THIS PASTOR’S VIEWPOINT
John H. Bigelow
For the week of December 26, 2010

Both our son John and daughter Leslie were athletic competitors in high school. Leslie was in track as both a runner and hurdler and John was a hard hitting tennis player. They both learned the need, not only for endurance but also for staying focused. You can’t look around when you’re running down the track and it goes without saying you don’t take your eyes off a tennis ball in play.

Endurance is something that is gained through constant effort and willful determination. You don’t just get up one morning and announce you’re going to run 25 miles. It takes a lot of dedicated practice and building up of both body and mind to acquire the necessary endurance to “stay the course."

The writer of Hebrews really caught my attention in Chapter 12:1b-2a(NLT) with these words, “… let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.” I can understand exactly what the author is saying and in looking at the history of God’s people it needs to be said.

This year, as I’ve have read through the entire Bible, I’ve saw, time after time, what happened when his people took their eyes off the Lord and focused, for however briefly, upon an idol. They stumbled and fell, missed the ball completely, and often suffered much more than just loosing the game.

If, as Christians, we are determined to live our lives in and through Jesus, then it is imperative that we remain focused in that endeavor and practice, determinedly, the values of Christian living that Christ demonstrated for us.

I can think of no more appropriate words with which to end this year and begin a new year of Christian service than “let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us…by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends.”



My Message for this week
Consider the Christ
Text: Luke 2:1-20

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. 8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. 21 On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.

They are not wealthy people, the man, some years older than the woman is a carpenter by trade and the woman, who is engaged to him, is really only a teenager…a young teen at that.

Today their faces can be seen on the evening news most any night or in a photograph on the cover of Time or Newsweek. For this journey Mary and Joseph are without a home or shelter, much like those refugees we are so accustomed to seeing in the news. It is winter, it is cold and Mary is due to give birth at any moment, but still they go for it was decreed.

They make their way to Bethlehem where they must register and find that the tiny inn is full, there is no room. Was it a cruel innkeeper who turned them away? No, it was a kindly innkeeper who offered them shelter in the stable.

So there, in a lowly stable, not much more than a cave under the inn Mary and Joseph found shelter, and there it was that God decided to reveal himself to all humankind. The question is, “If Jesus came to reveal God to us, then what do I learn about God from that first Christmas?
Four words come to mind for us to ponder. HUMBLE….. APPROACHABLE….
UNDERDOG …… and COURAGEOUS. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Before Jesus almost no pagan author used “humble” as a compliment, yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor in a devouring fire..

HUMBLE. Unimaginably the Maker of all things shrank down…down…down…so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and re-divide until a fetus took shape --- enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager.

“Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” marveled the poet John Donne. “He made himself nothing, he humbled himself,” said the apostle Paul more prosaically. The God who showed up that first Christmas came in an unexpected glory, the glory of humility. “ ‘God is great,’ the cry of the Muslims, is a truth which needed a supernatural being to teach men,” writes Father Neville Figgis. “ That God is little, that is the truth which Jesus taught man.”

This is the God who emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder. It is a God who depended on a teenager for shelter, food, and love.

When Queen Elizabeth II visited this country some years ago the reporters delighted in spelling out the logistics involved: her 4000 pounds of luggage including two suits for every occasion … a mourning outfit in case someone died…40 pints of plasma….and white kid toilet seat covers.

She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a host of other attendants. A brief visit of royalty to a foreign country can easily cost twenty million dollars…..

In meek contrast, God’s visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough.

APPROACHABLE. Those of us raised in a tradition of informal or private prayer may not appreciate the change that Jesus wrought in how human beings approach deity.

Hindus offer sacrifices at the temple. Kneeling Muslims bow down so low that their foreheads touch the ground. In most religious traditions, in fact, FEAR is the primary emotion when one approaches God.

But among the people who walled off a separate sanctum for God in the temple and shrank from pronouncing or spelling out the name, God made a surprise appearance in a manger. What can be less scary than a newborn with his limbs wrapped tight against his body? In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear. To illustrate this the first people invited to visit Jesus were lowly shepherds from the fields. Our God is certainly approachable.

UNDERDOG. Such a crude word, probably derived from dog fighting and applied over time to predictable losers and victims of injustice. Yet as we read the birth stories about Jesus we cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

Even the family’s mother-tongue summoned up memories of their underdog status: Jesus spoke Aramaic, a trade language closely related to Arabic, a stinging reminder of the Jews’ subjection to foreign countries. Since God arranged the circumstances in which to be born on planet earth – without power or wealth, without rights, without justice – his preferential options speak for themselves.

COURAGEOUS: It took courage to risk descent to a planet known for its clumsy violence, among a race known for rejecting its prophets. What more foolhardy thing could God have done? The first night in Bethlehem required courage as well. How did God the Father feel that night, helpless as any human father, watching his Son emerge smeared with blood to face a harsh, cold world?

Lines from two different Christmas carols come to mind. First, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes,” seems to me a sanitized version of what took place in Bethlehem. I imagine Jesus cried like any other baby the night he entered the world, a world that would give him so much reason to cry as an adult.

The second, a line from “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” seems as profoundly true today as it did two thousand years ago: “The hopes and fears of all the years do rest on thee tonight.”

“Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator,” said G.K. Chesterton. The need for such courage began with Jesus’ first night on earth and did not end until his last.

Amen.

Peace and God’s blessings to you all from Pennsylvania.
Pastor John