Christmas Eve 2009

12/24/09
Christmas Eve 2009
Hudson UMC

In our modern American culture, when we think about Jesus, we often have warm and fuzzy feelings of love. When we think about Jesus being born, we think about getting together with our families and sharing gifts with one another. What we may not think about is that God, by being born in our midst as the man Jesus, was throwing down the gauntlet before a hostile world. We think of Jesus as the Prince of Peace and so we have a hard time grasping that the birth of Christ could cause any strife at all.

When Jesus was presented at the Temple, there was a man named Simeon who loved God and was waiting for the promised Messiah. God had promised Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Christ. When Jesus arrived at the Temple, Simeon was there to welcome him. As he held the eight-day old baby, he said some things that sound odd in our modern Western ears. He didn’t say, “This child is destined for the salvation of the world,” or “This child is destined to save us from our sins,” but said, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

If we were to say that Jesus was a sign that will be opposed to someone a century or two ago, they would have thought we were crazy. After all, everyone is a Christian, right? The people were going to church, they looked to Jesus for their example, other religions were poorly represented at best, and even the laws were supposedly informed by the Gospel. How could we say that Jesus was a sign that will be opposed? And yet, as time continues to march on and people begin to flock away from the church, we might be getting to a season where we are willing to consider that Jesus is truly widely opposed.

In fact, when we look back through time, we see that there is an entire history of opposition to the work of God. In the Old Testament, we find that the prophets are often opposed by the people. Even Moses himself, who had the most universal support of the people of any prophet, had to deal with opposition, even from his own brother and sister. In fact, the more the prophet represented God to the people, the more they hated them. The prophets would not let them live like the other nations, they would not let them do things how they have always done them. Prophets were always meddling with the people and that is why the people didn’t like them. But the meddling was not their own, it was God’s. The people were not really reacting to the prophets themselves, but the God who sent them. It was God who was meddling, who would not let them do whatever they wanted. In the people’s opposition to the prophets in ancient Israel, we see their opposition to God.

The prophets were abused more and more until God sent His own Son. Here, we finally had God Himself giving His message to the people. Now, God was not just meddling through a prophet; He was doing it Himself. Even as a helpless baby, who had not yet done anything to annoy the people, Jesus was opposed. Our reading from Matthew told the story of Herod who was so upset at the idea that God’s appointed ruler had been born that he had all the boys in the Bethlehem area murdered. He knew that Simeon was right. Jesus was destined for the rising and falling of many in Israel. Those who were poor and helpless and needy would be raised up in Jesus and those who were rich, powerful and tyrannical would be brought down. God in flesh, even as a tiny baby, was considered enough of a threat to drive Herod to take terrible action.

This opposition did not stop when Jesus grew up. In fact, it amplified. Everywhere He went, people followed Him but many people opposed Him. They criticized everything He did, claimed He was possessed by demons, even plotted to kill Him. In the man Jesus, the hatred that humanity has toward God, the hatred that God would claim to be lord over their lives, the jealous anger that wants the power of God for itself, climbed to its highest pitch. The people, especially the religious people, wanted to get rid of Jesus because He stood over and against them and exposed their deepest thoughts, just like Simeon said He would. He showed them that, despite the show they liked to put on for others, they were not really as good as they thought they were. It is a sobering thought that when God came into our world as a human being and presented Himself to us as a human being, we did not welcome Him with open arms, but spread His arms apart and held them there with nails.

We might think that, once humanity had crucified the Son of God, that would be the end of the hostility, but that is not how it worked out. Though Christ was dead, He rose from the grave, ascended to heaven and poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church at Pentecost. Now, instead of having one person walking around proclaiming the word of God, you had a core of twelve people, with thousands more joining every day, who were living with the Spirit of Christ in them, challenging society and the leaders. Though the earliest Christians, and especially the apostles themselves, were giving themselves in love to the least the last and the lost, many of them were persecuted and killed by the people they were trying to help. Though Jesus was no longer physically present, He was still the sign that was opposed.

In fact, if you look through the history of the church, you almost always find that, when a group of people become passionate about Jesus and want to help renew the church, they are opposed by those who are already in power. Once again, Jesus is the sign that is opposed because He stands against our manmade power structures. Even the Methodists in the early days were beaten for their faith and hated by the establishment. Even centuries after the man Jesus actually walked on the earth, He has managed to infuriate people because He still claims absolute authority over humanity.

Whether we always notice it or not, the pattern is continuing even today. Even moderate Christians who are committed to their faith are often criticized by the culture. The more excited someone gets about the fact that our God loves us so much that He has been willing even to come among us in all the weakness of humanity, taking our brokenness and pain upon Himself and even going through the horror of death for us, the more their friends and families think they’ve gone off the deep end. It is happening throughout the world and it is happening even in Iowa.

And yet, though each of us, at one point of our lives or another, have opposed Christ, we have not been abandoned. Even if you are still in opposition to Christ tonight, you have not been abandoned. You see, God never moves in our midst and in our lives because we have it all together. If He waited until we had all the answers for ourselves, He would never move at all. God has not done what He has done because we are so good, but simply because He loves us. Why does He love us? There is no answer. We can come up with a million reasons why God should not love us and not even one really good reason that He should, and yet He loves us anyway.

Human beings have always been against God, because God insists that we live His way, but that resistance, that rebellion, has not stopped the incredible love of God that we see in Jesus. The apostle Paul declares the good news to us. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” When we were dead in our sins, when we had never given God the time of day, when we harbored nothing but hatred for God, God did not return our hatred to us. He took our hate and turned it into a manifestation of His love for us. The worst that we can throw at God does not, can not, has not stopped Him from loving us so much that He died for us.

If you are a sinner tonight, know that Christ was born for you. He took your brokenness and weakness onto Himself and took it to the cross so that you might have eternal life, starting now. Even if you have never done a single good deed in your life, God is calling out to you to receive Him tonight. If you are a saint tonight, know that the only reason you are is because God loves you. Even if you’ve been walking with God for years and you do all kinds of good things, living like a Christian should, remember that a saint is nothing more than a sinner who knows their sin, grieves over it and trusts, not in their own ability to do more good than bad, but only in Christ’s love and mercy.

Regardless of who you are tonight, we are gathered to celebrate the single greatest event in all of history. The God of the universe, the one who created everything there is, who has created each and every one of us, has become a creature and lived among us. God has taken our brokenness and shortcoming and taken it upon Himself, empowering us to really be the children of God. What is more, He has done this without us doing anything first. God has made the first move, God has done the work, God has sent His Spirit into our hearts. Let us rejoice and live as the people of God, knowing that, since we follow Jesus, we will be opposed, but knowing that God transforms even our opposition into the force that binds us to Him all the more closely. Let us give our praises to the God who can save even us. Let us pray.

AMEN