Two Christmas Sermons

What Mattered to Mary
Luke 1:39-46
By Everett Wilson, Pastor

Unexpected babies are a familiar story in the Bible. Angels told Abraham’s wife Sarah that she was going to have a baby when she was ninety, and she did. Another angel told Samson's parents that he was going to be born, and what he was going to do, and it happened. So also was Samuel’s birth predicted and blessed by the high priest in the Tabernacle, and the angel Gabriel himself predicted the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus. All of the women involved, except Mary, were either barren or past childbearing age. Mary, virginal and having as yet no husband, was not, in the eyes of the world, supposed to be having a baby at all. In the case of the other women, all of them married, it was unusual for them to conceive and bear a child; in Mary's case, it was impossible.
No wonder she went to Elizabeth right away. The angel had told her about Elizabeth, so if anyone would understand, it would be Elizabeth. You can imagine how it would have been with Mary's mother. She would be embarrassed and disappointed at the thought that Mary and Joseph had anticipated their wedding, but those things happen. But she would be shocked and angry at hearing about an angelic visit and a pregnancy without a man involved. The angel would have had to tell Mom too, and in no uncertain terms, for her to believe such a tall tale. That left Elizabeth was the one person she could go too who might believe her, because Elizabeth also was in a similar, though not identical, situation.
It’s a long hike from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea. We don't know what was going through her mind. Whatever it was, she was mightily assured by Elizabeth's response to her.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
What Elizabeth said would be enough for Mary’s explosion of joy. “Somebody else knows too! I am not dreaming it. I am not crazy. Elizabeth is not pretending, and neither am I. This is really happening!”
How could a teen-age girl speak the glorious words of praise that come from Mary's mouth? If you ask that question, you are thinking of a modern teen-ager, whose mind and emotions are continually stretched by outside stimuli—people around us, machines communicating with us; thousands upon thousands of images every waking hour, leaving our dreams to work some of them out the best they can. Mary was not a modern teenager, but neither was she an ignorant peasant. She was a descendant of Abraham. While she probably could not read or write, the stories of her ancient family—what we call the Old Testament—was not limited to the schoolroom of her brothers and male cousins (if she had them). The stories and songs of the Old Testament were their entertainment as well as their education. So what she says is not unusual for who she was, when she was. It governed how she thought and talked. It would be the most natural thing in the world for her to express her praise in Old Testament terms, for that is what she knew. In her outburst of joy, what we call The Magnificat, she doesn’t invent new doctrines or express new insights. Her song of praise is important not for what it says but because she said it.
Notice that in it she says nothing about the baby. That’s a little strange, seeing nothing matters more than the baby. But there isn’t any baby yet. When the baby comes, the angels will sing about that. What she has at this moment is the promise of God, which she either believes or not. She believes it, and rejoices in it. The baby will get his turn, but that is nine months or so away. When he arrives, he will be the most important person in the house.
After he is born, Mary’s life will be focused mainly on him, holding him, feeding him, changing him, burping him, singing to him. But it won’t be focused mainly on him. There is more to the will of God than one task. Mary has a husband too, and the story clearly implies that she will have more children, because Jesus is not her only son, but her firstborn son.
[Note: The doctrine that Mary remained a virgin comes from outside the Bible and seems to disagree with what the Bible clearly says.]
He is destined to become a big brother, and all you big brothers, and all of you who had big brothers, may suspect that his first encounter with temptation was not in the forty days after his baptism, but when a little brother or sister tried to get on his nerves.
Joseph and Mary had a real home in a real place, and Jesus lived in it with them. The Christmas story is the beginning of a human life, most of which was lived outside the pages of the New Testament. The family, including Jesus, drops out of sight for eighteen years, from the time Jesus was twelve until he was thirty. Mary appears a few times after Jesus is grown, and the brothers and sister, but not Joseph. A lot of people think he was dead. I think he was probably at his job! Somebody had to do the chores!
She will be a great mother and a great wife because she will take whatever God sends her. That will mean a helpless infant, a toddler, a little boy, a teenager. All of that is implied in her joyful acceptance of the task God has given her.
I think there is one thing you may be sure of—Jesus never pulled rank on Mary and Joseph. Later on, when he was twelve, Luke tells us that he submitted himself. He would not be a special case, promised Messiah or not. He will grow up as a carpenter’s son in order to become a carpenter himself. I can’t imagine him telling Joseph that he was too important to be a carpenter, that he had better things to do with his life. Like what? Die on a cross for the sins of the world? Jesus is the prime example that nobody is too good to do anything.
Mary is the second example. Her life was that of a wife and mother without servants, in a day when everything had to be done by hand. But that was the lot of all her friends too. The promise of God did not change any of that. In the midst of the burdens of daily life we take the tasks that are given us. If we are like Mary, we thank God for them.
But all of that is in the future. Until then, the promise will have to do.
Mary could see what the promise meant, not only for the world but for her personally: henceforth all nations will call me blessed. She didn’t look like the most important woman in the world, not then, and not ever. She looked like a carpenter’s very young wife, which is a way of saying that she looked like she could be anybody. She may have been pretty, but she didn’t need to be; she may have been smart, but not necessarily. What she needed to be was what she was, a person who wanted God’s will to be done above all things.
She knew who she was, and what it meant.
She knew who her son would be, and what it meant.
She knew who God was, and what he was like.
She knew before the birth of Jesus what we know afterward: God is holy, God is merciful, God is strong, God is generous, and God is on the side of the helpless. She not only knew these things; she was counting on them. They were what mattered most to Mary.
The prayer of Jabez, for prosperity in this life, was very helpful to many of us several years ago, that God desires a good life for here and now. But the prayer of Jabez is not always the prayer of the moment. The prayer Mary was anticipating, and that she lived, was the Lord’s Prayer: Thy will be done. She could shout her word of praise in the presence of Elizabeth because she had already said to Gabriel, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Amen.

Oh, What a Treasure

13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

14‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ Luke 2:13-14.
By Everett Wilson, Pastor

We have just sung the hymn, written by Minnesota Covenant pastor Nils Frykman over a hundred years ago, and now I will preach the message.

A Reason to Party

The two oldest Christian celebrations are Christmas and Easter. They were feasts, or festivals, as contrasted with the fasts of Advent and Lent. Christians said, “Let’s party” and chose the dead of winter for Christmas for two reasons. It didn’t have a specific date for it, like Easter does; we have only the approximate year for the birth of Jesus. Since the dead of winter was when the world partied—it cheered up the most depressing time of the year—the Christians joined them for their own reason; since they were partying in honor of Jesus Christ, they did it without drunken bashes and depraved orgies.

But then as always Christians who were Christians in name only, not in heart and mind, gradually got their way. They got so good at partying that they forgot what they were celebrating. After about a thousand years of this behavior, The Puritan Christians got so disgusted with it that when they settled Massachusetts and took political control of England in the 1600’s, they made the celebration of Christmas illegal!

But Christmas as a party was too powerful to be ignored, so even Puritans rejoined the party after awhile.

After all, what was going on in heaven in the early morning of the first Christmas, but an angelic party, praising God? Christmas is a time to pray, but so is every day; it is also a time to party.

If I read our own church’s history right, the founders of of the Covenant in the 1800’s were pretty straight-laced-laced about worldly entertainment on the whole, but they also enjoyed celebrations. Many of you know this, but many don’t, and it’s worth remembering. When Amy Nelson—Lee and Asta’s daughter—was ten years old and still Amy Solie, she represented the children of the Covenant at the opening of the Centennial celebration of the Covenant at the old City Auditorium in Minneapolis,1985. I didn’t know her then, and wouldn’t for fifteen years, but I always remembered what she said, because she said it for all of us: I love the Covenant because we know how to make a party. And most of the places I have been, that’s been true. We haven’t had a choir of angels, but we knew how to make a party.

A Gift to the World
The occasion for the angelic party was a birth, the reason why so many Sunday School programs have had the theme “A Birthday Party for Jesus.” But the birth of Jesus, along with all the other births that happened that year, would have been forgotten if it had not been recognized and received as a gift to the world. The savior was born to save us, and to make peace among all whom God favors. As Frykman summarized it with a rhyme:
Oh, what a treasure, God in his pleasure
Lovingly gives today;
Grace to the lowly, peace pure and holy,
Angels to men convey.
The party celebrates the gift; it is not itself the gift. The gift is grace and peace, not fun and games or even worldly happiness. The gift neither denies or guarantees these things. The gift is a reason to party, but that doesn’t mean that partying is the way we use the gift. When Jesus was grown-up and a teacher, Much of our treasure, Jesus said when he became a teacher, is to be laid up in heaven.
Earthly parties tend to end, and worldly happiness does not last forever. Marriages fail, accidents happen, promises are broken, you get cheated or you cheat somebody else; when these things happen—and they seem to happen to some people more than others, having nothing whatever to do with whether they are Christian or not, even good people or not. It’s not surprising at all when people believe that God let them down. Our heads may agree that God didn’t let them down, but our hearts sometimes have trouble going along. The hard realism of life
I could sing you a tune
and promise you the moon
But if that's what it takes to hold you
I'd just as soon let you go.
Even though God never guaranteed them earthly happiness here are those who say that God has let them down. but, as Cornelius sings in Hello, Dolly, “It only takes a moment to be loved your whole life long.”

In times of war, natural disaster, and personal tragedy these feelings take hold of many people The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was in that state of mind during the Civil War.

The month after the war began Longfellow’s wife died in a household fire, leaving him badly scarred in his attempts to save her. (The reason he is always pictured with a beard is that it was impossible for him to shave after the fire.)

Two years later his son, an officer in the Army of the Potomac, suffered a severe and disabling wound. Apart from his family grief there was the horrible grief of the war itself, Americans against Americans.
Then, on the fourth Christmas of the War Longfellow wrote a poem that has lived on in the carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. We are going to sing it to conclude this Christmas service, but I want to read for you now the two verses we do not sing, but which are just as significant as the ones we do. Longfellow is not lingering at the manger, but he grasps Christmas in the midst of national and personal tragedy.

Then from each black accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound, The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

In despair he bows his head, but his despair is not the last word, as we will sing it. Beyond the bad stuff, out of reach of the bad stuff in fact, is the treasure God offers: grace to the lowly, peace pure and holy.

Without grace for the lowly there is no peace pure and holy; there may be justice of a sort, but not “justice and peace.” Too often the theme song of justice and peace is actually “One tin soldier,” in which justice is bloody and the peace that issues from it is the peace of a cemetery, not of a heavenly kingdom; “On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.”

The fullness of grace is peace. Jesus may sleep in heavenly peace as he lies in the manger, but he makes peace by the blood of the cross, by which all people everywhere may be saved. Amen.

Beyond Understanding

Beyond Understanding
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:4-7

By Everett Wilson, Pastor
You may have been told that it is a sin to worry, but that point needs clarifying.
1. It is not a sin for the unconverted to worry, because their whole life is acclimated to sin; worry is natural for them and should be expected of them.
2. If we are to believe Time magazine, which we can more often than not, worry is a created response in all of us, believers and unbelievers alike. It is built in to our nervous systems and related to the “fight or flight” syndrome. It is as natural to worry as it is to feel hungry.
We get into trouble on this subject when we begin to believe that better education is a cure for worry. The theory goes something like this, and I don’t think I am making it up: We worry because we are afraid, and we are afraid because we do not understand.
On the face of it, it’s a neat explanation. Its application even seems to succeed sometimes, as when we convince a child that darkness doesn’t change the world one bit—that the bedroom with the lights out is exactly the same as the bedroom with the lights on. The darkness changes nothing.
Of course, convincing the child doesn’t make the fear go away. The child did not decide to be afraid, and we don’t decide to worry. We just do.
Neat explanations neither solve problems nor saves sinners. Sometimes the things we understand best are the very things we are most afraid of! And we can’t help it!
Oh, we sometimes can. Dr. Seuss’s little hero, the one who kept running into a pair of “pale green pants with nobody inside them” can’t talk himself out of his fear:
“I do not fear those pale green pants
With nobody inside them.”
I said, I said, and said those words.
I said them. But I lied them.
Then he understands the pale green pants, and becomes their friend, and everything is just fine in Dr. Seuss’s world.
But this is not Dr. Seuss’s wonderful world. This is the world under the dominion of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among the sons of disobedience. We are not up against rational good will. We are up against irrational wickedness.
Sometimes our worry is more sad than sinful. Excessive, disabling, persistent worry when there is nothing real to worry about may be the symptom of a mental illness called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. You may be sure that Paul’s command not to worry was not a command to mentally ill people to stop being sick! Rather, it is a reminder to the rest of us that
Þ worry does no good,
Þ worry changes nothing,
Þ it is more useful to think than to worry, and
Þ It’s a lot to better to pray than to think!
In fairness to mentally ill people, it’s probably better to read Paul’s command to mean “Do not choose to worry about anything.”
The best example I know of choosing to worry is what happened in our country in the three months following September 11, 2001. After the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, a great many people were worried, so chose to drive rather than fly. One result of this choice was that it put so many cars on the road that a thousand more people died in automobile accidents from October to December of 2001 than in the same months of the year before.
Actually, Paul’s commandment not to worry isn’t directed at everybody in the world, but at Christians, We are those who can believe that God has the whole world in his hands, who really can understand that there is actually nothing to worry about.
Christians may still worry. I know that because I even worried about this sermon as I was writing it! The difference is that the world has no alternative but to worry. Because of our faith, however, we can choose not to!

Not an Explanation
Explanations do not end worries. The trouble with the neat explanation I began with is not so much that it is wrong but that explanations aren’t what we want or need. If you have a headache, you don’t want a diagnosis nearly as much as you want a cure. It’s interesting to know what your problem is, but much better to be rid of it!

So I am not here to explain God to you. God does not even explain himself.
Þ When God made the universe, he didn’t point to it and say, “This explains me.”
Þ When he made the first humans in his own image, he didn’t point to them and say, “This explains me.”
Þ When he called Abraham to begin the long history of salvation, a history of which we are a part, he didn’t say, “This explain me.”
Þ When he allowed scientists to split the atom, he didn’t point to their laboratory and say, “That explains me.”
Þ Even when Jesus was born in a stable, was laid in the manger, was nailed to the cross, and later stood outside his empty tomb, God did not say, “This explains me.”
If he wasn’t explaining himself, what was he doing? And my preaching colleagues and I are not explaining God; what are we doing?

Sometimes I explain things in response to questions or to correct misunderstandings. We need some explaining for the practical reason that there are so many false explanations floating around, and we have to say “Not that! Not that either! Or that!” But explaining is not my primary job. God did not come into the world to explain the world, or even to explain himself, but to offer us a salvation we may accept by faith.


An Experience, not an Explanation
I side with Paul that the gift of God is not an explanation but an experience. God offers himself. If all he had to give was an explanation, then we would have to be smart enough to understand him. We will never be that. We may believe him, though, even if we can’t understand him. The primary question of the church is not, “Do you understand God?” but “Do you believe in Jesus?” Do you accept the gift of God?

If you insist that understanding is necessary, you want the gospel to be less simple than it is. What keeps us is not how much we know, but what God has given us: the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. The gospel describes the gift in other ways as well, but this description will do for this morning.
The peace of God is not the same as peace with God. We are at peace with God and with one another because Christ has settled the peace for us, on the cross. The peace of God is the experience of himself that God himself enjoys, and he includes us in it no matter how wild the world is. As Paul says in Romans 8, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ! The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Just about exactly 100 years ago G. K. Chesterton wrote a novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, about a mysterious secret society in which the leaders were code-named by the days of the week. The man who was Thursday told the story, but the man who was Sunday was the most mysterious of all. When Thursday finally asks him straight out who he really is, he answers with another riddle. “I am the peace of God.”
The novel doesn’t explicitly solve the riddle; I think you have to know the Bible to solve it. “I am the peace of God,” means, I think, You can’t begin to understand me. You may trust me, but you cannot understand me. I am the peace that is your resting place beyond all turmoil, confusion, and hostility.
For many people this is too simple. Since God won’t explain himself since he cannot explain what he alone can understand, we get many crazy explanations from people who claim to speak for God.
Here is not an explanation, but an offer: the peace of God coming to you through faith in Jesus Christ. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

The Third Goal of Godliness

The Third Goal of Godliness

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

By Everett Wilson, Pastor

Three points by way of introduction.

1. All of the letters Paul wrote, which is about a third of the New Testament, were addressed to people who were born again. They knew both from Paul’s preaching and from their own experience the big difference between the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. Paul could not have addressed the words of our text to the general population of Thessalonica, but only to the Christians there. That is why modern Christians treat the letters of Paul as addressed to us as well as to his first readers, and why Paul is not a good source of inspirational sayings for non-Christians. What he says does not apply to them nor work for them, until the Holy Spirit gives them by new birth.

2. The word “godliness” does not appear in the text, but godliness in the church at Thessalonica is what Paul is grateful for and asks for more of. In Christian terms, godliness is an inward relationship with God and an outward expression of God’s love to the world.

3. In the modern church we do not expect godliness from a church full of new converts, none of whom had been Christians a very few years earlier. In Thessalonica, none of them had grown up in a Christian home, since there were no Christian homes when they were growing up, and none of them had gone to Sunday School because there were none of those either. Some of them may have grown up in the Synagogue, but that was as close they got to the Word of God.

The way Paul addresses them indicates that the Thessalonians had come a long way in a short time, .

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

What Paul says about them is my testimony about you, and may be your testimony about one another. If you are a visitor, it may be your testimony about your church at home; if you have no church, we hope you will get a sense this morning of just how big it is to be part of a church, which he calls in a another place the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

The Thessalonians were teachable Christians. Paul was confident that they would understand him because they saw things as he saw them, and needed only to know more. On the basis of this confidence Paul prays for them to achieve the third goal of godly living, which is to be blameless before God when Jesus comes.

We often talk about the first two goals of godliness, which are to honor God and bless the world. Paul had a great deal to say about them throughout his letters. The third goal is more rarely stated, probably because it contains a personal ambition; but this first Sunday of Advent is a perfect time to consider it, when we are thinking about how Jesus came into the world to save us, and is coming again to take us home to be with him forever,

New Birth the Starting Point

The starting point of a godly life is new birth. The first Christians, like the Thessalonians, knew no other way to live it apart from this starting point. The Spirit of God in our lives is required for godly living, because the fruits of the Spirit must come from the Spirit. Otherwise all we can produce are what Paul calls “the works of the flesh,” none of which are very nice. Even listing them makes us uncomfortable.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

These are only examples of “things like these.” If you don’t understand some of the long words, they describe some pretty icky stuff; in explaining them I would get off track and I would tell you more than you want to know, or need to know to meet the third goal of godliness. Enough to say that the works of the flesh are all bad, and all have evil consequences—yet they are all that can be expected from those who are born only of the flesh. It’s no great surprise that Jesus says, What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

Those who have been born from above understand the third goal of godliness: for each of us to appear blameless before God when Jesus comes with all his saints.

Needing No Excuse

To be blameless means to need no excuse. If you need an excuse, you need more than that: you need to repent, and apologize, and be forgiven.

Blame is usually self-blame, inhibitions imposed by a guilty conscience. Other people do not blame us nearly as much as we blame ourselves. We look for excuses to mitigate the self-blame, to convince ourselves that we are not such terrible sinners after all.

Excuses are bad strategy for two reasons. They usually aren’t true, and they dodge responsibility. Instead of excusing yourself, you need to repent before God and apologize to your spouse, your teacher, your boss, your neighbor, your parents, or whoever else you offended by messing up. You may still have to bear the consequences. You don’t repent or apologize because it will get you off, but because it is the only way to face reality. We don’t need an excuse; we need forgiveness.

The television drama JAG, acknowledges this obvious truth. When the heroes, who were all Naval and Marine officers, were accused by their commander of messing up in some way, they had one response only: “No excuse, Sir,” or “No excuse, Ma’am!

To appear blameless, needing no excuse or apology, is a high goal even if your appearance is before a commanding officer, or Judge, or Principal, or Dean, or employer; how much higher it is to appear blameless before God when Jesus comes with all his saints! Yet that is exactly what Paul prayed for in our text: may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

It was possible for Paul to pray for the church as he does because the church was neither indifferent or hostile to this prayer. The Christians wanted for themselves what Paul wanted for them, which is what God wanted for them too. They didn’t want to have to say, “No excuse, sir.”

Not a Lot of Time Left

We do not have a lot of time left to abound in love and be strengthened in holiness. In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus warned us to get ready, because we don’t know when the end will come. He said that his coming will be as sudden and decisive as the springing of a trap.

If we knew when it was going to happen it wouldn’t be sudden. There are only two possible outcomes in the Bible.

Þ We will will meet Christ when we die.

Þ We will meet him when he comes again.

You are not going to miss him!

A great-grandmother I know put it in perspective when she said that she has a smaller fraction of her total life left to live today than she yesterday. She doesn’t know exactly what the fraction is, but she knows that it is getting smaller every day. So, whether you are young are old, there is not a lot of time left!