Christmas Eve

Auto-generated from the audio — may contain errors.

0:00 Well, for the rest of us, I'm like, the Luke 2 story, I feel like you can't not read it on Christmas and it's so well written. Like, you know, he talked about this on Sunday, we've been thinking through the first chapter of each of the gospels. But Luke is one of what we call the Synophistic gospels. It has a lot of the same stories as Matthew and Mark.

0:31 But Luke's style of writing is so different. It's clear that Luke was probably more educated in Greek than Matthew or Mark and his writing is so much richer and more precise in his Greek. So in some ways it's easier to translate it and other ways it's harder because the Greek is more complex. We talked about how Luke, where we're pretty sure, Luke was a friend of Paul because when he writes the story he actually apostles his places where he starts to change and talks

1:05 about how we are on the road together. And so you get this idea that Luke actually was on this very journey to Paul and after seeing what the Holy Spirit was doing among people of the way, as the way of Jesus was growing in the first century and Rome. He said this story needs to be told from the beginning and he went back and he said this story needs to be told from the beginning and he went back and turned it back and found man. And when you read the very beginning Luke chapter 1 he said he sets out the television complete narrative about the way of Jesus from his birth all the way through the start of the

1:42 church. So that's why Luke's story feels so comprehensive when you read Luke chapter 2. And he always sticks out the way that he gives us who's in charge. What does Caesar Augustus or Quiranias have to do with anything? For us, Quiranias is a much smaller name than Jesus even than Mary and Joseph. He's a Augustus, maybe we know because we like to see the silence or just some show

2:13 that we've seen. Right? So we know Caesar Augustus but Quiranias is not a name that the other would have any context for or care about but for the fact that Luke put it in. Now you know and maybe it's helpful to reminder Luke puts Caesar Augustus name in there and Quiranias is name in there because in the context he was writing when he sends the letter out to the churches throughout Asia, minors to be copied and distributed by hand to be

2:43 read amongst the followers in synagogues and in marketplaces, in homes and in catacombs when the gospel is read for the first time of course Quiranias and Caesar Augustus are huge banner names that stretch across the known world. Images and likenesses are set up along the road and they sit at the seat to which all roads lead Quiranias and Caesar Augustus are the big guys.

3:14 Mary and Joseph are nobody and they are on the wrong side of power underneath any kind of wealth or influence. Backwoods, small towns, folk. So Luke when he's writing this, exhausted narrative puts Quiranias and Caesar Augustus in there to locate Jesus in a place and town. It's the first thing I want to think about or mention with the Christmas story, how deeply

3:46 rooted the Christmas story is. In place and town. In actually politics and money. Isn't that funny? I'm going to read it much better than I would. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered as a translation I have here. Other ones, all the world should be.

4:20 So Caesar Augustus is used to all his governors. Does it sound like counts again because I'm sure y'all owe me more money. In Caesar Augustus is the one in charge. Quiranias takes the orders and executes it well. You've got to go back to your hometown. In the midst of politics and money, Luke touched the story of Jesus. Isn't that interesting?

4:54 Most of the story of the God of creation in life, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Christ in the Church is the story of end. Like politics and taxes end the God of the universe. Deal with the government and the money and the rest keep going on. It's not often it's not an either or.

5:26 In the story of the God of creation in life, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Christ in the Church comes in the midst of everything. You're dealing with all of the people moving, all of the money quandaries. Yup, those are going to keep going and also God will deliver you. When? Look, who knew? What's happening while Quiranias was pouring the strings all the way over there on the wrong side of the desert.

5:58 Mary and Joseph, Quiranias and Augustus. This is the first thing, the second thing to think about when we read Luke chapter 2 is death sounds like the Christmas story. And makes sense. But of course, for most folks, no one knew anything would happen in it. I don't know how to get a host of angels in the sky unnoticed, but I guess the shepherds were pouring us away from everyone else.

6:30 And so, I sometimes wonder where they go after that. But if you hadn't been right there, you wouldn't have known. I love the idea that Luke comes in Mary and Luke gives us the phrases, Mary pondered all these things in her heart. And I think that those phrases are in there because Mary has such the weird dichotomy of

7:05 Gabriel coming to Telverst who's carrying the savior of the world, of the realization and the capacity to believe that in fact her son will be monumentally, make things monumentally different. And also, he's compelled to move three days journey, nine months pregnant, pay money that she doesn't have, stay in places where she can't find. And so quietly, well, no one else is paying attention. Strew ponders in the heart, the capacity that God might be up to something that's in the

7:39 midst of everything else. And the reason that we start here is because I don't know what we all have going on, but I'm sure it's a lot more. I don't know what you all have going on, but I'm sure it's a lot. It's never enough, dollar bills. We could always use clearer purpose and direction. There's never quite enough friendships or family.

8:14 They're never quite working exactly the way that we want. We go to stay someplace and there's no place to stay. You have a lot going on. You carry responsibility. You owe people things, people owe you things. You said things, you've done things. You have a lot going on. And also, Jesus came into the world.

8:46 Both. Things. Just because your life is complex, confounding and confusing doesn't mean Jesus wasn't put in the womb. Just because you can't see the way that your life is shaking, the direction is going, just because you don't know clearly why things are happening doesn't mean Jesus didn't come. It's not did, it's why we're here.

9:17 All of those things are true and Jesus came. That is very encouraging. Very the best we could do in the midst of complexity was ponder those things in our heart and wait for it to make sense one day. I love, I wish more people than Luke would have wrote it down, but I love that at least Luke wrote it down so that he got to tell the story of all the things he had been pondering

9:53 in her heart. How long? May Jesus, may he, mid-thirty, right? So at least 30 years and then maybe another 20, maybe 40 years. If that's true and she's in her mid-50s, early-60s, he's not letting much longer and Luke, the physician, shows up on the doorstep and tells stories about false-long journey with Paul carrying the message of her son across the world and she said, oh, I wouldn't

10:27 have believed it, I couldn't have believed it except for that I did. But I couldn't tell very many people because they think I was crazy because all these things stacked up differently and so I couldn't think that Corinthians would be governor of Nigeria and demand taxes and we would have not enough family and certainly not enough money and no way to travel and also the savior of the world. I couldn't think it so I just pondered it in my hand and held to the whole. You don't have to be the great evangelist for God to save you.

11:03 You don't have to be the great apologist for Jesus who have come. All you need is the courage to ponder in your heart the hope that amongst all the challenges of your life and the world in fact Jesus has come, all you need is to clean the hope when you just ponder in your hope and wait for one day when it might all make sense.

11:34 It did for Mary. Luke just filled up over doorstep and tells her the far-growing stories of the people following the way of the son and she said, I somehow though I couldn't believe it, I knew that sure and certain hope. So we read the story of Luke who it just sounds like Christmas. To anyone involved in it, it didn't sound like Christmas at all. It looked like an absolute mess.

12:08 And that's the next thing I want to think about. God has been working along, if you read the story of Scripture, like this is my paper copy and I don't use paper copies that much, this is all the things that come before Luke 2. This is all the things after Luke 2. God has been prepping all this time, right? Like when Adam and Eve in the garden can't, for the life of them, believe that God has

12:43 their best interests at heart and they assume they know better than God. And from that moment when they're ushered out of the garden, he sets on a plan to the dean's humanity to restore it to what is intended to be from the very beginning. And he's been working on that plan all through here and this is what he comes up with, right? A woman grew young to have a baby without a place to deliver it, away from her home even.

13:15 This is what he comes up with. This is fascinating to me. This is without, who out of his imagination, from nothing else, he knows out of nothing imagines the world into existence, all of the waterfalls and mountains and oceans and oceans and oceans and seas and mammals and birds and fish, and sprung out of imagination and came at the force of his will in this garden. He thought that he dispersed the battle, he spread a flood, he split the sea, he controlled

13:48 the plague, he spoke through the prophet, he lifted up things, he orchestrated temples, this God is created and substantive. He worked with forethought and imagined futures and holds together power and what he comes up with is a baby born in a manger. I mean, I can imagine more compelling ways to orchestrate the salvation of humanity

14:20 under redemption of the world. One would be, let's just cut out all the brokenness and get to the end, right? Let's just recreate humanity in one thing. Let's lift the suffering out and set people loose. Let's have some magnificent, unimpossible to miss, change, descend from heaven.

14:57 Let's have a throne at least or a trumpet to something. Right? I remember when I was in college, I took classes on these different world religions, and I really liked to have this young professor that taught all the Asian religions, and I thought he was super cool and really smart to talk about when you're learning each other world religion, he had this phrase that he didn't make up, I was sure he made up when

15:29 I was in college, freshman about walking a mile in another man's moccassee. He talked about how learning things from the inside rather than the outside, and we were learning about Buddhism, and I was asking questions about the origin of the world, and it says the Buddhist doesn't ask that, it doesn't say a little wrote came from. I was asking questions about the end of the world and said the Buddhist doesn't care that, it doesn't ask that, it doesn't care where the world is going.

16:04 And then this is the one that got me, it's like what happens when someone reaches your bone? When you reach your bone, that's it, you're out. If you don't live the rest of your life, no, no, if you reach your bone, you're gone. Wow. That it's about getting out of this cultural pain and suffering. I was thinking about that story, and I remember when that guy told me that in class, and you

16:37 reached your bone, you're out. And you had this phrase for an obon, it's just blissed out, you're blissed out all the time. You don't even live the rest of your life. I was thinking about that when I was thinking about God, wherever he knows infinitely, his plan through redeem humanity to come and save the world, to come down into what's going

17:07 on. And like I told the kids, to embody flesh and bone. Whatever happened in the incarnation, however God in his infinite wisdom and mission bound the second person's eternity in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, whatever happened there, it can never be undone. So wherever Christ is now flesh and bone, body and spirit, all together with arms and

17:41 eyes and hair and the heart, sitting somewhere waiting to return them, to welcome all of us into the place that he has prepared. When God decides to save humanity, he comes down into the flesh. And not only that, he's born as a baby, and then in infinite wisdom lives every stage of love. It goes through every struggle and heartache, as friendships fall apart, the sides work

18:19 to learn is not good itself. I was thinking about that. Jesus, living through every stage, I was thinking about taking on flesh. What does it mean that the God of the universe has a body, a parent? I remember this phrase, I tried to find it, but I couldn't find it.

18:50 But in January I had to read this little book by some old monk called the baptism of Jesus. One of the things he loads and tries to understand is why on earth Jesus gets baptized without going into all of that. There's a phrase in that book that I remember. This is that which Christ involved it, and blessed it. The God of the universe took on flesh because flesh is worth saving.

19:24 The God of the universe was a child because children are worth saving. The God of the universe was a teenager because teenagers are worth saving. The God of the universe was a son because sons don't lose saving. The God of the universe was an adult because adults are worth saving. The God of the universe was a friend. You could friends are worth saving. The God of the universe was a job because employees, workers are worth saving. That word present habits and blessings.

19:54 Christmas isn't an escape for all of the things from you. It's a way to lean in to all of the things of life. Jesus doesn't come in order that you could escape life. He comes in order to live it. He blessed wherever you are, the God of the universe has been there and left flesh in behind.

20:24 This is why he says in John chapter 10, I came that they made help life and have it. You are abundant. Why I ask you, how do you really live? The intent of the way of Jesus isn't that you would segregate and separate and follow rules. It isn't that you would be wholly to the exclusion of the rest of the world and the rest of the experiences of life.

21:01 It's that the rest of the world and the experience of life would come alive for you. It's to pull you into life. I came that you might live abundantly. For me, it is really fun to know that the story about Manali and Joseph on the wrong side of the desert in a little town of Bethlehem without a place to stay has endured.

21:37 Luke was a good writer, but it wasn't his brilliant, made this story endure. The disciples were faithful, but it wasn't their faithfulness that made this story endure. It's that the story endured because from one generation to the next, unbroken from grandparents to grandchildren, from parents to sons, from mothers to daughters,

22:14 people have found that the way of Jesus incretes that experience of life, like abundantly. And so the story gets told again. I can't believe when I live with this one, it goes better. When I live with this one, I feel more. Join is richer. He is more robust. Gentleness has some kind of power.

22:46 Kindness is possible. Law is generative and rhetorical. When I live with this one, life is just much more abundant. I hope tonight and tomorrow you might remember that Christmas means you get to live. Now? Prabhav. Let me pray.

23:17 Thank you for the gift of your son and the abundant life you bear in. Thank you for Christmas. I will give a willing and receptive heart and minds and bodies and lives. Today we know you don't take us out of the things of life here. You don't escape. You are in the midst of them, Lord, we are.

23:50 Let us live today. Just one with death. Amen.