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The Reason for the Season

Luke 2: 4 – 15

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 25 Dec, 2005

WHAT WOULD the headlines have been in the Jerusalem Star newspaper of 26 December, 4 BC — the day after Jesus was born? The birth of the Messiah? Angels appearing to shepherds? I don’t think so.

Maybe we’d have read about new tax laws — Governments always like to make sure that the rich don’t have to do it hard.

Or we might have read about terrorism. Simon the Zealot, one of Jesus’ followers, had been a terrorist, and perhaps Judas as well. Terrorists were 5c a dozen in those days.

Maybe there’d be something about shepherds causing night–time disturbances.

The birth of Christ barely caused a ripple. It was just another baby born to poor and disreputable parents. Beside things like taxation, things like terrorism, things like law and order, who is interested in the mere birth of a baby?

No one ever expected that this birth might just change history itself.

AN UNNOTICED BIRTH

The Bible warns about despising the day of small things. But we all do it, don’t we?

If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the only people who even noticed this baby born among the jostling crowds in Bethlehem were a few shepherds who heard out in their paddocks that the promised Saviour had come. Not even the wise men were around. They came a lot later when Joseph and Mary had moved from the stable into a house.

The birth was not noticed.

The angels knew, though. They declared the message. They said,

I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

In other words, “Here’s the Messiah: he’s nothing like what you expected.”

But this unexpected Christ is going to make a difference. The angelic choir sings,

LK 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.”

This is a promise of change.

I visited the Great Synagogue in Sydney on one of its open days and someone asked the guide what Jews think of Jesus. She said that he couldn’t be the Messiah because the Messiah will bring peace, and there had been nothing but war since the days of Jesus.

But the angels make it clear This is no promise of universal peace. It’s about peace for those who receive the gift of God’s favour.

EFFECTS OF THE GOSPEL

So what has changed since Jesus came into the world? Did his birth mean anything real?

We divide time by his birth. But what else?

Have you ever been to hospital? The idea of providing special care for the sick and dying; the idea of facilities for people with mental illnesses — those are Christian ideas.

Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan provided a model. Organised care for the sick began in the monasteries. Maybe they could only make people comfortable and provide them with food as they recovered or died. But they took people in when there was no one else to do it. What they began developed into hospices and then into hospitals.

It was a Christian nurse caring for Crimean War soldiers who began the move to modern hospital care — Florence Nightingale.

Can you read? Did you go to school? No — these are not Christian ideas. But Bishop Jan Comenius invented the modern idea of education. When most people thought that education was about forcing children to learn facts and beating them if they didn’t, Comenius taught that children should be encouraged to learn. He published the first picture book for children.

Jesus came as a child. Later, he rebuked his disciples for neglecting children. He said,

Allow the little children to come to me: don't forbid them!

People forget that, in the troubled so–called “Dark Ages”, it was the monasteries that preserved learning and ran schools, and that Christian kings like Alfred and Charlemagne paid Christian scholars to translate, to preserve, to teach. Alfred even learnt Latin and personally translated several important ancient books so that English people could read them.

Do you own slaves? The end of slavery was a Christian idea. St Paul didn’t tell Philemon, the owner of a runaway slave, “Don’t own slaves,” But he did say, “Philemon: you and Onesimus are brothers now; think how this should change your relationship.”

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, campaigned against slavery. In the 1640s, the Quakers decided to disfellowship any Quaker who kept slaves. In the 1750s, John Wesley and the Methodists campaigned to end slavery; early in the 19th Century, it was the staunch Anglican, William Wilberforce whose anti–slavery campaign in Parliament eventually led to the outlawing of slavery throughout the British dominions. It was all a Christian movement. At a time when Muslim traders were supplying slaves across the world, it was Christians who gradually caught the anti–slavery vision and began acting on it.

Have you known anyone in prison? Did they have to depend on friends to bring them food and clothes? Did they have light in their cells?

Jesus declared that his message included liberty for captives. Since the earliest days, Christians visited and cared for prisoners. Once again, prison reform was a Christian thing. The original John Howard – not our Prime Minister, of course – Elizabeth Fry, the Cadburys: they were all Christians. They heard when Jesus declared that his mission was to declare release to the captives, and when he declared God’s judgment on those who do not visit the imprisoned.

Today, we hear about famous people who changed the world, but the fact that they changed the world because of their Christian principles is one of the world’s best–kept secrets. Letters in newspapers say that Christians are of no value to the world. But who remembers the great Christian charities like World Vision, or the impact that Rev Desmond Tutu had on South Africa, or local heroes like Father Chris Riley of Youth off the Streets.

If it were not for people whose lives have been directly transformed by the good news of Jesus, our world would grind to a halt. Evil would rampage across the land. And you don’t have to be a specialist of some kind. As the old song said, “Brighten the corner where you are.” We can all be part of God’s plan to change the world.

GOD’S VULNERABILITY

Jesus said that the touch of his Kingdom is like a pinch of yeast in a drum of flour. At first, you wouldn’t even know it was there, but it would just keep growing and growing.

No one even noticed that Jesus was there, but he was God’s yeast, and his influence is still changing the world.

He came as God putting himself entirely in our hands; he grew as God living among us. He died as God in the hands of evil. And he did it for you and for me.

God could have invaded our rebel world with an army of angels: instead he invaded it as a weak little baby born in a filthy cow shed to penniless parents.

He doesn’t force us to believe. He says, “I’m in your hands: decide as you feel you must.”

One of the devil’s greatest lies is that we have to improve ourselves if we want to be acceptable to God. If there is one Christmas song I detest, it is Santa Claus is coming to town. Its message is that you are acceptable if you are good, that you will receive if you are nice.

The gospel message is this:

God commends his love to us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

THE RESPONSE OF FAITH

What can I do about this amazing grace?

My response has to be repentant faith. God wants the kind of change that pleases him. Don’t try to clean yourself up — you’ll end up cleaning what wasn’t too bad, and neglecting the things God wants to sort out.

A true response to the Christmas message is to give myself to the God who gave all for me. Repentance does that. Faith does that. Repentance says, “I have done wrong; there is something about me that is wrong. I am ready to change however you want me to, Lord.” Faith says, “I don’t have a clue how this will happen; but I trust that God cares and will change me as he sees fit. I know that God did not withhold his only Son — would he ever betray me?”

Christmas begins with a gift — God’s gift to us in Jesus.

God loved the world so much that he gave his only–begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Our best response to Christmas is to give ourselves. God will work miracles with the life I give to him.

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)