Below is the sermon I preached at the Christmas Chapel at King's Christian this past Friday. Hope you find something that connects you to what God has done, with what we celebrate this season.
Standing
Before the Manger
Rev. Jack
P Savidge
There are
few more dramatic scenes in all of scripture than this: in the midst of man’s
deep darkness of night, the visible glory of God surrounds and envelops simple
men. To the outcasts, the messenger of
God proclaims a great mystery, a mystery that changes everything, a mystery
that will be the crux of all human history:
A Savior, The Christ, God Himself
A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,
lying in a manger.
Could there
be two more diametrically opposed realities, the holy God of power and might
and glory, maker of the universe, and a helpless baby, cold and needy? Could a greater paradox be found in all of
history?
To
understand the excitement of the angels, the truth that causes them to break
into joyous song we must begin to pull back the curtain of paradox and see that
God is doing.
The angel
proclaims two great truths. God has come. But it is more than that. It is God as Messiah, as Christ, as
Savior. God has come with
intentionality. Something new has
happened. God has looked at the darkness
of man’s sinfulness and come as savior.
The break that Adam made from God which we daily reaffirm will be once
and for all repaired. Paul reminds us
our abject sinfulness in Romans. All
have sinned and cannot come to God. We
fall short at every effort. It is into
this despair that God breaks into humanity to bring us to Him, to do what we
cannot and only He can.
The second
announcement must have seemed so strange.
God in a manger, a baby, weak and helpless. A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Clothes necessary to keep it warm. A reminder that the baby lives under the
threat of death. A body just like mine, weak
and vulnerable. A body that one day will
take its final breath. The Church
Father, Athanasius, wrote “for this reason, therefore, He assumed a body
capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word who is above
all, might become in dying, a sufficient exchange for all.”
God, the
Messiah, takes on human flesh, a body like mine. Because immortal God cannot
die. He must take what is mine and
become mortal. A baby born to die.
In the loneliness
of the manger we see that God has come to all.
Martin Niemoller, the German pastor imprisoned by Hitler, preached a
Christmas Eve sermon to seven fellow prisoners from his cell at Dachau
Concentration Camp. He reminded his
little congregation that “God, the eternally wealthy and all mighty God, enters
into the most extreme poverty imaginable.
No man is so weak and helpless that God does not come to him in Jesus
Christ, right in the midst of his human need and no man is so forsaken and
homeless in this world that God does not seek him.”
What an
amazing truth. God has broken into our
lives and seeks us out. Light has come
to darkness. To you I say…A baby is born
in Bethlehem. Your Savior, God Himself, to die for you. This is the reality that causes demons to
tremble and angels to sing. “Glory to
God in the Highest. Peace has come to mankind.
Peace has come to you.”
So what do
we do with God in a manger. The simple
shepherds show us what to do. They went
to see the baby, their Savior. In faith
they stood before a helpless child that had already begun to die, had already
begun to set them free.
Today, this
Christmas, you stand before that same manger.
What do you see? God asks you to
believe that this is God Himself, your Savior.
If you walk away from the manger, filled with joy and wonder and the God
you have seen and believed, do what the shepherds did; they did not keep it to themselves. Their lives now changed they now took that
message to others.
My challenge
to you is to take on the mind of Christ.
Our call to Christ-likeness is to begin to do what he has done, to
incarnate the Word of God in this world, into your world. Take the light of the gospel, this good news,
to others. Do not be afraid. Christ has already gone before you, into the
darkness of this world, vulnerable, yet victorious in that vulnerability. Show
the world what this baby has done, what God has done.
I’d like to
leave you with a Christmas prayer offered by my hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to
his students in 1939.
Let us pray.
Lord, God of all peace and all love,
You have come to us, so that we
should come to you,
You became human, so that we would
become godly,
In grace, you took on our flesh and
blood, so that we might partake of you,
Through you most holy birth, may we
be born anew in peace and love, and
Turn us poor sinners into children of
your mercy,
Lord Jesus Christ, come and stay
with us.
Amen.
Preached at The King’s Christian School
Christmas Chapel, December 18, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment