“Living Christmas”

A Sermon Based Upon Hebrews 1: 1-14

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2013

“But in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. (Heb 1:2 NRS)"

Pastor Len Sweet rightly says, “Christmas is no time for a sermon”.    A more poetic line suggests:  “I’d rather see a sermon, than hear one any day.”   Christmas is the time to ‘see’ not to “hear” a sermon.    If any text in the Bible can help us ‘see’ this sermon is the book of the Bible which is a sermon itself, the book of Hebrews. 

The whole book of Hebrews is a sermon which begins with a brilliant picture of Christmas:  “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets,  but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, (Heb 1:1-2).

There is no greater visual than this: At Christmas, “God has spoken to us by a Son”.

Thinking about this on an everyday level is also a picture.  Didn’t God speak to you in a unique way when you first became a parent?  What better way for God to get his message of love and life across to us that giving us the gift of life.  It has been that way ever since Adam and Eve, when God said to the first prospective parents, “Be fruitful and multiply…” (Gen.  1.28).   If you look this up in Genesis you’ll find that God not only gave the gift of life to the first humans, but he also gave the gift of life to nature itself (Gen. 1.22).  God created a world that teems with life and it should keep on giving life to us unless we insist on messing it up.  Life is an incredible gift from God and it has almost infinite possibilities.

I say “almost infinite possibilities” for a reason.   On the same level of the miracle gift of life, is the more incredible gift of eternal life, which God has given us through Jesus Christ.   Life in this world cannot give us such an incredible gift.  But this is what Hebrews is talking about.   The idea that “In these last days, he has spoken to us by a Son”, means even more than God giving a Son to be born into the world, but it also means that God gave his Son to be born in the world so we could be born into God’s eternal world.   This is why the writer of Hebrews writes that Jesus is ‘heir of all things, through whom he also created the world(s).’  Did you catch that the word ‘worlds‘ is not singular, but plural?  Christmas is not just about gaining a new perspective on life in the world.  It certainly should do that.  But Christmas is also about the wonder of the world that is still to come.  God has spoken in Christ to point us to another world.

Whatever we can say about Christmas, it must be said that Christmas points us toward this ‘other’ world.  Christmas is a time like no other time of the year.  Even the secular songs admit this.  Can’t you hear that tune by Andy Williams still in your head: “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!   Christmas is wonderful time of the year because it points us beyond this normal time, beyond the world’s present time, and transports us into God’s ‘not yet’ eternal time, which has been started in Jesus Christ.  What kind of time is this?  It’s the kind of time we can see in Christmas.

Think of some of those things you see at Christmas that you seldom see at other times.   We are people in such a hurry, but we still try to stop for Christmas, at least most of us still do.  Unfortunately some are trying to steal this time away by forcing people to work on Christmas, like they have stolen Sunday’s, but I want to remind you that you can’t really steal time away from God.   Time ultimately belongs to God and this is something we still can see at Christmas.

Also, we can see at Christmas that home can only be found in God.  We all long for home at Christmastime.  Soldiers long to be back home with family.   Family member long to come back home and be with family at Christmas.   Even people without a family, go looking for one at Christmastime.  There is something about the soul that knows at Christmas we need to find a home, have a home, and that Christmas is about God making a home with us, as well as, about us making our home with God.

Finally, Christmas is not only about taking time, finding home, but it is finally and most fully about finding out what life means and what life is about.  When we look at the sermon, which is Christmas, we should hear the angels once again, who say,  “For I have good news, which shall be great joy for all people….A savior is born….”

We all know that the heart of the message and meaning of Christmas is to realize that it is not just any savior that was born at Christmas, but it is ‘our savior’ who is born.   How can we still say to ourselves and to our world that the savior is born into our world at Christmas?  How can such an ancient story meant for Jewish people who were struggling for their lives so many years ago, have meaning for us, especially when it didn’t have much meaning for most of them either.  At least, as we know, when Jesus came to be their ‘savior’ they did not receive him, but they rejected him.   How can such a nice story that ends in such tragedy, give us hope for our world and for the future world that God has created in Jesus Christ?   This is still the ultimate ‘test’ of Christmas, isn’t it?   What can it mean for us, for you and for me, and for our world where we live right now?   How can we say still say in faith that in this moment, 2000 years ago plus a few, that God “spoke”, “appointed” and “created” new worlds, worlds of eternal life and worlds of eternal hope?   How can we still say that this is the true meaning of Christmas and that it is not only what Christmas means, it is still true? 

My answer is that we can only ‘say it’ when we can still ‘see it’ and because we still see it, we can feel it and we can know it and we can have it change how we see things and live life now.    As I was writing this sermon back in middle October, a Sheriff from Florida Dade County was hopping mad.   They showed on T.V.   He was mad because a young 12 year old girl had jumped off a grain bin and committed suicide.  She was only 12.  She committed suicide because another girl about her age, had bullied and belittled her.  She told this girl ‘she was no good’.  She told her ‘she was trash’.   She told her that she ought to kill herself.  So she did.  But what disturbed the Sheriff most was not simply that the girl gave up her life, but that after the fact, the bully, still a child herself had no remorse.  As soon as this girl was dead, she got online and said, “I’m glad she’s gone.”   Her parents didn’t see it as a crime, nor did they have any shame either.  The Sheriff decided that he was going to charge and put this young teenager behind bars.  And he was going to try to find a way to put her parents in jail too.   Do you know why?  He was going to put them all in jail because they could not see, understand or value the meaning of life.   For them, life had lost it’s value.

Christmas is the only way back---to learn to value of life and of living once again.  The evil in this world has always been bent on death, dying, killing and destroying.  All the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden, the devil has been trying to take away God’s eternal time, to destroy the family and home of God’s people, and he has been trying to damn us all to a life that already is hell on earth that lasts for eternity.   You certainly don’t have to go to hell to be in hell.  The devil is trying to make sure of that.   No, the only way I know out and away from a life that ends up like that is to return to the one who created life the first time and who give us life a second time, once and for good.   This is the promise of Christmas.  This is the promise of “a savior is born.”   We may have forgotten who the Savior is how and what the Savior can do, but the devil hasn’t…evil hasn’t, and Satan hasn’t.   The ‘demons always believe and tremble’ because they know whose time it is, and how little time they have left.   Anytime we return to the savior, we return to our home, we gain time, we start time anew and we point toward what is still to come, not what can be taken away from us.   We still need a savior like that, that’s for certain, but is he real?

This is the question Christmas asks, and it is the question no preacher can answer for you, but only you and I can answer for ourselves, as we come together in faith.   And you can’t answer an important question like this is a sermon, but you have to answer it after the sermon, in the faith you have, the love you share, the world where you live out the truth of the savior who is God’s last an only word of truth.    When I think again this Christmas about Jesus as being God’s final word of hope to us, I can’t help but reflect upon something the great theologian Karl Barth once said.   He’s the one theologian Billy Graham looked up too and asked, “What is the greatest truth in the Bible” and Barth answered, “Jesus loved me, this I know….”     When Barth was once asked whether or not a person can really know God in this life, Barth responded that this is not the right question.   The right question is not can we know God, but do we know that God know us?   Our answer: “You bet, God knows us” for this is why he sent us a savior.  You can be sure about that, especially at Christmas.  This is what God’s final, most important sermon is about.  Can you see it?   If you can, if you will see how well and good God sees and know us, then it can be Christmas all over again.  For when you see it, you will live it, and this is what Christmas means, so go out and celebrate God’s new, eternal world that begins when you believe God knows us, and sent his son to save us to join him in his world.   Amen.