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April 10, 2005
The Scandal or the Wonder of Jesus?
The Scandal or the Wonder of Jesus?
Psalm 100 / Isaiah 7: 9-11
Matthew 1: 18-25
April 10th, 2005
I would guess that the season that warms our hearts the most is Springtime. Winter can be beautiful when the ground is covered with snow and the air is crisp. Summer can be wonderful, particularly when you are swimming or canoeing at a lake, or enjoying the smell after a summer rain. Autumn for me is a close competitor to Spring.
But Springtime! Life bursts out all over, and it happens gradually. Each morning I go out to inspect the trees I planted seven years ago, to see how the buds are coming. Rabbits are running all over. Finches are at the bird feeder again. Life bursts during the Spring.
I think there must have been more than one thing in God’s mind in having Jesus’ death and resurrection take place at springtime. First, God wanted us to see and feel the burst of new life in nature itself as we remember that Jesus came out of the tomb alive on Easter morning. Maybe it would not have gripped our hearts nearly so much if it happened in the cold of winter, or as leaves were falling from the trees, or when the days were hot and humid during summer.
Second, Jesus rose from death at springtime because the Jewish Feast of Passover described in the Bible came during the Spring of the year. Then the sacrifice of a lamb prefigured Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
It was a miraculous event we say when Jesus came alive on Easter morning. Each of the ways that God interacts with us for our good involves both a very ordinary aspect of life and something extraordinary.
Two weeks ago we thought of the extraordinary event on Easter. This morning I want us to think particularly about Christmas when Jesus’ life began on this earth. As the resurrection of Jesus’ body took place when all of life was bursting forth at springtime, so Jesus was born as every baby is born, but with strange, miraculous new twists.
The first Christian statement of faith described Jesus’ earthly beginning this way: “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” There are four parts to this statement. First, it was for us and for our salvation. Second, Jesus was in heaven before He was born on earth. Third, this happened by a special work of the Holy Spirit of God. Fourth, Jesus was born of a virgin mother. These are the four unique aspects of Jesus’ birth.
Jesus was born because you and I who were born needed to be rescued from a predicament that starts at birth. This predicament is called sin. How do we know about sin? Look at how we hurt each other. We say things we shouldn’t. We forget to say what we should. And that’s just the start of how we hurt others.
We offend God by misusing His wonderful gifts. For some people their misuse of these gifts result in very unhappy lives. Sin is a total yuk! Jesus was born, died, and came to life again to lead the way in undoing the curse of sin. This is what salvation means. It was for our salvation that Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again.
Second, Jesus came down from heaven. Before you and I began we may have been a twinkle in our parents’ eyes, as they say, but we did not exist. We were a hope, a dream. When we get married and think of having children we imagine having a little girl or a little boy and dream of what that little one will become. But there is nothing there until we came together in that loving embrace that begins a human life. Wonder fills our hearts as young parents when we realize that we have done something very God-like. Our love “created” a new human being where there was no one before.
I remember so well when Bonnie and I were told we were going to be the parents of our first child. We had been married four months and fully intended to have no children until I’d finished school and we could afford the expense of all those diapers and formula and all the other expensive paraphernalia that goes with having babies. I worked from mid-night to eight in the morning to earn our keep, while carrying a full load of graduate school credits. We were scraping to make ends meet. Now this!
We lived in a tiny one-room efficiency student apartment. Our couch pulled out to make a bed, and the kitchen was so slight that only two newly weds could fit into it at the same time comfortably. Now, we learned we were to add a third person to our little nest, someone much smaller than we were who would occupy a lot more space than we did!
But we forgot the hurdles to be overcome. We were ecstatically happy. All the complications this little being would bring could not compare to the joy he would bring—not only in his birth, I might add. It seemed a miracle when Bonnie gave birth and I held this little guy in my arms. And it was a miracle, but one that takes place very often. He didn’t exist before. Now he existed—as he reminded us every hour of the day and night.
But before Jesus was born and made Mary and Joseph happy, He already existed. He was the Son of God, existing before time began with the Father and the Holy Spirit in heaven. The Creed says He “came down from heaven,” because we always think of heaven as up. We may as well say that heaven is up because it is a mysterious realm inaccessible to us just now. We have cartoon-like images of angels sitting on fluffy clouds in heaven, strumming harps, but these are only ethereal ideas suggesting how heaven is different from earth.
The Apostle Paul tells us that, “God is not far from each of us. In Him we live and move and have our being.” Heaven is where God lives, and He is not far from us. This makes me think that heaven is not nearly so much a place far away as it is a perfect state of existence that inter-penetrates this world and who knows, perhaps all space. Because God isn’t limited by space and time as we are.
When the Son of God started to form into a human baby in Mary’s womb, He didn’t have very far to go. He was “in the world, and the world was made by Him,” and “in Him all things were holding together.” In a mysterious Divine act the Holy Spirit moved the Son of God at the loving will of the Father so that He entered our time and space in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
From there on Jesus’ birth was like every birth.
The passage from Matthew’s Gospel tells us how things looked from Joseph’s perspective. I wish there were time to look through Joseph’s and Mary’s eyes and follow the course of this extraordinary birth. There were some who thought it a scandal because they weren’t married. Others realized the pertinence of what the prophet Isaiah wrote--that Ken Wark read for us--this was a wonderful new act of God, who was doing something good beyond our ability to understand—something with long-range effects. This morning we celebrate something very wonderful that God is doing many years later as we baptize a dear young man, Cory Wettshurack.
What happened in the birth of Jesus is like what has happened in Cory’s heart and life. What happened when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit was a figure of what happens inside of us when faith is born in our hearts.
There is nothing harder to change than the human heart. We call people “stubborn” who will not change from some terrible behavior or attitude. But when we see a person change from being a bitter, cynical, angry sort of person into a person filled with kindness, cheerfulness, and goodwill, we recognize that something has happened inside. But there is more to it than this.
Naturally, since we can’t see God, we’re tempted to think that God doesn’t exist. Naturally, since we did not see Jesus born and were not witnesses to the miraculous events surrounding His birth, we are tempted to think that Jesus was not the extraordinary person the Gospels tell us, even born in a unique way. Naturally, since we didn’t see Jesus die for us and rise again, and since there is no way we can imagine that such a thing should mean that God was taking care of the problem of sin in this way, how are we to believe it?
But when our natural Inability to trust that these things are true somehow changes and our hearts are filled with trust, it is because the Holy Spirit has caused something to happen in us. The Holy Spirit doesn’t force us. He simply makes it very plain to us that there is something to all of this to which we feel compelled inwardly to respond.
The Holy Spirit uses various means to give faith to us. If you were born into a home with parents who trusted in Jesus, who were loving to you, the Holy Spirit used them to teach your heart about Jesus. Or sometimes God the Holy Spirit lets us be in the company of people who show us in how they live and by what they say to us that there is something mysteriously more to life. And they become the means to trusting in Jesus, and being “born again.”
We’ve all heard that term, “born again.” Jesus used it in speaking to a Jewish teacher who was as puzzled at the idea as you and I might be. He thought it meant something physical, like a grown up climbing back into his mother’s womb and then coming out again.
Jesus used this term because what happens when our hearts are changed is every bit as unique and radical as being born the first time. When God changes our hearts, it starts very small, the way a baby begins very small it her mother’s body. And gradually, over time that little human zygote turns out to be a full-fledged human being. And after God plants the seed of faith in our hearts, it grows until we discover we are “new creations in Christ.” It is the Holy Spirit who makes this happen in us—as He made Jesus start in the body of His mother, the Virgin Mary.
When Cory stands before us and confesses his faith in Jesus, and I place the waters of Baptism on him, we are celebrating the work of God’s Holy Spirit who put the seed of faith in His heart. And Cory is publicly baptized to claim that what God’s Holy Spirit planted in his heart has grown so that he trusts in Jesus.
Trusting in Jesus brings to us God’s gift of eternal life in a mysterious way we can’t understand. But this shouldn’t surprise us since all of life, physical and otherwise, is mysterious to us. But this is a mystery of a different kind because it has to do with what we do and what we let God do with our lives afterward.
We read in the Bible, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and again, “You are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.” From now on, Cory, like each of us who has been baptized and confessed our faith in Jesus Christ, has a new purpose in life. Our purpose is to use whatever we are, whatever God has given us as gifts of mind and body, to please Him. God is pleased when we enjoy His gifts in thankfulness to Him.
Baptism and trust in Jesus is only a beginning, like a new birth. Every Sunday morning at the close of our worship service you see me raise my right hand, place my fingers in an ancient sign of the Holy Trinity, and pronounce a charge and blessing to you that is drawn from the Bible. “Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight.”
Here are the marching orders of every baptized child of God. Let God work in you what is well pleasing in His sight. Let God perfect in you and me every good work. Let go and let God. God’s goal with you and me is like the aspirations we parents have when we are granted a little one into our home. We aspire that our children will be healthy, happy, good, and useful. We want them to know we love them, and that this love will be like a wind in their sails, as they sail through life joyfully.
Jesus said, “I am come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” Jesus plans for you, Cory, and for each of us who has come to Him in trust, an abundant life—a good life, better than we can imagine. Let us then thoughtfully plan to live our lives to the glory of God, loving Him with all our hearts, loving one another with a full heart, faithfully, and all our neighbors as ourselves.
If any of you know you have not begun this new life perhaps God is stirring in you this morning the desire to find for yourself this new life He promises to those who trust in Him. Please speak to me if I can help show you the way. In any case, don’t let pass the moment when you recognize something new tugging at your heart. It’s probably God whispering to you, “Come to me and I will give you a new life.” God has put a certain twinkle of light in the heart of everyone who is born, by which we can see that life is more than a physical event. God promises you and me, “I will give my Holy Spirit to plant the seed of faith in your heart—and you will know what that “something more” is. Now respond, let that seed grow until you find the abundant life.
Let us pray: We are amazed at the wonder of a newborn child, Lord. But we are more amazed at the wonder of Jesus’ birth, and to know it was for our sake, that we could enjoy the kind of life that gives most joy. Help us to trust in Jesus, and to live in trust, day after day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at April 10, 2005 09:30 AM