“Good News of Great Joy!”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 2: 1-20

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock Baptist Church

Christmas Eve, December 24^th, 2016 

We all need ‘good news’.   But when you turn on the TV at night, or you read the newspapers, or you watch your notifications on your cell phone, most of seem to be more interested in ‘bad news.’

Back in the summer our director of missions told of a large group of reporters who came to cover a protest in front of the Presbyterian church.  At the same time a tractor trailer pulled into our association to collect items for the Baptist Childrens Home.   “The truck always comes to Yadkin Association first, because Baptist here are so supportive.   No reporter cover the good news of helping the children.  It's the bad news that was getting all the attention.

It’s the bad news that sells newspapers, fuels the curiosity, or turns the head and hearts of most people.   Only recently, did evening News reports on most networks concluded with a ‘good news story’.  They have done that perhaps, because our world is filled with so much ‘bad’ news.   Of course, we need good news, but how much do we really want it?

When the gospel of Luke describes the birth of Jesus, the angels announced that they had “Good news of great joy ….for all the people!”  The announcement of Jesus’ birth was being announced very much like the ‘birth announcements’ of kings and royalty in the ancient world.   Luke’s angels came directly to those “Shepherds…. watching over their flock” announcing this good news (v. 8).  But who were they?  I know they must have meant something to somebody, but who are they to receive this message?  Why did world come to know such ‘good news’ through these earthly “nobodies”, out in god knows where, tending sheep, “watching over the flocks at night?”  Why did the angels pick them?  Better yet, why didn’t they go straight to Herod’s palace or to the roman coliseum, or even straight to the Roman Emperor himself?  

And the same question might come to us, as well?  How can the birth of this baby, on the back side of nowhere, really come to be the answer, the hope, and the ‘joyful’ good news for all people in the whole world today?   Can we still hear this message in the same way it was once announced to those Shepherds?  Can we still hear the message that was intended for ‘all people’ everywhere?     

NO PLACE IN THE INN

I believe one reason we must still hear the message of the birth of this child as good news for all people, is because we all still need good news.

This gospel is not in any way a fairy tale, because at its core it is a realistic, undeniable historical witness to how the world really is.   We still live in a ‘bad news’ world.   Even when we do find good news for ourselves or for others, it is still constantly threat, as much now, as then.  

As we all know, when Jesus was the child born to be ‘good news’ for his people, there was ‘no room’ for him in the inn and he was ‘lying in a manger’ ‘wrapped in bands of clothes’ like any other poor child.   It may sound a lot less romantic, but it is much more realistic than the King James ‘swaddling clothes’.  We need to understand that this Jesus is a poor baby who was born and wrapped in rags.   His birth is no fairy tale, no opulent dream, but is the story ‘announcing’ the good news about a baby who was born right in the middle of a big mess.   He was born, as John later writes, ‘to become flesh live among us’ as a human, poor, vulnerable child, just like any and all of us.     

And just as there was no real place for him then, there is still no real place for him now.  This was not a child who would grow up to be a mythical hero going from rags to riches either, but this is the child, who changed the whole idea of what riches should mean.  This child was born to be a man who would not take from this world, but he came, as Scripture says, to give his own life as a ransom so people can get free from the  sin that destroys their potential for life.  By submitting to the cross, Jesus redefined what kind of life is worth living for, even as he died the worst kind of death.  And though this child was rejected and despised, and murdered, even by his own, he never stopped showing us how to love and how to live at our very best.

So let me ask you who come to worship this child again tonight;  will you let his message of what is good and what brings real  “joy” in living, have its rightful place in your Christmas celebration?   Even in this bad news world, the good news is that God’s love and truth is still available to us.   Even in this world that has no room for God, God still has room for us.    The horrors, evils, sins and destructive powers of hate have rejected God’s love, but they have not extinguished God’s love nor have they stopped God’s grace.    Though this child who came as our Savior does not yet rule the world, he can and must rule in our hearts.   For there is no idea, no religion, no spirituality, and no moral ethic that has ever, or will ever, surpass the wonderful compassion and loving example Jesus lived and revealed.   Humanity may still reject him, in spite of the truth that he was and still is, but no one will or can ever out love Him.   Jesus’ life, compassion, and most of all, his death for sinners, cannot be surpassed.  Rejoice!   His love, which still reveals God’s love for us all, is still good news! 

THIS WILL BE THE SIGN

And what is so joyful about having child born as a King, whose example of love and truth was fully rejected?    The angels announce that this child was born ‘to be a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord’.   But the sign of his Messiahship is not how ‘high and mighty’ he is, but it is how ‘low and humble’ he has become.   The sign of his Messiahship is not that he has all the power, answers all the questions, or gives us everything we want, when we want it, but the sign of his messiahship will be in the truth of who he is, the power he refuses, the questions he asks, and how we should give ourselves to him and his truth. 

The child who brings God’s glory to us, reveals God’s glory ‘of the highest heaven’ in the lowest, in the least, and in the last places on earth.   This ‘savior’ will not look like other ‘saviors’, other ‘kings’ or other ways of envisioning “God” at work in our world.   This child will bring ‘good news for all people’ because he can; he will be from among you, one like you, and this is how God will be ‘in him’  and bring ‘good news’ through him, in this most unusual, unexpected, but also most normal and accessible way.

The unique ‘sign’ that the angels give the Shepherds that this child is the Savior, is that they will find him ‘wrapped bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’   Do you know why the ‘manger’ is so important to the truth of Christmas?  It is not just that this was an animal feeding trough, which it was.   But even more than this, this is a ‘place’ or a ‘location’ that all these Shepherds already knew.  This was most likely their own ‘manger’ or their own ‘feeding station’ for their animals when they came to town.  The angels did not have to give the street address, or describe the place of the child’s birth with any more detail because this was all the detail they needed.  The child was born, not just anywhere, or just anywhere, but the child was ‘lying in a manger’ they all already knew.  This child was born in a place that known and recognizable as just for them.

How we too come to ‘recognize’ Jesus as the Savior will never be because Jesus came to be the Savior of the world.   I know that millions, if not over a Billion people in this world will celebrate Christmas tonight in many places; in many languages, in many cultures, with many different kinds of feasts, activities, and functions.  Some people will gather with family.  Others will be in churches.  Still others will go to parties and barely mention Christ, if at all. 

But what matters most is not that Christ is acknowledged for his greatness, his accomplishments, or for his benefit for all humanity.  What matters most is that you find this Jesus in the most recognizable place---in your heart, in your living-- in who you are and in how you live.   For you see, Jesus did not come into this world to get to be put on a Christmas ornament, nor to be remembered for his greatness, nor even to be worshipped because of who he was.   No, this child is the child who was born in the simple, most recognizable place---accessible to any and all of us, who will make him the LORD, the Savior, and the King.  This is the King, the Savior, and the child, who was born for each of us---made accessible in that one place that is still available to us all---our hearts.   Jesus is born to be the true King of our heart. 

In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela told about the impact a baby had on his life.  Mandela had been a political prisoner for fourteen years doing hard labor in a rock quarry on infamous Robben Island, South Africa.   However, in 1978, Zeni, his second-youngest daughter married a prince, the son of the king of Swaziland.  There was a tremendous advantage in Zeni’s becoming a member of the Swazi royal family.  Now she was immediately granted diplomatic privileges and could visit Mandela virtually at will. This was amazingly good news for Mandela. For just about his entire imprisonment he had been cut off almost entirely from his children.

That winter, after they were married, the young couple came to see Mandela, along with their newborn baby daughter. Because of his son-in-law’s status as a prince, Mandela and his family were allowed to meet in the consulting room, not the normal visiting area where one is separated from one’s family by thick walls and glass.   Mandela reports that he waited for his daughter and her family with some nervousness. It was a truly a wondrous moment when they came into the room. He stood up, and when Zeni saw him, she practically tossed her tiny daughter to her husband and ran across the room to embrace him. He had not held his now-grown daughter since she was a baby. It was a dizzying experience, says Mandela, as though time had sped forward in a science fiction novel, to suddenly hug one’s fully grown child. He then embraced his new son, Zeni’s husband, the prince.

Finally, his son-in-law handed Mandela his tiny granddaughter. Mandela says he did not let go of this precious child for the rest of the visit. To hold a newborn baby, so vulnerable and soft in his rough hands, hands that for too long had held only picks and shovels, was a profound joy. He says that in his mind, no man was ever happier to hold a baby than he was that day.

The visit, however, had a more official purpose and that was for Mandela to choose a name for the child. It is a custom in their culture for the grandfather to select the new child’s name, and the one he chose was Zaziwe which means “Hope.”   The name had special meaning for Nelson Mandela, for during all his years in prison, he says, hope never left him and now it never would. He was convinced that this child would be a part of a new generation of South Africans for whom apartheid would be a distant memory that was his dream  ( Nelson Mandela. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Kindle edition) .

LET US NOW GO TO BETHLEHEM

The way we still get the message of ‘hope’ and good news from this ‘manger’ into our own ‘hearts’ is the same way those Shepherds did.   We are told that when the angels left, their response was,  “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the  Lord has made known to us”  (v. 15).  Hear again, just how ‘personal’ the good news of that first Christmas was, and still is.  It is a message that ‘the glory of God in the highest’ has come to some of the lowest, the least, and the last people on earth.    This is exactly the salvation that Jesus promises, when he said, that in God’s kingdom, the ‘first will be last, and the last will be first’.   This message of good news has come, of course, to everyone, but the message of joy and good news  always comes first of all, through needs of the poorest, the least, and the most forgotten.

The point the ‘manger’ still makes is that there is no way to market this child.   There is no way to manufacture him either.  There is no way to make people want come to worship him either, unless they are willing to ‘hear the angels’ and ‘see’ what has ‘taken place’ for themselves.   And the only way you can join in the message, the joy and the good news of this Christmas, is to ‘go’ to the humble place where the Christ abides.   

To find this ‘babe’, to find the true Christmas, you will still have go, not to the safe place, or just the family place, and not only the sacred place, but you must also go to that lowest place, where the least, the lowest, and last are waiting on good news FROM THE very CHRIST WHO should be alive IN YOU.   Don’t miss what I’m saying.  You will never get to the GREATEST, DEEPEST, WIDEST, JOY of Christmas, without going to those low and last places where the humble and hurting reside.   “The poor you will always have with you”, Jesus said.   “You will find me, Jesus said also, among the least of these,”  There is where you can always find Christ, where you can always find ‘good news of great joy,  there, among the least, the last and the lost.

But will you see him?   A popular play and movie this time of year, is A Christmas Carol.  There is one scene that always fascinates.  The Ghost of Christmas Past has just paid a very discomforting visit to Ebenezer Scrooge.  Clearly the old miser is shaken by the entire ordeal.  But when he awakens from his sleep does he take the message to heart.  No, he simply dismisses it by saying: Bah, humbug, it wasn't real. "Just a bit of last nights undigested beef”.  Scrooge concludes: This was not a vision to be taken to heart, but simple indigestion.

Oh, you might say, had I been there at Bethlehem that night I would have seen the child. I would have understood. I would have known it was him in, lying in that manger.  Would you?  The real test is not would you have seen him then, but do you see him now, among those same humble people Ebenezer Scrooge also did not want to acknowledge?

But if you will go there, to acknowledge and be Christ with and for them,  where THEY ARE (whoever they are---the lost---the broken, the child, the elderly, the homeless, or the sick), then we also find that this  ‘good news of great joy’ will return to us, again and again.   For wherever they are, in those stinking, ‘manger’ places of this world, is where the joy of Christ and Christmas, can always be found.   Amen.