Christmas Requires Glory
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People just knew he would be someone special. A miraculous birth that some said could never take place and later an angry mob attempted to kill both him and his parents. Do you know who I am talking about? You might guess Jesus, but not this time. I am talking about Charles Wesley. Most people remember John, his brother, as the great preacher who started the Methodist Church. John had a brother named Charles and most remember him, rightly, as being one of the most prolific and greatest of hymn writers. Though he preached too, he wrote hymns mostly—over 6000 of them and some of the hymns he wrote will be sung by Christians as long as the world lasts. Now, the circumstances of his birth were indeed remarkable. He was the eighteenth—not eighth—eighteenth, count them—child of Susanna and Samuel Wesley. Both born several weeks premature in an age when these children rarely survived, he appeared more dead than alive. He was carefully wrapped in wool and he finally opened his eyes for the first time and cried on the day he was supposed to be born. Seventeen months later another miracle occurred. His father pastored an Anglican parish, the rector of Epworth, it was called. He had several disgruntled members of his parish and one of them set fire to the parsonage. The baby survived because a maid courageously carried him out of the burning building in her arms. Now, please, if you become angry with Buck or me, …..
One of the hymns he wrote is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” I am going to do something a little bit different today. I am going to take the verses of that hymn and use it for my sermon, or meditation, this morning. I have been doing a series on “Christmas Requires” and today Christmas Requires Glory. We find that theme in this hymn.
First the Scripture. The hymn itself refers back to this well known passage in Luke which we read several times already. Of course it is Luke, Chapter 2 about the shepherds meeting the angels. (Luke 2:6-14)
6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
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 of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Christ, 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 men on whom his favor rests.”
The second passage comes from the apostle Paul. Also you will find this theme in this hymn and in what I will say today. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation:[a] The old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Would you pray with me?
Father, this story is so familiar to us that we often forget its glory. May we see that once more again today and may your glory touch our hearts and our minds. May we see you once more and all that you have done for us and all that you want us to do, as well. I pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Within this hymn we find this theme of glory; but what exactly is glory? I ran across a quote by a fairly well-known writer and theologian named Bernard Ramm. He wrote a book called Them He Glorified, and here is what he says. He says, “Glory is one of the great words of the English language. It is so rich in connotations that no single word can serve as a good synonym. It means honor, praise, splendor, radiance, pomp, power, exultation, and supreme worthiness. In English usage it is one of the few words that can stand for all the word heaven represents. In one of the most remarkable usages in the Old Testament, it is a synonym for the true and living God in contrast to all the gods of paganism. In the Old Testament God is the King of glory. In the New, Jesus is the Lord of glory; and our role as subjects of the King and Lord is to glorify God.” Hear that? Glory is power, awe, beauty, splendor, worthiness all rolled into one. It is all connected with God.
So one of our first jobs in life, I think, is to look for glory in life and to pay attention to it. You see, we go through life all the time and see glory but we don’t notice it because we are too busy, or too distracted, or not thinking about it.
I have told you several times how in Afghanistan I would go and look at sunsets and those were some of my glory moments. I also remember writing back to you and talking about the stars there because, unencumbered with city lights, you could see the stars in a way you can’t see them here. We were so high up that they were almost on top of you. I remember a couple years ago about this time how we had the conjunction of the planets. Jupiter and Mars and Venus were all kind of rolled into one and I remember writing how I could imagine the star in the East on those days. It was just crystal clear and so glorious. That is all you could say. It was just glorious— the splendor, the beauty, the awe and glory is all around us, from the stars in the sky to the microscopic beauty under the microscope all around us, in one another, in our families, in the world we live in, sometimes the feelings that we have. That is all we can say—they are just glorious.
I haven’t shared this story too much but I remember when I was at Duke University, Duke has a chapel. It is rather a benign term for what it really was. It was actually a cathedral. It was a big gothic edifice. It had all the things that cathedrals have. You would walk in and the huge ceilings, so high and airy, and all the windows full of scenes and color. They were building at that time a glorious organ that they were actually, while I was there, installing; and then they would practice. So then you got to go hear this thing behind you that was just amazing. I would go there on many days, many days, to have my quiet times. Not every day, but, so it was just a place of glory. You could go and sit, even though it was a lot of people walking in and out, you were sort of by yourself. I remember one day, praying to God, O.K. it was one of those really neat times of prayer. I said, “Lord, I will be yours. Whatever you want me to do, I will do. I am ready.” Just at that moment, just at that moment, a beam of sunlight came through one of the windows up on my left. I was on the right about two-thirds of the way. It was like one of the spotlights back there, it just shown around me. I was sitting there going, “Wow.” Then I got a little embarrassed. I am going, “are people noticing this?” It was just like the Lord saying, “O.K. I accept your prayer.” Now I am not really skeptical about things like that; but I did come back the very next day at the exact same time because I wondered, “Was this just chance, at that moment?” I came back; no beam, no sunlight. Now it is probably true that on that day at 2:28, or whenever it was in the afternoon, that the sun was in the right spot in the sky for that beam to come through that particular piece of the window to shine on me. God arranges stuff like that. But it was glorious. That is what God does for us. He gives us moments of glory. I will never forget that, and that was a long time ago; but it is those moments of glory which can stay with us and give us strength to face other times in life. The question is do we notice them? Do we care about them? Are we skeptical about them? We need to look for glory in our lives. We see that in this, “Hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn King.” There was the moment of glory for these shepherds and these people of which, obviously, no one has ever forgotten because it has been enshrined in the Scriptures. It changed their lives and it could change ours. It can give us strength for life which has moments, of course, that aren’t so glorious.
To go along with that there is another aspect of glory which we can see in this story. Now we have already said that glory has to do with power, it has to do with…sometimes I imagine God not really as a human being. It is hard for me to think of God as the guy sitting on the throne, because I know that God is so much more than that. I tend to think of God as all color and light and power, personal, not impersonal, but when I think of God that is what I see or think of. I look forward to seeing him as he is, well sort of. I think it is going to be quite an experience, maybe overwhelming; but I do look forward to that. But it is this idea of power but within the story there is something else, something a little paradoxical. You know, I often use the example and ask the question, “Can we be Christians and say, not believe in the virgin birth?” Well, technically, yes. But if you don’t believe in the virgin birth it says a lot about what you believe about God—that God either doesn’t have the power to do that kind of thing or doesn’t. But the Bible everywhere says that God does that kind of thing. It says that God is not only the Creator of you and me but this world and the entire universe, every galaxy, every sun, all of the physics and biology, and all the stuff that goes with that, God made it all. So if you think in terms of God making a couple galaxies, what is the issue with the virgin birth? What is the issue of God sort of interrupting his own processes which he has already put in place? But you know, glory isn’t just about power and there is power in this story, isn’t there? …God coming to earth and making a birth miraculous. There is something no one else could do but God. But there is something else there, a paradox, if you will, that glory is putting aside power and greatness. You see, that is what the Incarnation is.
Christ by highest heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Yes there is power there. There is power there, but there is also humility. You know we can agree with Islam which says “Allahu Akbar,” “God is Great.” We believe that, but you will not see it in Islam, that God is also humble, that God gives up his power and that is our story. That is the Incarnation. God gives up his power. It says of Jesus that he became nothing for our sakes. He became like us so that we could become like him. So what do we expect when we think of glory?
Well, yes, we think of power. We think of glory. We think of all those kinds of things but we need to think in terms of putting aside all that, as well. I read a great story about a young man who came to a pastor who said, “You speak of glory in the Christian faith, but I have yet to experience it. What’s wrong with me?” The pastor said to him, this was many, many years ago, he said, “I’ll show you where it is.” He said, “Go to the coal yard and get a bag of coal, a big one. And go to the store and get a box of groceries and take it to the Widow Brown and when you get there take your bible out, read a psalm and say a prayer.” So the young man did that. He got the coal and he got the groceries and he went to see the Widow Brown. When he walked into the room he saw a cot with a child’s feet underneath some blankets and they were blue from the cold. He gave the coal and the groceries to this grateful widow who had shining tears in her eyes. He tried to read a psalm but he got all choked up and he couldn’t say the prayer. He went back to the pastor and said, “I found it. I found it.” The pastor said, “Where did you expect to find it?” Where do we expect to find glory? I think sometimes we are looking for that big experience of God and God gives us those if we are looking for them. But glory is found in service. Going to those places where it is not terribly comfortable for us, going to those places and maybe writing that check or just serving, being incarnational, like our Lord. Being him. Yes, I know we are not perfect and we are sinners and we will talk about that in a minute; but gloriously you and I are representatives of Jesus Christ in this world and we need to be that. That is what the Lord calls us to do.
Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
The third thing we see in glory is what God has done for us and that is that he has reconciled us to the Lord. Going back to the first stanza of the hymn, that middle piece, “God and sinners reconciled.” God and sinners reconciled. What do we think about when we think about peace on earth and reconciliation? Well, of course, for many people it is about politics, isn’t it? We have peace talks with other nations and we have reconciliation and all those things are good things. But when the Bible talks about it, and when this hymn talks about it, he is talking about something totally different than that. He is talking about peace between God and human beings. You know, that is hard for us. It is hard for us to think about being in open warfare with God, because it is not really open. It is usually inside and we are, on the surface, good people. We do good things. Of course, around Christmastime, if we have been around our families long enough, sometimes we are not as…well, I won’t go there. We all find that peace needs to start at home, doesn’t it? No matter where we are in the scale of it all, one to ten, we are all rebels and we don’t mind God helping us when we call on him. We don’t mind saying “O.K. I’m here.” But we don’t really want him telling us what to do, or saying you need to repent of certain things.
But that is what God has done and that is what Jesus was about. Max Lucado writes, “If our greatest need had been for information, God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist; but since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent a Savior.”
We do have a hard time with that. I love the story I read this week about a case in the Southwest involving two men on trial for armed-robbery and assault. You could here a pin drop in the court room as the prosecutor questioned the victim, who along with her husband, had been robbed at gunpoint. Her voice quavered and she seemed terribly frightened. Noting this, the prosecutor raised his voice and turned away from her hoping not to intimidate her anymore; but asked the question, really directed toward her, “Are the two men who committed this horrible crime in the courtroom today?” At that, the two defendants raised their hands. (laughter) And of course, everybody did exactly what you just did. Noticing the two arms in the air the prosecutor said, “Your Honor, may the record show that the defendants raised their hands and have just confessed to the crime.” It would be nice if all of us confessed to the crime. But the fact is that no one can ever be saved unless they realize their own sins. No one can be found unless they realize they are lost. And the point is that we will never forgive anyone more than God has forgiven us. And we will never love anyone more than God loves us. And what happens when we recognize our need of forgiveness?
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth (and the daughters, too, of course)
Born to give them second birth
Second birth is having our eyes open to the fact that God is in control and we belong to him. And there is glory, finally, in the fact that God loves us anyway and uses us anyway despite ourselves.
The final story to tell which I think says a lot. There was a man who came into a pet store because he like pets, especially dogs. He and his wife already had a dog, so he was just looking. When he came into this particular store, there was a beautiful Dalmatian puppy but something was different about this puppy. He was quite a bit bigger than the others and was on sale, half price, and he wondered what the story was abut this dog. The sales clerk explained that the dog was totally deaf, as sometimes happens with Dalmatians. The owner set the price by half in hopes that it would be sold. “What will happen if this dog is not sold?” “Well,” answered the pet store clerk, “the people who owned the dog have him here on consignment and they do not keep dogs that do not sell, especially deaf ones. I suppose they will just have to take him back and well, you know.” The man knew only too well that he would be destroyed.
So here was this poor dog, so very beautiful, yet something was wrong with it and he didn’t even know it. The man wanted to take the dog home but he already had a dog, so he prayed, “Lord, you care even about what happens to little dogs. Please take care of this one.” So he hung around just to see what would happen. In just a little while a couple came in pushing a stroller with a young boy in it and saw the dog and the price and once more the store clerk had to tell the whole story again. But this time the couple seemed interested. They drew off together and talked and the man watched in wonder as the couple seemed to have come to an agreement. They approached the clerk and said, “We would like to see if our son likes the dog.” So the clerk got the dog out of the cage; and, if on queue, the dog went up to the stroller, got up on his hind paws and placed his front paws on each side of the little boy and licked him square in the face. The little boy was not frightened at all, threw his arms around the dog and the deal was sealed right there. “We will take the dog,” the wife said. “Are you sure?” said the clerk. “The dog is totally deaf.” “We know,” the wife answered, “however, our son is also totally deaf.”
We all have what is wrong with us. We call it this big word, actually three letters but it is a big word, called sin. We all have weaknesses. We all have strengths. We are all in need of redemption and reconciliation and love and that is what Christ has come to do. Our job is to believe, to trust; and, when we do that, God enters our life, changes it and gives us glory, his glory, not ours, but his. That, my friends, is the message of Christmas.
Would you pray with me?
Lord thank you again and again and again for yourself and for Jesus our Savior who was more than just another human being, though he was human. He was you, incarnate. He died for us and lived for us and lived again for us. May that story be on our lips as we talk to others and may your glory be seen in us even though we don’t deserve it and it is hard; may the light shine from our words and our lives, as we live them for your honor and your glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.