(Note: This is the text from the meditation shared at our Christmas Eve service. You can find the video of that service here: https://youtu.be/PCIT75HQFAk)*
As unusual as this evening has been, we attempted to make it as normal as possible under the restrictions and our desire to keep one another safe during this global pandemic. I want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to email us and tell us that you were coming so that we could light a candle in our sanctuary for you. And I want to thank everyone who volunteered to help with our Advent wreath, or read one of our scripture for this evening, music team and our choir who sang extra songs, the volunteers that set up all our luminaries, or to recorded themselves lighting a candle, or for any of the other things that were needed to record, assemble, and edit this Christmas Eve service. I especially want to thank Bob Wallace for his herculean efforts at video editing. As much effort as it was to record dozens of short, socially distanced video clips, it was a gigantic task to assemble those short videos into one, understandable whole.
But beyond the thank-yous of the evening, is the importance of the message. As we have come together in this virtual gathering for Christmas Eve, I hope that you will all remember that the message of the angels was that they had brought “Good News of great joy for all the people.” The Shepherds watching their flocks were blinded by a great light and heavenly choirs announcing the arrival of the light of the world.
That’s why we came tonight to sing songs of celebration. And that’s why we lit candles and passed them, as much as possible, from one to another.
The light of the world has come.
But the light of the world didn’t come into the world so that we could read about it in a book. That light was the Good News, indeed, good news of great joy. And that good news was shared by the shepherds in the field, and the wise men who visited, and by everyone who had heard the story. That good news was shared, from one person to another, until, two thousand years later, someone shared it with you.
The light of the world has come.
And that light isn’t just something that we read about in a book. That light goes out into the world this evening. You carry that light. You carry that good news. The message of Christmas is that just as the light has been passed from one generation to another, and just as it was given to you, you must pass that light forward to the next person, and to the next generation, just as the flame of the candles was passed from one person to another.
The light of the world has come.
We have come here tonight, and we have heard Good News of great joy that is for all the people.
Let us go out from this place and share that good news with the rest of the world.
Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.
*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.
If we’ve learned anything from this pandemic, and from the last couple of decades of our national politics, it should be an overdeveloped sense of skepticism. I once had an engineering co-worker say that if our management said that the sky was blue, he would have to look out the window to check. And lately, that describes how many of us are consuming the news about both the coronavirus and politics. As Ronald Reagan once told Mikhail Gorbachev as they negotiated a new nuclear drawdown, “Trust, but verified.” If you think about it, our suspicions aren’t limited to politics and pandemics. You have probably noticed that many of our non-church friends view the stories of scripture with that same sort of skepticism. And, if we’re honest, even as believers, some of those stories strain our ability to believe them. But we aren’t alone. The stories of scripture remind us that the main characters of the story often wondered how such things were possible. And as our first example, let’s begin with a story found in 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, where we find King David having just completed his ascent to power as the king of a united twelve tribes if Israel, and the construction of his new palace in Jerusalem.
7:1 After the king was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”
3 Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.”
4 But that night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying:
5 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? 6 I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. 7 Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’
8 “Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. 9 I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth. 10 And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning 11 and have done ever since the time I appointed leadersover my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.
“‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you:
16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”
David rests from his warfare with Israel’s neighbors, from his political battles, and from his palace construction project, and how his attention turns to the idea of building a temple for the God of Israel. But God denies his request, vetoes his idea, and says that David is not the man for the job. But, rather than allowing this to be a discouraging word, God continues by reassuring David of his love for him and makes him an impossible promise for the future. God promises David that his kingdom will endure forever, and his throne will be established before God… forever.
And, although it doesn’t say so, and although we know that David was a great man of faith, and we know that David trusted God and was a man after God’s own heart, we also know that David was not naïve. David had been around the block more than once. He had been a part of King Saul’s inner circle and then fled for his life after Saul turned on him and sent his entire army into the countryside to hunt him. He had lived for a time as an advisor to the king of one of Israel’s neighbors, he had been betrayed by his friends, by his wife, and would later be betrayed by his own son. David understood that kingdoms do not last forever. And so, it isn’t difficult to imagine that even though David trusted God to keep his promise, he had to be wondering…
… “How can this be?”
And the same thing is true at the beginning of the Christmas story. In Luke 1:26-38, God sends the angel Gabriel to tell Mary that she would be the one whom God had selected to be the mother of the messiah that would fulfill God’s promise to David, as well as many of the prophecies of the Old Testament. Luke says…
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the holy one to be born will be calledthe Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
God specifically selects Mary to be the mother of Jesus because of her great faith. But even so, when she is told that she will bear a child, and she has never been with a man, she wonders aloud, “How can this be?” And I suspect that even after Gabriel’s explanation, Mary still didn’t really understand how a woman could have a baby without a man, but she trusted that God could find a way.
And that sense of wonder, and of faith, continues in the amazing works of God today. In Romans 16:25-27, Paul says this:
25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes fromfaith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
What Paul is saying, is that God is the one who can do things. God was the one who could create a reality in which one of David’s descendants, Jesus, would rule over Israel, and over all the world, forever. God was the one who could make a way for a virgin to have a baby and carry the creator of the universe, and the hope of the world, in her womb in the form a tiny baby human and, at the same time, fulfill hundreds of ancient prophecies and promises that he had made to his people. And that same God is able to draw us toward him, to bring us to a relationship with him, and to establish us in faith and trust as he did with David, and with Mary, with the disciples, with Paul, and with countless others who now gather as a great cloud of witnesses to the unfolding of history. As difficult as it is to believe, and as often as we ourselves might ask, “How can this be?” God is the one who is able to reveal the truth and to unveil the mysteries of the Old Testament, to rescue all of humanity, and to give strength to his people as they struggle through the twenty-first century. But as he always has, God does these tings so that all the Gentiles, all the people of the world, everyone, might come to faith and obedience to the God of creation and to his son Jesus Christ.
The answers to our question of “How can this be?”, is the same as it has always been, “Because God is able,” and “Because God cares for you,” and “Because of God’s great love for all people.”
Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.
U*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.
Certainly, current events will give us much to complain about and mourn over for years to come, but we also get glimpses of the occasional silver lining in our ongoing battle with the coronavirus. Certainly, among these are an array of new medical technologies that have been brought to bear as our doctors and scientists seek new medications and new life-saving treatments, as well as new technology that has allowed us to develop multiple vaccines in just 18 months when the previous speed record for such an accomplishment was five year long rush program with the Ebola virus that was only recently approved. But another important silver lining may be the attention that our forced lockdown and resulting isolation and seclusion has brought to those among us who suffer from depression, suicidal thoughts, and a variety of other mental illnesses. While isolation is difficult for all of us, it is harder for extroverts, and disastrous for many people who suffer even in ordinary circumstances. And while today’s message isn’t going to solve these difficult mental health issues, perhaps by shining a light, and continuing to raise our awareness of these problems, we can begin to make a difference in the lives of the suffering.
But for the rest of us, as we struggle with our isolation and lack of human contact, many of us, the midst of a pandemic, and the resulting upheaval of everything familiar, which is, of course, piled on top of our normal level of change and upheaval, are wrestling with how can we possibly find… peace. Our minds are constantly pulled in a hundred directions at once, we worry about our employment, we worry about our families, we worry about our health, about our church and other institutions and business that we care about, and in the midst of our whirling, dizzying, wrestling match with fear, worry, depression and despair, we hear the prophet Isaiah calling to us as we prepare for the arrival of the Messiah. In Isaiah 40:1-11 we hear these words, spoken to Israel as their nation, their religion, and everything they knew, faced destruction at the hands of the Assyrian empire.
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. 7 The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”
9 You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” 10 See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. 11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
Even as the disaster they are expecting approaches, God promises to bring comfort after Israel’s hard service was completed and her sin paid for on the day God would send the messiah to rescue them. God declares that people are like grass because we fade, fail, and fall away. Our failure comes because our faithfulness fails and not because God has failed. We know that God never fails, and that God endures forever. And that is why in this dark hour, Israel could find hope in God’s promise to send a messiah that would make the world right again. Like us, Israel looked forward to the day that God would return their world to normal. Best of all, was knowing that God wasn’t doing to do fix things with floods, fires, earthquakes, or destruction, but like a shepherd gathering his flock and carrying his lambs close to his heart.
And, because we get to read their story, we know that after their time of suffering in Babylon, the people of Israel, at least the few that had remained faithful, returned home to rebuild their nation just as God had promised. And much later, in Mark 1:1-8, we hear the story of the coming of God’s promised messiah. As Mark writes:
1:1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”— 3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you withwater, but he will baptize you withthe Holy Spirit.”
Echoing Isaiah’s message, John the Baptist preaches a message of baptism, repentance, and a return to faithfulness. And this time, the people are ready, and Israel answers John’s call. Mark says that the entire city of Jerusalem, and the whole Judean countryside went out to hear John, confess their sins, and be baptized by a man who spoke like, and dressed like, the ancient prophets. Of course, we understand that Mark is exaggerating. We know that the entire city of Jerusalem and the entire countryside of Judea did not go out to hear John preach and to be baptized, but the numbers must have been so large, that it seemed as if everyone was going. And we can certainly understand that so many people went to hear John that almost everyone must have known someone who had done so. But even though the people came, and even though John looked, dressed, and acted like a prophet, John’s message is that the people must be prepared for imminent arrival of messiah that God had promised.
God’s redeemer had arrived, and in the middle of an enemy occupation, and their struggles with Rome, the people were reminded of God’s words that they had heard from the prophet Isaiah, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed.”
But then what? Two thousand years have passed between them and us, between then and now. What can those two-thousand-year-old words have to tell us during a modern pandemic? But that isn’t a new question. The church has been asking that question from the beginning and Peter wrote to his church friends and explained it this way (2 Peter 3:8-15a):
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.
Peter wants the church to remember that God hasn’t forgotten us. What seems like a frightfully long time to us, is not a long time to God. Rather than hurrying, God is being patient and giving people time for a second chance. We are reminded that Christ’s return, and his judgement, are still unpredictable and may come at any time, like a thief in the night. As such, we must be prepared for his arrival by living godly lives, to watch, and look forward to his coming. On that day, everything physical will be destroyed but we are more than physical. What is physical will be destroyed, but what is spiritual will remain. It is for this reason that we must do everything that we can to be as blameless and perfect as we possibly can. On that day we will see a new heaven and a new earth, where everything will be right once again. Finally, the world will return to normal, and we will live in peace with one another the way that God intended. And it is for this reason that we look forward with hope.
God’s promise, given through the prophet Isaiah, to the people of Israel came eight hundred years before the arrival of Jesus in Bethlehem. And, since then, we have waited another two thousand years. But God’s promises remain. The people of Israel held on to God’s promises as they endured the loss of their homeland, the loss of their freedom, and the loss of God’s temple and their freedom to worship. But God kept his promise and many people returned to Israel and rebuilt it. As we endure a pandemic and wrestle with our feelings of separation, fear, depression, worry, and despair, we too hold on to the promises of God. As we celebrate Advent, we are especially reminded of God’s promise of redemption and rescue and we look forward to celebrating his arrival both at Christmas and upon his return someday in the future. God’s promises are not just something that we read about in the distant past, but an ever present, immovable rock upon which we build our lives, safe from the storms that swirl around us. God’ promises are not a thing of the past, but an anchor for our present lives in which we find hope…
Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.
*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.
Pastor Partridge 