12/24/67

Scripture: Luke 2: 1-20.

Christmas is a lovely season. For some, it has meant bells and snow, a zestful beginning of the winter season. For many, it is a time for the gathering of families. It is a time for some holiday relaxation. And all of this, supposedly, is incidental to the joyful celebration of Jesus’ birth.

One of our community’s ministers has been heard to observe that “the only trouble with Christmas is that is comes at such a busy time!” Many of us feel that, despite its “busyness” and quite a bit of tinseled superficiality, Christmas has its essential meaning in our lives as we gather for worship. Here, then, we celebrate the Christ’s coming. Here we face our relationship to the God of goodness.

And so, let us give some thought, for these few minutes of meditation, to some aspects of the meaning of Christmas for us. First, a bit of history. Through much of its existence, Palestine has been a land of turmoil. That which is so often called the “Holy Land” has changed governments and even changed populations, with distressing frequency through ages of history.

A century and a half before Christ, its people were in rebellion against Syria. Guerrilla warfare had been going on for more than a decade and a half, and would continue for some years more, until the quarter-of-a-century revolt of the people was successful. Then came a period in history when the Jewish folk were a free people. One of their own men, Simon Maccabee, ruled over them as both king and high priest. He was the only one of a family of six men who survived to see victory in the generation long underground fight for independence. When he and his forces took Jerusalem, Syria turned over the rest of Palestine to him.

Nationalism and Religion were thus embodied in one man. Hope ran high that Israel might become a great religious state once more. It might even happen that the long expected Messiah would come. Under the Maccabean rule, Jewish hopes were rosy for a long time. Simon was soon assassinated, but his successor managed to stay alive for thirty years, and even succeeded in annexing a few of Israel’s neighbors.

Then things went to pieces again. The heirs quarreled over the throne. Religious idealism vanished. Murder was rife in the struggle for power, and Israel was in civil war less than 80 years after the Maccabees had led the people to independence. Two of Simon’s great-grandsons led opposing sides of the war.

About that time, Rome got tired of all this nonsense and sent a Roman general to restore order. He did. And that was the end of Jewish independence. In 47 BC Julius Caesar appointed a Roman procurator to keep order in Palestine. Three years later, Caesar was assassinated, and the Maccabees tried to make a comeback. They killed the procurator whom Caesar had appointed.

In 37 BC the Roman senate named the son of the murdered procurator to be king of Judea. Mark Antony helped him to overthrow and kill the last of the Maccabees and to assert his kingship over all of Judea. He was a fellow named Herod. Meanwhile, things went not too well with Rome, either. After Julius Caesar was killed, corruption undermined, and ended, the republic which Rome had been. A couple of times the power was shared by three generals. But those triumvirates did not work, either. Each time, one of them disposed of the others. Then came the single military dictator who gave himself the imposing title: Caesar Augustus.

All of these events were world history at that time. They were not musty nor dull. They were the conditions under which people actually were living. In one century Jewish independence had risen and fallen again. The Roman republic became a dictatorship. Rome became the greatest power of its day, governed by one man -- Caesar Augustus. Power was the word for it. And the world is still in the throes of struggle for power at almost every level. We trust in military power. We see the rise of black power. Is there not also a different kind of power now, as there was at the time of the mighty Roman emperor?

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled --- and all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” The old world does not always recognize it, but it has been a different world ever since. That firstborn son of Mary made a more lasting impression on the earth than did the great Caesar Augustus.

Look 18 centuries farther along in history when all eyes were upon a cocky little Frenchman called Napoleon. His time was a period of important battles. He had brought continental Europe under his control. He too was a military dictator, and emperor, seeking to duplicate the Roman empire. And he almost did it! Prussian, Austrian and Polish armies failed to stop him. Nor could the Russian armies prevent him from reaching Moscow. His activities were on the center of the stage.

By 1809, the British naval victory at Trafalgar had been accomplished and the battle of Waterloo was just ahead. [The struggle for power.] In the midst of all this storm of powerful might, other things were happening. At Liverpool, in 1809, a fourth son was born to the Scotch merchant, John Gladstone. The baby boy was named William. Also in that year Alfred appeared in the Tennyson family. And across the sea, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a Calvinist minister wrote a lengthy entry in his diary for the day, and added these two words: “Son born.” The family name was “Holmes” and the baby was called Oliver.

In 1809, a son, Charles, was born to the Robert Darwin home in England. And on the same day in a new world frontier, Tom and Nancy Lincoln became parents of a little fellow whom they decided to call Abraham.

A few days later in that year, Frederic Chopin was born in a cultured Warsaw home. In the same year, over in Hamburg, Felix Mendelsohn arrived. And in Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett took her first breath.

There were a few of the births recorded in 1809, when Napoleon was such a big shot. What kind of power shaped the world? Half a century later in history, our own land was torn in strife. One of the issues was “what prerogatives and powers belong to the Federal Government; and which belong to the states?” Another issue was whether some men should be allowed to keep other people as chattel slaves. The survival of our nation hung on these issues, and the future of all Negro people in America was at stake. Sentiment on the debated issues was feverishly high. People were taking sides for the immanent war, which could break out at any time.

When armies in blue and gray took the field to battle out a settlement of the issues, all eyes watched. No one knew, or cared, what went on in the cabins of the slaves themselves. Running around in the cabin of his black slave mother near Hales Ford, Virginia, a tiny half naked mulatto boy answered to the name of Booker. Later, and quite arbitrarily, the name Washington was added.

And in a Missouri community, about that time, a scrawny slave child was about to be swapped for a horse valued at $300 or so. He was to be called George Washington Carver. The strength of armed might was not the only power at work for the good of the nation. There were these other influences as well.

A story is told by William Stidger having to do with a discovery in South Africa. The owner of a diamond mine stumbled upon on e of the worlds’ finest diamonds, about the size of a small lemon. He was shrewd enough to know that the very transportation of so large a precious stone to the main office in London was a serious problem. So large a diamond would have fabulous value; news of its discovery was bound to leak out; lawless men would be eager to get their hands upon it.

He worked out a plan. Selecting 4 trustworthy men, he handed them a small, locked strong box. They were to take it to London. It was never to be out of their sight. Two must guard it with vigilance when the other two slept. They were to get it over land to a certain ship which had a special safe installed. When the ship reached the end of its voyage, similar precautions and protections were to guard the strong box until it was in the hands of London officials of the company.

After a delivery that was about as carefully guarded as a Brink’s pickup and delivery, the London office prepared to open the box in the presence of a few, very carefully screened guests. Having been notified of the coming of the stone, these guests were entirely baffled when, upon the opening of the strong box, it was found to contain only a small lump of coal.

A few days later, the real diamond arrived at the London office, wrapped in cotton batting, packed in a cardboard box, tied up in brown paper, sent by parcel post. The sender had mailed the package without even notifying the authorities of its value. He just trusted the postal service to handle dependably whatever was dispatched through it. This most valuable gem was entrusted to this ordinary, commonplace transportation.

Throughout history, we watch the wrong shows. Our attention gets glued to the scenes of might and the struggles for power. We watch for pomp and parades and fireworks and “news.” Not infrequently they turn out to be lumps of coal. And all the while, God has been sending gems of greater price through commonplace channels. Was the destiny of the Negro race in America settled on the battlefield at Gettysburg, or on a peace table at Appomatox? Yes, partially. But a lot more was determined when that slave mother bore her little boy in the cabin near Hales Corners, Virginia. Booker T. Washington lived to begin the liberation of his people from ignorance and superstition. The guns had not ceased their roar, when, in 1864, a real diamond arrived in the Missouri slave hovel where George Washington Carver saw his first light of day. For he lived to pilot the economic recovery of Dixie through rediscovery of her natural resources. The world’s respect for his entire race rose with the announcements of his discoveries and accomplishments.

And Napoleon? He is a good subject for Hollywood portrayal. Historians and generals analyze his strategy and expose his lack of foresight.

But, even though he bled a continent white in his day, that day now appears but a parenthesis in history. The whole show was a lump of coal that could generate quite a bit of heat for a while, before burning out in ashes. But, in plainer wrappings, God sent babies into houses of Liverpool and Kentucky to become statesmen. Into parsonages at Somersby and Cambridge, came wisps of humanity that were to speak with lucid vision and poetic insight. Music leaped forward from cradles in Warsaw and Hamburg. An honest mind, growing from infancy in a Shrewsbury doctor’s house, contributed brilliantly to man’s self-understanding.

But who was thinking of babies in 1809?

And on that first Christmas?! Well, whoever heard of “Christmas?” Nobody, for years yet to come. Most people knew of the assassination of the last of the Maccabees. All the Roman world knew that Herod had restored Roman order to rebellious Judea. Everyone had heard of the dissolution of the Roman senate and the ascendancy of the dictator Caesar Augustus. If there had been a newspaper published, these things would have been publicized and headlined. It is doubtful that the birth of a baby whose arrival complicated the necessary traveling of a Galilean couple, would even have been noticed or mentioned. Of course a feature writer, looking for a story, might have whipped up a little human interest --- if indeed there was any interest in a birth in a barn, or in a few shepherds smelling of their sheep and the fields, or a few oriental astrologers passing through.

But how different we may see it all! Roman pageantry and the Jewish striving of that time fade to the background, as we witness the permanent jewel which God sent by the most commonplace of events.

Our headlines stay big and compelling. And we can not but be excited by the tensions of our time. Indeed, we had better be alert and excited! But the greatest events of our day are not necessarily the international debates, the power predictions that frighten strong men and confuse smart people. There is a greater power than nuclear or thermonuclear power.

The greatest power is the Spirit of God working on human lives. through human lives. It comes through cradles and cribs, just as it came with all its saving grace through a humble manger nineteen and half centuries ago.

Not wars nor revolutions, not treaties nor technology, can match the persisting, surviving, insistent power of God in a life like that of the Bethlehem babe -- in people who are available as channels of His will!

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n!

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Now, lest it seem futile, or meaningless, to talk of peace at a Christmas season which sees the continued fury of naked warfare in the orient and the continuing threat of the same in Palestine itself; which witnesses the insistent rise of what is being called “Black Power” in our own nation; let us try to be realistic about our present Christmas situation. One of the pieces of realism is that the whole world has to live with its violence until some peaceful and right solutions to the problem are found.

One of our representatives of the United Church of Christ is a minister of Metropolitan Mission, the Rev. David Rohlfing, who serves in Milwaukee. He is part of the effort there to combat tendencies of bigotry and prejudice during the effort of the Black community to broaden its base of self-determination and of the White community to understand, and come to terms with, the need. As he reports on the Milwaukee situation, Dave Rohlfing has observed that there has developed as awareness of the meaning of Black Power appropriate to the Milwaukee situation, in which “blackness” refers not to the color of skin, but to sympathy of heart, and alludes to the basic right of self-determination by all persons. And, according to him, “Black Christmas,” while referring, at least in part, to the boycotting of Christmas gift purchases, has actually called attention to the real meaning of Christmas itself. Instead of the rush of gift exchange, it has highlighted the expression of personal concern among people. It hints at the need for peace on earth, whether in Vietnam or in the United States.

Sometimes a genuine concern for constructive peace involves difficult choices. Alan Paton, the well known South African writer of “Cry The Beloved Country” and other works, has written a recent meditation, which calls attention to the truth that when a Christian takes seriously the command to love his neighbor as himself, he may incur the active hostility of current state or even church policy. One should remember that Jesus did exactly that, and he told his disciples that this might happen to them also. But God’s goodness works through some people. It is possible that our Christian concern could bring us into conflict with authority, as it does for Paton in the matter of South African apartheid. And the only way we can overcome the fear of such a prospect is to believe that we are the instruments of God’s peace which also means our conviction that we are instruments of God’s love. And because we are used by God’s love, it dwells in us, and we have no cause for fear. So writes Paton from the vantage point of one who lives in the midst of an issue of power versus conscience.

If we find it difficult, frustrating, dangerous, to live in this 1967-68 era AD, and we are tempted to be cynical about the songs of “peace on earth,” or to throw over the whole idea, it may be well to ask the question: “How do we think of peace?”

Two artists were asked to create paintings that would depict the theme of peace. One painted a beautiful, mirror-like lake that reflected blue sky, bright sun, leafy trees. There was perfect, marvelous, calmness --- peace indeed! The other artist painted a thundering waterfall, with foaming whirlpools and treacherous rocks at its base --- lethal violence for anyone or anything that might fall into its power. Extending over the brink of the cataract was the single limb of a tree. In its forked twigs was a nest where a mother bird was feeding her young --- peace indeed!

And now to you, even above today’s torrent, and to the whole human family, God’s peace at this Christmas!

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of ‘Peace on Earth, good will to men!’

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Let us pray:

Give us courage, O Lord, at this Christmas, to stand and be counted --- to stand for those who cannot stand up for themselves, to stand for ourselves when it is needful for us to do so. Let us fear nothing more than we fear Thee and Thy righteousness. Let us love nothing more than we love Thee and Thy righteousness, for thus may we find Christ’s grace to fear nothing.

Let us have no god before Thee; let us look for no messiah more than the pioneering spirit of Christ. Let us seek no peace save the peace which is Thine. And make us its instruments, with opening eyes and ears and hearts.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 24, 1967.

Also in large part, in Wisconsin Rapids, December 23, 1956.