WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 12/24/05 Christmas Eve

Luke 2:10-14 “God’s Gifts”

The Pastor seemed lonely, so a very kind and Christian family invited him for Christmas dinner. As he sat in the parlor with their 8 year old son, he asked “Do you know what we are having for dinner?” “Goat,” said the boy. “Goat? Are you sure?” asked the pastor. “Oh yes,” the boy said, “I heard my mother say ‘We’d better have the old goat for Christmas’.”

Christmas is a time for being together for being kind, for giving gifts – even to those who do not deserve them!

What do you want for Christmas? In our family, there is a clear division. Our sons never have any problem producing a list of gifts they want – almost all electronic; the latest iPod, or a game box, a new digital camera, a new cell phone! But for those of us over a certain youthful age, the wants become more ephemeral. We already have more than enough “stuff” - although that doesn’t stop us carrying home prizes from the Thrift Store every time we visit! But what we really want are things you can’t get in stores or online, at any price: health, strength, peace of mind, contentment, hope, security, love – happiness, even. Especially at Christmas, we long for a sense of well-being, of being right with ourselves, with other people, with the world, with God. How can we get these things?

Well, there is good news! If you read carefully what the angels told the shepherds, you discover that the birth of Jesus brought to them, and can still to bring us, the things we really want. God has given us the gifts at Christmas that we most need, and they are wrapped up in the coming of the baby who was named Jesus.

1) Good News of Great Joy

The first of these is joy. The angel calms the frightened shepherds: “Do not be afraid, I bring good news for you and all the people of Israel.” “Good news,” “glad tidings,” “the gospel” – what is it? That “today in Bethlehem is born to you a Savior; he is Christ the Lord.” The good news is that Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, has come; the good news is that the Savior of the world has arrived. The good news should lift shepherds and other ordinary folk like you and me out of fear, out of anxiety, out of despair. The Savior we need to rescue us has come. Of course, we don’t always think that we need to be redeemed, that we need a Savior. At times, we think we are just in a slump that we can “snap out of,” just in a small pit that we will soon climb out of. At times, we fool ourselves into thinking we are basically “ok” and that it’s only the rest of the world – other people – who are messed up.

But in our clearer moments, when the light of God’s truth shines in, we know that we are in a mess, inside and out; that we have done what we ought not to have done, that we have left undone very many good things that we ought to have done, and that by God’s standards, we are black sheep, lost sheep. We need forgiveness, and we need rescue; and in many cases we need first the gift of repentance – the light of God to shine on us and show us who we truly are, and to move us to turn towards him in faith. We need to be freed from the troubles of a fallen world to which we ourselves contribute so frequently. We need to re-learn that our messed up relationships, our alienated families, our antagonistic workplaces, our divided communities, our polarized country, our warring nations, all stem from our basic alienation from the God who is the source of all that is good and right and true.

The good news of Christmas is that redemption is possible: that it has arrived in the person of Jesus the Savior. If we will admit our need for him, and turn to him in faith and trust and repentance, our wounds and our divisions can be healed, and we can find joy – real joy, lasting joy, even in the middle of a messed up world. This is the gift of God.

2) On Earth Peace

The angels have a second word for the shepherds, and for us: that the glorious God, Creator and Judge of us all, now looks with favor on his fallen and wandering people, and that his Son has come to bring us peace. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” God will now relate to those who have faith in his Son as a Father relates to his children. He has sent his Son to reconcile us to him, to bridge the gap between us; our alienation is dealt with if we put our trust in the Savior he has sent. If we have faith in Jesus Christ, we have peace with God – and that can be the start of our finding peace with each other.

And we need it. Our families, our churches, our community, our nation, are too often divided, warring, anything but peaceful. Who does not want better and more peaceful interactions with all the members of our families? Well, perhaps your family is perfect? Never a cross word, nobody at odds, nobody who is not speaking, nobody who wants to avoid family gatherings? For you, the holidays are all peace and joy? Well - we hope you have a very large turkey, because tomorrow we will all be coming to your house...! But if your family is not perfect, but just average, you know that peace among all its members would be a great blessing.

Peace in our community would be a blessing: an end to the endless fights over school budgets and school boards, an end to the endless political divisions that render our town governments at times almost useless. Peace in the City between management and workers would have been a blessing to millions this week. Peace in our nation could release the huge potential for good that is now locked up in partisan disputes and political posturing. Peace would bring young men and women home from Iraq and Afghanistan and so many other places, and bring good government and a hopeful future to tens of millions who have known very little of it in the past.

Our world, and we ourselves, are so short of peace that only an intervention of God can produce it. We all need to experience the “peace of God that transcends human understanding.” This is what the OT calls “shalom,” the wholeness, the integrity, the rightness, the harmony of life lived in the presence of God and of other people in the way it was meant to be. The angels tell us that “the Prince of Peace” has come, and those who receive him and believe in him can receive the gift of God’s wholeness, God’s “shalom,” God’s peace. If you know in your heart how you long for and need God’s peace this Christmas, then turn to him and ask him to make it grow up within you, and then overflow into the lives of other people, so that peace spreads out in a circle of renewed relationships that starts with you.

3) This Is Love

There is one final gift of God that lies behind all the others: his love. The Scriptures tell us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The coming of Jesus was and is God’s gift of love to us; “this is how God showed his love... He sent his one and only Son into the world, that we might live through him... this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Christmas - and Easter – are about God’s love for us, and how he gave us what we need – even if we did not know it.

Christmas is about the love of God reaching down to touch lonely, longing hearts; about renewing us on the inside when we turn to him in faith and trust. Christmas is when we know that God loves us, because he gave us his Son. Christmas is good news for people who know that what we really need can’t be wrapped in shiny paper or left under a tree: that the dearest desires of our hearts – for love, joy, peace – lie deep within us because we still carry the dimmed and scarred image of the God who made us, and we are restless creatures until we find our rest and peace and joy in him.

Amid all the hurry and bustle of the holidays, amid all the nostalgia for half-remembered Christmases of our childhood, amid all the quiet disappointments and the moments of loneliness, I wish for you – I pray for you, and for myself and for my family – the love, joy and peace that Jesus Christ came to bring.

May this Christmas bring us to kneel before Jesus and admit that we need redemption from our sins and weaknesses, from our anger and our self-centeredness, from our greed and our indifference, from our fears and our anxieties. May we find in Jesus’ coming the gifts that we truly need, and then become ourselves gifts to the people we live among.

Let us pray...