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When I was a child and continuing through adolescence and young adulthood, I had a recurring nightmare. Five or six times each year I would have the same general dream, even if the specific details were changed. I would be riding along on a two-lane road in a car. Sometimes I would be driving a car and at other times I would be a passenger. The car would come to a bridge and go racing across. Halfway across the bridge I would shudder to see that the bridge was out. The car would go plummeting straight downward in a dive toward the water. And I would be screaming. Most of the time I woke up shaking before the car hit the water. A few times the car would sink below the water before I awakened.

Obviously, a good psychiatrist might be able to look beneath the dream and reflect the emotional issues involved. But I never really needed one. Certainly there was some great insecurity, some fear of something, that touched the dream off. I really don't know what it was. But I learned early that fear is a part of life. We modern, civilized people live in a fear-ridden world. I stand in the pulpit each Sunday and I look out at a sizeable congregation of fine, intelligent people. An observer could casually glance at us and almost swear that everybody present is inwardly calm and confident. Yet, most of us know that if we could gather together all the personal fears lurking behind all these impassive faces, we would have a great load of fear.

You and I have plenty of things to be afraid of. We are afraid for our health. The increasing flow of information has the unhappy by-product of making everybody conscious of the fact that one-third of the things we touch and eat have caused cancer in laboratory rats. We are afraid of heart trouble; we are afraid of paralysis; we are afraid someone will not "pull the plug" if we need it pulled. We are afraid Social Security will run out. We are afraid of money problems. We are afraid for our children's future. We are afraid our children will marry the wrong persons. We are afraid about international affairs. The list could go on and on. We sometimes ride on a veritable river of fear.

Consequently it seems to me that occasionally we have to go back and remind ourselves that the greatest issue with the Bible is simply why it was written. Sometimes humans get so involved in studying the side issues of a book, the importance of an issue, its authority, its truthfulness, its consequences, and its interpretation that they forget the purpose for which the book was written. All efforts to find the way home at the end of life focus on Holy Scriptures. Confucianism, with its worship of heaven, ancestors, and spirits, contains Scriptures which describe the divine cosmic order. Shinto, with its worship of Kami, contains Holy Scriptures which describe the spiritual force in all things. Judaism, with its worship of Yahweh, contains Holy Scriptures which point the way to one god with personal attributes. Islam, with its worship of Allah, contains Holy Scriptures which point the way to Allah. Hinduism, with its worship of Brahman-Atman, contains scriptures that describe the eternal spirit in the world and the individual.

In like manner, Christianity, with its worship of God, contains Scriptures which describe one God with personal attributes characterized by love and justice. To merely focus on the authority and interpretation of such Scripture, as many have done in our era, is to forget the purpose for which the Scripture was written.

For example, consider children. Sometimes we parents get so involved in the emotional and physical problems of children, the financial cost of children and the educational issues with children, that we forget why we had children in the first place. Children were born because we found love on this earth and wanted someone else to find it and experience it, as well. Now, we may have had the child in an unplanned or untimely manner. Or we may no longer be in love and some may even be divorced from the parent, but children are on this earth because, for however fleeting or however lasting a time, you and I found love.

The same is true with marriage, church, vocation, and the other meaningful avenues in the Christian life. We can get so bogged down in the programs of church, the finances of church, the personalities of church, that we forget the purpose for being in a church.

The same is true relative to the birth of Jesus Christ: the child was born in order that you and I might not be afraid of life and death. The author of John's Gospel tells us very plainly why he wrote his book. With deep feeling he acknowledges that he did not write down everything Jesus did or said. No, he was selective. But he goes on to say, "I wrote these things I did write that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through his name (John 20:30-31)." That's his purpose - that we might believe and have life, not fear, through his name.

Why The Child?

The child was born so that when great crises and personal anxieties come upon us we can rise up and say, "Because of the presence of God among us, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and I will live, not die; I will triumph, not be afraid in his name."

There is no greater purpose for anything than releasing us from our fears of life and death. Sometimes we Christians get involved in studying the Scriptures and looking for the meanings in the narratives. Sometimes we argue about the authority of the Bible - whether or not it is historical or scientific. Other times we worry about the inspiration of the Bible - whether or not it has errors. Other times we worry about the interpretation of the Bible - which version is closest to the original, or if someone is too liberal or too conservative. Our race has expended tremendous amounts of time and energy, and money as well, arguing those points in recent days. At some juncture, we must pull back and not forget to ask, "Hey, wait a minute - why was the book written for us in the first place?" It was not written to record everything Jesus did. It was not written to answer questions about history or science or authority. It wasn't written to prove the truth or error in any belief system. It was written so that you and I might know that Jesus is the Son of God and live without being afraid! It was written to give us a direction toward home.

I don't see how people can live without that assurance from Bethlehem's child. I wonder what people without a church and without a firm belief in God do when they encounter fear in life, when they ponder their ultimate destination. Without that assurance from Jesus, "Fear not, I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth," I wonder how people would make it.

In the past two weeks, I have stood with some families in some amazing experiences. I have seen a five-day old baby have brain surgery; a woman whose kidneys are not functioning go through dialysis that lasts four hours, moving back and forth from life to death like the sweeping pendulum of a clock in the hallway. I have seen a father have to give medicine to his 46-year old mentally ill son, then watch that son flee to another state to avoid hospitalization. Yet, every single one of those families will make it. They are anxious and uncertain, but they are not afraid. They know God. They know what God is like. They know the purposes of life and why life is worth living. In spite of incredible complexities and problems, God bless them, they will make it. That is why the child was born and the book was written in the first place.

One of the finest people in our time was J.C.Penney. During the great Depression, J.C.Penney had to face the bitter fact that he had lost some 40 million dollars. Can you imagine how you would feel if you lost 40 million dollars? J.C.Penney became terribly ill. He had himself placed into a santarium. One night he became convinced that he was going to die. Consequently he took pencil and paper and wrote farewell notes to his wife, his children, and others. He made peace with God and fell into a very troubled sleep. But when he opened his eyes, he saw sunlight streaming into his room. He realized that he had another day of life. As he lay in bed he heard the faint sound of singing far away down the hall. He caught the melody of an old hymn. He slowly got out of bed, went down the hall and found a group of people singing "God will take care of you."4

Mr. Penney wrote that he had heard that hymn many times before. "God will take care of you, through every day, o'er all the way; He will take care of you." And he had long believed and had the academic thought that God would take care of him. But it was not an experience. That night he sat around listening to the group sing and he realized his purpose - to live without fear as a child of God. From that time on he was past being afraid. He knew that God would indeed take care of him.

I have never been with my back to the wall like Mr. Penney. Few of us have. But we have known fear. One summer when I was in graduate school, my left knee completely locked on me. It was the same knee that had been operated on after a football injury, while I was in college. The doctors said that if it was not properly operated on again, I might have a limp for life. As such, said the doctors, if I had any children I would not be able to participate in any recreational activities with them. As I remembered the previous surgery which included fifteen days in the hospital and six weeks on crutches, I was despondent. Diane and I decided that I would fly, by myself, back up to Harvard Medical Center to have the surgery. It was a lonely flight. With great misgiving and fear I entered the huge building and went down to the X-ray area. I knew several of the nurses from my student days and one of them explained what they would do. They would inject this dye in my knee, look at all the mess it was going around, and plan from there. The room I was pushed into looked like something from outer space. And then he walked in. My God, the doctor looked like something from outer space, too. He appeared to be at least 70 years old. His hair fired out from his head in all directions like he had been struck by lightning. And his hands were shaking a little bit. He was German and he said, "Ye vill soon be veddy to begin." Lord, it was daytime but I could go back to childhood and see the car going down the two-lane road, heading for the bridge. When Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Quack, or whatever his name was, left the room for a minute, I frantically called the nurse over. "Does this old guy know what he is doing? Is he good?" I asked. She smiled and said, "He invented the process." Well, well, that greatly threw fear out the window. When the distinguished, elderly gentleman returned, I said, "No kidding, you invented this?"

"Yah," he exclaimed. "I tell you why I invent this. So we can locate precisely where everything is. Then, instead of cutting I just take rod and spear the damaged part. Then I pull it over next to the skin and we take it out." Suddenly a great peace came over me. The inventor himself would take care of me. And he did. I was in the hospital only two days and I never had to use a crutch. From the time I found out the inventor was doing the work, I was past being afraid.

That is why a child was born among us in Bethlehem - to tell us that the inventor of human life knows how messed up things can get. He knows the pain and the agony of limping along in a difficult world, disinherited and dispossessed travelers marching toward death, with no vision of home. A child was born, among certain spiritual ancestors, to bear the burden of the quest and provide a present glimpse of a future destination.



2. THE MODEST PACKAGES FROM GOD

In my brief lifetime, I have witnessed little practical things become whole new industries. This has happened to gift wrapping. Instead of having to bother with gift wrapping, we now have ready-made bows, flowers, and ornaments to put on packages. And, for a fee, the retailer will provide pretty paper, ribbon, and cards suited for any occasion, and someone to wrap your purchase accordingly. Such is wonderful for a man like me who is very awkward in these things.

Pretty wrappings make getting a present more exciting. But they can sometimes be quite expensive in relation to the value of the gift. I have paid as much as $3.00 for someone to wrap a $5.00 present during the Christmas season. Since wrappings build up the anticipation involved in opening a gift, my store-wrapped purchases create problems. The anticipation over the wrapping builds up so high that by the time a person opens the box, all they have is a letdown.5

It's very disappointing to get a package all wrapped up in shiny foil and satin ribbon, decorated with sparkles, sequins, and plastic figurines, but containing nothing more than a $5.00 item that often doesn't work.

If the great experiences in the Christian faith, like Christmas, Palm Sunday, and Easter, point to anything, it is that God must surely have a sense of humor and great purpose. The gifts of God are different. Have you ever noticed how most of God's gifts come in modest packages? Some of his greatest gifts are of the brown paper bag variety. Yet inside they are always beyond price and, frankly, often beyond description. How can anyone think that God doesn't have a grand sense of humor?

It's a lesson that God seems to try to teach his children over and over again. Witness the old couple, Abraham and Sara, too old to have a child; Moses, the burned-out eighty-year-old reject; the humble carpenter, Joseph, and his pregnant teenage wife, Mary, who have no motel reservation. The human race looks to open the shiny packages that promise so much. We often forget or never find the gift that waits inside the brown paper bag from God.

The Palm Sunday experience is perhaps the most humorous of all these gifts. Imagine your perspective if you had been there in Jerusalem. For 4,500 years you have waited for a king, a Messiah, the ultimate gift from God. In our day, gifts from God are very often looked for in rather spectacular and lucrative wrappings - the religious theme park, a hundred thousand lights on display at Christmas, prayer towers, grand hotels, and centers of Christian healing forty stories tall. Media entertainers with hundred million dollar budgets are represented as proof to our world that God has indeed pointed the way to home through some special people. Yet such is only a dead end road that leads to human performance. That is not the way at all.

The ancient Jews waited for such a gift. A king to end all kings. So they stood there ready to receive the ultimate gift, the King of the new religious nation. Down the road toward them came an unemployed carpenter, riding bareback on a little donkey, his heels gripping the belly of the donkey so he would not fall off.

The times were tension-ridden times. Thousands of pilgrims poured into Jerusalem for Passover. It was a freedom celebration as the people commemorated God's rescue of the slaves from Egypt. It was a freedom celebration at the very time when Israel smarted under Roman occupation. Because of the tension, Pilate came back from his beach house on the sea coast at Caesarea. It takes a lot of tension at the office to get a man to leave his beach house. But he knew he'd better not be at the beach when so many suppressed Jews were celebrating freedom. So he came into the city with a great show of military force - just in case things got out of hand. Pilate knew all too well that the people longed for some flashy leader to ride in on a big horse and scream, "Long live Israel." Such a soldier-king on a horse could probably become king. It had happened before - just summon the collective military psyche of the people. Saul had done it. Pharoah had done it. Caesar had done it - riding in on a mighty horse, at a time the people were tense.

And 2,000 years before Christ the Aryans had done it in India. The Aryans were a group of people who arose in the region of modern Iran and Iraq. They were an aggressive and warlike people. The Aryans were the first people to tame the horse and develop the war chariot. These Aryans used their military skills to conquer territories to the east and to the west. They conquered Egypt. Their kings rode on horses. They went as far as the British Isles and called it Aryan land, which we now call "Ireland." The horse had become the symbol of the arrogant, warlike kings.

Still later, in the twentieth century, a man named Adolph Hitler used the term Aryan to refer to the master race. Most people thought he was referring to the blond, blue-eyed nature of Germans. He actually was referring to the use of military skills to usher in a new era.

So Pilate sat there in temporary residence in Jerusalem, trying to control order. The word reached him, "The king is coming! The king is coming!" A modern day Aryan, coming to make things right, is coming. The gift to the Jews from God Almighty was just down the dusty road. The cynical, secular world with all its power plays quaked in its boots as word reverberated through the waves of humanity - the king is coming! The noise grew louder and louder.

Then through the dust he appeared - an unemployed carpenter riding bareback on a little donkey, his heels gripping the belly of the animal to keep from falling off.

I'm telling you, only God could think of that! Pilate and all his soldiers from Caesar's legions must have laughed their heads off. Wouldn't you?

The ass, the donkey, was the burden-bearer of the world - not the symbol of power. And that's exactly what happened. The donkey-king became the ultimate burden-bearer of this sad, sad world.

They put him through a trial that lasted one whole night long. They were double-crossing him and he knew it. The next morning they took him into a courtyard, put a crown of thorns on his head, jammed it down so that the blood ran over his face and neck, and he lost a lot of blood. Then they beat on him and laughed at him. Then they spit on him. They made a great big heavy cross and made him carry it a long, long way. And he did.

Only God could have thought of that. The donkey-king became the ultimate burden-bearer of this sad, sad world.

And in that kind of king there is a great hope. When you stand alone, your back to the winds of your youth, facing the precipice of your own death, all the Caesars on all the white horses cannot save you. You stare into an unknown dusty road, wanting a glimpse of the way home. Your money and position mean nothing. The dark night of the soul closes over you with a rush. When deep in your gut you face the icy desert that tells you the good times are over, your perspective changes. When doubt is substituted for support and when your heart burns from man's inhumanity to man, where do you find the road that leads you home? When the choir finishes its chants, the bells stop ringing, and the absolute quiet descends over you, to what do you look forward? Do you look to the grandiose images of a world carved out by human hands? Or do you look for the more modest yet more enduring packages and signs from your faith in God?

What ancestors do you turn to in your search? What resources from the wisdom of the age lie beneath these modest signs from God?

We Christians maintain that the Child of Bethlehem points the way.


3. PICKING THE RIGHT ANCESTORS

On a hot, dry June day, I was riding on a bus with 33 other Americans through the mountain passes in southern Greece. We were headed to the ruins of ancient Mycenae. When the bus stopped I couldn't believe we had chosen that place to visit. Mycenae is actually a mountain of rocks with hundreds of steps, over 2,300 years old, leading to the top. Mycenae was a little kingdom ruled by an overlord who had built his fortress on this tremendous moutain. The gates of Mycenae contain the first coat of arms in Europe. Two lions stand facing one another with their front paws resting on two small, united altars. This coat of arms of the royal house of Mycenae is the oldest example of sculpture in Europe. It is also the oldest example of trying to preserve a family tree. The people of Mycenae were the first to whitewash their ancestors. You see, the last dynasty of Mycenae was a horrible one. They committed every crime in the book - slavery, incest, and cannibalism. You name it and they did it. Yet they persisted in using the beautiful lions as their coat of arms.

Genealogists amaze me. Virtually every family has a coat of arms on their wall today and an impressive family tree. I have both in my family. But, like everyone else, there are a number of people in my family tree about whom little is known. The late dean of Duke University, Harold Bosley, had a friend in Iowa who worked up his family tree. Like most of us, this man had a great time working up his family's coat of arms and the remarkable line of men and women of integrity and high community repute who emerged as he traced the family from Boston to Iowa over their hundred-year history. But then the genealogist did a no-no. He started working on tracing down a few of the forebearers about whom little was known. On a trip to Vermont he decided to look up the grave of one of these people. You can guess that rest: he found him in the section of the old cemetery reserved for bums!6

One of the facts of life is that history is written by the winners or at least the survivors. The losers do not write much history. If you go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, you will see that, quite properly, the majority of the monuments there are to the Union soldiers.

Now, choosing ancestors is not all bad. In fact, the early Psalmist said that we must pick and choose among our ancestors. It is true. You can tell a person or a people or a church not so much by their ancestors but by the ancestors they have selected to follow. The United States does not have one heritage. It has many. To say our heritage is all good would be untrue. We have made some of the most colossal and humiliating follies known to humankind. To say our heritage is a bad one would be equally untrue. We have a landscape that is dotted with some of the greatest successes humans have ever seen. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance (Psalm 16:5-6).

One must choose a well-worn path to follow. The options are many. Religious ancestors abound on our planet. One of the most ancient ancestors in religion is Hinduism. This ancient religion traces its origin to 2000 B.C. From its definition of humankind as eternal sprang Buddhism with its emphasis on an eightfold path. The ancestors of the Eastern Religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto) have certain beliefs in common. They are oriented toward nature and conceive of the Divine Power as impersonal. They place little emphasis on time and downgrade individual will.

Our ancestors in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the so-called Western Religions) were quite different. They were oriented toward history, conceived of the Divine Power as personal, believed truth came through particular persons, placed great emphasis on time, and exhalted individual will.

In choosing to be Western, we have selected certain ancestors. And even in our daily life as we march toward death, we pick and choose among the influences available to us. This was a message Jesus hammered home again and again. Jesus said that the eye is the seat of the body. He constantly emphasized the importance and the peril of seeing. There is such a thing as "a deliberate rationing of the intake of the eye."7 There is much to see in this world and our eyes are bombarded by the gentle people and the ruthless people. We live in a world of advertising and family trees. We are not forced to look at all of them. We have to practice an aristocracy of looking. We have television but we do not have to look at everything. We have a world of sex and violence, but we do not have to keep staring at it. You and I cannot afford to try everything as we journey toward home. We may not be responsible for the things we see and for the things people give to us, but we are responsible for the degree of attention we decide to give things. We must pick and choose.

And if we must pick and choose, why not pick and choose the highest and the best instead of the lowest and the worst? Sure, we have ancestors buried in the sections of old cemeteries reserved for bums. We are not responsible for their being there. But we are responsible for the degree of attention we give them and how much we emulate them. The same is true of our great country. We have cast away in certain sections of our past the sordid legacies of mistreatment of the American Indians, Joe McCarthy, slavery, segregation, Watergate, and a thousand other less than desirable events and people. I personally believe we are not responsible for their being there. But we are responsible for how much we emulate them.

Rabbi Beryl Cohon once went to a dinner party with a friend who teaches history in high school. This friend proudly proclaimed that he tears things apart in his classes. He rips off the popular notions, the myths, and the legends. George Washington, by the time he is through with him, emerges a first-class bum. He contends that all the nonsense about his character, his integrity, and his dependability is for simple minds. Rabbi Cohon pulled him aside and asked, "After you have debunked and pulled apart and analyzed and exposed every bit of pretense and sham, what do you put together? What do you give your children that they may respect, and by which they may be guided decently?"8

It is a fair question. We teach ourselves to expose, to pull apart, to analyze. But do we teach people to put things together? The same is true for churches and religion. We all have ancestors. Every church I have pastored has, at some point, had a minister get a divorce. Every church I've ever known has had fights, and mistakes. Every church in the world has hypocrites. Every minister and every church member has moments of ill-temperament and folly. Every church building has a leak. Every program within a church has weaknesses. Likewise, every one of those entities holds up the Kingdom of God. It is the only institution that claims to have as its sole purpose the worship of God. It is a very easy institution to expose, pull apart, analyze and debunk. In fact, there's enough there to make God look like a first-class bum. We can do that. But can we teach people to put things together, so they may respect God and be guided decently in life?

Every nation, every person, every people has to pick and choose whom it will serve and how much attention it will give to certain things it sees and experiences. One of the great moments in history is recorded in Joshua 24. Joshua knew that it was time for the 12 tribes of Israel if they were ever to be united, to pick a god to worship and emulate from among all the gods of their ancestors. Consequently he assembled at Shechem all the descendants of Jacob (Israel), the six tribes of Leah and the six tribes of Rachel, the two wives of Israel. He said, "We've got three choices: 1) the gods our forefathers worshiped beyond the river in Mesopotamia; 2) the local gods here in Canaan; 3) Yahweh, the one lord who has led the house of Joseph." Joshua recounted how Yahweh had led Abraham, Isaac, and Moses; how he had led them out of slavery into the Promised Land; how he had led them over the citizens of Jericho. Then Joshua said, "Choose among the three choices. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

This is much more than a story that is 3,000 years old dealing with choices that were 3,000 years in the past. You see, those three choices have to be made by each succeeding generation. You and I have to choose to worship the gods our forefathers worshiped beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The gods of Europe united church and state. If you did not worship the god of the Church of England, you didn't thrive in England. If you did not worship the Catholic Pope, you didn't thrive in Italy. If you did not worship Allah, you did not do well in the Mid-East. If you did not worship where the Lutheran Heads of State in Denmark and Germany worshiped, you did not thrive. You could not go to college, own property, or be treated civilly if you did not worship the gods of the government. Now, there are those who say we should choose to worship those gods from beyond the river. They say our founders didn't really mean to have separation of church and state, that we need to saturate their brand of Christian principles throughout our laws. They want to merge government with fundamentalist biblical ideas. We should be a religious republic with a moral majority and a Baptist god, just as Prussia had a moral majority and a religious state. They even have political candidates right down to a television evangelist who is running for president. We can indeed choose to worship the gods our forefathers worshiped beyond the river in Mesopotamia.

Secondly, we can choose to worship the local gods in Canaan. This is our "promised land." All of our forefathers were immigrants - people who searched for a new Israel, a new beginning, and freedom from tyranny. And, like the 12 tribes of Israel, we have prospered in our Canaan. We have local gods of prosperity and wealth that we can worship. The gods of prosperity are everywhere. All you have to do is call an 800 number and you can talk to them. The shiny car, the new house, the inflated importances of society - all these things are the new local gods of Canaan. We can worship them. We can totally lose consciousness of the ethical God and his demands to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and minister to the needy. This God that Joshua called "Yahweh" and Jesus called "father" is indeed rivaled by the local gods in the promised land.

Or, we can choose to follow the God of Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Jesus. The choice is still there. George Washington faced it when the people wanted to make him king. Abraham Lincoln faced the choice when he looked upon a land smoldering with division and lack of freedom. Thomas Jefferson faced the choices when the Library of Congress had burned and the Capital was under siege. To remain in the world is to choose your gods: 1) the gods our forefathers worshiped across the water before you got to the promised land; 2) the local gods of prosperity; 3) the Lord God who has led you to this point in your history.

At a critical juncture in his life, King Solomon had a dream. God appeared to him and said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." What an opportunity. What a choice. There were no exceptions. "Ask me anything and I will give it to you." Solomon did not ask for wealth and gold and silver. That was unusual because the ancient world put great stock in gold and silver. They covered their ceilings with gold, ate from golden plates, slept on golden couches and quaffed wine from golden goblets. Yet, Solomon did not ask for gold.

Neither did he ask for vengeance on his enemies. That was also unusual. Ancient coronations began with the music of massacres. Neither did Solomon ask for victory in battles or world reknown. He did not ask for a long life. A long life was just as treasured then as it is today.

This is what Solomon asked for that night: "Give your servant, O God, an understanding heart that I may discern between good and bad. Help me to make the right choices."

You and I, if we claim the title "Christian," have chosen among the many religious ancestors in the world to follow the Christ child born in Bethlehem as the path toward home. Inherent in that choice of a western religion is the awesome fact that this makes us accessories before the fact of our society's religious future.