Ephesians 1: 3–6 15–19
Luke 2: 41–52
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Lord, may we hear your voice in the words spoken in your Name. Amen.
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If I was looking for a sense of the holy last week in the culture
around me, I must have been looking in all the wrong places. For
everyone’s attention had already passed on – way beyond
Christmas – as if the coming of the Light of the World wasn’t
worth dwelling on. And I was troubled by that cultural amnesia,
that cultural incomprehension. For I knew it hadn’t always
been that way.
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Not so many years ago, the Christmas season, the Church’s
celebration of Jesus’ birth on this earth, was something everyone
understood and celebrated. It meant Emmanuel, God with us. It
meant the possibility of new life in Jesus Christ, a hopeful way of
life. For everyone understood if the Son of God had been born in
our midst, then he was accessible to us, and might be walking with us
through anything life might throw at us. And that was cause for
celebration. So, beginning on Christmas day everybody
partied. Everybody celebrated for a full twelve days — with
feasting, games, music, dancing. During that time no one
worked. Everybody played and rejoiced. And the whole
community joined together in wonder – the joyful wonder that
God had come to them in the flesh – and had never left.
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In our day of course, as you and I approach Christmas, we do have a
sense of wonder. For we understand something of our faith. We
understand what Emmanuel, God with us means, day by day. Maybe
that’s why, at the close of every service in this church we sing,
God be with you ’till we meet again. It is simply one of
the more profound blessings we can wish for one another.
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But in the wider culture around us, fewer and fewer people seem to
share our sense of wonder. They do understand that Christmas has
something to do with the gift of that baby, born to Mary in a
stable . . . but they’re not
quite sure what that gift has to do with their own
day–to–day lives. And advertisers, of course,
have exploited their confusion by suggesting that Christmas is all
about the buying of gifts — man–made gifts, neatly
packaged and tied with a bow. They have made Christmas something
of a retail experience. And once those purchased gifts have
been given, once the actual day of Christmas is over, many people
imagine that the holiday is over. All that remains is to return
the gifts that weren’t quite right to the store, take the
wreaths off the windows, and haul the tree out to the curb.
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So I thought it might be helpful this morning to look at our scriptures
for today and see them in the light of Incarnation – which is
the Church’s $20 word for the gift of God with us in the
flesh. That’s what this holy season of Christmastide is
all about. And, of course, as the Church sees things, this season
of Incarnation, this period of Christmastide only marks the
beginning of the gift that is now ours.
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In the Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning,
we understand that God’s promise to be with his people, to gather
them back to himself — was something those people longed
for. It was something they thought was worth waiting for. But
this is something, in our own day, that we have lost. In fact, in
our instant culture of faster and faster internet speeds, Instagram and
quick, effortless microwave meals, people have trouble believing that
anything is worth waiting for. So on that day when the
gift is finally given, we are less inclined to sing and dance, less
inclined to celebrate our wholeness. In fact many people these
days haven’t even noticed that sense of wholeness missing.
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But our psalmist, this morning, isn’t nearly so cynical. He
presents reunion with God as the greatest possible gift anyone could
want and directs our attention to the Temple as the place where heaven
and earth, God and humankind, can join together as one. In a
beautiful image, the psalmist likens the one who seeks God out to the
swallow who chooses to build her nest right beside the Lord’s high
holy altar in the Temple. But he also hints that this happy
reunion won’t come about easily. Just as the swallow must
first migrate long distances to get back home, God’s people will
travel some distance — along a difficult route – before
arriving, finally, at home with the Lord.
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When we come to the New Testament reading for this morning, to
Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, the message is finally
explicit. God isn’t just close, Paul says; He has chosen
us, destined us for adoption into his family. And this not as
some careless afterthought, but intentionally, from before the
foundations of the world. So this longing for God the Father is
written into our DNA. “It’s your faith in Him,”
Paul says, “and your love for each other that proves it, that
causes me to give thanks to the Father and pray for you every day.”
In other words, this gift of adoption is not to be taken for
granted. It must be cultivated by staying in faith — close
together with God and with one another.
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And, finally this morning we have Luke’s story of a young Jesus,
lingering in the Temple to talk with the scholars there – to the
consternation of his parents, who thought he must be somewhere in their
large entourage as they left Jerusalem and returned to Nazareth. But
the boy wasn’t en route back to Nazareth at all. He had
stayed behind in his Father’s house to ask probing questions of
the rabbis. Luke has already told us that from his birth onward,
the boy had grown in wisdom and stature with God and man. But now
the boy understands he has more growing, more learning to do. Though
he is the very Son of God, he must now grow into the fulness of that
promise. And he needed to take some steps – to get there.
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This, I think, is the lesson for us in this season of Christmastide,
this season of Incarnation. The baby Jesus has been born into
our world. Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people
on earth!! No longer do we need to climb up to God; God
has come down to us . . . and has made
Himself available to each and every one of us. But we have to
open that gift and cultivate it, understand it, begin to abide in
its promise. And as we grow into Him, as we grow into a full
understanding of Him, He will begin to work in us – transforming
us into what He always hoped we would become. In that process
the word abide is crucial. It tells us that this gift will
take some time to develop.
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The best illustration I could come up with this morning were these key
limes. I didn’t buy this fruit in the grocery store. I
picked it this morning off a key lime tree that Cindy Womack gave me
years ago. She and Larry had bought the plant in Florida and she
had kept it on her sun porch. But the plant wasn’t doing
well there. It had some fungus growing on it – and she was
about to throw the whole thing out. So I offered to take
it – and began to care for it – applying fungicide and
fertilizer, giving it lots of water and keeping it in the
sun. Finally the plant began to grow and flourish. And —
lo and behold, this year – after four years — it began to
produce fruit.
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Maybe this is the point of Emmanuel, God with us, that the world has
somehow missed. Though He has come to us, we also have to come to
Him. And then abide in Him . . .
because our growth in Him is not automatic. Nor is it
quick . . . instantaneous . . .
happening overnight. The presence of Christ in our lives is
simply not a gift we can buy for ourselves in a store – and then
open up on Christmas morning. But He is a gift worth waiting for.
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And He believes that we are worth waiting for too.
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Amen.
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