The Baby Who Changes Everything
Sermon
Something's Coming ... Something Great
Sermons For Advent, Christmas And Epiphany
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There was a commotion in Roaring Camp. Cherokee Sal, the only woman in this rough, tough mining settlement, was dead after giving birth to a son whose father was unknown. Around the crude cabin where the newborn child lay helpless and crying, the hundred or so hard-bitten goldrush miners gathered in curiosity and concern. Death was so common here, but birth - this was a whole new experience.
Stumpy, a fugitive from justice on charges of bigamy, had by common consent taken charge of the little one's arrival. Shortly he allowed the miners to view the new baby, suggesting that it would be appropriate to make a contribution for the helpless orphan. So they came filing in, unconsciously taking off their hats in the presence of this miracle of new life, and putting their gifts at his side - a revolver, a diamond ring, a sling shot and a silver spoon. But now what to do?
The next day the inhabitants of Roaring Camp met in serious deliberation, and without the usual slugging and brawling, decided that working together they would all help raise this child. Stumpy was designated the particular guardian with a female mule as his first assistant. Strange to say, the little one thrived under their care, and equally strange was the effect on Roaring Camp. The little infant was named "Tommy Luck." His cabin, a filthy mess before he had been born there, was scrupulously cleaned, whitewashed and fixed up. A cradle was packed in by mule, and that made all the rest of the makeshift furniture so shabby in contrast that by common consensus, the whole place had to be done over.
In turn the local gambling joint and bar, the so-called grocery store, had to be spruced up to be in keeping with the Luck's cabin, and before long, the remainder of the settlement followed suit. This, and Stumpy's remarkable but understandable refusal to let anybody hold the Luck unless he was spotlessly clean, shaven and shorn, produced miracles in the miners' appearances. And equally amazing was the change in their conduct. Shouting within sound of Tommy's cabin was forbidden, lest he be wakened, and shortly the usual profanity was practically given up as not right for their boy to hear. From being Roaring Camp, the ugly drunken frontier settlement became, as one Cockney criminal inhabitant expressed it, "kind of 'eavenly." There was talk of further improvement and even of inviting some decent families to live there to benefit Tommy Luck with their presence. Word got around to the outside world of this miracle of change through the pony express riders who would say, "They've a street up there in Roaring Camp that's better than any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their cabins, and they wash themselves twice a day ... and they sure worship an Injun baby."
A baby - a baby who changed life! Bret Harte's memorable short story was never intended to be a Christmas story, but it nonetheless is a parable that can help us understand God's dealing with us in Jesus Christ. It has been said that when a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants presenting, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it. People may think that the course of the world is ultimately determined by big battalions, decisive battles and all the panoply of power, but all the while God is setting it, quietly, in littleness and in weakness, through the birth of a child. For example back in 1809, Napoleon stood over much of the western world like a Colossus. From Spain to the Near East, kings and popes did his bidding or suffered the consequences. Nations and peoples trembled at the menace of his might. People were impressed with his power and acknowledged him as the world shaper of his time. No one paid any attention to the cries of newborn babies amidst the cries of battle and the clamor of war.
But in the same year of 1809 there was born in a crude cabin in Kentucky a child who was named Abraham Lincoln. And in Massachusetts, a baby called Oliver Wendell Holmes came into the world. In Liverpool another baby was born by the name of William Gladstone, while in Somersby, Alfred Tennyson was coming to birth. In Germany, Felix Mendelssohn was born that year, and in Poland, Louis Braille. And so they came into the world from the hand of God, these and countless other babies, including Cyrus McCormick and Charles Darwin. Within six years, Napoleon was through and his empire shattered, but Lincoln's words, Tennyson's poetry, and Braille's humanitarianism, McCormick' s invention, Gladstone's vision and Darwin's ideas are still bearing fruit and reaching more lives than ever before. "When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants presenting, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it."
So we come to Isaiah's words, "Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name "Emmanuel." Isaiah foretold the birth of a child as a sign to King Ahaz of Judah that God would deliver his nation from the treachery of Syria and Israel. The name, Emmanuel, of course means "God with us." As modern scholars are quick to point out, the words of Isaiah may have had a much more immediate fulfillment in King Ahaz's time with the birth of a baby that signaled the defeat of Judah's enemies. However, in the minds of Christian believers through the centuries, Isaiah's words have come to symbolize the far greater deliverance God sent into this world with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ whom the disciples knew as Emmanuel. God with us now! Once again, God chose what is low and despised in the world to bring to naught the things that are. As John Buchan has written, "There in Judea was born the One who was to proclaim a kingdom mightier than Rome and a world saved not by a man who became God, but by a God who became a man for our sakes."
This One who began life on earth as the baby of Bethlehem changed life so that it has never been the same since. Sometimes in our cynicism, we listen to the news reports of bloodshed, crime, disease, destruction, brokenness and hostility, and conclude that the world around us is beyond saving. I love the story of the shipwrecked sailor who had spent three years on a tiny island. He was elated when he finally spied a boat approaching his island prison, but as the boat neared the shore where he was waiting, a young naval officer tossed the distraught sailor a bundle of old newspapers. "Captain's compliments," he shouted. "Read these newspapers and then let us know if you still want to be rescued!" We know that the world we live in today is filled with misery and suffering, hatred and hostility, but we must never forget the radical changes that the Babe of Bethlehem, God's Emmanuel, have begun in our poor old world.
1. Radical Changes In Our Outer World
Think for a few moments of the things that are different because God once came into our world in Jesus Christ. No longer, for instance, are women regarded as men's possessions without a soul of their own. Jesus changed all that by showing a graciousness and esteem to women unknown in the world before he came. No longer are children maltreated as of old, or babies cast out to die. Children became precious when he said, "Let the little ones come to me, for of such is the kingdom of God." No longer is it accepted that some human beings are born to be slaves and others to be masters, since Jesus died for all to deliver us from the bondage of sin. No longer are some races regarded as inferior to others, because the Christ calls us to "love one another as I have loved you." Human life took on a new dignity and worth when he told us, "The very hairs of your head are numbered." Jesus lifted family life to new and glorious heights when he exalted purity and faithfulness within the marriage bond. He stimulated learning to new purpose and depth when he promised, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Labor is no longer scorned as something lowly since he became the carpenter of Nazareth and the servant of all. Hospitals and homes for the elderly, playgrounds and libraries, and institutions dedicated to public service all draw their being from the source of his compassion and concern. The powerful and noble concepts that motivate our lives at their best, freedom and peace, decency and kindness, forgiveness and love, all these we have drawn from Emmanuel. Of course, all these things did not happen at once, and much remains to be realized in our world as Christ continues to challenge us over the problems of war and race, economic injustice and the source of AIDS. But let us never forget that the One who began life as a baby in Bethlehem is the one who has changed all things!
Kenneth Scott Latourette, the distinguished Yale historian once wrote, "Measured by its fruits in the human race, that short life of Jesus has been the most influential ever lived on this planet. Gauged by the consequences which have followed his life, Jesus of Nazareth is central in the human story and the most important event in the history of our world."
2. The Possibility Of Inner Change
The outward changes in society are the evidences of a far more important kind of change that Emmanuel, Jesus the Christ has made possible in his coming. Because God came to be with us in that little child in the manger, our human weakness and insufficiency under the demands of life have been caught up in the all-sufficiency and gracious power of the eternal Creator. We have discovered in Christ how much God loves us, and with God's help, how much of life can be changed. Jesus never eliminated the qualities that made Peter Peter or Paul Paul.
Peter's impetuosity and Paul's imperturbable drive were still there after Christ had touched them, but you would have to look twice to be sure it was the same life. So every generation testifies to the transforming power of Emmanuel in our inward lives: Augustine was a frivolous libertine until Jesus changed his inner spirit and brought forth a spiritual giant. Francis of Assisi was a self-seeking dilettante when Christ changed him into a self-sacrificing servant of the needy and warm-hearted lover of nature. In our own times it has been Emmanuel's touch upon people like singer Ethel Waters, atomic scientist William Pollard, onetime agnostic C. S. Lewis and writer Dorothy Day that has made a radical difference in the lives of people. It is Jesus who has brought healing and wholeness, forgiveness and restoration to countless women and men, and who comes once more so that we may experience in our lives the lilt and the luster, the glory and the gladness that God intends for creation.
Pete Richards was the loneliest man in the town on the day little Jean opened the door of his shop. The store window was filled with a disarray of old-fashioned things: bracelets and lockets, gold rings and silver boxes, images of jade and ivory porcelain figurines. On this winter's afternoon just before Christmas, little Jean had spent a long time with her forehead pressed against the glass, looking for something quite special. Finally, with a satisfied air, she entered Pete Richards' store. "Mister," she began, "could I have that string of blue beads in the window?" Pete brought them out. She looked at them and said, "They're perfect! Will you wrap them up pretty for me, please?"
Pete studied her with a somewhat stony air. "Are you buying these for someone?" "They're for my big sister. She takes care of me. This will be the first Christmas since my mom died and I want to do something special for my sister." "How much money do you have?" asked Pete warily. Little Jean opened a handkerchief and poured out a pile of pennies on the counter. "I emptied my bank," she explained simply. "It's everything I have."
Pete Richards looked at the child thoughtfully. How could he tell her that it cost many times what she hadin money to buy it? And as he looked at the little girl with the trusting look in her blue eyes, something deep within Pete Richards began to come back to life. He looked at her wheat colored hair and her sea blue eyes, and remembered another woman with that same yellow in her hair and with eyes just as blue. The turquoise necklace had been hers. But there had come a rainy night - a 'truck skidding on a slippery' road - and the life was crushed out of his dream. Since then, Pete Richards had lived with grief and bitterness and an emptiness in his soul that until this little girl had come into his shop, he had carefully buried from the eyes of the world. The blue eyes of little Jean jolted him into acute remembrance of what he had lost. Carefully he wrapped the blue beads in scarlet paper and tied the package with a bright green ribbon. "There you are," he said. "Don't lose it on the way home."
The next few days were busy ones for Pete Richards as many customers finished their Christmas shopping. He was just about to lock the door of his shop on Christmas Eve when a woman hurried in. With an inexplicable start, Pete realized she looked familiar, yet he could not imagine having seen her before. Her hair was golden and her eyes were blue. Without speaking, she drew a package from her purse and asked, "Did this necklace come from your shop?" "Yes," said Pete, "they came from this shop." "Then I must return them, because I am sure my little sister did not have enough money to pay for them."
Pete Richards looked at the woman for a long time and then said, "The price is always confidential between the seller and the customer. The little girl who purchased this necklace paid the biggest price anyone can ever pay. She gave all she had. What's more, she helped me remember the One who gave his life on a cross, so that we might all live."
The One who changes all things can change you and me for the best, if we will open our hearts to meet him. As a photographic plate exposed to light bears the image of that reflected light upon it and so is changed, you and I, open, sensitive, receptive can face the light of Jesus Christ until God's own likeness is imprinted on our souls. This is the deliverance foretold so long ago by the prophet Isaiah in the coming of Emmanuel, God with us now!
"0 holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray,
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
0
come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel."
There was a commotion in Roaring Camp. Cherokee Sal, the only woman in this rough, tough mining settlement, was dead after giving birth to a son whose father was unknown. Around the crude cabin where the newborn child lay helpless and crying, the hundred or so hard-bitten goldrush miners gathered in curiosity and concern. Death was so common here, but birth - this was a whole new experience.
Stumpy, a fugitive from justice on charges of bigamy, had by common consent taken charge of the little one's arrival. Shortly he allowed the miners to view the new baby, suggesting that it would be appropriate to make a contribution for the helpless orphan. So they came filing in, unconsciously taking off their hats in the presence of this miracle of new life, and putting their gifts at his side - a revolver, a diamond ring, a sling shot and a silver spoon. But now what to do?
The next day the inhabitants of Roaring Camp met in serious deliberation, and without the usual slugging and brawling, decided that working together they would all help raise this child. Stumpy was designated the particular guardian with a female mule as his first assistant. Strange to say, the little one thrived under their care, and equally strange was the effect on Roaring Camp. The little infant was named "Tommy Luck." His cabin, a filthy mess before he had been born there, was scrupulously cleaned, whitewashed and fixed up. A cradle was packed in by mule, and that made all the rest of the makeshift furniture so shabby in contrast that by common consensus, the whole place had to be done over.
In turn the local gambling joint and bar, the so-called grocery store, had to be spruced up to be in keeping with the Luck's cabin, and before long, the remainder of the settlement followed suit. This, and Stumpy's remarkable but understandable refusal to let anybody hold the Luck unless he was spotlessly clean, shaven and shorn, produced miracles in the miners' appearances. And equally amazing was the change in their conduct. Shouting within sound of Tommy's cabin was forbidden, lest he be wakened, and shortly the usual profanity was practically given up as not right for their boy to hear. From being Roaring Camp, the ugly drunken frontier settlement became, as one Cockney criminal inhabitant expressed it, "kind of 'eavenly." There was talk of further improvement and even of inviting some decent families to live there to benefit Tommy Luck with their presence. Word got around to the outside world of this miracle of change through the pony express riders who would say, "They've a street up there in Roaring Camp that's better than any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their cabins, and they wash themselves twice a day ... and they sure worship an Injun baby."
A baby - a baby who changed life! Bret Harte's memorable short story was never intended to be a Christmas story, but it nonetheless is a parable that can help us understand God's dealing with us in Jesus Christ. It has been said that when a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants presenting, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it. People may think that the course of the world is ultimately determined by big battalions, decisive battles and all the panoply of power, but all the while God is setting it, quietly, in littleness and in weakness, through the birth of a child. For example back in 1809, Napoleon stood over much of the western world like a Colossus. From Spain to the Near East, kings and popes did his bidding or suffered the consequences. Nations and peoples trembled at the menace of his might. People were impressed with his power and acknowledged him as the world shaper of his time. No one paid any attention to the cries of newborn babies amidst the cries of battle and the clamor of war.
But in the same year of 1809 there was born in a crude cabin in Kentucky a child who was named Abraham Lincoln. And in Massachusetts, a baby called Oliver Wendell Holmes came into the world. In Liverpool another baby was born by the name of William Gladstone, while in Somersby, Alfred Tennyson was coming to birth. In Germany, Felix Mendelssohn was born that year, and in Poland, Louis Braille. And so they came into the world from the hand of God, these and countless other babies, including Cyrus McCormick and Charles Darwin. Within six years, Napoleon was through and his empire shattered, but Lincoln's words, Tennyson's poetry, and Braille's humanitarianism, McCormick' s invention, Gladstone's vision and Darwin's ideas are still bearing fruit and reaching more lives than ever before. "When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants presenting, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it."
So we come to Isaiah's words, "Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name "Emmanuel." Isaiah foretold the birth of a child as a sign to King Ahaz of Judah that God would deliver his nation from the treachery of Syria and Israel. The name, Emmanuel, of course means "God with us." As modern scholars are quick to point out, the words of Isaiah may have had a much more immediate fulfillment in King Ahaz's time with the birth of a baby that signaled the defeat of Judah's enemies. However, in the minds of Christian believers through the centuries, Isaiah's words have come to symbolize the far greater deliverance God sent into this world with the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ whom the disciples knew as Emmanuel. God with us now! Once again, God chose what is low and despised in the world to bring to naught the things that are. As John Buchan has written, "There in Judea was born the One who was to proclaim a kingdom mightier than Rome and a world saved not by a man who became God, but by a God who became a man for our sakes."
This One who began life on earth as the baby of Bethlehem changed life so that it has never been the same since. Sometimes in our cynicism, we listen to the news reports of bloodshed, crime, disease, destruction, brokenness and hostility, and conclude that the world around us is beyond saving. I love the story of the shipwrecked sailor who had spent three years on a tiny island. He was elated when he finally spied a boat approaching his island prison, but as the boat neared the shore where he was waiting, a young naval officer tossed the distraught sailor a bundle of old newspapers. "Captain's compliments," he shouted. "Read these newspapers and then let us know if you still want to be rescued!" We know that the world we live in today is filled with misery and suffering, hatred and hostility, but we must never forget the radical changes that the Babe of Bethlehem, God's Emmanuel, have begun in our poor old world.
1. Radical Changes In Our Outer World
Think for a few moments of the things that are different because God once came into our world in Jesus Christ. No longer, for instance, are women regarded as men's possessions without a soul of their own. Jesus changed all that by showing a graciousness and esteem to women unknown in the world before he came. No longer are children maltreated as of old, or babies cast out to die. Children became precious when he said, "Let the little ones come to me, for of such is the kingdom of God." No longer is it accepted that some human beings are born to be slaves and others to be masters, since Jesus died for all to deliver us from the bondage of sin. No longer are some races regarded as inferior to others, because the Christ calls us to "love one another as I have loved you." Human life took on a new dignity and worth when he told us, "The very hairs of your head are numbered." Jesus lifted family life to new and glorious heights when he exalted purity and faithfulness within the marriage bond. He stimulated learning to new purpose and depth when he promised, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Labor is no longer scorned as something lowly since he became the carpenter of Nazareth and the servant of all. Hospitals and homes for the elderly, playgrounds and libraries, and institutions dedicated to public service all draw their being from the source of his compassion and concern. The powerful and noble concepts that motivate our lives at their best, freedom and peace, decency and kindness, forgiveness and love, all these we have drawn from Emmanuel. Of course, all these things did not happen at once, and much remains to be realized in our world as Christ continues to challenge us over the problems of war and race, economic injustice and the source of AIDS. But let us never forget that the One who began life as a baby in Bethlehem is the one who has changed all things!
Kenneth Scott Latourette, the distinguished Yale historian once wrote, "Measured by its fruits in the human race, that short life of Jesus has been the most influential ever lived on this planet. Gauged by the consequences which have followed his life, Jesus of Nazareth is central in the human story and the most important event in the history of our world."
2. The Possibility Of Inner Change
The outward changes in society are the evidences of a far more important kind of change that Emmanuel, Jesus the Christ has made possible in his coming. Because God came to be with us in that little child in the manger, our human weakness and insufficiency under the demands of life have been caught up in the all-sufficiency and gracious power of the eternal Creator. We have discovered in Christ how much God loves us, and with God's help, how much of life can be changed. Jesus never eliminated the qualities that made Peter Peter or Paul Paul.
Peter's impetuosity and Paul's imperturbable drive were still there after Christ had touched them, but you would have to look twice to be sure it was the same life. So every generation testifies to the transforming power of Emmanuel in our inward lives: Augustine was a frivolous libertine until Jesus changed his inner spirit and brought forth a spiritual giant. Francis of Assisi was a self-seeking dilettante when Christ changed him into a self-sacrificing servant of the needy and warm-hearted lover of nature. In our own times it has been Emmanuel's touch upon people like singer Ethel Waters, atomic scientist William Pollard, onetime agnostic C. S. Lewis and writer Dorothy Day that has made a radical difference in the lives of people. It is Jesus who has brought healing and wholeness, forgiveness and restoration to countless women and men, and who comes once more so that we may experience in our lives the lilt and the luster, the glory and the gladness that God intends for creation.
Pete Richards was the loneliest man in the town on the day little Jean opened the door of his shop. The store window was filled with a disarray of old-fashioned things: bracelets and lockets, gold rings and silver boxes, images of jade and ivory porcelain figurines. On this winter's afternoon just before Christmas, little Jean had spent a long time with her forehead pressed against the glass, looking for something quite special. Finally, with a satisfied air, she entered Pete Richards' store. "Mister," she began, "could I have that string of blue beads in the window?" Pete brought them out. She looked at them and said, "They're perfect! Will you wrap them up pretty for me, please?"
Pete studied her with a somewhat stony air. "Are you buying these for someone?" "They're for my big sister. She takes care of me. This will be the first Christmas since my mom died and I want to do something special for my sister." "How much money do you have?" asked Pete warily. Little Jean opened a handkerchief and poured out a pile of pennies on the counter. "I emptied my bank," she explained simply. "It's everything I have."
Pete Richards looked at the child thoughtfully. How could he tell her that it cost many times what she hadin money to buy it? And as he looked at the little girl with the trusting look in her blue eyes, something deep within Pete Richards began to come back to life. He looked at her wheat colored hair and her sea blue eyes, and remembered another woman with that same yellow in her hair and with eyes just as blue. The turquoise necklace had been hers. But there had come a rainy night - a 'truck skidding on a slippery' road - and the life was crushed out of his dream. Since then, Pete Richards had lived with grief and bitterness and an emptiness in his soul that until this little girl had come into his shop, he had carefully buried from the eyes of the world. The blue eyes of little Jean jolted him into acute remembrance of what he had lost. Carefully he wrapped the blue beads in scarlet paper and tied the package with a bright green ribbon. "There you are," he said. "Don't lose it on the way home."
The next few days were busy ones for Pete Richards as many customers finished their Christmas shopping. He was just about to lock the door of his shop on Christmas Eve when a woman hurried in. With an inexplicable start, Pete realized she looked familiar, yet he could not imagine having seen her before. Her hair was golden and her eyes were blue. Without speaking, she drew a package from her purse and asked, "Did this necklace come from your shop?" "Yes," said Pete, "they came from this shop." "Then I must return them, because I am sure my little sister did not have enough money to pay for them."
Pete Richards looked at the woman for a long time and then said, "The price is always confidential between the seller and the customer. The little girl who purchased this necklace paid the biggest price anyone can ever pay. She gave all she had. What's more, she helped me remember the One who gave his life on a cross, so that we might all live."
The One who changes all things can change you and me for the best, if we will open our hearts to meet him. As a photographic plate exposed to light bears the image of that reflected light upon it and so is changed, you and I, open, sensitive, receptive can face the light of Jesus Christ until God's own likeness is imprinted on our souls. This is the deliverance foretold so long ago by the prophet Isaiah in the coming of Emmanuel, God with us now!
"0 holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray,
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
0
come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel."
