Sermon:
December 19, 2004
Sunday Night Alive  

Scripture:
Matthew 1:18-25

A true story: Two weeks before Christmas, a nine-year-old girl was walking with her friend down the street, sliding on the ice. The two of them were talking about what they hoped to get for Christmas. They stopped to talk to an old man named Harry, who was on his knees pulling weeds from around a large oak tree. He wore a frayed, woolen jacket and a pair of worn garden gloves. His fingers were sticking out the ends, blue from the cold.  

As Harry responded to the girls, he told them he was getting the yard in shape as a Christmas present to his mother, who had passed away several years before. His eyes brimmed with tears as he patted the old oak. “My mother was all I had. She loved her yard and her trees, so I do this for her at Christmas.” His words touched the girls, and soon they were down on their knees helping him weed around the trees. It took the three of them the rest of the day to complete the task. When they finished, Harry pressed a quarter into each of their hands. “I wish I could pay you more, but it’s all I’ve got right now,” he said. 

The girls had often passed that way before, and as they walked, they remembered that the house was shabby, with no wreath, no Christmas tree or other decorations to add cheeriness. Just the lonely figure of Harry sitting by his curtain-less window. The quarter Harry gave them seemed to burn a hole in the one girl’s mind as they returned to their homes. The next day she called her friend and they agreed to put their quarters in a jar marked “Harry’s Christmas Present,” and then they began to seek out small jobs to earn more. Every nickel, dime and quarter they earned went into the jar. 

Two days before Christmas, they had enough to buy new gloves and a Christmas card. Christmas Eve found them on Harry’s doorstep, singing carols. When he opened the door, they presented him with the gloves wrapped in pretty paper, the card and a pumpkin pie still warm from the oven. With trembling hands, he tore the paper from the gloves, and then, to their astonishment, he held them to his face and wept. 

This story reminds us that the best Christmas gifts always come in unexpected packaging. Expect the unexpected. Christmas is full of surprises, full of twists and turns and those “aha” moments.  It is how it is. It is how it has always been. Expect the unexpected. Ask any of the characters from that first Christmas story and they’d tell you that the silent night some two thousand years ago—that night when Christ was born—was nothing like any of them ever would have expected.  

The shepherds never expected Christmas to come the way it did. They were all alone in their fields. In the dead of the night, like every night before, the shepherds were the forgotten ones, the ones the world paid no attention to. It was to them the angels came. It was to them the message first came: “Fear not. For I bring Good News of great joy which is for all people. For unto you a savior is born, who is Christ the Lord.” It was to them and not to the kings, religious leaders or political figures that the announcement was first made. A king is born, a shepherds’ king. This is not what they expected. Christmas is the season to expect the unexpected. 

The three wise men never expected Christmas to come the way it did. The star had shown in the sky, and it was clear that something extraordinary was happening. They traveled to the spot where this king of the Jews was to be born, expecting, I suppose, to find him in a castle, a fitting place for a king. They must have expected this baby king to be adorned in splendor, wearing the marks of royalty. But when they discovered the common child, born of common parents, adorned in simplicity, the joy that settled in on them was not what they expected. Christmas is the season to expect the unexpected. 

Mary. This unexpected mother who would soon “be expecting” in such an unexpected way. God chose Mary—an unknown, unwed, unremarkable teenaged peasant girl—to bring Christmas into the world. It is perhaps the most unexpected part of this whole unexpected story. It seems impossible when you think about it. Too young…too poor…too inexperienced…never been married. How was this miraculous thing supposed to take place? Christmas to the unexpected, through the unexpected, calling us to live in ways we never would have expected. Christmas is the season to expect the unexpected. 

Joseph surely wasn’t expecting any of this. Our scriptures today make that abundantly clear. Joseph was a righteous man, an upstanding person, a good man. This good man was looking for a good woman whom he could marry. In Mary, he believed he had found a good girl—one who, by all accounts, he could take home to momma. But then a series of unexpected events began. First, his fiancé informed him that she was in a family way. She was with child. Talk about unexpected news! The wedding was a ways off; they had always planned to wait for the wedding night and she maintained that her chastity was still intact. Joseph wasn’t sure who this Holy Spirit was, but boy, if he were to ever catch him, he’d give him a piece of his mind—and a piece of his boot, if he had a chance. Pregnant out of wedlock. Not what he expected. 

Then there was this unexpected dream. A dream that would take this already-unexpected story down another unexpected path. In the dream, an angel assured Joseph that indeed this child, although unexpected, would be a blessing to him, would be a blessing to Mary, would be a blessing to the world. He should take her as his wife. He should be the father, or stepfather, or surrogate father for this child who would bring salvation to the world. None of this is what Joseph had expected. Yet in embracing the unexpected, Joseph discovered the miracle that would transform the world. Christmas is the season to expect the unexpected. 

It seems that every character in the Christmas story was caught off guard by God’s unexpected entrance onto the scene. There is one other character in that first Christmas story who was so unprepared for the unexpected that they missed the entire thing. That character is the world. Except for a handful of shepherds, three foreign dignitaries and anyone who was staying at the O Little Town of Bethlehem Bed and Breakfast, everyone else seemed to miss God’s entrance into human history. How could that be?  

It wasn’t due to a lack of expectations. Most people expected God to show up at any moment. They had long been waiting for the Messiah, the great deliverer, to come. Some were waiting for God to arrive as a great military leader, a leader who would build an army and reclaim and restore God’s holy people to their proper place. Others were expecting God to show up as a great religious leader, a rabbi who would restore proper worship and sacrifice. Others just expected God to show up in a flash of light and with power and might to judge that which needed judging, condemn that which needed condemning, and smite that which needed smiting. I think that is why so many just missed it some two thousand years ago—and I think that is why so many miss it still today. In Jesus, God came into the world so unexpectedly.  

“They shall call him Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” Emmanuel. God with us. Jesus is the unexpected God with us. Jesus is the Son of God. He is the embodiment of the partnership between God and humanity. In him, the very nature of God is revealed. But something we must understand about what it means to say that Jesus was the spirit of God made flesh is that Jesus reveals a most unexpected God. Jesus is not the God we expected. Jesus comes not as a loud, bullying, macho general but as a vulnerable baby. Jesus lives as a poor Jew without religious or political power, and models not a conquering arrogance but a friendly submission….not rugged independence but courageous obedience….not angry dominance that threatens with suffering but loving faithfulness that suffers instead. He told stories instead of quoting the expected list of do’s and don’ts, rules and regulations. He was more interested in relationship than religion, more interested in justice than in being justified, more interested living life in the right direction than living by right doctrine. From the mouth of God made flesh came some of the most unexpected words: 

“Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”

“The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”

“If you want to gain your life, then you have to lose it.”

“The Son of God did not come to be served, but to serve.” 

And from the cross, perhaps the most unexpected words of all: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus is the unexpected face of God, and the difference between what we find in him and what we had always expected from God makes all difference in the world. 

Emmanuel. God with us. The great fourth-century theologian Athanasius told the ancient disciples a story to help them understand the unexpected miracle of Emmanuel. Its wisdom still speaks profoundly, thousands of years later: 

Once upon a time, there was a good and kind king who had a great kingdom with many cities. In one distant city, some people took advantage of the freedom the king gave them and started doing evil. They profited by their evil and began to fear that the king would interfere and throw them in jail. Eventually these rebels seethed with hatred for the king. They convinced the city that everyone would be better off without the king, and the city declared its independence from the kingdom. 

But soon, with everyone doing what they wanted, disorder reigned in the city.  There was violence, hatred, lying, oppression, murder, rape, slavery and fear. The king thought: “What should I do? If I take my army and conquer the city by force, the people will fight against me, and I’ll have to kill so many of them, and the rest will only submit through fear or intimidation, which will make them hate me and all I stand for even more. How does that help them, to be either dead or imprisoned or secretly seething with rage? But if I leave them alone, they’ll destroy each other, and it breaks my heart to think of the pain they’re causing and experiencing.” 

So the king did something very surprising. He took off his robes and dressed in the rags of a homeless wanderer. Incognito, he entered the city and began living in a vacant lot near the edge of the city. He took up a trade, fixing broken pottery and furniture. Whenever people came to him, his kindness and goodness and fairness and respect were so striking that they would linger just to be in his presence. They would tell him their fears and questions, and ask his advice. He told them that the rebels had fooled them and that the true king had a better way to live, which he exemplified and taught. One by one, then two by two, and then by the hundreds, people began to have confidence in him and live in his way. 

Their influence spread to others, and the movement grew and grew until the whole city regretted its rebellion and wanted to return to the kingdom. But ashamed of their horrible mistake, they were afraid to approach the king, believing he would certainly destroy them for their rebellion. But the king-in-disguise told them the good news: he was himself the king, and he loved them.  He held nothing against them, and he welcomed them back into his kingdom, having accomplished by a gentle, subtle presence what never could have been accomplished through brute force. 

Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus is love become flesh. God is love, and through the birth of Christ, we know that God does not repudiate any part of his creation. If we are indeed made in the image of God and the likeness of God, God sees something in us that’s worth fixing and healing. May God grant us the wisdom and the vision to see in each other something of the image and likeness of God. Love is the determination to look beyond our faults and see our worth. This is the love that enhances all values and sustains all life. Without love, every person is abused, every value is distorted and every security is threatened. This week’s holiday celebration reminds us of the importance of the Divine love in our midst. It calls on us to remember that love changes everything in unexpected ways.    

Art without love is confusion
Music without love is noise
Money without love is slavery
Intelligence without love is arrogance
Competence without love is meanness
Industry without love is pollution
Competition without love is destruction
Conservatism without love is indifference
Liberalism without love is condescension
Worship without love is pretense
Preaching without love is meaningless
Praying without love is selfishness
Work without love is drudgery
Activism without love is frenzy
Faith without love is fanaticism
Retreat without love is cowardice
Reason without love is fear
Power without love is oppression
Truth without love is a lie
Freedom without love is chaos
Growth without love is cancer
The Bible without love is incomprehensible
Life without love is death
God without love is impossible 

If God is not love, we broken creatures of distrust and doubt have every reason to be terrified by God and no reason to love God. If God is not love, we can only pity ourselves and not praise God. If God is not love, our faith is in vain, our preaching is in vain, and our churches are closed clubs of contentious cronies and not open communities of hope and light. If God is not love, we have no light to quicken us, no hope to sustain us, no faith to justify us, no joy to inspire us, no grace to save us, no forgiveness to reclaim us, no love to lift us, no cross to redeem us and no Christ to receive us. Oh, but God is love, and that love became flesh at Christmas. That is the unexpected nature of Christmas. “They shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God with us.”  

In closing, let me say, it is my hope that none of us gets what we expect for Christmas this year. For the best gifts at Christmas are always those you never expected.  

Notes: The opening story came from a collection of stories called Illustrations Unlimited, edited by James S. Hewitt. 

I found the Athanaius story in Brian McCleran’s book, Generous Orthodoxy. As I have said before, McCleran is one of the most influential writers and thinkers of our times. He is one of the leading voices in the emerging church movement, a movement that is boldly seeking to reinterpret evangelical faith for our postmodern world. 

I am also indebted to my preaching professor, Dr. Charles Adams. He is one of our country’s premier preachers, and having had a semester to sit and learn at his feet will always be one of my ministry’s most treasured experiences. Dr. Adams has become the master of the litany—a list of concepts on a theme strung together for effect. The love litany at the end of this sermon is in his style and was adapted from a sermon I heard him preach while I was a student.