St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, December 21, 2008
Finding Jesus – Rev. David Mundy
Luke 1:46-55 Luke 1:26-38
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In difficult economic times we might expect that there will be a growing incidence of theft in our society but the recent news item caught me by surprise.
There has been an alarming increase in the number of stolen baby Jesus’ during the past few weeks, enough to warrant reports in the media in the United States and Great Britain.
Many churches, particularly Roman Catholic churches it seems, put out their large – sometimes larger than life – nativity scenes at this time of year and thieves have been making off with Jesus. It’s interesting that of all the figures available in these creches, it is Jesus who is by far the most common target of the crooks – one might imagine they wouldn’t want the constant reminder of their transgression, although perhaps they feel they can avoid the middleman when they are making their confession.
In the States technology has come to the rescue, or at least hopes to make a difference. A security company has offered surveillance cameras and GPS’s – global positioning devises – to help keep track of Jesus and the supporting cast. So far 70 churches and synagogues have responded to the offer. Now you might wonder why a synagogue would want a GPS since Jews don’t have nativity scenes, but they do have menorahs which are also the subject of theft.
This technological aid has already worked. Thanks to the GPS police in Florida raided an apartment and found a life-size baby Jesus figure worth $1800 laying face down in the middle of the living room. Presumably when the police burst through the door and yelled “everyone on the floor!” Jesus was the first to do what he was told. In two other instances the culprits were caught on security cameras and tracked down.
Is nothing sacred anymore? Although it is tempting to make light of this weird trend, congregations are traumatized when this happens. Years ago, Jesus was stolen from the Roman Catholic church in which I was serving, and after a fruitless search by police the congregation replaced the Holy Infant with one made of concrete to deter future theft – look for a suspect with a hernia! But who wants to be searching for Jesus at this time of year?
Wait a minute . . . aren’t we all searching for Jesus as Christmas draws closer? In actual fact our greatest challenge, even in the church, is not that Jesus may be stolen, but that he gets lost in the shuffle. Even though we pay lip-service to Jesus as “the reason for the season” it’s not all that difficult for our Saviour and Friend, the one we claim to love and who loves us, to disappear in the flurry of activity.
This last Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of Love and it is God’s love in Christ we want to remember and celebrate this morning. As always we are hoping to “find” the Jesus who was born in a manger and died on a cross out of love. Because we haven’t arrived at Christmas quite yet we hear passages that prepare us for the birth of Jesus and this year our readings are from Luke. This means that we get the Mary story rather than the Joseph story which is in Matthew. An angel comes to Mary with a powerful scary message that she will give birth to a child that many are waiting for and looking for. In the King James Version of the bible it says that Mary is “troubled “to begin with – in the New Revised Standard Version it says “perplexed.” Either way this young, very vulnerable, unwed woman is less than thrilled with the news, but she recovers quickly and says that she
In many medieval and renaissance paintings both the angel and Mary are portrayed like royalty, as we can see in this painting by Fra Angelico. I prefer this 19th century depiction of the annunciation by Henry Tanner, which shows the angelic presence as a powerful light and Mary as the perplexed youth we heard about in the gospel.
Have you found Jesus, the Promised One, the embodiment of God’s love? I’m not asking if you have literally found Jesus, like the cops bursting through the apartment door in Florida. I’m not asking the way some churches do, as though he is a sock lost in the dryer. Have you found the Christ who can be at the heart of your faith not only in this season but in every day and in every circumstance?
There are people who are angry because they feel that Jesus has been stolen from us by a politically correct society which is ready and willing to enjoy the season which came into being because of the birth of Christ but seems intent on getting rid of any reminders that he ever existed. There are even the “red-neck” commentators who claim that it is our pluralistic society with all those other religions which has carried Jesus away. Except that every Muslim or Jew or Hindu that I have heard speak or write on the subject says that they respect Christmas as a Christian celebration.
The comedian and talk show host, Ben Stein, is Jewish and he wants people to know that he is not offended by Jesus or anything else about Christmas for that matter”
It doesn't bother me a bit when people say,
"Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or
getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that
we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't
bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection
near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few
hundred yards away.
Maybe we have simply undermined our sense of the deep mystery of these stories from scripture by explaining them away until Jesus has gone MIA – missing in action. Modern science tells us that there are no angels and there are no pregnant virgins. Deal with it!
Yet two theologians of our day who are considered fairly liberal, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have this to say in their book The First Christmas.
That Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God is not a fact to be proven...rather to call Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, Lord and Saviour, as the Christmas stories do, is a confession of commitment, allegiance, and loyalty. To do so means I see in this person the anointed one of God, the decisive disclosure of God...this is what it means to call him Emmanuel and to affirm that Emmanuel has come.
In the end, this commitment and loyalty to Jesus is what really matters when it comes to “finding” him.
The good news is that Jesus can`t be stolen from us by secularism or pluralism if we choose to respond to his love.
Jesus can’t be lost in materialism if we hear his invitation to the gift of simplicity.
Jesus is never missing in action for those who are open to experiencing him in the everyday events of life.
The message of the angel was that Jesus would change the world and Mary “got it.” Our other reading today was first yet it is actually Mary’s response to the news she has received. She sings a song of justice and hope for the world. She understands that the love of God in Christ is not some vague, sentimentality, but vision of a world transformed by new values rooted in the message and person of Christ
What a message! Every single day we are told of the pain and injustice and violence of the human species and we could easily give into despair because of the litany of bad news. We are Good News people, gospel people who understand that the love of God in Christ overcomes evil and darkness and is the source of light and a new way forward.
This Sunday of love can be a renewal of commitment to the Jesus of cradle and cross. Parents, your children will find Jesus because you have found him. Those of us who have grown a little too cozy and comfortable in our faith can wake up to the extraordinary message that God has found us and redeemed us in Christ.
When we find Jesus we turn around and give him away rather than protect him from others. We can actually make a noise about Jesus and let others know that he matters enough to us that when we come together it’s not just for the opportunity to travel down memory lane or to get our annual booster shot of religion. Jesus is life and love for us.
I read recently that a survey discovered that people have identified The Little Drummer Boy as the most obnoxious Christmas song ever, with it’s incessant refrain of pah rum pah pum pum. I thought it might have been Felice Navidad, but it didn’t make it into the top three.
James Buchanan, the editor of the Christian Century magazine offers that this song gives us a rather bizarre picture of newborn baby Jesus trying to sleep in the manger while a little boy pounds on a drum nearby.
He goes on to say that 2000 years after the birth in Bethlehem we are the ones who need to pound the drum so that the world will stop and listen to the story they think they already know, a message of God’s vulnerability, God’s love and God’s presence in the midst of life at its most human.
Jesus can’t be taken from us. And we can find him again, as though for the first time. Thanks be to God!