custom, in the Temple, before an aging leader named Simeon. Then the family returned to Nazareth and nothing more is recorded by Luke about them, until they all returned for a visit to the temple at Jerusalem when Jesus was about 12 years old. Mark and John do not concern themselves with any account of Jesus’ birth.

The other gospel, from which I read the Christmas story today, was written by Matthew, who has a definite Hebrew viewpoint. Matthew begins by patiently enumerating the 42-generation lineage from Abraham down through David and Solomon to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Matthew sets great store by Hebrew prophecy as “prediction.” And each event is fitted into this sense of Hebrew expectancy. Matthew makes no mention of Joseph and Mary having come from Nazareth. After tracing the genealogy of Joseph, and commenting on the circumstances leading to Jesus’ birth and how they fit with Old Testament prophecy, the author simply begins with the phrase: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”

Luke had told of angels and shepherds. Matthew tells how wise men came from the east to see the babe in Bethlehem. These wise men were possibly astrologers, interested in the stars and what one could, presumably, learn from them. And they were led by their study of an unfamiliar, bright star. Matthew does not say how many of these wise men there were, nor from whence they came (except “from the east”). Nor does he call them kings. Other traditions have developed the assumption that the wise men were “3 Kings.”

Matthew does not speak of the dedication of the child in the temple at Jerusalem. He tells of the jealous rage of the Roman ruler, Herod, who as a precaution against the rise of anyone to whom these Jewish subjects might possibly look as a revolutionary leader, ordered the slaughter of all babes in and around Bethlehem who were under 2 years of age.

Joseph, made uneasy by the warning of a dream, had fled with his wife and the young child, southward to Egypt. And Matthew says they stayed in this foreign country until after Herod was dead. Then the family cautiously returned, avoiding the Jerusalem area where Herod’s successor reigned, and journeying north to the province of Galilee where they settled at Nazareth. All of this, Matthew maintains, fulfills certain Hebrew prophecies having to do with the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem, and the comment that the Christ should be called a “Nazarene.”

This, then, is the way Matthew tells his readers the story of Jesus’ birth. But, whether we are reading the story as told by the Hebrew Matthew or the Greek doctor Luke, we rejoice, with both, that Jesus was born here upon the earth, into a home that knew hard work and danger and wonder like ours. Whether it was shepherds, guided by angels, or wise men guided by a strange star, or both, that came to Bethlehem to see the wondrous babe, we want to come, too. For there is hope, and soul-healing, and deep joy in the assurance of his presence. And he is well worthy of our offerings, not alone of money and rare goods but of our dedicated lives.

Christmas is a beautiful, a wonderful time. And it is a time for spiritual pilgrimage to the cradle of new life in the midst of our problems and terrors and frustrations and the agony of the world. It is a time for reminder that it is not far from here to Bethlehem; nor from Bethlehem to your own street. They are as close to each other as you will let them be in your imagination.

It is a time for the beauty and strength of symbolic truth like that recalled by Helen Keller. Miss Keller has spoken of a legend that, when Jesus was born, the sun danced in the sky, the aged trees straightened themselves and put on fresh leaves and sent forth again the fragrance of blossoms. These, Miss Keller insists, are symbols of what takes place in our hearts when the Christ child is born anew each year. It may be that our natures have become leaf-less and bent. But the blessing of Christmas sunshine brings forth new love, new kindness, new mercy, new compassion. “As the birth of Jesus was the beginning of a Christian life, so the unselfish joy at Christmas shall start the spirit that is to rule the new year.”

And all of this is as near as you and I will let it be. It comes in various homey and wonderful ways. It comes in memories. You have yours; I have mine. When I was a young child our family had a Christmas routine that always excited the expectation that something wonderful was to happen. On Christmas Eve we invariably went to the village church for the annual Christmas program put on by the Sunday School. My father was the Superintendent at that time; and he always managed to maintain an air of excitement and expectation about it. Of course the celebration of Jesus’ birth was mixed with the anticipation of Santa Claus’ arrival. But perhaps the mixture may be good in the life of a child. After the program - back home and to bed (after leaving our gifts for parents and family under the Christmas tree.) Christmas morning, called by my father, we opened our gifts around the tree (after breakfast was finished!) And then a trip back to the village where the whole family clan gathered at the Grandparents’ home for dinner and more festivities. It was, considerably, family fun. But it was also celebration, in our way, of the birth of our Lord. The gifts we received seem to symbolize the gift of God in the sending of his son. The receiving of any gift can be such.

A couple of ministers, some years ago, sat in the study of one of them talking late into the night. After growing very quiet for a time, the host reached into his desk drawer and took out a small box. From it he took out a watch in a highly polished silver case. It was an inexpensive watch, but it obviously meant something important to the owner. He held it affectionately in his hand for a moment and then he said: “Every time I sit listening to the ticking of this watch, memories crowd into my mind -- memories that go back more than 50 years. I was then 10 years old. It was Christmas morning. The sun had barely risen when I woke up and leaped out of bed. In my bare feet I tiptoed down to the living room. To my surprise, I found my mother and father there ahead of me. A Christmas tree, beautifully decorated and lighted, stood in the center of the room. Mother and Father were looking at it. Suddenly I noticed a small box resting on the cotton at the base of the tree. Since my name was on the box, I opened it. It contained a watch - the thing that I wanted more than anything in the world. Each Christmas now I take out that little watch and, as I listen to it tick, memories come back -- memories of well-loved faces and familiar voices from the past, and I am carried straight home for Christmas.”

Christmas Day is a day of memories. Precious, happy, hopeful memories come crowding out of the past -- memories of other Christmases -- perhaps of the Christmas trees in your home, the services at your church, the packages in your house, the loving hands and faces that you associate with your family, the laughter, the cheery greetings.

An aunt of mine, now nearly 90 years of age, lies today all but completely helpless in a Minneapolis hospital. But I well remember how eager we kids used to be to see whether on Christmas Day at Grandfather’s house we could sneak up on Aunt Mary with our shouted “Merry Christmas” before she might see us coming and beat us to it by shouting “Merry Christmas” first to us!

We have remembrances of another sort, too. We think of those whom we love who are at distant places, or are perhaps on the move at this moment. Some are at church at Christmas Sunday worship. Some wish they were! Thousands of young men and some young women in the armed services inhabit the camps and bases of distant ports of responsibility or danger. Young folk of other nationalities are there, too. And on Christmas Day, many of them may momentarily forget the surroundings of foreign places or distant camps as they are carried back in memory to Christmas at home. Hundreds and hundreds of them will do what they can to bring Christmas cheer to the people like the Korean orphan kids for whom American GIs like to pour out their concern.

It is a time not alone for memories of one sort or another, but for the renewed recognition of Christ in the world and in our hearts. And if we welcome him here, Christmas need not end with the throwing out of withered Christmas trees. It becomes an experience that reaches through the entire year.

The angelic light that flooded the souls of ordinary shepherds; the bright light of a special star -- these illuminated the lives of people who came to find the baby Jesus. It was the grown Jesus who said to his hearers, “I am come a light into the world.” [John 12: 46]. It was a darkened and despairing world then to which he came. His light is just as good for our torn and troubled and anxious world as it was for the world of 19 centuries ago.

I have told some of you before how, 25 years ago, I loved to climb Mount Haleakala on the Island of Maui in Hawaii. I usually tried to be a member of a party that would begin the climb in the night in order to see the sunrise from the crater rim, 10,000 feet up. The sky would be getting pale and the stars ready to fade. The east would become pink; then red; then the sun would appear over the far ocean’s horizon. Its rays touched first the tallest peaks and cliffs. Then, as the sun began to rise higher, the reflected light crept steadily lower into the crater valley, showing up one after another of the huge cinder cones. Steadily, surely, the whole of the mountain’s crater would be flooded with the daylight, and the distant sugar cane and pineapple, and the ocean’s shoreline would become clear back down the side of the mountain up which we had climbed. In one direction the outline of other islands -- Lanai and Kahoolawe, would appear. Looking the other way, we could make out the snow-capped peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa floating high and serene above the channel clouds.

So does the light of Him who said, “I am the light of the world,” [John 9: 5], glorify not only our mountain peaks, but our darkened valleys as well, with the power to transfigure life’s humblest tasks.

I suppose each of us harbors a cherished image of the ideal life that could be lived by mortal persons here upon earth. In Jesus Christ, we see that ideal personalized. There, incarnate, are the qualities of life that we recognize as ideal, and not only ideal, but possible by the grace of God. And we may travel that distance from Bethlehem to our own street in no time at all.

It was a physician who illustrated this in a striking way. He was telling a friend about his student life in Medical School at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It happened to the medical students in that medical theater of the university. Said the man who had been a student there: “Like a lot of medical schools at that time, many of our teachers talked in mechanistic terms. Anatomy was supreme. The mind and spirit of an were seldom mentioned. Then one day a visiting lecturer was introduced to the class. He began by saying, ‘I’m going to need several of you men from this class. I promise you no easy time, but rough, hard, exhausting, and sometimes dangerous work. it is discouraging too. I want you to go out to a place where within thousands of miles there is not a single doctor. Sometimes in emergencies you will have to go out in blizzards with a dog team when you can hardly see a yard before you. I want you to join me in the Labrador.’ The members of the class were looking into the weather-beaten face of Sir Wilfred Grenfell -- a face tanned by the sun and winds of the Labrador and lighted with a glow of inner consecration. When the address was finished, almost every man in the class volunteered.”

Is it not true that “Life is kindled by life as fire with fire?”

What mankind needs is not an argument, but a well-rounded life that will show us how to live. Unbelief shatters itself on such a life as Grenfell’s like waves breaking up on Gibraltar.

That is the inner meaning of Christmas. It brought to us The One who redeems us and shows us human life as God intended it to be. And He calls for volunteers!

Though Christ a thousand time

In Bethlehem be born,

If He’s not born in thee

Thy soul is still forlorn.

Let us pray.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 22, 1957.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, December 17, 1967.