Christmas in Quartet:“Luke Sings Loudest!”

A sermon based upon Luke 2: 1-20

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Sunday, Dec. 13^th,, 2020 Christmas in Quartet: 4 Part-Harmony of the Christmas Story

 

Who doesn’t love the Christmas story.  My wife’s family tradition was that on Christmas Eve, for her Father’s side of the family to gather at her grandparents home, and before sharing gifts, her grandmother would read, very emotionally, the Christmas story from Luke.  Fortunately, after we were married, I also got to participate in that tradition. 

 

I’m sure each of you have developed some Christmas traditions too.  If your tradition is religious, it probably focuses somehow on this story from Luke, which is the only gospel that tells us that Jesus was ‘wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manager’.   

 

While Matthew also tells us where Jesus was born; in Bethlehem and not in his hometown of Nazareth, only Luke tells us ‘how’ he was born, in such a inconvenient, unexpected, and humiliating setting.      

 

With this little introduction, we continue the current Advent series entitled,, “Christmas In Quartet.  We’re studying how and why the Christmas story differs in each gospel.

 

In our first message, we noted how Mark sings lead; the main melody line about Jesus takes us straight to the cross.   Then, last week we heard Matthew’s more dissonant voice pointing to the Jewish world, where the message of Christmas is grounded. 

 

Today, we come to Luke’s familiar, well known, and most beloved voice.  As a historian and man of the world, Luke focused on many detail to point out the universal implications of Jesus’ birth and story.  

 

TO WRITE AN ORDERLY ACCOUNT. Luke 1:3,  

Luke’s attention to details can be compared to how Laura Hillenbrand wrote the biography of Louis Zamperini.  Zamperini was Olympian and war hero, who was converted at a Billy Graham crusade.  

 

Hillenbrand also wrote the book Sea-biscuit.  Critics have called Hillenbrand a “research genius” and one of the “best writers” alive today.  

To write her account of Zamperini’s life, she conducted 75 interviews and pored over countless historical documents, taking 7 years to write “Unbroken,” the 496-page biography of Zamperini’s life.

 

In Luke’s own approach to the gospel, it looks as if he has researched the life of the Lord Jesus quite extensively too.   He seems to writing this gospel account to intentionally speak to a much broader audience. 

 

Luke may have interviewed eyewitnesses and pulled together other source material.  As a physician, he was careful, thoughtful, and persuasive.  In the way he crafted his gospel together,  you can tell that he was accustomed to handling data and giving close attention to details   This is why in opening verses, he says he made an ‘orderly account’.

 

But what does this mean, an ‘orderly account’.  How this relate to Luke’s whole approach to the Christmas story? 

 

Well, for one thing, Luke’s gospel is the longest gospel.  Luke wrote Acts too.   Luke’s goal seems to be to take us from the ‘humble beginnings’ of Jesus, and to how the church was also born and launched out into the world.  Luke would have been especially interested in this story, as he was a companion to Paul on some of his missionary journeys (2 Tim. 4:11, Col 4.14).

 

This makes it clear, that Luke’s gospel certainly has missionary concerns.  You can see this missionary concern bleed through the pages in two most prominent ways.  One, Luke is writing this account for Theophilus (Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1).  This is either a real person with Greek name which means ‘friend of God’ or, most likely, it could be a pseudonym for his intended audience; a culturally Greek people who were open to Jewish, religious ideas and the story of Jesus. 

 

Also, Luke’s primary aim was to tell the story, not in contrast to the evil ways of the Jewish King Herod, but to point to Jesus, as opposed to the cruel, corrupted rulers of the Roman Empire.  Just as those rulers were considered to be divine ‘sons of God’, Luke even more intentionally, points to Jesus as the humble, but true ‘Son of God’. 

 

In this his gospel, Luke is putting forth a missionary invitation to the saving, healing, and more compassionate way of Jesus Christ.  His perspective of the gospel, and Christmas too, has striking, universal and political implications, as we are about to see.   

 

 

ON EARTH, PEACE... 2:13

We see Luke’s world-shaking and world-shaping very ‘political’ and ‘missionary’ gospel in the most climatic introduction to Jesus, at the close of the account, when the angels announce his birth to ‘shepherds’ who were ‘keeping watch over their flocks by night’ (2:8). 

 

Here, we not only have an angel, like in Matthew, but Luke’s announcement concludes with a ‘multitude of the heavenly host’ proclaiming in chorus, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace...’ (2:14). 

 

So, the very first political question raises with his readers it this:  How does Jesus birth and life offer the peace ‘on earth’, when the earth we live on can be such a troubled, conflicted and war-threatened place?

 

Interestingly, that very question was once asked in a Christmas carol, based upon a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1863.  That poem was written in a time our greatest American conflict, during the middle of America’s Civil War.  If you recall, it was Longfellow who also wrote the famous poem about ‘The midnight Ride of Paul Revere’.

 

The Christmas Carol tells of the writer’s despair upon hearing Christmas bells during the American Civil War, saying "hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men".  Here, Longfellow quotes Luke 2:14 directly.  

 

The song does not end with despair, but concludes with the bells carrying a message of renewed hope for peace among people, saying, in spite of what was happening at the time, that: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."

 

In 1861, two years before writing this poem, Longfellow's personal peace was shaken when his second wife of 18 years, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire.  

 

Then in 1863, during the American Civil War, Longfellow's oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father's blessing.

 

Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. "I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer", he wrote. "I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good.".

 

Charles was soon appointed as a lieutenant but, at the end of November that same year, he was severely wounded during General Mede’s failed Mine Run Campaign against General Lee in northern Virginia.

 

Charles eventually recovered from his shoulder wound, but his time as a soldier was finished.  Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1863, right after he received a Telegram informing him that his son had been wounded in battle. 

 

What makes this poem and song so powerful, is that is so honestly hopeful.  It faces the realities of life in a conflicted world but does this with unrelenting hope in God’s promise of peace. 

 

I recall another Christmas Carol story based upon “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”.   “Midnight Clear” is a historically accurate 1992 World War II movie based upon the true story of how American and German soldiers faced each other in the Ardennes Forest, just before the Battle of the Bulge.

 

 It was near the end of the war, and the German patrol actually wanted to surrender without their superiors knowing about it. They called a cease fire and met with American’s to exchange cigarettes and sing Christmas carols.  The next day, their common plan for the Germans to surrender tragically did not work, but for one moment, on cold winter night, there had been ‘peace’, but peace didn’t work out.

 

Unfortunately, as we in the church know all too well, in our world, whether it be personal or political, even God’s peace doesn’t always work out either.   “Hate is still very strong, and still mocks the song of Peace”.  So, how are we to understand Luke’s angelic greeting?   Is this only a hopeful greeting, or is it an unattainable spiritual reality, or is it, as most might say, wishful thinking of a delusional religious mythology? 

 

He has Lifted Up the Lowly 1:52

Luke’s own answer, which maybe is the kind of answer most don’t want to hear, is that a brand-new kind of ‘politic’ that has entered into the world through Jesus Christ. 

 

The new political agenda of Jesus is made clear by the angel Gabriel, who comes to Mary.   Gabriel isn’t just any angel.  Gabriel is Israel’s guardian angel and God’s ruling angel, who will do whatever is needed to defend Israel from other nations. 

 

It is Gabriel who not only says that Mary ‘will conceive’, but Gabriel announces that Mary’s child will be ‘great’, the Son of the Most High, and that the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David’ (1:32).   That’s not a simple ‘post card’ greeting.   The angel Gabriel means business, and it’s political business too, and it doesn’t stop there.  Later on in this text, Mary visits her sister-in-law, Elizabeth.  After informing her about the child, Mary breaks out in a song of praise to God that has more political punch than anything else in Luke’s gospel.

 

Are ready for it?   Mary is full of praise because through the birth of her child,  ‘The Mighty One’ (she names God) has not only ‘scattered the proud’, but this God has ‘brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly’.   This God ‘has filled the hungry with good things, and has ‘sent the rich away empty.’   It is because of this political agenda that God has ‘helped his servant Israel’ and ‘remembered mercy’.  God is about to something political, earth-shaking again, because in order to lift one people up, God will have to bring others down. Do you see that?

 

Often, we hear pastor’s being warned, ‘’When you work in your church, make sure you don’t get political.’  And there certainly some important wisdom being shared here, isn’t there?   As a pastor, or even as a church, you don’t want to get locked into one side of the political equation in our country, or any country for that matter.   The gospel is bigger than one political party.  The gospel is also bigger than any one nation too.  

 

I once told you about the Baptist pastor in Texas, who upon being convinced that the Mennonites and Amish are right not to put any national flag on display, he proceeded to remove the America flag from the pulpit area, without consulting church leaders.  Upon finding the flag removed, the next week they removed the pastor, and then on the following week the America flag was back up.  Today, that pastor now leads a Mennonite church in Virginia.

 

Yes, we must use wisdom in understanding the connection between God and any nation; and just as God is pro-Israel, pro-America, he is must also be understood to be pro-people, period too.   But when we read the Christmas, we must understand that the church must have a political agenda.  The word ‘politic’ means ‘of the people’ and if we are going to be a church who cares about God’s agenda,  then we must know that we aren’t only given a spiritual agenda, but we have a political one too. 

 

And one of the of the most important images that reveals Jesus’ own political agenda, which is God’s own political agenda, is being detailed for us in Luke more than any other gospel.   And this political agenda is that God is constantly inviting new people to God’s table of goodness and grace. 

 

After Mary tells us that God ‘has filled the hungry with good things’,  we also see Jesus as a dinner guest with a sinner, tax collector (5:27f), a Pharisee (7:36f.), at the home of Martha and Mary, (10: 38f.), and then, he is eating at the house of a Pharisee again, where he does not ‘wash his hands’ in the proper ritualistic fashion (11:37f.).  

 

Jesus is also invited to a Sabbath meal with a ‘ruler of the Pharisees’ (14: 1f).  The point is Jesus is always at a ‘table’ eating somewhere, and he is normally the kind of dinner guest you wouldn’t invite, unless you are also prepared for some kind of trouble. 

 

And the biggest trouble with Jesus, according to Luke, is that Jesus has such bad ‘table manners’, that he and his own ministry was labeled as ‘the one who welcomes and eats with sinners’ (Luke 15:1ff).  

 

In fact, more than anything else, Luke wants us to know that it is Jesus’ own table manners, especially in how he spoke about the rich man’ went to Hell, was the one who has all kinds of wealth and food, but he didn’t have God.  The reason he didn’t have God, wasn’t because he didn’t believe in God, but because he never stopped to see or meet the need of the poor beggar, who was lying helpless, hopeless and hungry right out his is front door.

 

Now, are you beginning to see the kind of political agenda Jesus has in Luke, especially?   Other gospels reveal this political agenda too.  In fact, Matthew even has Jesus saying plainly, that ‘he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword’ (10:34).   Luke didn’t even go that far.  But Luke accomplishes the same challenging political agenda with ‘forks and knifes’. 

 

For you see, Jesus does have a political agenda---a very definite political agenda, but Jesus is not on the side of Democrats or Republicans.   Jesus is on the side of the poor and those who have needs, ever which party that is at any given time.   And Jesus displayed his agenda with who he ate with, and how he challenged people with means reach out and respond to help those without means, especially in the basic matters of food and community.   It was actually because Jesus was so politically charged, not only religiously charged, that the religious and the political establishment felt like they had to get rid of him.

 

I know this is not the kind of stuff you want to hear about at Christmas.

You mind is already on some other agenda---you family agendas that are so important to all of us this time of year.  I understand that.  That’s certainly important too.  

 

Still, we must also consider the true political agenda of Jesus, which goes hand in hand with his spiritual, saving agenda too.  For Israel, and for us too, still today,  ‘Salvation’ isn’t just a religious matter, it’s also a political matter.  Salvation isn’t just something God wants to do in people spiritually, but salvation, which means, ‘healing’, also has a family, community, social, and political agenda too.  

 

And isn’t it true, that we often do, perhaps more than churches used too, don’t we think this political and social agenda more this time of year?  Don’t we have ministry programs, and give money to charity now, at Christmastime, more than other times?   Maybe, just maybe, we’ve already have a glimpse at seeing that Jesus and his agenda is bigger than just going to church.  Maybe we might even see that Jesus is bigger than going to heaven too.  Of course, I’m certainly not belittling going to church or going to heaven, but what I am doing is helping us see that Jesus cares about much about this world as the next.  In fact, the Bible actually teaches Resurrection, not mere immortality.  In other words, the Bible cares about what happens in this world, because God’s future, in some amazing, transformational way, includes this world, as part of the world that is still to come.  Yes, the world must still undergo some tremendous changes, but God’s world is it is heaven.  Isn’t that how Jesus taught us to pray;  ‘Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in heaven?’

 

Luke is the one who brings right out in the open, and applies it not just to Jerusalem, or Israel but puts Israel right in the middles of the greater political struggle that is still going on in the world; the struggle between the rich and the poor, the struggle between the powerful and weak, which is just as important, as the struggle between the proud and the humble.  In fact, it is Luke’s Jesus who said, the Kingdom is here, now, ‘among’ you (17:21).

 

Because You Did Not Believe 1:20

Finally, here again, this hope of a changed peaceable world, because of a changed more peaceable people; people who not only care about God and what we can get from God, but who actually care about those who need us to care about them, and what we can ‘give’ to them.  This is a ‘kingdom’, that never comes, but which the angels announced, and Jesus declared is a kingdom that can be ‘among’ us, even here and now, if we care enough.

 

Maria Colvin, a British war reporter, was killed in 2012, while covering the heart-breaking civil war in Syria, where President Assad, sent out jets to bomb his own people.  She was reporting on how it wasn’t armies he was attacking, but families, women, children, and the elderly.  That was her approach in many places she had gone before, in Libya, in Iran, in Afghanistan, and in Bangladesh, reporting in the darkest corners of war torn areas, about what happens to normal people to bright light upon the true  human costs of war.  Before he tragic death, she asked why she choose to do such dangerous work.  She said: ‘I cared enough to go to these places and write in some way something that would make someone else care as much about it as I did at the time.  Part of doing this is that you're never going to get to where you're going if you acknowledge fear. I think fear comes later when you've - when it's all over.’

 

We all know the world and people, need to change; to do things differently.  But what will it take for that to happen?   What will it take for peace to come to the world that lasts?  What will take for a political agenda to rise up that makes a real, lasting change to how we live together in this world, and how we come together in this world, as rich, poor, powerful, weak, or proud and humble?   How will that ever happen?

 

The answer is in how Luke opens up his gospel, with the very strange story about a Priest, named Zechariah, who is also visited by an angel.  He’s an old man, and his wife too, are both too old to have children.  In a surprising, and frightening visit, an angel informs Zechariah that this is going to happen.  But when Zechariah hears this, he asks the wrong question.  “How?”   Old Zech is a old Priest, and he’s been righteous and faithful too, but this didn’t set too well with the angel.   The angel makes him mute, until the Baby is born, just to prove his point.  

 

And do you know why Luke tells us that the angel was so hard on Zechariah?   The angel explains, “... because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur." (Lk. 1:20 NRS)

 

Did you catch the problem the angel has with this very religious guy?  This guy who believes in God.  This guy who goes to church every Sunday, or Saturday.  This guy who has been faithful to God every day of his life?  Do you know why the angel is so hard on him?  He doesn’t believe. 

 

Oh, yes, Zechariah believes in God, he just doesn’t believe God wants to do something different.   Zechariah has gotten stuck in the ‘same ole, same ole’.  He wasn’t ready to see and understand that God is about to do something different, very different.

 

My favorite part of the story about Zechariah, comes at the end, when Elizabeth’s baby is born, and people start wondering, what she’s going to name the baby.  She said his name was going to be ‘John’, as the angel had instructed her.  The neighbor’s answer, but nobody in your family has that name.  So they went to Zechariah, who still can’t speak, and they ask him what the child’s name will be.   They had him a tablet to write on.  And do you know what Zechariah writes?  He writes exactly what the angel said: “JOHN”.   It was then, that Zechariah regained his voice. 

 

What about you?  The reason hate is still strong and mocks the song of peace on earth’ isn’t because of what God hasn’t done.  No, everything that needs to be done, needs to be said, and needs to be proven, so that we can get life right, get our heads right, and get our politics right, has been done, but do we get it?  

 

Are we ready for God to do something different?  Don’t we know enough about what war, hate, and divisive, dirty, underhanded politics does to people, and will finally do to us?  How can we, in this season of the year, or any season, do something that makes a difference and brings peace and hope to those hurting and hungry for love around us?  Amen.