Don't Forget The Child!
Sermon
Holidays Are Holy Days
Sermons For Special Sundays
Most of us are familiar with the blockbuster movies, Home Alone and Lost in New York: Home Alone 2. In Home Alone, little nine-year-old Kevin is accidentally left behind in the Chicago suburbs while his family flies off for a Christmas vacation in Paris. In its sequel, Kevin mistakenly boards a plane for New York City while the rest of his family heads off to Florida.
Several recent real-life cases of child neglect have made the concept of leaving young children home alone a whole lot less funny. Does anyone remember the Chicago couple who left their nine-year-old to take care of herself and her four-year-old sister, while they went off on vacation for nine days to Mexico?
The movies should have contained a scene where Kevin's parents had to explain a few things to a judge: explain why they're not guilty of child neglect! They seem like nice people. They take great vacations. But especially around Christmas, you don't forget the child!
But then, if we're honest with ourselves, we might have to admit that sometimes we can be guilty of "child neglecting," around Christmas. Not neglecting our own children or grandchildren, of course. They have their ways of not letting us forget them, especially around Christmas!
No, the child we sometimes "ignore," "overlook," "leave behind," or "neglect" is God's Son. For many of us, this Christmas season, and especially this last week of Advent, is a frightfully busy time: the biggest shopping days of the year, one of the busiest travel periods of the year, a time when many businesses hope to make, often need to make up to 45 percent of their annual profits. For many, it's a time of mounting celebrations and office parties, a time of writing out cards, wrapping gifts, hanging lights, decorating trees, and baking brownies. Sometimes we get so absorbed in preparing for Christmas that we forget the reason for the season. One of our church members puts it well. In the midst of all the frantic activity in this season, our Christmas can become "Xmas," with the Christ "X-ed" out.
It's often been easy to overlook the Child. He was, after all, largely ignored, overlooked, and neglected by the world on that first Christmas. "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not" (John 1:10-11 RSV). You see, during the period when Christ was born, the world's attention was focused, not on Bethlehem, but on Rome.
"All roads lead to Rome." Rome was where everything important was happening. The Roman Empire was the greatest political and economic creation of the Ancient World. It was huge, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, to the Euphrates on the east. It stretched, at that time, as far south as the Sahara Desert and as far north as the Danube. And all this massive empire was ruled by one man. Caesar Augustus was his name.
Tucked away in Caesar's mighty empire was a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean known as Palestine; an impoverished, conquered territory that was considered a cultural backwater. Tucked into one corner of Palestine near the south, in a hilly region, was the little town of Bethlehem. Its name in Hebrew means "House of Bread." It was a village as plain and ordinary as a loaf of bread.
If someone had told Caesar Augustus, sitting in his palace in the capital, Rome, that history was about to be made by a Jewish baby, being born in Bethlehem, into a family headed by a hillbilly father, born to a teenage mother, he would have laughed. Caesar would not have known where Bethlehem was. It was too insignificant a spot to attract the attention of someone like him. Besides, Caesar would have contended that history is made, not by weak, defenseless babies, but by people like him. After all, hadn't he just ordered a census so that "all the world should be enrolled" (Luke 2:1 RSV) that was disrupting the entire world? Even if he had known about the birth of Jesus, Caesar Augustus, in his pomp and circumstance, would have considered it of no account. Caesar Augustus was among those who overlooked the child.
Most of the people of his time ignored him. We may sometimes forget him. But God does not forget Jesus! Eight hundred years before Caesar Augustus, Micah, God's prophet, informed the world about how it would go. Micah spoke these words in the name of the Lord:
Bethlehem ... you are one of the smallest towns in Judah, but out of you will I bring a Ruler for Israel, whose family line goes back to ancient times. When he comes, he will rule his people with the strength that comes from the Lord and with the majesty of the Lord God himself. His people will live in safety because people all over the earth will acknowledge his greatness, and he will bring peace.
-- Micah 5:2-5a (TEV)
Eight long centuries before Christ, the Lord God put his finger on little Bethlehem, the insignificant "House of Bread," and announced that this backwater village would be the birthplace of his Son. Caesar Augustus no doubt thought he was pretty clever ordering that census. But mighty Caesar was only a messenger boy, a minor character in the plot. Caesar, and the whole machinery of the Roman Empire were merely God's instruments to get Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a distance of eighty miles. God had a plan. God had never forgotten the Child!
You see, it's often what we consider insignificant that God considers important. It is what we consider important that God considers insignificant. An impoverished land, a backwater village, a run-down stable, a teenage mother, a poor child's birth: we might overlook them. A mighty Caesar, an enormous palace, prestige and power: we might be impressed. But God's values are often the reverse of this world's.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a woman who was humble, plain, and simple, but also obedient, insightful, and faithful. With her simple faith, Mary understood a lot of the values of God. Mary praised God's ways in the "Magnificat," a hymn that the early church attributed to her:
(God) has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud (like Caesar Augustus) in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those (like Mary) of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.
-- Luke 1:51-53 (RSV)
Christmas is more than just a family holiday; more than just a winter-time celebration to "knock back" the dark and the cold; more than just an economic and social event; more than just an opportunity to play host to co-workers, neighbors, and friends (although it is all of these things, too!). It is the breaking into our world of God's long-awaited Messiah. It is God's overturning of the values of our world. It is the promise that, through this Child, this Christ, the spiritually hungry and the physically hungry will be fed. It is the miracle of the Incarnation, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. It is the beginning of the ultimate act of love: God wanting so much to communicate with us, to share God's self with us, that God breaks into our world and becomes a human being. A human being who willingly dies for us on a cross! It's the Light of God shining in our world's darkness, and overcoming the darkness.
You don't see all this if you only look at the birth of Christ with the eyes of Caesar, with the jaded eyes of the world. You have to look at Christmas with the eyes of Mary, the eyes of wondering faith.
I really hope you enjoy this Christmas! Go out and celebrate! Laugh and exchange gifts and eat too much; rejoice in life, thank God for family and friends, squeeze your grandchildren until they think they'll burst! Like any loving Parent, God is happy when God's children are happy. God rejoices in our holiday joy.
But don't forget, Christmas is not just something passing. It's something radical. It's the bursting of God into our world. It's the overturning of the values of this world. It's the fulfillment of prophesy and God's plan which has unfolded since the beginning of creation. Let it be a time of awe and reverence and wonderment, of inviting the Child into your heart.
Do it all! Really celebrate Christmas! We need that light in the darkness. But in the midst of it all, don't forget the Child!
Christmas
A Christmas That Lasts
Luke 2:1-20
I would imagine that any one of us here this morning could tell an amusing story or two about unusual items that they have received at Christmas. At one time or another, most adults have gotten gifts that they consider just a little bit odd: like a battery-operated tie that flashes in the dark, or a water-proofed radio to play in the shower, or a year's supply of Norwegian sardines.
One such gift came in a Christmas card. When it was opened, along with the card, a packet fell out. On one side it read: "Sprouts Birth of Jesus. Drop capsules in warm water and watch!" On the other side it continued, "Fun, educational, non-toxic, for children five years old and older. Not to be taken internally. Each capsule contains a different figure: Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, Creche ... Cross Publishing Company. Made in the USA."
What we had was a clear plastic wrapper containing four pill-sized capsules. When you placed the capsules in warm water, they dissolved and four sponge figurines, which have been packed tightly into the capsules, break out. Here's Mary, Joseph, the Creche, and the Baby Jesus. Christmas in a capsule. What will they think of next?!
The little toy provided a moment of amusement and diversion, but when you come right down to it, it's kind of lightweight, disposable, easily lost, discarded, or forgotten. It treats the Nativity as a novelty and little more.
Sadly, some folks will experience a Christmas that has little more substance or permanence than one of those sponge-rubber figures. A Christmas equally capsulized. A Christmas not taken internally. A Christmas that is a mere novelty and little more.
In just a few days, once the scraps of wrapping paper are finally picked up off the living room floor, the leftovers are eaten, the guests have gone home, and the tree is taken down, then, for some folks, Christmas will be over until next December. Nothing will be left of Christmas -- except the unpaid bills!
I think that's a shame! On the other hand, I believe it is possible to have a lasting Christmas, a Christmas that means as much to us in July as it means right now. One component of a Christmas that lasts is a continuing sense of wonder: the miracle of Almighty Good emptying God's self, taking the form of a servant, coming down to earth as a helpless infant, born in the likeness of human beings; the sudden appearance of the angelic chorus to the astonished shepherds out in the fields, the marvelous journey of the three kings to lay their treasures at the feet of an unknown peasant child in a dirty cattle stall. When we think about the elements of the Nativity story, we find, with Mary, that there is much to "ponder in our hearts." Christmas ought to give us "a rebirth of wonder."
But that sense of wonder and surprise need not be confined to Christmas. For the mysteries of God are there to be savored all of the year. There was an entomologist, a scientist who studies insects, who had spent his entire career studying a certain type of beetle. Turns out he was one of the world's foremost authorities on this particular beetle.
For decades, this scientist had devoted his life to the study of this insect, capturing it in the woods, breeding it in the laboratory, putting them under a microscope, publishing papers about them.
After much thought, one realizes that this man had a really healthy perspective. He was a Christian. And it was his belief that in finding out as much as he could about this particular beetle, he was helping to bring glory to God. God, after all, was the one who had fashioned these insects. The scientist wrote that even after a lifetime of study, he felt he had barely scratched the surface in understanding his subject. He was still amazed as to how complex this insect was. It remained a marvel and a mystery to him.
Another scientist, Albert Einstein, once wrote: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
The Creator's wonders are all around us: from the tiniest insect to the vast reaches of the heavens and ocean, to a fragile flake of snow. All we need to do is open our eyes! The mysteries of Christ's birth remind us that life is bigger than our precise calculations and neat explanations. A continuing sense of wonder is a component of a Christmas that lasts.
So also is a lively belief in the existence of things spiritual. Christmas also is about the breaking into our world of a largely unseen world, the world of the spirit. It reminds us that there are truths beyond the truths we take for granted. As we ponder the Nativity story, it ought to have the effect of enlarging the horizons of our minds.
Take the existence of angels, for example. During Christmas, we hear about angels, we sing about angels, we hang angels on our trees. But then we tend to put them aside for another year. But the scriptures speak, nearly 100 times, about the existence of angels. They are portrayed as God's messengers and our personal helpers. The Nativity reminds us of spiritual possibilities beyond our everyday world. I don't know whether you believe in angels or not. Many Americans do ... about 65 percent.
Angels are a "hot" topic right now. Could you at least consider the possibility that angels exist? There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that they do ...
Time magazine had a story of an angelic encounter, told by a woman named Ann Cannady.
Cannady is the second wife of a retired Air Force Master Sargeant named Gary who had lost his first wife to cancer. It turned out, after some years of marriage, that Ann Cannady was diagnosed as having advanced cancer herself. Of course, both she and her husband were crushed. They spent the weeks before a pending operation for her scared and praying. Ann prayed, "Please (God), if I'm going to die, let me die quickly. I don't want Gary to have to face this again."
Ann is convinced her prayers were answered. One morning, three days before she was to enter the hospital for surgery, Gary answered the door. Standing on the step was a large man, a good inch taller than her six-foot-five-inch husband. "He was the blackest black I'd ever seen," says Ann, "and his eyes were a deep, deep azure blue." The stranger introduced himself simply as Thomas. Then he told her that her cancer was gone.
Ann, still confused, looked at the man and demanded, "Who are you?"
He responded, "I am Thomas. I am sent by God."
Next, Ann recalls, "He held up his right hand, palm facing me, and leaned toward me, though he didn't touch me." The heat coming out of his hand, she reports, was incredible. Suddenly she felt her legs go out from under her and she fell to the floor. As she lay there, a strong white light, like a searchlight, traveled through her body. When she awoke, Thomas was gone and her husband was standing over her, asking her if she were still alive and begging her to speak.
Ann was convinced that Thomas was an angel visitor and that she had been healed. Her doctor was skeptical and put it down as stress. Still, at her insistence, he conducted a biopsy before subjecting her to the operation. The doctor discovered, much to his amazement, that the cancer was completely gone. It has not returned for fifteen years!1
There are lots of stories about the existence of angels. To me, Ann's story, and others like it, reinforce the idea that the biblical account of angelic visitors is literally true. That's my opinion. You might share it, or not. But Christmas reminds us that there are truths beyond the truth that we take for granted. Who knows when one of God's angels might appear -- maybe even to you!
Too often we experience a disposable, throw-away Christmas; a Christmas with about as much substance as one of these toys. But I contend that Christmas is not meant to be packed away, capsulized into one month, or maybe five weeks, and then forgotten. Christmas is meant to give us a new perspective on life. When we look at the things of this world with a renewed sense of wonder; when we have a lively belief in things spiritual, we bring something of Christmas into our daily living. We break Christmas out of its capsule and begin to experience a Christmas that lasts.
____________
1.aNancy Gibbs, "Angels Among Us," Time magazine (New York: Time, Inc., December 27, 1992), pp. 59-60, the story of Ann Cannady.
Several recent real-life cases of child neglect have made the concept of leaving young children home alone a whole lot less funny. Does anyone remember the Chicago couple who left their nine-year-old to take care of herself and her four-year-old sister, while they went off on vacation for nine days to Mexico?
The movies should have contained a scene where Kevin's parents had to explain a few things to a judge: explain why they're not guilty of child neglect! They seem like nice people. They take great vacations. But especially around Christmas, you don't forget the child!
But then, if we're honest with ourselves, we might have to admit that sometimes we can be guilty of "child neglecting," around Christmas. Not neglecting our own children or grandchildren, of course. They have their ways of not letting us forget them, especially around Christmas!
No, the child we sometimes "ignore," "overlook," "leave behind," or "neglect" is God's Son. For many of us, this Christmas season, and especially this last week of Advent, is a frightfully busy time: the biggest shopping days of the year, one of the busiest travel periods of the year, a time when many businesses hope to make, often need to make up to 45 percent of their annual profits. For many, it's a time of mounting celebrations and office parties, a time of writing out cards, wrapping gifts, hanging lights, decorating trees, and baking brownies. Sometimes we get so absorbed in preparing for Christmas that we forget the reason for the season. One of our church members puts it well. In the midst of all the frantic activity in this season, our Christmas can become "Xmas," with the Christ "X-ed" out.
It's often been easy to overlook the Child. He was, after all, largely ignored, overlooked, and neglected by the world on that first Christmas. "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not" (John 1:10-11 RSV). You see, during the period when Christ was born, the world's attention was focused, not on Bethlehem, but on Rome.
"All roads lead to Rome." Rome was where everything important was happening. The Roman Empire was the greatest political and economic creation of the Ancient World. It was huge, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, to the Euphrates on the east. It stretched, at that time, as far south as the Sahara Desert and as far north as the Danube. And all this massive empire was ruled by one man. Caesar Augustus was his name.
Tucked away in Caesar's mighty empire was a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean known as Palestine; an impoverished, conquered territory that was considered a cultural backwater. Tucked into one corner of Palestine near the south, in a hilly region, was the little town of Bethlehem. Its name in Hebrew means "House of Bread." It was a village as plain and ordinary as a loaf of bread.
If someone had told Caesar Augustus, sitting in his palace in the capital, Rome, that history was about to be made by a Jewish baby, being born in Bethlehem, into a family headed by a hillbilly father, born to a teenage mother, he would have laughed. Caesar would not have known where Bethlehem was. It was too insignificant a spot to attract the attention of someone like him. Besides, Caesar would have contended that history is made, not by weak, defenseless babies, but by people like him. After all, hadn't he just ordered a census so that "all the world should be enrolled" (Luke 2:1 RSV) that was disrupting the entire world? Even if he had known about the birth of Jesus, Caesar Augustus, in his pomp and circumstance, would have considered it of no account. Caesar Augustus was among those who overlooked the child.
Most of the people of his time ignored him. We may sometimes forget him. But God does not forget Jesus! Eight hundred years before Caesar Augustus, Micah, God's prophet, informed the world about how it would go. Micah spoke these words in the name of the Lord:
Bethlehem ... you are one of the smallest towns in Judah, but out of you will I bring a Ruler for Israel, whose family line goes back to ancient times. When he comes, he will rule his people with the strength that comes from the Lord and with the majesty of the Lord God himself. His people will live in safety because people all over the earth will acknowledge his greatness, and he will bring peace.
-- Micah 5:2-5a (TEV)
Eight long centuries before Christ, the Lord God put his finger on little Bethlehem, the insignificant "House of Bread," and announced that this backwater village would be the birthplace of his Son. Caesar Augustus no doubt thought he was pretty clever ordering that census. But mighty Caesar was only a messenger boy, a minor character in the plot. Caesar, and the whole machinery of the Roman Empire were merely God's instruments to get Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a distance of eighty miles. God had a plan. God had never forgotten the Child!
You see, it's often what we consider insignificant that God considers important. It is what we consider important that God considers insignificant. An impoverished land, a backwater village, a run-down stable, a teenage mother, a poor child's birth: we might overlook them. A mighty Caesar, an enormous palace, prestige and power: we might be impressed. But God's values are often the reverse of this world's.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a woman who was humble, plain, and simple, but also obedient, insightful, and faithful. With her simple faith, Mary understood a lot of the values of God. Mary praised God's ways in the "Magnificat," a hymn that the early church attributed to her:
(God) has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud (like Caesar Augustus) in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those (like Mary) of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.
-- Luke 1:51-53 (RSV)
Christmas is more than just a family holiday; more than just a winter-time celebration to "knock back" the dark and the cold; more than just an economic and social event; more than just an opportunity to play host to co-workers, neighbors, and friends (although it is all of these things, too!). It is the breaking into our world of God's long-awaited Messiah. It is God's overturning of the values of our world. It is the promise that, through this Child, this Christ, the spiritually hungry and the physically hungry will be fed. It is the miracle of the Incarnation, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. It is the beginning of the ultimate act of love: God wanting so much to communicate with us, to share God's self with us, that God breaks into our world and becomes a human being. A human being who willingly dies for us on a cross! It's the Light of God shining in our world's darkness, and overcoming the darkness.
You don't see all this if you only look at the birth of Christ with the eyes of Caesar, with the jaded eyes of the world. You have to look at Christmas with the eyes of Mary, the eyes of wondering faith.
I really hope you enjoy this Christmas! Go out and celebrate! Laugh and exchange gifts and eat too much; rejoice in life, thank God for family and friends, squeeze your grandchildren until they think they'll burst! Like any loving Parent, God is happy when God's children are happy. God rejoices in our holiday joy.
But don't forget, Christmas is not just something passing. It's something radical. It's the bursting of God into our world. It's the overturning of the values of this world. It's the fulfillment of prophesy and God's plan which has unfolded since the beginning of creation. Let it be a time of awe and reverence and wonderment, of inviting the Child into your heart.
Do it all! Really celebrate Christmas! We need that light in the darkness. But in the midst of it all, don't forget the Child!
Christmas
A Christmas That Lasts
Luke 2:1-20
I would imagine that any one of us here this morning could tell an amusing story or two about unusual items that they have received at Christmas. At one time or another, most adults have gotten gifts that they consider just a little bit odd: like a battery-operated tie that flashes in the dark, or a water-proofed radio to play in the shower, or a year's supply of Norwegian sardines.
One such gift came in a Christmas card. When it was opened, along with the card, a packet fell out. On one side it read: "Sprouts Birth of Jesus. Drop capsules in warm water and watch!" On the other side it continued, "Fun, educational, non-toxic, for children five years old and older. Not to be taken internally. Each capsule contains a different figure: Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, Creche ... Cross Publishing Company. Made in the USA."
What we had was a clear plastic wrapper containing four pill-sized capsules. When you placed the capsules in warm water, they dissolved and four sponge figurines, which have been packed tightly into the capsules, break out. Here's Mary, Joseph, the Creche, and the Baby Jesus. Christmas in a capsule. What will they think of next?!
The little toy provided a moment of amusement and diversion, but when you come right down to it, it's kind of lightweight, disposable, easily lost, discarded, or forgotten. It treats the Nativity as a novelty and little more.
Sadly, some folks will experience a Christmas that has little more substance or permanence than one of those sponge-rubber figures. A Christmas equally capsulized. A Christmas not taken internally. A Christmas that is a mere novelty and little more.
In just a few days, once the scraps of wrapping paper are finally picked up off the living room floor, the leftovers are eaten, the guests have gone home, and the tree is taken down, then, for some folks, Christmas will be over until next December. Nothing will be left of Christmas -- except the unpaid bills!
I think that's a shame! On the other hand, I believe it is possible to have a lasting Christmas, a Christmas that means as much to us in July as it means right now. One component of a Christmas that lasts is a continuing sense of wonder: the miracle of Almighty Good emptying God's self, taking the form of a servant, coming down to earth as a helpless infant, born in the likeness of human beings; the sudden appearance of the angelic chorus to the astonished shepherds out in the fields, the marvelous journey of the three kings to lay their treasures at the feet of an unknown peasant child in a dirty cattle stall. When we think about the elements of the Nativity story, we find, with Mary, that there is much to "ponder in our hearts." Christmas ought to give us "a rebirth of wonder."
But that sense of wonder and surprise need not be confined to Christmas. For the mysteries of God are there to be savored all of the year. There was an entomologist, a scientist who studies insects, who had spent his entire career studying a certain type of beetle. Turns out he was one of the world's foremost authorities on this particular beetle.
For decades, this scientist had devoted his life to the study of this insect, capturing it in the woods, breeding it in the laboratory, putting them under a microscope, publishing papers about them.
After much thought, one realizes that this man had a really healthy perspective. He was a Christian. And it was his belief that in finding out as much as he could about this particular beetle, he was helping to bring glory to God. God, after all, was the one who had fashioned these insects. The scientist wrote that even after a lifetime of study, he felt he had barely scratched the surface in understanding his subject. He was still amazed as to how complex this insect was. It remained a marvel and a mystery to him.
Another scientist, Albert Einstein, once wrote: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
The Creator's wonders are all around us: from the tiniest insect to the vast reaches of the heavens and ocean, to a fragile flake of snow. All we need to do is open our eyes! The mysteries of Christ's birth remind us that life is bigger than our precise calculations and neat explanations. A continuing sense of wonder is a component of a Christmas that lasts.
So also is a lively belief in the existence of things spiritual. Christmas also is about the breaking into our world of a largely unseen world, the world of the spirit. It reminds us that there are truths beyond the truths we take for granted. As we ponder the Nativity story, it ought to have the effect of enlarging the horizons of our minds.
Take the existence of angels, for example. During Christmas, we hear about angels, we sing about angels, we hang angels on our trees. But then we tend to put them aside for another year. But the scriptures speak, nearly 100 times, about the existence of angels. They are portrayed as God's messengers and our personal helpers. The Nativity reminds us of spiritual possibilities beyond our everyday world. I don't know whether you believe in angels or not. Many Americans do ... about 65 percent.
Angels are a "hot" topic right now. Could you at least consider the possibility that angels exist? There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that they do ...
Time magazine had a story of an angelic encounter, told by a woman named Ann Cannady.
Cannady is the second wife of a retired Air Force Master Sargeant named Gary who had lost his first wife to cancer. It turned out, after some years of marriage, that Ann Cannady was diagnosed as having advanced cancer herself. Of course, both she and her husband were crushed. They spent the weeks before a pending operation for her scared and praying. Ann prayed, "Please (God), if I'm going to die, let me die quickly. I don't want Gary to have to face this again."
Ann is convinced her prayers were answered. One morning, three days before she was to enter the hospital for surgery, Gary answered the door. Standing on the step was a large man, a good inch taller than her six-foot-five-inch husband. "He was the blackest black I'd ever seen," says Ann, "and his eyes were a deep, deep azure blue." The stranger introduced himself simply as Thomas. Then he told her that her cancer was gone.
Ann, still confused, looked at the man and demanded, "Who are you?"
He responded, "I am Thomas. I am sent by God."
Next, Ann recalls, "He held up his right hand, palm facing me, and leaned toward me, though he didn't touch me." The heat coming out of his hand, she reports, was incredible. Suddenly she felt her legs go out from under her and she fell to the floor. As she lay there, a strong white light, like a searchlight, traveled through her body. When she awoke, Thomas was gone and her husband was standing over her, asking her if she were still alive and begging her to speak.
Ann was convinced that Thomas was an angel visitor and that she had been healed. Her doctor was skeptical and put it down as stress. Still, at her insistence, he conducted a biopsy before subjecting her to the operation. The doctor discovered, much to his amazement, that the cancer was completely gone. It has not returned for fifteen years!1
There are lots of stories about the existence of angels. To me, Ann's story, and others like it, reinforce the idea that the biblical account of angelic visitors is literally true. That's my opinion. You might share it, or not. But Christmas reminds us that there are truths beyond the truth that we take for granted. Who knows when one of God's angels might appear -- maybe even to you!
Too often we experience a disposable, throw-away Christmas; a Christmas with about as much substance as one of these toys. But I contend that Christmas is not meant to be packed away, capsulized into one month, or maybe five weeks, and then forgotten. Christmas is meant to give us a new perspective on life. When we look at the things of this world with a renewed sense of wonder; when we have a lively belief in things spiritual, we bring something of Christmas into our daily living. We break Christmas out of its capsule and begin to experience a Christmas that lasts.
____________
1.aNancy Gibbs, "Angels Among Us," Time magazine (New York: Time, Inc., December 27, 1992), pp. 59-60, the story of Ann Cannady.
