Word of Salvation – Vol.26 No.31 – May 1980

 

Christmas Sermon

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. deGraaf on Luke 2:16,17

 

“And they went with haste
and found….
Mary and Joseph
And the babe lying in a manger,
And when they saw it,
they made known the saying
which had been told them
concerning this child.”

You all have been told to take it easy on the road this Christmas time, and not to do what these shepherds did: for they – says our text, went WITH HASTE, IN A HURRY!

Not that they drove motor cars, of course.  In fact, there are things in life that still today are so urgent, that you’d better hurry.  That ambulance better hurry when your wife lies bleeding by the roadside, and the news that makes the difference between living forever and dying forever had better not be too slow either.

There are things you just cannot put off.  If you see someone in a hurry you can be sure he is on the way to what he reckons is important, even if only that he does not want to risk the anger of his boss …or his wife for that matter.  These shepherds were in a hurry: they were going to see the great deed of God!  They were going to see what all Israel had waited for, for thousands of years!  Yes, God had waited for 2000 years… but boy!  THEY were in a hurry.  Isn’t that lovely?

God must have smiled when he saw them run.  We with our stately dignity, our figured-out text books, we with our lukewarm religion do not do it nearly enough.

Man!  God has done it, let’s run and go see!  They run to find!  But then WHAT do they find?  It is very typical what they find.
The text says: They find MARY!  AND JOSEPH…….. these first.
And then the baby lying in the manger.
Not that Luke reckoned that the child was least important, but apparently on their way they saw Mary and Joseph first.

I said, isn’t that typical?  Here you go, trying to find God, trying to find Jesus, your peace eternal, your rest, your spiritual destination.  Here you go to find Christ but what do you see first?  Church people..!  Isn’t that enough to put anybody off?  You can meet them by the droves, the disappointed souls who are put off by people, church people especially, they have been hurt by people, they are irritated and irked by people.

Yes, but when we go look for Jesus with a soulful of sentimental piety, then what do we meet long before we even see Jesus?  We see Jesus’ brother, we see the least of his brothers, we see some awkward Reformed Church member who needs your forgiveness for what he did to you.  Or some drug addict who needs a home, or a square middle aged fattie asking for your love, or an unkempt youngster on the way like you are.  Come to think of it, YOU ALWAYS MEET PEOPLE BEFORE YOU MEET JESUS

Your own father and mother who told you about Him… a minister in a church, a friend at work, and way back… there are the blokes that wrote the Bible, the messengers who gave the good News in the first place.  It is always people who reach out with that greatest Gift of God.  You cannot serve God, you cannot believe in Christ without being linked with His people.

It was like that at the cradle… the manger.  It was like that also at the cross.  Mary his own mother, was looking at Jesus, but Jesus points her to the fellow next to her: there is John: let HIM be a son to you.  And John looks up at his friend hanging on the cross, but Jesus points him to the woman next to him: look after my mother, will you?  That is not horizontalism: it is not other people instead of Jesus, but it is the will of God that your faith and love is trying to be like His: embracing, open, welcoming: if you want Jesus, you get a church full of people thrown in for good measure.  And if you do not like that, it is possible that you cannot get to find Jesus either.

But then there is not only a church full of people, but there is also a world full.  Those shepherds having worshipped Jesus somehow get away again.  How long they stayed the text does not say.  An hour?  An hour-and-a-half?  Or just the twenty minutes you allow a minister to preach?  Anyway, afterwards they’re back on the street.  And they realise: there are their fellow-citizens of Bethlehem.

Jesus they do not see any more.  Some older ones might never see Him again after that hasty flight into Egypt.  But there ARE the people of Bethlehem.  What do they tell them?  Look what the text says: THEY TELL THEM WHAT HAD BEEN TOLD CONCERNING THE CHILD.

The child…?  Well it looked like any child.  The song of the angels…. well they had no tape recording of THAT either.  But the message: THIS WAS THE MESSIAH AT LAST, now THAT they could tell.  And it was what you and I have in the Bible.  Nothing spectacular, just a simple equation: This child Jesus is the One,

He is the One through Whom God will do it.  That is the simple message of the church today as it was the message of those shepherds then.  Christ came to his fellow-citizens of Bethlehem via those rough uncouth night-shift people, the meanest of Bethlehem’s work-force.  The message was not of men having to be noble for God, but of God coming to seek us in our misery.

The rich Christ for the poor sinner.  Never mind that what those shepherds saw was still so unfinished, after all, what is a baby?  That did not stop those shepherds from starting the job that later on would go on at Pentecost.

We need not wait till we have it all down pat.  We never quite will get it down pat: When God meets people, there are many things we will never fully understand.  Do not let the sharp cookies with their questions scare you: just tell them the news.  Do not think you must get a degree first before you can tell someone the good news.  The shepherds started when they saw a Baby.

YOU may start when you know: God loves me, Jesus loves me, and that not for my sake, but because He cares.  God has come to look us up, and God was not deterred even when all we had for His Son was a cross.  My friend, when you are looking for God, and for the peace that God can bring, you sure will find people first.  You will find awkward people with funny traditions, you will find people who cannot answer all your questions.  Maybe you find the odd one who thinks he knows ALL the answers, which is worse.  But listen carefully.  Behind all that awkwardness you will hear a message still unique in the world: “Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to get us right with Him….. and with each other.”

May God give you, this Christmas season and in the new year that follows, to find or to find anew, the joy of that message: That GOD cares for you, that GOD took the initiative to save His creation.

May He give you also, this time, this new year, new peace with your fellow men, peace with the one closest to you to begin with.  May you live in peace by God’s grace with the one you meet in church, or on the road you travel.  Don’t look for God in the lonely places.  It has pleased Him to link Himself up with people.  After all, you are supposed to be one of them.  Come to think of that, just as well that God wasn’t too choosey when He called Himself a people, is it not?  Where would you or I be otherwise?

Amen.