Sunday, December 24, 2007
Luke 2:1-11
Senior Pastor
We have a great group of young people going through their confirmation studies right now preparing for joining the church this Spring. They are good looking and bright youth. They are studying all the major doctrines of the church, as well as learning biblical and church history. I am with them at least once a month. Last month we were studying the history of the United Methodist Church. I began class by asking them to stand and recite their family lineage as far back as they could go. Two generations is about as far as any of us could get.
Do you know your lineage? Most of us do not know our family linage much farther back than maybe our great grandparents. But this story from Luke’s Gospel tells us that everybody in the Roman Empire is being required to go back to their hometown to be registered. He tells us that Joseph went back to Bethlehem because he was from the house and family of King David – greatest leader in Israel’s history. That puts Joseph into a family history covering about 1,000 years. That is a much larger span of time than most of us can comprehend in regard to our own family’s history.
But then Luke goes to another whole level when he tells us that this baby that is to being born is for all the people. For I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people! (v. 10) That broadens the context and how we see family and whom we count as our family. The family of God is much larger than we normally consider when we think of our own family and identity. Yet this message is echoed again and again in the Gospels.
In John it says: For God so loved the world, or we could say, all the people – for God so loved all the people that he sent his only begotten Son. Or remember just a couple of chapters from the passage we read tonight here in Luke, when Jesus begins his public ministry by identifying certain groups of people he wants to deliver the good news to: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
And in this story we read tonight, it makes clear that poor shepherds and unwed mothers are included in God’s family. It is indeed a story of good news for all the people, even those we do not think are included – we must remember, they too are a part of our family.
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen tells of a time when she was flying home from a business trip. She was exhausted and was glad to see that there was an empty seat in the middle of her row. She took out her mystery novel and began to read. Thirty minutes later when dinner was served, she simply continued to read until her seatmate gasped.
I glanced over to investigate and saw that he had dropped his full container of yogurt onto the floor. It was on his shoes and his bag and on the carpet. He had turned his head and was staring out the window. When I looked back at the floor I could see that he was slowly pulling his right leg back under the seat and that his left ankle was swollen and he had a brace emerging from his left shoe. His left leg was paralyzed.
I reached up and rang for the flight crew. No one came. Eventually the drink cart came and I pointed to the spilled yogurt and asked the flight attendant for a wet towel. She went ballistic: “There are 452 people on this flight! I am doing the best I can. You’ll just have to wait!” I was baffled, then I realized she did not understand that I would clean it up, if she would just bring the towel. So I added, “If you bring me a wet towel, I will be able to get that up.” We stared for an awkward moment and then she turned on a heel and brought me back a towel.
My seatmate was still staring out the window. Dr. Remen ventured, “ I used to love to fly but I find it difficult now.” I went on to explain how my eyesight was failing. Still looking out the window my elegant looking seatmate told me that eight months ago he had suffered a stroke and now had no feeling in either of his arms from his fingertips to his elbows. Yet he had flown halfway across the country to be with his son. Then in a barely audible whisper he added, “Since my stroke I am incontinent, I have to wear a diaper.”
I nodded, marveling at the choreography of this chance seating arrangement. “I have an ileostomy,” I said. Then he turned and looked at me. He wanted to know more. I explained that my large intestine had been surgically removed and I wear a plastic appliance attached to my side to collect my partly digested food. I told him, “Even after 30 years, I am concerned that it may leak. Especially on a plane.”
Then he looked at the towel I was holding and I looked down at his feet. “May I?” His face warmed into a smile. I kneeled and began to wipe his shoes. He leaned over and said, “I used to play the violin.”
Once the flight crew realized what had transpired each of them came by and thanked me profusely. When I was leaving the plane, the pilot stopped me at the door and thanked me and pressed something into my hand. It was the gift of wings pin they often give children. I appreciated their gratitude, but their surprised reaction to a simple act of kindness is chilling.
Dr. Remen reflects, “Perhaps we are no longer a kind people. More and more, we seem to have become numb to the suffering of others and ashamed of our own suffering. Yet suffering is one of the universal conditions of being alive. We all suffer. We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other. Yet becoming numb to suffering will not make us happy. The part in us that feels suffering is the same as the part that feels joy.” (Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 145ff)
Do not be afraid; for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord (v. 10) Receive the Good News! God has sent you his love and his power, his compassion and his caring, his kindness and his forgiveness – God has sent you his Son so that you may know your linage, so that you may know what family you are a part of, the very family of God. As United Methodists we try hard to live out of this larger context of being a part of God’s family.
That is why we have an active prison ministry across the state. That is why we have an extensive ministry for children in need of special care. That is why we have built a university in Africa. That is why we have a special ministry to the poorest people in our state. We see them as part of the family of God.
That is why we started the Bridge trying to reach out to unchurched young adults in our community. That is why we send mission teams out every year. That is why we do VBS and participate in Church Women United. We want to exemplify the family of God. We want to live out the good news of great joy for all the people.
Let me share one last story tonight about a man named Yitzak. He was a WWII concentration camp survivor. Once liberated Yitzak came to America. He became a respected research physicist. Then later in life he was diagnosed with cancer.
In his battle to beat it, he attended a week-long retreat that helps people integrate their thoughts and emotions for a healthier self. During the retreat he had an experience in which he sensed he was surrounded by this great rose-colored light. But then it became more startling because he said the light seemed to be pouring out of his chest “like a big hemorrhage.” It made him feel terribly vulnerable because it seemed to be coming from his heart.
Over the next several days he contemplated what meaning this could have for him. On the last day of his retreat he shared that while walking alone the previous day he had been talking with God and it came to him. Since his days of fear and distrust in the concentration camps he had been very guarded with his relationships to anyone outside of his family. So he said to God, “Is it okay to love strangers?” And God says, “What is a stranger? You make strangers. I don’t make strangers.” (Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., p. 156)
Amen and thanks be to God.