God with Us...Always
God with Us…Always by Rev. L. John Gable
December 20, 2020
If I were to ask you, “When is Christmas?”, your obvious and immediate answer would be December 25, as it is every year, as it has been since the 4th century during the reign of the Emperor Constantine, unless of course you are one of those who celebrates the tradition of the 12 days of Christmas, from the Christmas Day to the Day of Epiphany, this year on Wednesday, January 6th, the day marking the arrival of the Magi who came to worship the new born King.
Most of us, however, usually think of Christmas as being a day, or at best a season, when we celebrate God’s great gift to us in the birth of Jesus, but of course, this Covid year of 2020 has been anything but usual and it has challenged every one of our traditions, as it did our celebration of Holy Week and Easter last April. Who could ever have imagined? This pandemic has caused confusion everywhere. If I were to say that Christmas is five days away some of you would think I am stating the obvious and others of you would be startled that it has come upon us so soon. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I lose track of what month it is, much less what day of the month. I chalk that up to what some are calling “covid brain”. Having lost so many of our daily routines we can also lose a sense of time and place.
So many of the traditions that mark the season and help us keep track of the time are missing: Christmas parties and pageants, gatherings with neighbors and friends, coordinating calendars with family members who are coming and going, trying to figure out where they are going to sleep and how long they are going to stay. My mom used to teasingly say to us, “Love to see you come and love to see you go,” at least I think she was teasing. But the timing of it all is way off when schools have been virtual, college kids are home and aren’t quite sure when they are going back, or when shopping this year has been reduced to an Amazon click or dropping a check in the mail to a grandchild you won’t be seeing rather than making countless trips to the mall as in years past.
There is so much about Christmas 2020 that is different than it has been before, not to mention our virtual worship throughout Advent, the season in the church year we use to prepare ourselves for Christmas, and now virtual Christmas Eve services as well. A year to remember, and hopefully never to repeat again, to be sure.
But what if we didn’t think of Christmas as being just a single day that we spend weeks and months planning and preparing for, which even in the best of years always seems to pass too quickly anyway?. And what if Advent was something more than a designated five week season in the Christian calendar set apart for our waiting and watching, our praying and preparing for the coming of our Lord, but rather was the way we designed to live our lives each and every day, in each and every season of our lives? Perhaps that would take out some of the sting of disappointment many are feeling this year. What if we came to think of Christmas not as a day but as a way of life?
One day Lucy walked up to Charlie Brown and said, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. Since it’s this time of the season, I think we ought to bury past differences and try to be kind.” Charlie Brown asks, “Why does it have to be only this time of the season? Why can’t it be all year long?” To which Lucy responds, rather dumb-foundedly, “What are you, some kind of fanatic?” Call us crazy but what if we came to see what we commonly call Christmas, December 25th, not as a day alone, but as a new way of doing life; not as the end point of our planning and preparing, but as the beginning, the starting point, of something new?
Listen again to the testimony of Scripture. Centuries before the birth of our Lord the prophets spoke clearly of the coming of the Messiah. “Look, a virgin is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them the light has shined. For a child has been born to us, a son is given” (Isaiah 9:1-2,6). “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth one who is to rule Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient of days” (Micah 5:2).
For centuries, people of faith, like us, waited and watched and prayed for the coming of the promised Messiah. Then “in the fullness of time”, this child was born and we know the story: of Mary and Joseph, of angel visitations and heavenly choruses, of shepherds and mangers and Magi and a star. Centuries of hopeful waiting and watching and praying led to the little town of Bethlehem and the humble birth of the Christ Child. But did this long-expected, much anticipated, Holy Birth mark the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? The angels returned to heaven, the shepherds to their sheep, the Magi presented their gifts then went back home and that first Christmas was over. After centuries of waiting and watching and preparing, then what? Is that all Christmas was for them then, or is for us now, a great build up for a single day, a special event, that then suddenly is over and done with? Have we reduced this life-changing, world changing event to a single day, wedged between all the others, that when it is over, we simply clean up the mess, put away the ornaments and start the timer again in preparation for next year, same time, same place, same station?
No, that is not what Christmas was for them then, nor what it should be for us now. Our celebration of this season is not the beginning of the end, it is the end of the beginning. This birth is the fulfillment of centuries of the faithful’s waiting and watching and hoping and praying; as we sing, “the hopes and dreams of all the years are met in Thee tonight”, in the birth of our Lord, for this birth marks a new beginning for each and every one of us.
The season of Advent reminds us not simply to look back to what God has done in the past, but also to open our eyes to see what God is doing in and around us right now, and then to look forward in hopeful anticipation to what He is yet to do in the future in His coming again. While His first coming and His second seem so different and distinct to us, yet in the economy of God they are but one event. Christ has come and Christ will come again, so our waiting and watching, our praying and preparing continue even now as our new way of life.
Consider again our two Scripture lessons for this morning, both from the Gospel of Matthew, the first telling of His birth and the second the Great Commission and promise given following His death and resurrection. In the first we are reminded that “He will be called Emmanuel – which means God is with us” and in the second we are given the promise that He will never leave us, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” These passages speak to us of the three comings of Christ: in His birth, in His return, and in His promised presence with us still.
Friends, Christmas is not a day, it is a way of living. As one has written, “Maybe it is no big thing that the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God. But we live in the same kind of irreverent world, working at the same uninspiring jobs: adding up figures, wiping runny noses, selling ships and shoes and sailing wax. And it is the same Savior, whose birth we celebrate once a year, whose story reminds us all year long that God has accepted this very uninspiring and scandalous world and all of us who inhabit it. I lay before you that if shepherds could return glorifying and praising God, so can we.” You see, Christmas is only a day if we make it a day. It is only over if we let it end. The Christmas story reminds us that God is with us, not just for a moment in time or a span of years, not simply for one day in a year, much less one hour a week. The promise of Christmas is that God is with us, now and always.
I love this story which touches at the heart of this great truth. I’m not sure how this came to pass, but in 1994 two American teachers were invited by the Russian Department of Education to come and teach morals and ethics based on Christian principles. They were invited to teach in schools and prisons and businesses, as well as at a large orphanage where over 100 abandoned and abused children were left in the care of a government run program. They tell of their experience in their own words.
“It was nearing the holiday season, so we told them the traditional Christmas story and the children were hearing it for the very first time. We told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem and finding no room in the inn, and how they went to a stable where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. The children and staff sat in amazement as they listened to the story. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word.
“When we finished the story, we gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each was then given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins, which they carefully tore into strips and laid in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel, cut from an old nightgown, were used for the baby’s blanket. And finally, we gave each of them a little doll-like baby cut from tan felt that we had brought from home.”
One of the teachers continues the story. “The orphans were busy assembling their manger as I walked among them to see if they needed my help. All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project. As I looked at what the little boy had made, I was startled to see not one but two babies in the manger. Quickly I called for a translator to ask the boy why there were two babies instead of one.
“Crossing his arms and looking very serious, little Misha began to repeat the Christmas story, word for word, just as he had heard it, until he came to the part where Mary placed the baby Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to ad lib. He said, ‘When Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked if I had a place to stay. I told Him I had no mamma or poppa, so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with Him. But I told Him I couldn’t stay because I didn’t have a gift to give Him like everyone else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, I thought about what I had that I could give Him as a gift. I thought, ‘Maybe if I keep Him warm that would be a good gift’, so I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep You warm will that be a good enough gift?’ And Jesus told me, ‘If you keep Me warm that will be the best gift anybody ever gave Me’, so I got in the manger with Him. Then Jesus looked at me and told me I could stay with Him, for always.’”
“As little Misha finished his story, his eyes filled with tears and he put his hands over his face. He had finally found Someone who would never abandon or abuse him. He had finally found someone who would stay with him, for always.”
Friends, this is the message of Christmas. God’s promise through the ages, which was fulfilled on that first Christmas day when the One for Whom people of faith had waited and watched and prayed, had finally come. But His birth was not the end of the story; it was just the beginning. Whatever disappointments we may feel in this covid year of 2020, let nothing ever diminish the hope and the promise we have been given that in the birth of Jesus God has come to us and continues to be with us, not just for a time, or a season, much less for a day, but for always. Amen.