"prepare Him Room"
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
Dear Fellow Preachers,
Regardless of what's going on in the nation and the world, the Sunday before Christmas is an excellent time to speak about the Incarnation. So for this week's installment of The Immediate Word, we asked team member Carlos Wilton to address that topic using two of the lectionary texts for this Sunday, and he's done it in more than one way so that you have a choice of how to approach it in your church.
For one approach, Carlos has given us an excellent selection of material (including a discussion of the appeal of the Google search engine) for developing our own sermons on the Incarnation. For another, he has discussed the theology of Incarnation. And for a third, he has provided a story -- his own composition -- that is a complete sermon in itself illustrating the power of Incarnation in a person's life. He has provided enough material that you can use one approach for this Sunday and another for your Christmas Eve/Day service.
In addition to all of that, we have also included, as usual, team comments, related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
Have a blessed Christmas!
"Prepare Him Room"
By Carlos E. Wilton
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:26-38
THE MESSAGE ON A POSTCARD
From time immemorial, people have tried to build a house for God. David thought the Temple would be such a house. When Jesus was transfigured on the mountaintop, his disciples tried to build a shelter to keep him there. At Christmastime, we're tempted to install Jesus in any one of a number of houses -- most of them expensive in one way or another. Yet true devotion at Christmastime is not to prepare him a room anywhere; what we're meant to do is prepare room in our hearts. In this wired world, were Internet search engines race through megagigabytes of data in a heartbeat to arrive at their destination, we celebrate the Incarnation: when the love of God focused on a single point in all the universe, a stable in Bethlehem. "Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing...."
SOME WORDS ON THE WORD
King David's glory days as a kingdom-builder are behind him, but as he moves into middle age, the aura of kingly glory remains. Now content with his achievements -- or as content as an ambitious king can ever be -- he plans to build a temple, a "house," that is ostensibly a monument to the Lord's steadfast love, but which is really just as much a monument to himself.
There's a double meaning, here, to the word "house" -- it means both a literal house, and the dynastic house of a king's progeny.
The prophet Nathan first approves of the king's plans, then is warned by the Lord in a dream to speak against them. What need has the Lord -- this wild, desert deity who for generations has met the people in a tent -- for a building constructed of bricks and mortar?
Nathan testifies to David that, quite the contrary, the Lord will build him a house -- the dynastic house of his royal line. From the Christian perspective, that line continues to David's most illustrious descendant, Jesus of Nazareth -- which is what makes this passage work as a late-Advent text.
David's royal line would not reveal itself in precisely the fashion that he, or other observers in his own day, expected. The full glory of his dynasty lasted but one generation longer, through the reign of David's son, Solomon. After Solomon's demise, each Davidic king ruled over a progressively smaller and weaker kingdom -- until the day when the Babylonians hauled the last Davidic monarch off into exile.
It's no wonder the Lord chooses a tent over a temple, a trailer park over a subdivision filled with McMansions. It will not be long, in the great scheme of things, before the people of God will be on the move once again.
For a people on the move, the image of "room" is a powerful one. "Let every heart prepare him room," says our familiar Christmas carol, "Joy to the World." As with David, we wish to prepare a room for the Lord, but in reality the Lord is the one who prepares a room for us (as Jesus himself would ultimately declare, in John 14).
There's a particularity to this whole concept of "room." The Lord will not consent to David's offer to dwell in his proposed temple (although, a generation later, Solomon will have gained sufficient favor to dust off Dad's blueprints and finish the project). Even then, God's tenancy in the temple was relatively short-lived.
Ultimately, the place where the Lord is pleased to dwell is not a building at all, but rather the womb of a simple peasant-girl. The idea that God could dwell in a physical building was a new development in Israelite theology; God coming to dwell in human flesh was a totally unique occurrence, before or since. As Patricia Dutcher-Walls writes:
Nathan's oracle raises theological questions which we do well to consider. The contrast between a tent, a movable place of presence, and a temple, a permanent one, resonates with questions about where and when God is present with the people and the extent to which God's presence can be assured and established in any one place. The Old Testament explores through its narratives the common but dangerous assumption that God's presence is automatically assured to any particular place. Jeremiah's 'temple sermon' is a case in point (Jeremiah 7:1-15).1
The question of where God dwells is very much a question for 21st-century Americans preparing for Christmas. Everyone in our culture seems to be falling over each other, trying to build a house for God: the merchants, the civic authorities -- even, in a very limited way, the schools (their Frosty-and-Rudolph-and-Santa Christmas is, in its own wholly secular way, an attempt to stand in for the divine).
Ultimately, God declines to dwell in any of those places. The place of residence God chooses is Mary's womb, and eventually the person of her son, Jesus Christ. The world's continual response to this child -- despite the ever-distracting, secular-holiday fanfare -- is still "no vacancy." Yet he comes anyway, despite our dullness and disobedience. "In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed." As we marvel and remember, let every faithful heart "prepare him room."
A MAP OF THE MESSAGE
My own sermon this week is going to take a rather unusual direction (at least for me). I plan to preach a story sermon, "Prepare Him Room." The manuscript follows. Before I share that, however, let me present some material that may be useful in a more traditional sermon ...
The subject of "preparing room" for the Lord -- and, in Jesus Christ, the Lord preparing a "house" for us -- is closely related to the theological theme of Incarnation. Like David, we too would dearly love to build the Lord a house. We'd like him to inhabit the best and most beautiful places of our lives, but those places are not often where he turns up. Rather, he is pleased to dwell in those parts of our lives we do not consider so pleasing or acceptable: the places where doubt disorients, where fear disarms, where willful disobedience brings shame.
This is utterly in character for the Incarnate Lord. Remember how he came not to the royal palace of Herod (where the Magi were at first inclined to seek him), but to a couple so poor and to a place so ordinary that his birth would surely have escaped notice, were it not for the divine signs pointing the way.
The December 16, 2002 issue of Newsweek includes an article, "The World According to Google," by Steven Levy. Levy writes:
Internet-search engines have been around for the better part of a decade, but with the emergence of Google, something profound has happened. Because of its seemingly uncanny ability to provide curious minds with the exact information they seek, a dot-com survivor has supercharged the entire category of search, transforming the masses into data-miners and becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process. By a winning combination of smart algorithms, hyperactive Web crawlers and 10,000 silicon-churning computer servers, Google has become a high-tech version of the Oracle of Delphi, positioning everyone a mouseclick away from the answers to the most arcane questions -- and delivering simple answers so efficiently that the process becomes addictive. Google cofounder Sergey Brin puts it succinctly: "I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise you haven't and that's it." We're almost there now. With virtually no marketing, Google is now the fourth most popular Web site in the world -- and the Numbers 1 and 3 sites (AOL, Yahoo) both license Google technology for their Web searches. About half of all Web searches in the world are performed with Google.2
Levy even tells how Google has spawned a new social phenomenon:
Google dating -- running prospective beaus through the search engine -- is now standard practice. If the facts about a suitor stack up, then you can not only go on the date with confidence, but you know what to talk about. 'If I find out he's a runner, for instance, that's something I know we have in common, and I'll say that I'm a runner, too,' says Krissy Goetz, a 24-year-old interactive designer in New York City.3
In a twinkling of the eye, an Internet search engine like Google drills down through millions of layers of data, to zero in on the single result that's most appropriate. That technology seems amazing and incomprehensible -- although, in the Incarnation, God accomplished something far more amazing and incomprehensible than any task mere technology can perform. God focused in, through all space and time, to find the young girl known as Mary: the one who was ready to respond, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).
The Greek Orthodox call her theotokos, "God-bearer" -- as bluntly and earthily they declare this mystery that exceeds the limits of our imagination: the Incarnation, God in human flesh, Jesus who is truly divine and truly human. Maybe the only way we can deal with this mystery is to simply state it: for our intellects cannot fathom it. Mary carried God in her womb for nine months, then gave birth to him.
Walter Wangerin revels in the earthy reality of this child's birth, as he pens a sort of hymn to Mary:
For heaven itself was swelling within you, and you were the door. Not in terrible glory would he come, this Son of the Most High God. Not in primal blinding light, nor as the shout by which God uttered the universe, nor yet with the trumpet that shall conclude it, but through your human womb, as an infant bawling and hungry. By your labor, Mary, by the fierce contractions of your uterus, eternity would enter time. The angel said, "Will you be the door of the Lord into this place?" And you said, "Yes."4
In his 2002 Christmas message, Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, marvels at this miracle of Incarnation. Citing the words of a medieval English carol, "For in this Rose contained was Heaven and earth in little space," he writes:
And here, in the "little space" of Mary's body, divine fullness is alive; when Jesus is born, 'the fullness of him who fills all in all,' to quote Paul again, is wrapped in cloths and tucked into a feeding trough. After the crucifixion, the fullness of God's life is locked away in the tomb. God's way with us is not to overwhelm us with majesty but to live his life "in little space" and to speak there the quiet words that summon us to faith.
Only when we are very quiet can we hear. Only when we stand still can we give him room. Faced with the fullness of God in the embryo, the baby, the tired wanderer in Galilee, the body on the cross, we have to look at ourselves hard, and ask what it is that makes us too massive and clumsy to go into the 'little space' where we meet God in Jesus Christ.
It may be our wealth and security; it may be our ambition; it may be our images of ourselves as powerful or virtuous or godly. The world -- and the Church -- are still fairly full of people (like you and me) who walk around surrounded by inflated ideas and pictures of ourselves that crowd out others and push away God. We need at Christmas above all to remember what Christ says again and again -- that there is no way in to his little space without shedding our great load of arrogant self-reliance, bluster, noisy fear and fantasy.
And when we have set this aside, we find that it is only in the little space that there is room enough for all of us -- forgiven, welcomed, made inheritors of the divine fullness of life and joy that God longs to share with us. Behind the low door of the stable is infinity -- and more, an infinity of mercy and love. No straining our eyes to see a distant God; but a God whose fullness dwells in that space we are not small and simple enough to enter."
What happened "... in that fold or crack in the great gray hills," G. K. Chesterton once said, was "that the whole universe had been turned inside out ... all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest ... God who had been only a circumference was seen as a centre; and a centre is infinitely small."
The story of the birth of Jesus has power over us, Chesterton says, not because it turns "our minds to greatness ... to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth." Rather its power is instead in "something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal parts of our being ... as if [we] found something at the back of [our] own heart[s] that betrayed [us] into good."5
Thomas Merton, in his New Seeds of Contemplation, has a marvelous metaphor for Christ in the essay entitled "The Mystery of Christ." He writes:
"As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire in the spirit of man....
God is everywhere. His truth and His love pervade all things as the light and the heat of the sun pervade our atmosphere. But just as the rays of the sun do not set fire to anything by themselves, so God does not touch our souls with the fire of supernatural knowledge and experience without Christ."
A search engine drilling down through megagigabytes of data to find a single target ... Chesterton's image of the infinitely small center, that "turns our minds to greatness"... Merton's vision of a magnifying glass concentrating the sun's rays on a single point (even as Mary's soul "magnifies the Lord" -- Luke 1:46). The wonder of this holy season is not that we find God; it is that God, despite all the immensity of the universe, finds us. Our joyful and grateful response is to prepare him room in our hearts.
Now, the story sermon:
Prepare Him Room: A Christmas Story
By Carlos E. Wilton
"Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord:
Are you the one to build me a house to live in?"
-- 2 Samuel 7:5
Dot took the gray rag in her red-knuckled fingers and squeezed the soapy water into the sink. Then she dropped it onto the counter and began rotating it in ever-increasing circles, as she'd done nearly every night at the diner for the past six years.
Dot wasn't a "server." She wasn't a "customer service professional." She was a waitress, plain and simple. That was the label she herself used. Fifty-six years old, divorced mother of two (not that she saw her grown-up sons very often, they lived halfway across the country) -- Dot considered herself a simple, straight-up kind of person.
Nobody paid much attention to her late-night routine of wiping down the counters. She found it almost therapeutic: the mindless rhythm of those circular motions. But this night, Dot was aware she wasn't alone. A set of eyes was watching her intently: brilliant, blue eyes. They belonged to that peculiar old woman, the one who'd trudged in about seven o'clock for a bowl of soup. There she'd stayed, parked in the corner booth, ever since. It was Christmas Eve, ten p.m., and all the other customers had cleared out. All except her.
Her soup bowl was empty. Had been for a couple hours. Ever since then, she'd nursed a cup of tea, ever so slowly: cradling it in her crooked fingers, as if to warm them. On her hands she wore those half-gloves that allowed the fingertips to protrude. Dorothy had poured her cup after cup of hot water, drawing from the single teabag a progressively paler brew.
Dot knew perfectly well what the woman was up to. Just stretching out the time. God knows, in that neighborhood there were enough like her: poor souls who lived nowhere -- and everywhere. This one wore a threadbare, gray coat that might once have been elegant. A few curls of snowy-white hair escaped from under her red stocking cap. Beside her on the linoleum floor sat the obligatory shopping bag, stuffed with articles of clothing. God, Dot thought to herself: the woman's a walking stereotype!
Back in the kitchen, Jamal the night cook was loudly putting pots back on the shelves. He'd be shutting the kitchen lights off in a moment, Dot knew. It was Jamal's job to lock the place up. Normally, he'd be there till midnight -- but tonight was Christmas Eve. "Close early," the boss had said, in a gruff display of benevolence, before heading off to his own suburban Christmas.
Dorothy finished her counter-wiping, and came over with the check. Those blue eyes met hers, and looked back steadily. "It's time, isn't it," the woman said, matter-of-factly -- more as a statement than a question. Then, with a Mona Lisa smile at the corners of her mouth, she spilled out a handful of coins onto the table.
"So ... where you going tonight?" asked Dot, eyeing her customer as she picked the coins up. The words escaped her before she had time to worry about crossing the line between professional and personal. She wondered if she'd regret that later.
The customer shrugged, smiling sweetly. "Same place I go every night."
"I mean, do you have a place to stay? A real place? A roof over your head? It's Christmas Eve: tonight of all nights, everybody ought to have a place to go."
Even as she spoke those words, Dot began to regret the direction this conversation had taken. She'd lived in the city a long time, and she was nobody's fool. She knew people like this could take advantage, and very often did. But as she met this old woman's steady gaze, somehow she knew this one was different from most others. She was cleaner and tidier, to begin with -- but it was more than that. This customer -- this bag lady, let's be honest -- had a kind of presence around her that was ... well, comforting.
"I'll be all right," the old woman said, rising to her feet and reaching for her bag of clothing.
"No," said Dot. "Wait a minute. Do you ... I mean, would you ..."
"Would I what?"
"Would you like to come home with me tonight? I've got a couch in my living room. You could leave first thing in the morning, and go wherever you want. I just hate to think of you out on the streets on Christmas Eve."
Back in the kitchen, the head and shoulders of the eavesdropping Jamal were visible. He was shaking his head in amazement. "Crazy Dot," he muttered, under his breath. "If it's not a stray kitten, it's a bag lady ... You okay out there?" he called. Dot waved him off, impatiently.
"So. You're Dot," said the old woman, squinting at her plastic nametag. "Dorothy ... gift of God ... you know, that's what your name means."
Dorothy nodded her head.
"My name's Althea. It means, 'the healer.' I'm grateful for your offer, Dorothy. You're a dear to make room for me. I accept."
It wasn't long before the two women were out in the parking lot. Snowflakes floated through the air, but none of them were sticking to the ground. Dorothy led Althea to her car: the '93 Mercury with the rusted fenders and bald tires. "I know it doesn't look like much, but it does run -- I promise."
She settled Althea into the front passenger seat. She would have tossed the bag of clothes into the back, but the old woman hugged it tightly to her.
They set off down the road. The night wasn't all that cold, but the streets were deserted -- except for the corner taverns, of course, with their neon beer signs and half-open doorways discharging golden beams of light. Dorothy remarked to Althea that she couldn't believe so many of those places stayed open, even on Christmas Eve, but the old woman said nothing, only nodded.
Dorothy said a good deal more, too, during the car ride. Funny, but this woman with the snowy hair and the ridiculous red ski cap made her feel comfortable. It had been a long time since she'd had someone listen to her, about anything other than the list of daily specials. Dorothy spoke matter-of-factly about her life, the kids she'd raised, her work in the diner. Althea just sat there, nodding slightly and looking over from time to time with that odd half-smile of hers.
A little further on, they stopped at a traffic light next to a church: an imposing, brick Colonial edifice, high on a hill, its majestic white steeple illuminated by floodlights. Dorothy's eyes were instinctively drawn up to its peak, where there was a golden cross. Groups of well-dressed people were streaming up the several footpaths leading to the church doors. "Must be the midnight service," Dorothy remarked.
Her mind went back in a flash to the Christmas Eve services she'd attended as a child. Candlelight ... carols ... her mother's hand clasping hers ... people packed into every available space. She'd thought, earlier that day, about going to church this night herself, just as she'd toyed with the idea the last few Christmas Eves. But she never did get beyond the thinking stage, then or now. It had been so long -- too long, really. That idyllic, churchgoing life of hers seemed so far away. And besides, she still had her pink waitress uniform on, complete with plastic nametag reading, "Dot." That's about all she'd be to those church people, Dorothy mused. A dot. A period. A tiny, inconsequential punctuation in the midst of their lavishly unfolding holiday story -- someone these well-heeled worshipers, with their elegant clothes and perfect-seeming families, would probably look straight through.
"The baby Jesus!" Althea called out. "Stop the car! Let's go see him!"
"Oh no," thought Dorothy. "I really have done it this time. I've got a crazy woman in my car!"
In the darkened interior, Althea couldn't have seen the expression on Dorothy's face, but she must have intuited what she was thinking. "No," she said, chuckling and pointing at something at the side of the road, "it's not like that. Do you see? There's the baby Jesus!"
Dorothy looked over. It was the baby Jesus. There, on the edge of the church property -- not high up where all the people were walking, but down where they were, at street level, was a nativity scene. It was supplied with the usual cast of characters: the holy family, farm animals, wise men, shepherds.
"Can you stop the car?" asked Althea, with childlike glee. "Please, can we go see the baby Jesus?"
The light changed, and Dorothy guided the old Mercury over to the curb. Amazed at how spry the old girl was, Dorothy watched Althea open the door, bound out of the car, and take her place in front of the crèche. She let go even of her bag of clothing, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. She removed her woolen cap and clasped her hands together in an expression of reverence. Dorothy turned off the engine, got out, and walked over to stand beside her.
There on the old woman's face was an expression of such unrestrained delight, such childlike innocence, that Dorothy could think of nothing whatsoever to say. With the beams from the floodlights streaming through her silvery hair, Althea looked both aged and ageless. The skin on her face seemed to grow taut. Her hair seemed, suddenly, not so much white as golden. She straightened up out of her stooped posture, seeming almost to grow taller. On her face was an expression of perfect peace, as well as a kind of determination.
She turned to Dorothy, and her eyes shone. "To you," she said, sounding at first like she was making some kind of toast. "To you, Dorothy, is born this night, in the city of David, a savior, who is Christ the Lord."
Dorothy turned her eyes back to the little sculpted babe in the manger: lying there in the straw with arms extended, half in embrace and half in blessing. From the expression on his face, he seemed to be chortling in joy. She looked into those glazed-ceramic eyes, and they seemed for a moment to have depth beyond imagining. God, how she missed it -- that faith of her youth!
It's a pity, Dorothy thought to herself, that they would be taking this display down so soon. Someone would unscrew the bolts holding the plywood stable together, take back the gifts of the Magi, lift up the kneeling shepherds and return the Christ-child to his storage crate -- cushioned this time not by straw, but more likely by bubble-wrap. What a pity, that a vision such as this could be so fleeting!
Dorothy looked up, to try to discern from Althea's face what she was thinking, and found her no longer there. Quickly she scanned the church grounds with her eyes: and saw her mysterious guest nowhere. How had she managed to slip away so stealthily -- and why?
There's no accounting for the comings and goings of people like her, Dorothy reflected. They live by their own code, well under the radar of most everyone else. They enter and depart as they please. They mingle in the crowd, but are rarely a part of it. They stand for a time off to one side, regarding the world from an acute angle. Their perspective is always slightly askew: but oftentimes they do indeed see truth that busy people miss.
Something about Dorothy's brief encounter with this homeless woman made her feel overwhelmingly thankful. "I made room for you, my angel," she said aloud, to no one in particular, "but you made room for me."
Dorothy turned from the nativity scene, and headed back toward her car. But when she came to the place where the concrete pathway forked, she paused for a moment, then took the path leading uphill to the church. As she crossed the threshold into the candlelit sanctuary, she could hear the congregation singing:
Let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing...
Notes
1 The Lectionary Commentary, The First Readings, the Old Testament and Acts, ed. Roger E. Van Harn (Eerdmans, 2001), 204.
2 47-48.
3 49.
4 Preparing For Jesus (Zondervan, 1999), 69.
5 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1955), 170, 183.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: You've provided a good deal of useful material on "room" for God, Incarnation etc. A few further ideas:
1) The idea of "room" for God and the tension of "tent vs. Temple" continue in the New Testament, especially in the Johannine material. In John 1:14 "dwelt" is eskenosen, which is related to
skene ("tent"), and in 2:19-21 Jesus replaces the Temple and all of this points toward Revelation 21:3 where "the dwelling [or tent, again skene] of God is with humanity." (NRSV's "mortals" is poor since the next verse says, "death will be no more.")
2) How are we to "prepare him room"? I think one has to be a little careful here because it's easy to slip into a kind of works righteousness in which we have to do one thing or another in order to be worthy of having him dwell with us. If Christ is to dwell with us in some way related to the Incarnation of the Word, then what we are concerned with is precisely receiving God's Word. I.e., we prepare him room by hearing God's Word with faith, because that is where the risen Christ encounters us. (And, I would add, by receiving him with faith in the Eucharist, the "visible word" to use Augustine's term.)
3) Your discussion of the internet, Google, etc., might raise questions about how we talk about "Incarnation" in a world in which virtual reality is becoming an increasingly common idea. Or to put it another way and connect with #2, how can the church use the internet to proclaim the Word (which is not the same as simply providing information)?
4) A reminder -- and challenge -- to preachers: Mary is "the bearer of the eternal Word" (a phrase from J. Athelstan Riley's hymn "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," which is a paraphrase of the Orthodox Magnificat) in the fullest sense. But in a way that is what the preacher is to do -- to bring the living Word of God to people.
Carter Shelley responds: My stuff is puny today; however, I can't imagine improving on what Carlos offers. It all felt like an early Christmas present to me.
Your story sermon, Carlos, is so moving and beautifully told in detail that I hope other ministers and congregations will be able to use it this Advent while identifying you as the source. No congregation objects to a well-told, insightful story at Christmas time. Often the best theological work and insight occurs through such readings. Since I can think of nothing better than the stories and supplementary materials you already have supplied, what I offer is a few words of encouragement to the cautious, ethical pastor overwhelmed with services and church events in the coming eight days. Be kind to yourself and your congregation, and share this story and identify its author. When Jesus wanted to make a point and be sure his followers and fans "got it" he told a story about humanity and about God that went down easy while carrying a punch.
Related Illustrations
I was standing behind an altar in a small crypt chapel of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth in the Holy Land, the place where Mary heard that she was going to have a baby. I looked down and saw familiar words carved into the altar in Latin, Verbum camo factum est. "The Word was made flesh." But then I noticed that there was one other little word in Latin that could only be written here. That word: h - i - c. Hic. Here. Verbum camo hic factum est. The Word was made flesh here. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that. I had the feeling that I was in a real place where the real God was pleased to come! Hic. Here in this place the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in a human being. God is with us. All of the explosion of love and compassion from the heart of a gracious God came here, hic, to the belly of this woman, Mary, hic, in this Arab town, in this world, forming a family to include all the world's children here, hic, with us.
I believe that we can speak of the hicness of God, the nearness of God.
(Lutheran Speaker Bishop Stephen Bouman, The Protestant Hour on the Web, August 1, 1999.)
----------
So, on this Christmas Day when our hearts are stilled by the magnitude of God's great love toward us, we are reminded that the greatness of God is seen in the wonder both of the ordinary and of the small; the miracle of God, his divine economy, is that he can make much of nothing and something of almost anything. A little town becomes the focus of the world's last best hope; a little baby comes to oppose the forces of Caesar and fear; and human flesh and human life are dignified and made whole as never before. The test of God's power is not in his capacity to move mountains and outmaneuver the phenomena of nature, or in his power to perform tricks or rebuke nature; God's power is in his capacity to make much of little, for that is what he does in creation, that is what he does at Christmas, and that is what he does with us, if only we will let him.
(Peter Gomes, "The House of Bread," in Sermons [New York: Morrow, 1998], 23-24.)
----------
Reflecting on the great exposition of the Incarnation in the Prologue of John, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," William Quick writes:
It's that verb "became" which is the problem. By what strange chemistry can the essence of divinity become fleshed out in a human frame? I don't know, and I don't know anyone else who does either. Mercifully, there are many things in this life one doesn't have to understand in order to benefit from them. We can be sustained, comforted, even changed by truth too deep to be fathomed. So, that short sentence --"The Word became flesh"-- expresses the core of Christianity. A person could probe and dissect it for a lifetime and still not strike bottom....
Does God care? Behold Jesus ministering to restore a sick world, heal a divided world, save a doomed world, and dying to spell out the truth by shedding his own blood. You ask: how can I reach God? You can't. But God has reached you -- put himself within range of your outstretched hand by raising Jesus from the dead, transforming him from a historical memory to a living presence. And if you think that is extravagant language there are thousands of people in every country, in every part of the world, who are prepared to risk the sneers of the detractors and the disbelief of the cynics by claiming, 'I know he lives! He lives within my heart!'
A philosophy may be argued about; a theology may be expounded; ideas may be played around with, but it is the truth incarnate in any personality which is most profound and mysterious. And that truth expressed through "the Word become flesh" answers your and my deepest need -- to be made whole, to be saved.
(Methodist Speaker Dr. William K. Quick, The Protestant Hour on the Web, January 3, 1999.)
----------
According to an article in Wired, using current technology, we can compress the entire three billion digits of a person's DNA onto about four CD. (Kevin Kelly, "God Is the Machine," Wired, December 2002, 182).
Given that, the idea of God incarnating (compressing) himself into the baby Bethlehem seems quite logical.
(From Stan Purdum)
----------
One of the books many of us loved to hate in school -- not because it's a bad book, but because they required it in English class -- is Silas Marner, by George Eliot. It's the story of a bitter old man, unlucky in love and shunned by his community. He withdraws into an isolated cottage, to eke out his days as a weaver.
Silas Marner cares for little, other than sending the shuttle of his loom back and forth) and the money he earns doing it. And so, one day, when a burglar breaks in and steals every last gold-piece from the hiding-place under his floorboards, it seems Silas has nothing left to live for. He spends his evenings standing at the open doorway of his cottage, hoping against hope that someone will happen along and return his treasure.
What Silas receives, instead, is a very different treasure. A little blond-haired girl -- whose homeless, opium-addicted mother has just died in the snow -- toddles toward the light of his doorway, and walks in like she owns the place. The little girl falls asleep on his hearth. As he gazes down at the golden-haired child, Silas thinks to himself, "Gold! -- his own gold -- brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart beat violently ... the heap of gold seemed to glow ... he leaned forward at last and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls."
The rest of the novel tells the story of the melting of Silas Marner's heart -- as he adopts the toddler and becomes both father and mother to her. Plundered of his life's savings, robbed of all he once held dear, Silas Marner is granted a sign of God's love -- not a babe in a manger, but a little child stretched out upon the warm stones of his hearth.
"In old days," writes George Eliot, "there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they may look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."
The Lord is handing out signs this Christmas, handing them out wholesale -- signs of love for you and for me. The darkness of winter's night is pierced through with the light of a thousand Bethlehem stars. The angel of the Lord speaks again -- this time not to shepherds, but to the likes of you and me: "This will be a sign for you...."
(From Carlos Wilton)
----------
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by greed and pride the sky is torn --
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
(from "The Risk of Birth," by Madeleine L'Engle.)
----------
G. K. Chesterton's poem, "The House of Christmas" picks up on the theme of Christ's homelessness:
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
----------
The Incarnation is the place ... where hope contends with fear.
(Kathleen Norris, cited in Christianity Today, December 6, 1999, 49.)
----------
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
(Carl Sandburg)
----------
Words don't come alive for us until they have some flesh and blood on them, till they have a history with us -- as the word "terror" now has for Americans. My mentor Douglas Nelson used to speak in this connection of an incident that he had read in a book about Abraham Lincoln. According to this book, a wounded soldier in a Civil War hospital once saw Lincoln come onto the ward for a visit. The soldier spoke of it years later, and he said something like this: "I had a good home, and I had learned in church that God is compassionate. But I don't think I understood compassion till the day that I saw suffering in Lincoln's face. The boy in the next bed was dying, and the President sat there for two hours with this lad, clutching his hand. The Secretary of War and a couple of generals were trying to move the President along -- I think for a cabinet meeting. But Lincoln wouldn't move. He sat there in the stench and in the noise and he talked with that boy about home on the Sangamon River. The President talked with him till he died. And I saw the tiredness in his face and the sadness of his eyes and then I knew things about God that I'd never known before."
The gospel is full of the words of God, but the words need to have faces so that we can recognize them. So the words become flesh. Because they did, we can recognize the fierceness of God's determination. We can read it in the face of Jesus Christ -- the face he sets like flint as he turns toward Jerusalem, the city of his death."
(Cornelius Plantinga, "The Word Became Flesh," in Perspectives: A Reformed Journal, December 2001, 24.)
----------
But there is something more extraordinary still: this one who created, sustains and is the goal of all creation, comes to us, not in power and regal majesty, not with the pomp, pageantry or ostentation of oriental potentate, nor the mechanized motorcade and technologically armed advanced security guard preceding a head of state. He comes to us as a baby, a vulnerable child, entering life the way each of us enter it. Yet, at least for most of us, entering in a far more fragile, humble and life-threatening set of circumstances: born in the most unregal and unlikely place, a stable, wrapped not in royal ermine, nor opulent robes, but in bands of rough homespun cloth, he lies on straw in a feeding trough. Soon he will be hunted by Herod and escape slaughter only by flight to Egypt. Can God's glory be revealed in such unlikely circumstances? What does it mean that when God comes into life, it is as one exposed to all the elements and inherent dangers of human life just as you and I are exposed, vulnerable to acceptance or rejection, just as you and I are so vulnerable, subject to pain and suffering, death and dying, just as you and I are subject? What a turn things have taken in the birth of this child. He does not come and overwhelm us with a holiness which would send even the best of us screaming back into the night in search of a place to hide, rather, he comes in human form, as one we can each recognize and embrace.
God spoke to us that night in a Son. And from that time on, the talk about this Son has not stopped. He has claimed lives calling forth from them more than they would ever dream for themselves. He has changed lives, both the course of peoples and nations. He has inspired lives, artists and musicians, poets and scholars, diplomats and physicians, rulers of countries and chiefs of industry, ever looming on the horizon of each generation's world with a word of invitation which is both freeing and captivating. For some he is healer; for others, creator of new life. For some he is liberator; for others, a master. For some he is mercy; for others, courage. For some he is victory; for others, forgiveness and strength to try again. For some he is hope for a spiritual journey; for others, he is the way home. Each person sees in him the reflection of his or her own need, inevitably envisioning him as the one who can meet that need. It is not by accident that this is so. For this is both the mystery and majesty of this child -- his greatest miracle -- he meets us in our need with what is needed for life.
(Fred R. Anderson, "God Spoke By a Son," a sermon on the website of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, based on Hebrews 1:1-12.
----------
Where are his courtiers, and who are his people?
Why does he wear neither scepter nor crown?
Shepherds his courtiers, the poor for his people,
With peace for his scepter and love for his crown.
(From John Rutter's "Christmas Lullaby.")
----------
Edmond McDonald, a Presbyterian, wrote in the Presbyterian Outlook that when God wants an important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, he goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn't release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes; God simply has a tiny baby born. Perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother, and then God waits. God puts an idea, a purpose, into that mother's heart and then she puts it into the baby's mind. The great events of this world, McDonald says, are not battles or elections or earthquakes -- they are babies. For each child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.
(Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, in a speech to the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), July 27, 1997.)
----------
To avoid offending anybody, the schools dropped religion altogether from their Christmas programs and started singing about the weather. At my son's school, they now hold the Winter Program in February and sing increasingly non-memorable songs such as "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman," and -- this is a real song -- "Suzy Snowflake," all of which is pretty funny, because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belong to the Church of Meteorology.
(From a 1994 column by Dave Barry.)
Worship Resources
By Larry Hard
CALL TO WORSHIP
Open your eyes, light is coming.
Open your ears, good news of great joy is coming.
Open your minds, a revelation is coming,
Open your hearts, redeeming love is coming.
HYMN
Note: We are suggesting Advent hymns since this Sunday is still in Advent. However, recognizing that many churches observe this day as "Christmas Sunday" we are also providing Christmas hymn suggestions.
Advent hymn: "People, Look East"
Christmas hymn: "Joy to the World"
LIGHTING THE FOURTH ADVENT CANDLE
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we light the candle
of joy. Joy, joy, joy is coming to the world. This
week we join Christians around the world in celebrating
the advent of Jesus. Let heaven and earth rejoice!
May the light of Jesus bring joy to your life.
SUNG RESPONSE
"Advent Song"
Sing stanza four of "Light the Advent Candle" (words and music by Mary Lu Walker)
ADVENT ANTIPHONS
(Invite the congregation to turn toward center of the church
and speak to each other. L= left side; R=right side)
L. God, we need illumination for our journey.
R. Come, Jesus, be the light to our path.
L. God, we need genuine love in our lives.
R. Come, Jesus, be the lover of our souls.
L. God, we need deep joy to fill our spirits.
R. Come, Jesus, be the joy of our desire.
L. God, we need peace that passes understanding.
R. Come, Jesus, fill our hearts with enduring peace.
L. God, we need wisdom in addition to knowledge.
R. Come, Jesus, and be wisdom for our minds.
HYMN
Advent hymn: "Hail to the Lord's Anointed"
Christmas hymn: "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice"
CONFESSION
I confess to God, and to you, my sisters and brothers,
that my time is filled with activities, leaving no room for Christ;
my mind is filled with worry, leaving no room for Christ;
my heart is filled with myself, leaving no room for Christ.
I ask God, and I ask you of this church family, to forgive me,
that my life will be prepared to receive Christ this season.
SILENT CONFESSION
(Name what keeps you from being open to the coming of Christ in your life)
PRAYER FOR PARDON (by the Pastor)
In Jesus, we are forgiven as God's gift to us.
Receive the grace given to you at this moment, and be thankful. Amen.
LORD'S PRAYER
SONGS
"The Snow Lay on the Ground" (Anglo-English carol)
"Glory to God" ("Gloria a Dios") Trad. Peruvian (Luke 2:14)
"Star-Child" (words: Erena Murray; music: Carlton Young)
"He Came Down" (c. WGRG The Iona Community)
PASTORAL PRAYER
God of heaven and earth, what do we need to do to receive you on earth? We continue reading about terrorism. How can you come and dwell among us when there is violence on the minds of many? We know about the threat of war in Iraq. How can you come as the Prince of Peace? We live in a time nuclear weapons. How can you come and dwell among a fear-filled people?
We pray you will come into our dark times, as you did the dark times when Jesus was born. Keep us looking for the light shining through the darkness in our day, that we be prepared to receive you into our world and our lives. We look east and west, north and south for signs of your presence. We look outward and inward to find Christ as light.
This week as we worship, bring us again to the glad awareness of your holy presence. This week as we gather with family in homes, fill us with awareness that you are in words and deeds of love. In ways mysterious to us, be born among us, in us, to us, for us and the world. Amen.
HYMN
Advent hymns: "Once in Royal David's City" or "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light"
Christmas hymn: "Angels We Have Heard on High"
A Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Luke 1: 26-38
Text: And he (Gabriel) came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." (v. 28)
Object: A Madonna or picture of Mary or perhaps the Mary figure from the nativity
Good morning, boys and girls. We are very close to Christmas -- only three more days. I think Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are my favorite days of the year. What is you favorite day? (let them answer) I thought so; Christmas is also your favorite day. What do you think favorite means? (let them answer) It means that something is very special to us. What is your favorite color? (let them answer) What is your favorite song? (let them answer.) What is your favorite toy? (let them answer) We have a lot of favorite things but they are the most special things to us that we have or know.
I have favorite things also. I have a favorite Christmas hymn and a favorite Bible story and a favorite Bible hero. I even have a favorite angel. And did you know that God also has favorites. It is true. A long time ago God sent his angel Gabriel, my favorite angel, to a young woman by the name of Mary. When the angel arrived he spoke to Mary and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." That's what the angel said to Mary. He said God favored Mary. She was his favorite. Of all the women in the world that God could have chosen as his favorite, it was Mary, a young woman who lived in a village called Nazareth, that he selected. She had a boy friend, named Joseph, who was a carpenter in the same village. They were engaged to be married.
I have a little figure that I took out of our nativity scene at home to help us think about God's favorite woman. (show them the figurine) What made her special? Why do you think God called her his favorite? (let them answer) That's right, because she was chosen to be the mother of God's child. Mary was told to name him Jesus. This was going to be a very special birth. We even have a very special name for this birth because no one else in the history of the world was born like this child was born. It is a kind of big word but I think you can learn it. The word is Incarnation. Can you say that word? (let them repeat it several times) It means that God became a person. God favored Mary and she became pregnant with God's baby. When the baby was born it was God in a human form, a baby, just like you were a baby or your baby brother or sister. God chose Mary as a very special mother to give birth to Jesus.
Before the day Jesus was born we only knew God as the Holy Word. Now we know God in human flesh as the baby Jesus. He was incarnate. This is the Incarnation. Can you say that word again with me? (have them say the word Incarnation several times) Remember what it means. It means that the Word was made flesh. God was born in human form. And the favored one of God, a young woman from Nazareth named Mary, was chosen to carry this precious gift. The word is Incarnation, and it is a very special word.
The Immediate Word, December 22, 2002, issue.
Copyright 2002 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
Regardless of what's going on in the nation and the world, the Sunday before Christmas is an excellent time to speak about the Incarnation. So for this week's installment of The Immediate Word, we asked team member Carlos Wilton to address that topic using two of the lectionary texts for this Sunday, and he's done it in more than one way so that you have a choice of how to approach it in your church.
For one approach, Carlos has given us an excellent selection of material (including a discussion of the appeal of the Google search engine) for developing our own sermons on the Incarnation. For another, he has discussed the theology of Incarnation. And for a third, he has provided a story -- his own composition -- that is a complete sermon in itself illustrating the power of Incarnation in a person's life. He has provided enough material that you can use one approach for this Sunday and another for your Christmas Eve/Day service.
In addition to all of that, we have also included, as usual, team comments, related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
Have a blessed Christmas!
"Prepare Him Room"
By Carlos E. Wilton
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:26-38
THE MESSAGE ON A POSTCARD
From time immemorial, people have tried to build a house for God. David thought the Temple would be such a house. When Jesus was transfigured on the mountaintop, his disciples tried to build a shelter to keep him there. At Christmastime, we're tempted to install Jesus in any one of a number of houses -- most of them expensive in one way or another. Yet true devotion at Christmastime is not to prepare him a room anywhere; what we're meant to do is prepare room in our hearts. In this wired world, were Internet search engines race through megagigabytes of data in a heartbeat to arrive at their destination, we celebrate the Incarnation: when the love of God focused on a single point in all the universe, a stable in Bethlehem. "Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing...."
SOME WORDS ON THE WORD
King David's glory days as a kingdom-builder are behind him, but as he moves into middle age, the aura of kingly glory remains. Now content with his achievements -- or as content as an ambitious king can ever be -- he plans to build a temple, a "house," that is ostensibly a monument to the Lord's steadfast love, but which is really just as much a monument to himself.
There's a double meaning, here, to the word "house" -- it means both a literal house, and the dynastic house of a king's progeny.
The prophet Nathan first approves of the king's plans, then is warned by the Lord in a dream to speak against them. What need has the Lord -- this wild, desert deity who for generations has met the people in a tent -- for a building constructed of bricks and mortar?
Nathan testifies to David that, quite the contrary, the Lord will build him a house -- the dynastic house of his royal line. From the Christian perspective, that line continues to David's most illustrious descendant, Jesus of Nazareth -- which is what makes this passage work as a late-Advent text.
David's royal line would not reveal itself in precisely the fashion that he, or other observers in his own day, expected. The full glory of his dynasty lasted but one generation longer, through the reign of David's son, Solomon. After Solomon's demise, each Davidic king ruled over a progressively smaller and weaker kingdom -- until the day when the Babylonians hauled the last Davidic monarch off into exile.
It's no wonder the Lord chooses a tent over a temple, a trailer park over a subdivision filled with McMansions. It will not be long, in the great scheme of things, before the people of God will be on the move once again.
For a people on the move, the image of "room" is a powerful one. "Let every heart prepare him room," says our familiar Christmas carol, "Joy to the World." As with David, we wish to prepare a room for the Lord, but in reality the Lord is the one who prepares a room for us (as Jesus himself would ultimately declare, in John 14).
There's a particularity to this whole concept of "room." The Lord will not consent to David's offer to dwell in his proposed temple (although, a generation later, Solomon will have gained sufficient favor to dust off Dad's blueprints and finish the project). Even then, God's tenancy in the temple was relatively short-lived.
Ultimately, the place where the Lord is pleased to dwell is not a building at all, but rather the womb of a simple peasant-girl. The idea that God could dwell in a physical building was a new development in Israelite theology; God coming to dwell in human flesh was a totally unique occurrence, before or since. As Patricia Dutcher-Walls writes:
Nathan's oracle raises theological questions which we do well to consider. The contrast between a tent, a movable place of presence, and a temple, a permanent one, resonates with questions about where and when God is present with the people and the extent to which God's presence can be assured and established in any one place. The Old Testament explores through its narratives the common but dangerous assumption that God's presence is automatically assured to any particular place. Jeremiah's 'temple sermon' is a case in point (Jeremiah 7:1-15).1
The question of where God dwells is very much a question for 21st-century Americans preparing for Christmas. Everyone in our culture seems to be falling over each other, trying to build a house for God: the merchants, the civic authorities -- even, in a very limited way, the schools (their Frosty-and-Rudolph-and-Santa Christmas is, in its own wholly secular way, an attempt to stand in for the divine).
Ultimately, God declines to dwell in any of those places. The place of residence God chooses is Mary's womb, and eventually the person of her son, Jesus Christ. The world's continual response to this child -- despite the ever-distracting, secular-holiday fanfare -- is still "no vacancy." Yet he comes anyway, despite our dullness and disobedience. "In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed." As we marvel and remember, let every faithful heart "prepare him room."
A MAP OF THE MESSAGE
My own sermon this week is going to take a rather unusual direction (at least for me). I plan to preach a story sermon, "Prepare Him Room." The manuscript follows. Before I share that, however, let me present some material that may be useful in a more traditional sermon ...
The subject of "preparing room" for the Lord -- and, in Jesus Christ, the Lord preparing a "house" for us -- is closely related to the theological theme of Incarnation. Like David, we too would dearly love to build the Lord a house. We'd like him to inhabit the best and most beautiful places of our lives, but those places are not often where he turns up. Rather, he is pleased to dwell in those parts of our lives we do not consider so pleasing or acceptable: the places where doubt disorients, where fear disarms, where willful disobedience brings shame.
This is utterly in character for the Incarnate Lord. Remember how he came not to the royal palace of Herod (where the Magi were at first inclined to seek him), but to a couple so poor and to a place so ordinary that his birth would surely have escaped notice, were it not for the divine signs pointing the way.
The December 16, 2002 issue of Newsweek includes an article, "The World According to Google," by Steven Levy. Levy writes:
Internet-search engines have been around for the better part of a decade, but with the emergence of Google, something profound has happened. Because of its seemingly uncanny ability to provide curious minds with the exact information they seek, a dot-com survivor has supercharged the entire category of search, transforming the masses into data-miners and becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process. By a winning combination of smart algorithms, hyperactive Web crawlers and 10,000 silicon-churning computer servers, Google has become a high-tech version of the Oracle of Delphi, positioning everyone a mouseclick away from the answers to the most arcane questions -- and delivering simple answers so efficiently that the process becomes addictive. Google cofounder Sergey Brin puts it succinctly: "I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise you haven't and that's it." We're almost there now. With virtually no marketing, Google is now the fourth most popular Web site in the world -- and the Numbers 1 and 3 sites (AOL, Yahoo) both license Google technology for their Web searches. About half of all Web searches in the world are performed with Google.2
Levy even tells how Google has spawned a new social phenomenon:
Google dating -- running prospective beaus through the search engine -- is now standard practice. If the facts about a suitor stack up, then you can not only go on the date with confidence, but you know what to talk about. 'If I find out he's a runner, for instance, that's something I know we have in common, and I'll say that I'm a runner, too,' says Krissy Goetz, a 24-year-old interactive designer in New York City.3
In a twinkling of the eye, an Internet search engine like Google drills down through millions of layers of data, to zero in on the single result that's most appropriate. That technology seems amazing and incomprehensible -- although, in the Incarnation, God accomplished something far more amazing and incomprehensible than any task mere technology can perform. God focused in, through all space and time, to find the young girl known as Mary: the one who was ready to respond, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).
The Greek Orthodox call her theotokos, "God-bearer" -- as bluntly and earthily they declare this mystery that exceeds the limits of our imagination: the Incarnation, God in human flesh, Jesus who is truly divine and truly human. Maybe the only way we can deal with this mystery is to simply state it: for our intellects cannot fathom it. Mary carried God in her womb for nine months, then gave birth to him.
Walter Wangerin revels in the earthy reality of this child's birth, as he pens a sort of hymn to Mary:
For heaven itself was swelling within you, and you were the door. Not in terrible glory would he come, this Son of the Most High God. Not in primal blinding light, nor as the shout by which God uttered the universe, nor yet with the trumpet that shall conclude it, but through your human womb, as an infant bawling and hungry. By your labor, Mary, by the fierce contractions of your uterus, eternity would enter time. The angel said, "Will you be the door of the Lord into this place?" And you said, "Yes."4
In his 2002 Christmas message, Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, marvels at this miracle of Incarnation. Citing the words of a medieval English carol, "For in this Rose contained was Heaven and earth in little space," he writes:
And here, in the "little space" of Mary's body, divine fullness is alive; when Jesus is born, 'the fullness of him who fills all in all,' to quote Paul again, is wrapped in cloths and tucked into a feeding trough. After the crucifixion, the fullness of God's life is locked away in the tomb. God's way with us is not to overwhelm us with majesty but to live his life "in little space" and to speak there the quiet words that summon us to faith.
Only when we are very quiet can we hear. Only when we stand still can we give him room. Faced with the fullness of God in the embryo, the baby, the tired wanderer in Galilee, the body on the cross, we have to look at ourselves hard, and ask what it is that makes us too massive and clumsy to go into the 'little space' where we meet God in Jesus Christ.
It may be our wealth and security; it may be our ambition; it may be our images of ourselves as powerful or virtuous or godly. The world -- and the Church -- are still fairly full of people (like you and me) who walk around surrounded by inflated ideas and pictures of ourselves that crowd out others and push away God. We need at Christmas above all to remember what Christ says again and again -- that there is no way in to his little space without shedding our great load of arrogant self-reliance, bluster, noisy fear and fantasy.
And when we have set this aside, we find that it is only in the little space that there is room enough for all of us -- forgiven, welcomed, made inheritors of the divine fullness of life and joy that God longs to share with us. Behind the low door of the stable is infinity -- and more, an infinity of mercy and love. No straining our eyes to see a distant God; but a God whose fullness dwells in that space we are not small and simple enough to enter."
What happened "... in that fold or crack in the great gray hills," G. K. Chesterton once said, was "that the whole universe had been turned inside out ... all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest ... God who had been only a circumference was seen as a centre; and a centre is infinitely small."
The story of the birth of Jesus has power over us, Chesterton says, not because it turns "our minds to greatness ... to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth." Rather its power is instead in "something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal parts of our being ... as if [we] found something at the back of [our] own heart[s] that betrayed [us] into good."5
Thomas Merton, in his New Seeds of Contemplation, has a marvelous metaphor for Christ in the essay entitled "The Mystery of Christ." He writes:
"As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire in the spirit of man....
God is everywhere. His truth and His love pervade all things as the light and the heat of the sun pervade our atmosphere. But just as the rays of the sun do not set fire to anything by themselves, so God does not touch our souls with the fire of supernatural knowledge and experience without Christ."
A search engine drilling down through megagigabytes of data to find a single target ... Chesterton's image of the infinitely small center, that "turns our minds to greatness"... Merton's vision of a magnifying glass concentrating the sun's rays on a single point (even as Mary's soul "magnifies the Lord" -- Luke 1:46). The wonder of this holy season is not that we find God; it is that God, despite all the immensity of the universe, finds us. Our joyful and grateful response is to prepare him room in our hearts.
Now, the story sermon:
Prepare Him Room: A Christmas Story
By Carlos E. Wilton
"Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord:
Are you the one to build me a house to live in?"
-- 2 Samuel 7:5
Dot took the gray rag in her red-knuckled fingers and squeezed the soapy water into the sink. Then she dropped it onto the counter and began rotating it in ever-increasing circles, as she'd done nearly every night at the diner for the past six years.
Dot wasn't a "server." She wasn't a "customer service professional." She was a waitress, plain and simple. That was the label she herself used. Fifty-six years old, divorced mother of two (not that she saw her grown-up sons very often, they lived halfway across the country) -- Dot considered herself a simple, straight-up kind of person.
Nobody paid much attention to her late-night routine of wiping down the counters. She found it almost therapeutic: the mindless rhythm of those circular motions. But this night, Dot was aware she wasn't alone. A set of eyes was watching her intently: brilliant, blue eyes. They belonged to that peculiar old woman, the one who'd trudged in about seven o'clock for a bowl of soup. There she'd stayed, parked in the corner booth, ever since. It was Christmas Eve, ten p.m., and all the other customers had cleared out. All except her.
Her soup bowl was empty. Had been for a couple hours. Ever since then, she'd nursed a cup of tea, ever so slowly: cradling it in her crooked fingers, as if to warm them. On her hands she wore those half-gloves that allowed the fingertips to protrude. Dorothy had poured her cup after cup of hot water, drawing from the single teabag a progressively paler brew.
Dot knew perfectly well what the woman was up to. Just stretching out the time. God knows, in that neighborhood there were enough like her: poor souls who lived nowhere -- and everywhere. This one wore a threadbare, gray coat that might once have been elegant. A few curls of snowy-white hair escaped from under her red stocking cap. Beside her on the linoleum floor sat the obligatory shopping bag, stuffed with articles of clothing. God, Dot thought to herself: the woman's a walking stereotype!
Back in the kitchen, Jamal the night cook was loudly putting pots back on the shelves. He'd be shutting the kitchen lights off in a moment, Dot knew. It was Jamal's job to lock the place up. Normally, he'd be there till midnight -- but tonight was Christmas Eve. "Close early," the boss had said, in a gruff display of benevolence, before heading off to his own suburban Christmas.
Dorothy finished her counter-wiping, and came over with the check. Those blue eyes met hers, and looked back steadily. "It's time, isn't it," the woman said, matter-of-factly -- more as a statement than a question. Then, with a Mona Lisa smile at the corners of her mouth, she spilled out a handful of coins onto the table.
"So ... where you going tonight?" asked Dot, eyeing her customer as she picked the coins up. The words escaped her before she had time to worry about crossing the line between professional and personal. She wondered if she'd regret that later.
The customer shrugged, smiling sweetly. "Same place I go every night."
"I mean, do you have a place to stay? A real place? A roof over your head? It's Christmas Eve: tonight of all nights, everybody ought to have a place to go."
Even as she spoke those words, Dot began to regret the direction this conversation had taken. She'd lived in the city a long time, and she was nobody's fool. She knew people like this could take advantage, and very often did. But as she met this old woman's steady gaze, somehow she knew this one was different from most others. She was cleaner and tidier, to begin with -- but it was more than that. This customer -- this bag lady, let's be honest -- had a kind of presence around her that was ... well, comforting.
"I'll be all right," the old woman said, rising to her feet and reaching for her bag of clothing.
"No," said Dot. "Wait a minute. Do you ... I mean, would you ..."
"Would I what?"
"Would you like to come home with me tonight? I've got a couch in my living room. You could leave first thing in the morning, and go wherever you want. I just hate to think of you out on the streets on Christmas Eve."
Back in the kitchen, the head and shoulders of the eavesdropping Jamal were visible. He was shaking his head in amazement. "Crazy Dot," he muttered, under his breath. "If it's not a stray kitten, it's a bag lady ... You okay out there?" he called. Dot waved him off, impatiently.
"So. You're Dot," said the old woman, squinting at her plastic nametag. "Dorothy ... gift of God ... you know, that's what your name means."
Dorothy nodded her head.
"My name's Althea. It means, 'the healer.' I'm grateful for your offer, Dorothy. You're a dear to make room for me. I accept."
It wasn't long before the two women were out in the parking lot. Snowflakes floated through the air, but none of them were sticking to the ground. Dorothy led Althea to her car: the '93 Mercury with the rusted fenders and bald tires. "I know it doesn't look like much, but it does run -- I promise."
She settled Althea into the front passenger seat. She would have tossed the bag of clothes into the back, but the old woman hugged it tightly to her.
They set off down the road. The night wasn't all that cold, but the streets were deserted -- except for the corner taverns, of course, with their neon beer signs and half-open doorways discharging golden beams of light. Dorothy remarked to Althea that she couldn't believe so many of those places stayed open, even on Christmas Eve, but the old woman said nothing, only nodded.
Dorothy said a good deal more, too, during the car ride. Funny, but this woman with the snowy hair and the ridiculous red ski cap made her feel comfortable. It had been a long time since she'd had someone listen to her, about anything other than the list of daily specials. Dorothy spoke matter-of-factly about her life, the kids she'd raised, her work in the diner. Althea just sat there, nodding slightly and looking over from time to time with that odd half-smile of hers.
A little further on, they stopped at a traffic light next to a church: an imposing, brick Colonial edifice, high on a hill, its majestic white steeple illuminated by floodlights. Dorothy's eyes were instinctively drawn up to its peak, where there was a golden cross. Groups of well-dressed people were streaming up the several footpaths leading to the church doors. "Must be the midnight service," Dorothy remarked.
Her mind went back in a flash to the Christmas Eve services she'd attended as a child. Candlelight ... carols ... her mother's hand clasping hers ... people packed into every available space. She'd thought, earlier that day, about going to church this night herself, just as she'd toyed with the idea the last few Christmas Eves. But she never did get beyond the thinking stage, then or now. It had been so long -- too long, really. That idyllic, churchgoing life of hers seemed so far away. And besides, she still had her pink waitress uniform on, complete with plastic nametag reading, "Dot." That's about all she'd be to those church people, Dorothy mused. A dot. A period. A tiny, inconsequential punctuation in the midst of their lavishly unfolding holiday story -- someone these well-heeled worshipers, with their elegant clothes and perfect-seeming families, would probably look straight through.
"The baby Jesus!" Althea called out. "Stop the car! Let's go see him!"
"Oh no," thought Dorothy. "I really have done it this time. I've got a crazy woman in my car!"
In the darkened interior, Althea couldn't have seen the expression on Dorothy's face, but she must have intuited what she was thinking. "No," she said, chuckling and pointing at something at the side of the road, "it's not like that. Do you see? There's the baby Jesus!"
Dorothy looked over. It was the baby Jesus. There, on the edge of the church property -- not high up where all the people were walking, but down where they were, at street level, was a nativity scene. It was supplied with the usual cast of characters: the holy family, farm animals, wise men, shepherds.
"Can you stop the car?" asked Althea, with childlike glee. "Please, can we go see the baby Jesus?"
The light changed, and Dorothy guided the old Mercury over to the curb. Amazed at how spry the old girl was, Dorothy watched Althea open the door, bound out of the car, and take her place in front of the crèche. She let go even of her bag of clothing, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. She removed her woolen cap and clasped her hands together in an expression of reverence. Dorothy turned off the engine, got out, and walked over to stand beside her.
There on the old woman's face was an expression of such unrestrained delight, such childlike innocence, that Dorothy could think of nothing whatsoever to say. With the beams from the floodlights streaming through her silvery hair, Althea looked both aged and ageless. The skin on her face seemed to grow taut. Her hair seemed, suddenly, not so much white as golden. She straightened up out of her stooped posture, seeming almost to grow taller. On her face was an expression of perfect peace, as well as a kind of determination.
She turned to Dorothy, and her eyes shone. "To you," she said, sounding at first like she was making some kind of toast. "To you, Dorothy, is born this night, in the city of David, a savior, who is Christ the Lord."
Dorothy turned her eyes back to the little sculpted babe in the manger: lying there in the straw with arms extended, half in embrace and half in blessing. From the expression on his face, he seemed to be chortling in joy. She looked into those glazed-ceramic eyes, and they seemed for a moment to have depth beyond imagining. God, how she missed it -- that faith of her youth!
It's a pity, Dorothy thought to herself, that they would be taking this display down so soon. Someone would unscrew the bolts holding the plywood stable together, take back the gifts of the Magi, lift up the kneeling shepherds and return the Christ-child to his storage crate -- cushioned this time not by straw, but more likely by bubble-wrap. What a pity, that a vision such as this could be so fleeting!
Dorothy looked up, to try to discern from Althea's face what she was thinking, and found her no longer there. Quickly she scanned the church grounds with her eyes: and saw her mysterious guest nowhere. How had she managed to slip away so stealthily -- and why?
There's no accounting for the comings and goings of people like her, Dorothy reflected. They live by their own code, well under the radar of most everyone else. They enter and depart as they please. They mingle in the crowd, but are rarely a part of it. They stand for a time off to one side, regarding the world from an acute angle. Their perspective is always slightly askew: but oftentimes they do indeed see truth that busy people miss.
Something about Dorothy's brief encounter with this homeless woman made her feel overwhelmingly thankful. "I made room for you, my angel," she said aloud, to no one in particular, "but you made room for me."
Dorothy turned from the nativity scene, and headed back toward her car. But when she came to the place where the concrete pathway forked, she paused for a moment, then took the path leading uphill to the church. As she crossed the threshold into the candlelit sanctuary, she could hear the congregation singing:
Let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing...
Notes
1 The Lectionary Commentary, The First Readings, the Old Testament and Acts, ed. Roger E. Van Harn (Eerdmans, 2001), 204.
2 47-48.
3 49.
4 Preparing For Jesus (Zondervan, 1999), 69.
5 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1955), 170, 183.
Team Comments
George Murphy responds: You've provided a good deal of useful material on "room" for God, Incarnation etc. A few further ideas:
1) The idea of "room" for God and the tension of "tent vs. Temple" continue in the New Testament, especially in the Johannine material. In John 1:14 "dwelt" is eskenosen, which is related to
skene ("tent"), and in 2:19-21 Jesus replaces the Temple and all of this points toward Revelation 21:3 where "the dwelling [or tent, again skene] of God is with humanity." (NRSV's "mortals" is poor since the next verse says, "death will be no more.")
2) How are we to "prepare him room"? I think one has to be a little careful here because it's easy to slip into a kind of works righteousness in which we have to do one thing or another in order to be worthy of having him dwell with us. If Christ is to dwell with us in some way related to the Incarnation of the Word, then what we are concerned with is precisely receiving God's Word. I.e., we prepare him room by hearing God's Word with faith, because that is where the risen Christ encounters us. (And, I would add, by receiving him with faith in the Eucharist, the "visible word" to use Augustine's term.)
3) Your discussion of the internet, Google, etc., might raise questions about how we talk about "Incarnation" in a world in which virtual reality is becoming an increasingly common idea. Or to put it another way and connect with #2, how can the church use the internet to proclaim the Word (which is not the same as simply providing information)?
4) A reminder -- and challenge -- to preachers: Mary is "the bearer of the eternal Word" (a phrase from J. Athelstan Riley's hymn "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," which is a paraphrase of the Orthodox Magnificat) in the fullest sense. But in a way that is what the preacher is to do -- to bring the living Word of God to people.
Carter Shelley responds: My stuff is puny today; however, I can't imagine improving on what Carlos offers. It all felt like an early Christmas present to me.
Your story sermon, Carlos, is so moving and beautifully told in detail that I hope other ministers and congregations will be able to use it this Advent while identifying you as the source. No congregation objects to a well-told, insightful story at Christmas time. Often the best theological work and insight occurs through such readings. Since I can think of nothing better than the stories and supplementary materials you already have supplied, what I offer is a few words of encouragement to the cautious, ethical pastor overwhelmed with services and church events in the coming eight days. Be kind to yourself and your congregation, and share this story and identify its author. When Jesus wanted to make a point and be sure his followers and fans "got it" he told a story about humanity and about God that went down easy while carrying a punch.
Related Illustrations
I was standing behind an altar in a small crypt chapel of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth in the Holy Land, the place where Mary heard that she was going to have a baby. I looked down and saw familiar words carved into the altar in Latin, Verbum camo factum est. "The Word was made flesh." But then I noticed that there was one other little word in Latin that could only be written here. That word: h - i - c. Hic. Here. Verbum camo hic factum est. The Word was made flesh here. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that. I had the feeling that I was in a real place where the real God was pleased to come! Hic. Here in this place the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in a human being. God is with us. All of the explosion of love and compassion from the heart of a gracious God came here, hic, to the belly of this woman, Mary, hic, in this Arab town, in this world, forming a family to include all the world's children here, hic, with us.
I believe that we can speak of the hicness of God, the nearness of God.
(Lutheran Speaker Bishop Stephen Bouman, The Protestant Hour on the Web, August 1, 1999.)
----------
So, on this Christmas Day when our hearts are stilled by the magnitude of God's great love toward us, we are reminded that the greatness of God is seen in the wonder both of the ordinary and of the small; the miracle of God, his divine economy, is that he can make much of nothing and something of almost anything. A little town becomes the focus of the world's last best hope; a little baby comes to oppose the forces of Caesar and fear; and human flesh and human life are dignified and made whole as never before. The test of God's power is not in his capacity to move mountains and outmaneuver the phenomena of nature, or in his power to perform tricks or rebuke nature; God's power is in his capacity to make much of little, for that is what he does in creation, that is what he does at Christmas, and that is what he does with us, if only we will let him.
(Peter Gomes, "The House of Bread," in Sermons [New York: Morrow, 1998], 23-24.)
----------
Reflecting on the great exposition of the Incarnation in the Prologue of John, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," William Quick writes:
It's that verb "became" which is the problem. By what strange chemistry can the essence of divinity become fleshed out in a human frame? I don't know, and I don't know anyone else who does either. Mercifully, there are many things in this life one doesn't have to understand in order to benefit from them. We can be sustained, comforted, even changed by truth too deep to be fathomed. So, that short sentence --"The Word became flesh"-- expresses the core of Christianity. A person could probe and dissect it for a lifetime and still not strike bottom....
Does God care? Behold Jesus ministering to restore a sick world, heal a divided world, save a doomed world, and dying to spell out the truth by shedding his own blood. You ask: how can I reach God? You can't. But God has reached you -- put himself within range of your outstretched hand by raising Jesus from the dead, transforming him from a historical memory to a living presence. And if you think that is extravagant language there are thousands of people in every country, in every part of the world, who are prepared to risk the sneers of the detractors and the disbelief of the cynics by claiming, 'I know he lives! He lives within my heart!'
A philosophy may be argued about; a theology may be expounded; ideas may be played around with, but it is the truth incarnate in any personality which is most profound and mysterious. And that truth expressed through "the Word become flesh" answers your and my deepest need -- to be made whole, to be saved.
(Methodist Speaker Dr. William K. Quick, The Protestant Hour on the Web, January 3, 1999.)
----------
According to an article in Wired, using current technology, we can compress the entire three billion digits of a person's DNA onto about four CD. (Kevin Kelly, "God Is the Machine," Wired, December 2002, 182).
Given that, the idea of God incarnating (compressing) himself into the baby Bethlehem seems quite logical.
(From Stan Purdum)
----------
One of the books many of us loved to hate in school -- not because it's a bad book, but because they required it in English class -- is Silas Marner, by George Eliot. It's the story of a bitter old man, unlucky in love and shunned by his community. He withdraws into an isolated cottage, to eke out his days as a weaver.
Silas Marner cares for little, other than sending the shuttle of his loom back and forth) and the money he earns doing it. And so, one day, when a burglar breaks in and steals every last gold-piece from the hiding-place under his floorboards, it seems Silas has nothing left to live for. He spends his evenings standing at the open doorway of his cottage, hoping against hope that someone will happen along and return his treasure.
What Silas receives, instead, is a very different treasure. A little blond-haired girl -- whose homeless, opium-addicted mother has just died in the snow -- toddles toward the light of his doorway, and walks in like she owns the place. The little girl falls asleep on his hearth. As he gazes down at the golden-haired child, Silas thinks to himself, "Gold! -- his own gold -- brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart beat violently ... the heap of gold seemed to glow ... he leaned forward at last and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls."
The rest of the novel tells the story of the melting of Silas Marner's heart -- as he adopts the toddler and becomes both father and mother to her. Plundered of his life's savings, robbed of all he once held dear, Silas Marner is granted a sign of God's love -- not a babe in a manger, but a little child stretched out upon the warm stones of his hearth.
"In old days," writes George Eliot, "there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they may look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."
The Lord is handing out signs this Christmas, handing them out wholesale -- signs of love for you and for me. The darkness of winter's night is pierced through with the light of a thousand Bethlehem stars. The angel of the Lord speaks again -- this time not to shepherds, but to the likes of you and me: "This will be a sign for you...."
(From Carlos Wilton)
----------
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by greed and pride the sky is torn --
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
(from "The Risk of Birth," by Madeleine L'Engle.)
----------
G. K. Chesterton's poem, "The House of Christmas" picks up on the theme of Christ's homelessness:
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
----------
The Incarnation is the place ... where hope contends with fear.
(Kathleen Norris, cited in Christianity Today, December 6, 1999, 49.)
----------
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
(Carl Sandburg)
----------
Words don't come alive for us until they have some flesh and blood on them, till they have a history with us -- as the word "terror" now has for Americans. My mentor Douglas Nelson used to speak in this connection of an incident that he had read in a book about Abraham Lincoln. According to this book, a wounded soldier in a Civil War hospital once saw Lincoln come onto the ward for a visit. The soldier spoke of it years later, and he said something like this: "I had a good home, and I had learned in church that God is compassionate. But I don't think I understood compassion till the day that I saw suffering in Lincoln's face. The boy in the next bed was dying, and the President sat there for two hours with this lad, clutching his hand. The Secretary of War and a couple of generals were trying to move the President along -- I think for a cabinet meeting. But Lincoln wouldn't move. He sat there in the stench and in the noise and he talked with that boy about home on the Sangamon River. The President talked with him till he died. And I saw the tiredness in his face and the sadness of his eyes and then I knew things about God that I'd never known before."
The gospel is full of the words of God, but the words need to have faces so that we can recognize them. So the words become flesh. Because they did, we can recognize the fierceness of God's determination. We can read it in the face of Jesus Christ -- the face he sets like flint as he turns toward Jerusalem, the city of his death."
(Cornelius Plantinga, "The Word Became Flesh," in Perspectives: A Reformed Journal, December 2001, 24.)
----------
But there is something more extraordinary still: this one who created, sustains and is the goal of all creation, comes to us, not in power and regal majesty, not with the pomp, pageantry or ostentation of oriental potentate, nor the mechanized motorcade and technologically armed advanced security guard preceding a head of state. He comes to us as a baby, a vulnerable child, entering life the way each of us enter it. Yet, at least for most of us, entering in a far more fragile, humble and life-threatening set of circumstances: born in the most unregal and unlikely place, a stable, wrapped not in royal ermine, nor opulent robes, but in bands of rough homespun cloth, he lies on straw in a feeding trough. Soon he will be hunted by Herod and escape slaughter only by flight to Egypt. Can God's glory be revealed in such unlikely circumstances? What does it mean that when God comes into life, it is as one exposed to all the elements and inherent dangers of human life just as you and I are exposed, vulnerable to acceptance or rejection, just as you and I are so vulnerable, subject to pain and suffering, death and dying, just as you and I are subject? What a turn things have taken in the birth of this child. He does not come and overwhelm us with a holiness which would send even the best of us screaming back into the night in search of a place to hide, rather, he comes in human form, as one we can each recognize and embrace.
God spoke to us that night in a Son. And from that time on, the talk about this Son has not stopped. He has claimed lives calling forth from them more than they would ever dream for themselves. He has changed lives, both the course of peoples and nations. He has inspired lives, artists and musicians, poets and scholars, diplomats and physicians, rulers of countries and chiefs of industry, ever looming on the horizon of each generation's world with a word of invitation which is both freeing and captivating. For some he is healer; for others, creator of new life. For some he is liberator; for others, a master. For some he is mercy; for others, courage. For some he is victory; for others, forgiveness and strength to try again. For some he is hope for a spiritual journey; for others, he is the way home. Each person sees in him the reflection of his or her own need, inevitably envisioning him as the one who can meet that need. It is not by accident that this is so. For this is both the mystery and majesty of this child -- his greatest miracle -- he meets us in our need with what is needed for life.
(Fred R. Anderson, "God Spoke By a Son," a sermon on the website of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City, based on Hebrews 1:1-12.
----------
Where are his courtiers, and who are his people?
Why does he wear neither scepter nor crown?
Shepherds his courtiers, the poor for his people,
With peace for his scepter and love for his crown.
(From John Rutter's "Christmas Lullaby.")
----------
Edmond McDonald, a Presbyterian, wrote in the Presbyterian Outlook that when God wants an important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, he goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn't release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes; God simply has a tiny baby born. Perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother, and then God waits. God puts an idea, a purpose, into that mother's heart and then she puts it into the baby's mind. The great events of this world, McDonald says, are not battles or elections or earthquakes -- they are babies. For each child comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.
(Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, in a speech to the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), July 27, 1997.)
----------
To avoid offending anybody, the schools dropped religion altogether from their Christmas programs and started singing about the weather. At my son's school, they now hold the Winter Program in February and sing increasingly non-memorable songs such as "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman," and -- this is a real song -- "Suzy Snowflake," all of which is pretty funny, because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belong to the Church of Meteorology.
(From a 1994 column by Dave Barry.)
Worship Resources
By Larry Hard
CALL TO WORSHIP
Open your eyes, light is coming.
Open your ears, good news of great joy is coming.
Open your minds, a revelation is coming,
Open your hearts, redeeming love is coming.
HYMN
Note: We are suggesting Advent hymns since this Sunday is still in Advent. However, recognizing that many churches observe this day as "Christmas Sunday" we are also providing Christmas hymn suggestions.
Advent hymn: "People, Look East"
Christmas hymn: "Joy to the World"
LIGHTING THE FOURTH ADVENT CANDLE
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we light the candle
of joy. Joy, joy, joy is coming to the world. This
week we join Christians around the world in celebrating
the advent of Jesus. Let heaven and earth rejoice!
May the light of Jesus bring joy to your life.
SUNG RESPONSE
"Advent Song"
Sing stanza four of "Light the Advent Candle" (words and music by Mary Lu Walker)
ADVENT ANTIPHONS
(Invite the congregation to turn toward center of the church
and speak to each other. L= left side; R=right side)
L. God, we need illumination for our journey.
R. Come, Jesus, be the light to our path.
L. God, we need genuine love in our lives.
R. Come, Jesus, be the lover of our souls.
L. God, we need deep joy to fill our spirits.
R. Come, Jesus, be the joy of our desire.
L. God, we need peace that passes understanding.
R. Come, Jesus, fill our hearts with enduring peace.
L. God, we need wisdom in addition to knowledge.
R. Come, Jesus, and be wisdom for our minds.
HYMN
Advent hymn: "Hail to the Lord's Anointed"
Christmas hymn: "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice"
CONFESSION
I confess to God, and to you, my sisters and brothers,
that my time is filled with activities, leaving no room for Christ;
my mind is filled with worry, leaving no room for Christ;
my heart is filled with myself, leaving no room for Christ.
I ask God, and I ask you of this church family, to forgive me,
that my life will be prepared to receive Christ this season.
SILENT CONFESSION
(Name what keeps you from being open to the coming of Christ in your life)
PRAYER FOR PARDON (by the Pastor)
In Jesus, we are forgiven as God's gift to us.
Receive the grace given to you at this moment, and be thankful. Amen.
LORD'S PRAYER
SONGS
"The Snow Lay on the Ground" (Anglo-English carol)
"Glory to God" ("Gloria a Dios") Trad. Peruvian (Luke 2:14)
"Star-Child" (words: Erena Murray; music: Carlton Young)
"He Came Down" (c. WGRG The Iona Community)
PASTORAL PRAYER
God of heaven and earth, what do we need to do to receive you on earth? We continue reading about terrorism. How can you come and dwell among us when there is violence on the minds of many? We know about the threat of war in Iraq. How can you come as the Prince of Peace? We live in a time nuclear weapons. How can you come and dwell among a fear-filled people?
We pray you will come into our dark times, as you did the dark times when Jesus was born. Keep us looking for the light shining through the darkness in our day, that we be prepared to receive you into our world and our lives. We look east and west, north and south for signs of your presence. We look outward and inward to find Christ as light.
This week as we worship, bring us again to the glad awareness of your holy presence. This week as we gather with family in homes, fill us with awareness that you are in words and deeds of love. In ways mysterious to us, be born among us, in us, to us, for us and the world. Amen.
HYMN
Advent hymns: "Once in Royal David's City" or "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light"
Christmas hymn: "Angels We Have Heard on High"
A Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Luke 1: 26-38
Text: And he (Gabriel) came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." (v. 28)
Object: A Madonna or picture of Mary or perhaps the Mary figure from the nativity
Good morning, boys and girls. We are very close to Christmas -- only three more days. I think Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are my favorite days of the year. What is you favorite day? (let them answer) I thought so; Christmas is also your favorite day. What do you think favorite means? (let them answer) It means that something is very special to us. What is your favorite color? (let them answer) What is your favorite song? (let them answer.) What is your favorite toy? (let them answer) We have a lot of favorite things but they are the most special things to us that we have or know.
I have favorite things also. I have a favorite Christmas hymn and a favorite Bible story and a favorite Bible hero. I even have a favorite angel. And did you know that God also has favorites. It is true. A long time ago God sent his angel Gabriel, my favorite angel, to a young woman by the name of Mary. When the angel arrived he spoke to Mary and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." That's what the angel said to Mary. He said God favored Mary. She was his favorite. Of all the women in the world that God could have chosen as his favorite, it was Mary, a young woman who lived in a village called Nazareth, that he selected. She had a boy friend, named Joseph, who was a carpenter in the same village. They were engaged to be married.
I have a little figure that I took out of our nativity scene at home to help us think about God's favorite woman. (show them the figurine) What made her special? Why do you think God called her his favorite? (let them answer) That's right, because she was chosen to be the mother of God's child. Mary was told to name him Jesus. This was going to be a very special birth. We even have a very special name for this birth because no one else in the history of the world was born like this child was born. It is a kind of big word but I think you can learn it. The word is Incarnation. Can you say that word? (let them repeat it several times) It means that God became a person. God favored Mary and she became pregnant with God's baby. When the baby was born it was God in a human form, a baby, just like you were a baby or your baby brother or sister. God chose Mary as a very special mother to give birth to Jesus.
Before the day Jesus was born we only knew God as the Holy Word. Now we know God in human flesh as the baby Jesus. He was incarnate. This is the Incarnation. Can you say that word again with me? (have them say the word Incarnation several times) Remember what it means. It means that the Word was made flesh. God was born in human form. And the favored one of God, a young woman from Nazareth named Mary, was chosen to carry this precious gift. The word is Incarnation, and it is a very special word.
The Immediate Word, December 22, 2002, issue.
Copyright 2002 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
