Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
For Christmas Eve, December 24, 2012
"Glory
to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he
favors!"
(Luke 2:14 NRS)
There is an unforgettable story about
Major Harold Kushner and a marine who was held by the Viet Cong for five and a
half years. Among the prisoners in
Kushner’s POW camp was a tough young marine, 24 years old, who had already
survived two years of prison-camp life in relatively good health. Part of the
reason for this was that the camp commander had promised to release the man if
he cooperated. Since this had been done before with others, the marine turned
into a model POW and the leader of the camp’s thought-reform group.
As time passed he gradually realized
that his captors lied to him. When the full realization of this took hold he
became a zombie. He refused to do all work and rejected all offers of food and
encouragement. He only lay around on his
cot sucking his thumb. In a matter of
weeks he was dead. Why? Could it be that
when this marine realized that his captors had lied to him, that he lost all hope?
Hope is powerful. “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves
the impossible.” I once heard that a
dying person can live on one spoonful of water a day. Even holding on to a little hope can keep us our
spirits alive in much the same way.
The great prophet Isaiah gave a powerful
presentation of hope, in Isaiah 9:6, naming the Messiah who was to come as the “Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.” But between Isaiah’s hope until the birth
of Jesus was more than 700 years. Even
the Bible went silent for over 400 years of those years. The voice of God went silent for a long,
long time, but it wasn’t permanent.
By the time we get Luke’s account of
Jesus’ birth, people were still wondering when the time would be fulfilled. Right
after the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds keeping watch
over their flock by night, we find an old man named Simon, still hoping to see
the fulfillment of Israel’s long awaited hope before he dies. Upon seeing Jesus and holding him in his
arms, he rejoiced and praised God, saying these unforgettable words that even
shocked Mary and Joseph: "Master, now you are dismissing your
servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all
peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people
Israel." (Luk 2:29-32 NRS). It
was as if Simon was saying for all of us, Jesus is worth the wait!
But we also know the difficulty most of us
have with waiting, don’t we? Christmas
will be here tomorrow, but we still have one more night to wait. Most children won’t be able to stand it much
longer. They have been waiting long enough. Tomorrow is Christmas. Many of them will get up before the break of
dawn, without your permission or without your persuasion to see what there is
to see. The wait has been long, but tomorrow
will prove that Christmas has been worth the wait.
But tonight we are still waiting. And we are waiting not just for tomorrow, but
for the truth of Christ’s rule of peace to become a reality all over the
world. We are still waiting tonight, and
we will probably still be waiting tomorrow, but for now, we need to hear the
joyful message of the angels who message of “good news and great joy” and their
benediction of “glory to God in the highest, on peace” remind us again that
Jesus is indeed the coming one who is worth the wait. Can we still believe this heavenly
pronouncement? Do we still hope for such peace to come to earth, into our lives
and for our families? Can we hope that
this peace will even start with the nations and religions of the world? Are we still willing to wait?
Last year in an interview the Dalai Lama
was asked if he had hope for the future. He laughed and said, 'Of course I have
hope. The future has not yet been decided.' Do we believe this? Or do we live as if we
believe there is no hope, as if the future has already been determined, as if the
conflict of our lives and world are permanent.
Tonight and tomorrow, throughout the world, Christians will celebrate
the birth of the Prince of Peace. Even well beyond the Christian household, men
and women with their families and children will mark this day with gift-giving
and celebration. People and cultures
everywhere will hear again the song of hope and will look to the child and wait,
singing “Glory to God in the highest and
earth peace…!
Shepherds were the first ones to learn that
the hope had come, but that they still had to wait. Unlettered, unwashed herders of livestock
existing at the margins, far from the power-centers of respectability and
prestige, they were the first to hear the angel’s chorus: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth
peace." The shepherds believed what
they heard. The end of waiting did not
come first to the power places and power holders of the world. The message of hope emerged among the least
significant, among shepherds, among those who could never have imagined. They were the first to envision the end of
all waiting---but they too still had to wait.
They had to wait on the child to grow, on the teacher to appear, on the
cross to take his life, and upon the resurrection message to spread the word
into the world. They heard the angels,
but they still had to wait.
Aren’t many of us are still
waiting, while we too “keep watch” in the 'fields' of our nations, in places very distant
from all the noise of Washington, and the many other places of power and
prestige? How do we still think about
the child, still contemplate the message, and wait on his rule of peace? The song of angelic hope has long been sung,
but it is still repeated every year at Christmas or felt every time a child is
born. We are still waiting on peace and
on hope. Can we still hope? Do we still believe? Is it still worth the wait?
In Matthew’s gospel, it is not the shepherds,
but it is wise men who are wandering in the desert waiting to find the trail of
a new star which has appeared. These are
not insiders, like Mary, Joseph, Simon or the Shepherds, but they are “outsiders”,
travelers, migrants, or internationals, who have come from others cultures,
other religions, and other places, looking and waiting for the same thing we
all need---hope and peace. Can you
realize that tonight, we are not the only ones waiting, praying, hoping and
believing? Can we understand that we
live in a world where people are more alike than different? Can we understand that the core of what we
are all waiting for is found in the truth---even the truth about Jesus Christ? We don’t all have to be Christians to
understand the truth that is in this child is the same truth we all need, want,
and await. We want God and we want
peace.
In his book, “Why Jesus, Moses, Buddha
and Mohammed crossed the Road”, Brian McLaren makes this point. As a Christian writer, he was recently having
a meeting with a bunch of Rabbi who were reading one of his books and asked him
to speak. Since his book was about the
Christian Faith, he wanted to know what they thought about Jesus. The answer the Rabbis gave was: “Oh they know that Jesus was a faithful Jew,
a true, but rejected prophet, the Son of God, and everything the New Testament
said he was.” “But,” they continued, “don’t
expect us to jump up and down to become Christians and join your church. Do you know how many thousands years
Christians have bullied and persecuted us?
We can’t easily become one with you when we’ve been so mistreated like by
some like you. We just aren’t there,
yet. You’ll just have to wait!
So what do we do, while we are still
waiting? What are we to do when we are
waiting to for others to understand Jesus and when others are waiting for us,
the church, to understand Jesus? If we
are honest, we in the church don’t always get Jesus right either, do we? Like Philip Gulley, a Quaker writer puts it
on the title of one of recent books: “If the Church Where Christian” implying
exactly why some people still have not become Christian, because so many us still
are not. It has nothing to do with
Jesus, but it has everything to do with how unlike Jesus some of his followers still
can be. If we are waiting on the world and the world is waiting on us, we could
be in for a long, long wait! Is Jesus
really worth the wait?
So let’s get back to those Wise Men who
came looking for Jesus. Interestingly,
the shepherds and wise men never appear again in Gospel accounts. Maybe they never heard the rest of the story.
Maybe they never became Christians. Becoming a Christian is not the only point
of the Christmas story. Surprisingly, everyone
does not have to become a Christian for the peace of Christmas to come to the
earth. Even Jesus wasn’t a Christian, was
he? If you want to get technical about
it, the followers of Jesus weren’t called “Christians” until Jesus’ followers
moved out of Jerusalem and into Antioch. The believing Thief on the Cross wasn’t a
Christian either. Everyone does not have
to become ‘Christian’ or a ‘Church person’ to discover the hope of the earth, but
everyone does have to come to love, follow and wait on the Christ. If there will ever be peace on this earth, we
all have to wait for Jesus.
Do you see what the wise men did while
they were waiting in the in-between time between curiosity, adoration and
saving faith? They brought their best gifts. That’s not a bad thing to do while you wait,
is it? Bring your best gifts to God and
wait and see what God does next. If
people of the world learn this---just to bring their best gifts and wait on God,
the peace would come sooner, than later, wouldn’t it? But we don’t always give God our best. Too often we become impatient and we give God
our worst. Who knows what they really
knew of God, of Christ or whatever religion they had, but they did know how to
give their best.
They gave to the child the greatest
gifts: gifts of gold--- a costly gift of preciousness----a gift of frankincense---the
blessed perfume of sacredness----and they also brought the healing ointment of myrrh---pointing
to the healing and help we all need from God.
Interestingly, when we think about these
gifts of preciousness, sacredness, healing, these are the same gifts the magi
are looking and waiting for. And what
they were waiting for is also what they brought to the child. In
this way, I guess you could say that the Christmas miracle of giving is kind of
like the miracle of the Loaves and Two Fishes.
You give God the best you’ve got, the best you understand, the best you
have to give, and then you wait and see what God does next. Maybe this is exactly why Christmas keeps
coming back year after year, so that we can learn what it all means and what we
truly have to give. The wisest people know that God can’t give anything
to us until we give our best to him. The
seeds of hope for peace in the world have already been put into our human hands. When we put to practice of what it means to
be faithful to God and to others, we will not have much, if any longer, to wait. The greatest gifts are in our hands.
But tonight we still wait. Tonight, we are asked to bring to the child
our best gifts and we are to wait for others and with others until they do the
same. This great hope we wait for is not
out there, but the great hope for peace in the world is already here, waiting
for us to open our hands and to bow down.
He waiting on us to give the best that we can give. Will we give the gifts of the preciousness of
life, of sacredness of God, and the gifts of healing we all need? The greatest hope of the world is still waiting
on us, not just on Jesus, on God, or some other Wise Men, but for the Christmas
peace to break loose in this world could be waiting on us.
Let me close with a story about a
preacher’s father. John Phillip Newell’s
Father had a dream of peace in his heart that he was waiting to come into the
world. His father was born off the
Shankhill Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the most militant of Protestant
communities. He was born in 1922, the
same month as the Irish Civil War began. He breathed in the infection of soul that tore
apart the life of a whole nation. He knew within himself the hatred that
divided North from South, Protestant from Catholic, Christian from Christian.
But in his mid-eighties, John Newell’s father
wanted his son to take him to the south of Ireland. He had never been before as
an adult. The son arranged a family holiday in County
Kerry and on the first Sunday John took him into Dingle Town, naively thinking
there might be a variety of churches to choose from. They could find only one, St Mary's. It was Catholic, but they were Protestant. So there they were standing outside a Roman
Catholic church, and the son was feeling slightly sorry for his father.
"You know, we don't have to go in there," the son said to the
father. To which the Father responded,
"I want to go to church and I want to go in there." Yet still unsure,
the son said, "And we don't have to stay for the whole service!" To
which he replied, "I want to go to church and I want to stay for the whole
service."
The priest on duty that day was a
delightful Irish man, whose warm style was endearing. When it came to the
intercessions, he said, "Now we pray for the weather, Lord. It's not been
too bad but it could be much better. And we have people visiting from all over
the world, Lord, and we'd like them to see our beautiful country, so we pray
for the weather, Lord." And on and on he went.
When it came to the distribution of the
mass, there was that Belfast-born Protestant father with tears streaming down
his face going forward to receive the bread and the wine from a Roman Catholic
priest from the south of Ireland. When
you give the best gift---even the gifts of tears for the peace of the world, there
is always hope. As long
as we can feel for each other, and feel pain for the world, we know that it will all
be worth the wait. (From John Philip
Newell's sermon, “Look to the Child”, www.dayone.org).
What in this world could not be
reconciled, if we would bring Christ our best gifts and learn to wait---to wait
for God and to wait with each other? As
we wait we give to God and to each other those gifts we consider most precious,
most sacred and most healing. If we
will give our best, God will do the rest.
The in these kinds of gifts is the power of love---and we all know, that
true love knows how to wait.
Will we bring to Christ our greatest
gifts, we carry within ourselves---the precious gift of life, the sacred gift
of Holy God, and the healing salve of love?
If we will bring such gifts as these, I believe, I know, I guarantee,
that we won’t have much longer to wait.
So for now, we rejoice in what we have to give to each other this night: "Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace!" Amen.
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