Now What?

Now What?

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 27, 2015

Scripture: Luke 2:21-24; Luke 2:25-35

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Christ is born! Thanks be to God! We spent a lot of time over the past few weeks getting ready. You’ve heard me preach about who it is that we’ve been waiting for. Now the waiting is over, and the one we awaited is here. We celebrated his birth last Thursday evening at our Christmas Eve service. I trust that you celebrated his birth on Friday. Jane and I did it with my children and their families on Saturday. Out in the world Christmas is over. The after-Christmas sales are under way, with merchants of all kinds hoping we’ll come and spend money we got as a gift for Christmas on their wares and services. Out in the world Christmas is over, but here in the church it’s just starting. See, on the church calendar Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s a season. It’s not a very long season. It lasts from Christmas Day until January 5, the day before Epiphany. That’s what the twelve days of Christmas are all about, seven days in December and five days in January for twelve days of Christmas. Christmas is a short season, but it is a season not a day. So for us here Christmas isn’t over and won’t be for several days yet.

Christmas isn’t over, but Jesus has gotten himself born. The one we were waiting for has arrived, and what I think is a rather important question has occurred to me as I thought about how I would preach after Christmas now that I can’t preach about waiting any more. That question is: Now what? I suspect that it is a question that occurred to Mary and Joseph too. Mary had given birth to this miraculous child, a child from God in a way no child had ever been before or has ever been since. OK, he’s born. Now what? Of course for Mary her son was a tiny newborn infant. She certainly knew that what was next in her immediate future was raising a new baby, something she’d never done before. Jesus may have been the Son of God, but he was also a little baby boy like other little baby boys. He needed care, teaching, and love just like all human babies do. Raising a baby was the immediate answer for Mary to the question now what.

Yet Luke tells us that she pondered in her heart what the things that had happened to her all meant, so surely she was thinking beyond the immediate matters of how to raise an infant, daunting enough as that can be for any of us. After all, she knew that this was no ordinary baby. She knew that he was her son but that he was also the Son of God. So surely she pondered what that meant. Who would this child become? What would he do? How would the world react to him? What would become of him? Surely these questions occurred to her, and probably many more as well. She didn’t know the answers. Jesus hadn’t lived his life yet. He hadn’t lived into being the Son of God yet. He was just a tiny newborn baby, but he was one that raised so many questions, questions to which Mary had no answer. She didn’t know his life story yet.

She didn’t, but we do. We live after Jesus, not before and with him like Mary did. Mary didn’t know what he would teach, but we do. Mary didn’t know what he would call people to do or how he would call people to be, but we do. She didn’t know how people, both ordinary people and powerful people, would react to him, but we do. She didn’t know how he would die, but we do. She didn’t know what, if anything, his death would mean, but we do. She didn’t know that he would rise from death and conquer death for everyone, but we do. On that first Christmas night Mary didn’t have the information she would need to know what it would mean not just to be Jesus’ mother but to know what it would mean to follow him. She didn’t, but we do.

Mary perhaps didn’t need excuses, but she was entitled to plenty of them for not knowing Jesus and not following him. He had after all just been born. Not so with us. We have no excuses. Yes, we have God’s grace; and I don’t believe that God condemns us when we fail to follow Jesus fully. At least, I certainly hope and pray that God doesn’t condemn us for our failings as disciples because I need God’s forbearance on that account as much as anyone else. Now, I certainly can’t give you everything that I think what we know about Jesus that Mary didn’t on that first day of her son’s birth means; but I want here to suggest what I think are at least some of the more important things that the story of Jesus that we know and Mary didn’t means for us.

Just some of the things, and while I’m no kind of poet myself, it sometimes strikes me how the poets can say important things more succinctly and more powerfully than I can. Howard Thurman is one of our great American writers and preachers. He was also a poet. Yesterday someone put some lines of his on Facebook that fit this sermon perfectly. Sometimes grace happens. Here they are:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.

I would change his words to say “bring peace among brothers and sisters,” but otherwise these are powerful and meaningful words. They tell us that the work of Christmas begins when Christmas ends. What is the work of Christmas? Thurman suggests that it consists of several things. It consists first of all the work of making people whole. Find the lost and heal the broken, he says. Our world is so full of lost and broken people. People who despair of having a decent life. People who can’t find any meaning in their lives. People who are discovering that material success and wealth bring not wholeness but emptiness when there’s nothing more to life than them. The work of Christmas is to be there for them. To find them. To help them find the wholeness that the faith of Jesus Christ can bring and the meaning that Christians find in following Jesus. That is the work of Christmas.

Then Thurman tells us that the work of Christmas is the work of charity and social justice. To feed the hungry, to release the wrongly imprisoned. I’d add to house the homeless and bring medical care to those without it. To provide meaningful work to those who can’t find it. To challenge and remake systems that produce poverty and want. That too is the work of Christmas.

Then Thurman tells us that the work of Christmas is the work of peace. To rebuild the nations, he says. Now, that doesn’t mean send in the Marines to engage in forced nation building. Surely we know by now that that usually doesn’t bring peace but only chaos and more violence. It means that those of us in nations with means must help the people of broken nations find their own way to peace, security, and wellbeing. That is the work of Christmas. So is helping to bring peace to people in their personal lives. For us pastors and I think for all church people that means be there to listen, support, and encourage. Perhaps for churches it means being places of mediation and reconciliation. That too is the work of Christmas.

Finally Thurman says that the work of Christmas is “to make music in the heart.” To me that means to live life in the Spirit more than life in the world. To tend to our spiritual lives more than to our physical ones. To be people of faith, people who trust God and Jesus Christ to save, heal, and lead us to the spiritually abundant life that Christ was born to bring us. If we can do that, then our hearts will sing indeed. Our hearts will sing the songs of peace and good will for all people. Then our hearts will sing songs of hope and joy in the presence of God. That surely is the work of Christmas too.

Christ is born. The great gift that we anticipated has come. Now the work of Christmas begins. It is work that never ends. It is the work of a lifetime not of a moment, but here’s the good news. Jesus Christ is with us when we do that work. He is there leading us, encouraging us, prodding us. He’s there to lift our spirits when they sag. He’s there to give us a push when get lazy. He’s there to lift us up when we fall. He’s there to bless our efforts and forgive our failings. Christ is born. Thanks be to God. Now the work begins. Shall we get on with it together? May it be so. Amen.