Christmas Takes Courage
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I remember reading an account of the Battle of the Bulge one time. The author described what was happening. He was trying to tell the story. He talked about the terrible suffering. He talked about how people felt as they didn’t know what was going to happen, what the outcome was going to be. But even so, as I read the story I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the author had the attitude, “Well, this is what happened;” but we all know, of course, what did happen. It’s hard to get away from that. When we talk about history we know what’s happened; so when we know what’s happened we don’t feel the emotion of the story—the suffering or the sense of what is going to happen. It is kind of like when we watch the Vikings play. You know, we have this sense of anticipation, whether we should or not, at least last year. The Super Bowl, or right before the Super Bowl, will they make it? But then afterwards, well, next year. But you know what I mean. We are so full of emotion in the midst of a story and we don’t know how it is going to happen and that is part of the allure of it.
Well, it is true in the Bible, as well. When we read the Christmas story we often bypass the sheer terror, the sheer sense of anxiety, the emotion of it. What people are asked to do, their risks, their fears, the courage they are called to have because they don’t know what will happen; how it is going to turn out. That’s why I say it takes courage to have Christmas, because if you read the stories you find the immense courage these people had to have for this all to have happened. We look back with the joy and the wonder and all of that; but they had not only to trust God, they had to do, they had to step out. And we see it in these stories. One we’ve heard about today, just read a minute ago—the story of Zechariah. I am shortening the Scripture lesson a little bit so that we don’t have to reread all of it. You remember Zechariah. Zechariah was John the Baptist’s father. He is told by an angel who appears to him that they are going to have a son. Now they can count, they were chronologically blessed, a lot chronologically blessed. They had been trying their whole married life to have a child and this is what the angel says. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son, and you are to name him John.” (Luke 1:13) Then in the next story another angel appears to a young teenage girl, we know who that is. It is Mary. The message is very similar. “Do not be afraid Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give me the name of Jesus.” (Luke 1:30-31) And the third story, the shepherds. (Luke 2:8-20)
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Let’s pray together.
Lord God we ask that you would make this story new to us once more time. We have heard it dozens of times and it doesn’t really get old but it looses something over time. We pray that you will make it real to us one more time, right now, in this place, for your honor; and we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I think the first lesson we have to come up with in this is that it takes Courage in Christmas to BELIEVE what God says. Most of us remember a scientist named Carl Sagan. He has passed on but he had on PBS a special called Cosmos and he wrote this in a book called The Dragons of Eden. He said, “A single human chromosome contains twenty billion bits of information. How much information is twenty billion bits? What would be its equivalent if it were written down in an ordinary book in modern human language? Well twenty billion bits are the equivalent of about three billion letters. If there are approximately six letters in the average word, the information content of the human chromosome corresponds to about five hundred million words. If there are about three hundred words in an ordinary page of printed type, this corresponds to about two million pages. If a typical book contains five hundred such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome, and there are hundreds and thousands of them in each of our bodies, it would correspond to some four thousand books. It is clear then that the chromosome contains an enormous library of information. It is equally clear that so rich a library is required to specify as exquisitely constructed and intricately functioning object as a human being.”
Now I often find myself very curious. How does a brilliant man like Carl Sagan list off such incredible information about human beings and their creation and not make the connection between that creation and God? Or, a man like Steven Hawking who some say is probably the smartest man on earth right now. He has been called the new Einstein for our era. He just wrote a book recently proclaiming that God is not necessary to the creation; that the creation could have happened all by itself simply because of gravity.
The story of a science professor who was a believer, he constructed a planetarium, a precisely scaled model of the universe. A student came into his office and asked him who made it and the professor said, “No one.” The student laughed again and asked again, “Come on, who made that fantastic piece of work?” The professor replied, “No one. It just happened.” The student became angry and the professor said, “Well, if you can go out of this class and look at the nature around you and believe it just happened, you can also believe this precise work just happened without a creator.”
And this is precisely what men like Sagan and Hawking do. That is exactly what they do. There are many reasons for that. Some are evidential, some are other kinds of reasons. But I have come to believe, and it is only and opinion, I think it is an educated one, I have come to believe that one of the reasons is fear. For a scientist or any thinking person it is fear. I remember reading what C. S. Lewis said about the intellectuals of his time. He said, “You know, it is not really about the evidence for many of these people, it is really because they are afraid of what their colleagues will think of them if they believe in God.” Now this is C. S. Lewis talking about his own era but I really believe that is true for many people. Now, we know that’s true. There are certain fads and certain things that happen along the way and people believe them with all their heart, and, if you don’t believe that, you get hooted at or driven out of the academy or you get lambasted in their editorials, or whatever it happens to be because that is what people believe at that moment in time. And yet, new information comes along and things change.
I have a friend, I am sure he is long since gone to be with the Lord, but he was a great geologist and yet he was stuck in a G7 job in a lab and I happened to work there over the summers a long time ago. He described how he believed much of the earth’s geology came about by impacts. What he means by that are meteors and comets and those kinds of things had a great deal to say about the way the earth was shaped and back then nobody believed that. Well today, everybody believes that. But here was a man who was scorned because he believed these things. Things change. Imagine if a man like Sagan or a man like Hawking changed their mind, what would happen to them?
I think it takes courage to believe. But for us there not only the doubts of others and the skepticism of the world that we have to deal with, we have to deal with our own doubts, don’t we? We see this in John the Baptist’s father. Here was a man who was a believer and, yet, he had a lifetime of heartache because he and his wife couldn’t have a son. Maybe they had several false alarms along the way. He was hurting. So here was an angel who appeared to him, a messenger, obviously a little different kind of person— we don’t know if he had wings and glowed and all that kind of thing— but somebody was there who was a little different and says you are going to have a son. That may have been enough for many people but it wasn’t for him. He basically said, “How can I be sure? How can I be sure?” Not only was he going to have a child but he would be the person who announced the Messiah. That was even harder. I suppose we can ask the same questions? How can we be sure? We all have that doubt, don’t we, sometimes? I mean, after all, we Christians believe in an unseen being who doesn’t speak to us directly, very often, every now and then. He has spoken to us in the Scriptures. He speaks to us through the Holy Spirit but not in the audible voice. Every now and then I would like that, I don’t know about you. Maybe I wouldn’t if I heard it. I would probably be too scared. Or when I am trying to make a really difficult decision, at least have an airplane write it in the sky. God didn’t do that. He requires belief, without that. We believe in a God who is all powerful and made the entire universe. He made himself known, is making himself known, will make himself known. How can we be sure? It takes courage to believe. Surrounded by skeptics and our own doubts, it takes courage to believe. Zechariah had a hard time. He did in the end.
The second thing is that it takes Courage to say YES to God’s purpose. I still, I have said many times before you over the years, that I am just still amazed at Mary. I find an amazing story: a teenage girl, probably no more than fourteen or fifteen, and yet she is chosen. Again the same sort of thing, an angel appears to her and she says “May it be to me as you have said.” She is told that she is going to be used in an amazing way, that she is “highly favored.” That all sounds great except when you get down to brass tacks and she has to go out and begin to grow a little bit in this small town community with all the voices and then has to explain it to her husband-to-be and her family. No wonder she went to visit her relative Elizabeth, just to get out of town for a while. Then Joseph believes also. Philip Yancey, a great author, if you read his books you will know why I say that, he says it makes him tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers. Have you ever thought about that? We look at the story and say “Oh how quaint, a baby in a manager, how wonderful it was.” No, all the heartache and the pain and the emotional suffering that went with that saying “Yes”.
You know, we live in a culture which encourages us to live as long as possible, as comfortably as possible, as securely and with any pain we have we need to get rid of it as quickly as possible. We don’t like to be made inconvenient. I heard a great story just this week. A friend of mine who is also an Army chaplain, he is a Baptist minister, and a few years ago was deployed to Kosovo. He spent a year there and he said, “When we got on the plane to come home, naturally the chaplain, who I call it kind of like being in the church, you are kind of the DP, designated prayer, they asked him to pray, you know, “Lord make this a safe trip, traveling mercies, we are glad to go home, and all that.” Well they were going down the runway in Kosovo and the right engine blows up, shrapnel everywhere, the plane skids off the end, all the balloons come out, they slide down, the whole nine yards. One of the soldiers came up to him and said “Chaplain that was just a great prayer, wasn’t it? See what happened?! We are stuck here for three days!” The chaplain, my friend, looked at him and said, “Well, it could have happened about thirty minutes after it did and we would all be dead.” And the soldier looked at him and said, “Darn good prayer, chaplain!” (He used another word but that is o.k.) And yet my friend described for the next three days how they were stuck in the airport and all the grousing and all the complaining and all the stuff that went with that even among soldiers who are trained to be inconvenienced. That is us, isn’t it? We don’t like to be inconvenienced. We don’t like to suffer.
Malcolm Mudderidge another great author said, “I wonder if two people of our times steeped in me-centered comfort seeking philosophy so common in our time could make such a choice as to bear God’s Son.” Being used requires courage, requires courage because God doesn’t get rid of the pain. God doesn’t make it easy. That is not part of the promise. It is a bother, sometimes. It is a bother.
It takes Courage to GO. The story of the shepherds, can you imagine these guys? I told you before how shepherds in Jesus’ time were not the quaint picture that we have in our minds of this wonderful pastoral scene sitting around with grandpa’s crooked crook, pole, all that, looking beautiful with the stars and all those kinds of things. You know the shepherds in our pageants, the shepherds are the cute little ones, dressed up in dads’ bathrobes. But in Jesus’ time it went something like this, let me read it to you. “Faithful Jews were warned by their Rabbis against entering six professions. One of these forbidden occupations was shepherding. Conscientious Pharisees would never consider doing business with a shepherd. They would buy wool and milk but never from a shepherd himself. Shepherds were not allowed to give testimony in a court; in fact, shepherds were not permitted to enter places of worship. They couldn’t go to the temple or synagogue. Why? …because for one thing, shepherds were constantly walking among the droppings of the sheep and that made them religiously unclean. Second, shepherds ranged their sheep throughout the countryside without paying attention to property lines, in other words they were constantly trespassing. And what’s more, they were in the right position to pick up things along the way. They were considered thieves. They often ran the local black market. Nobody loved a shepherd.” So the Willie Nelsons’ of that day would sing, “Mamas don’t let your children grow up to be shepherds,” because they were the cowboys of the time: hard drinking, hard talking, hard people. Well could you imagine how these shepherds felt? This big light comes up, dead asleep; probably thinking the law is after them; probably thinking God is after them. Maybe they were waking up from a dream, a hung-over dream, who knows; but the angel comes to them. The angel comes to them. They are given a message of redemption. Some of them probably wanted to run and yet God comes to these lowest of the low people. You know there is really no excuse. Sometimes the hardest thing a pastor has to do is to go recruit people to do things. “Not me. I’m to busy.” “Not me. I am not worthy.” If God can choose shepherds, he can choose you.
I remember one of my pastorates, a wonderful lady advanced in years became a great friend of mine. She had this dream. I was trying to create a small group program and she had this dream. She wanted to have a small group…she is a little old lady and she wanted to have a small group for her little old lady friends. She said, “Chris, I can’t do this. I am terrified of the idea of leading a small group.” And I basically said, “You can do it. Just come to the training and after that if you can’t do it, no problem. But I bet you can.” And sure enough, she started a group of little old ladies in a small group and it was going for years. She could do it. She was good enough because God had made her good enough.
Last thing is the Courage to SPEAK. What did the shepherds do? “When they had seen Him, they spread the word concerning the child they had seen.” (Luke 2:17) You know in our time, particularly in America right now, the Church is diminishing, many cases; at least the organized churches are diminishing in membership, culturally it is very difficult. I think part of the problem, I am not trying to be offensive, but part of the problem is that the people in the pew have seeded their job, which is to be witnesses, to the so-called professionals. The pastor should do it. Now it is partly the pastor’s fault too, please, I could list things; but it is all our fault because we seed it to the professionals. We are going to let those seminary trained people… let me tell you a little secret. Some of our seminaries don’t teach pastors how to witness any more, so we don’t know how either. So if the professionals don’t know how and the folks in the pew don’t know and don’t want to because they are a little embarrassed what their friends might say or they don’t want to be inconvenienced, or whatever, and the message is very simple: Christmas takes courage. It takes courage.
I ran across a little poem that I will end with. It is called The Greatest Words and it goes like this:
‘Tis sweet to hear ‘I love you’
Beneath a giggling moon;
‘Tis fun to hear ‘You dance well’
To a lilting, swinging tune;
‘Tis great to be proposed to
And whisper low, ‘I do;’
But the greatest words in all the world,
‘I’ve got a job for you.’
Question for all of us in this Advent time is do we have the courage to do it?
Pray with me.
Lord God we are all fearful people, everyone of us. We are full of anxiety about what is going to happen. Help us to remember Lord that we already do know what happened. We have seen the Messiah come and we know he is coming again and we know that you win in the end. But in the meantime Lord, help us to do our part, where we are today, and give us your courage and fill us with your Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.