December 30, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

This Is the Way

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 148
Matthew 2:13–23
Hebrews 2:10–18

The danger is always to sentimentalize the Christmas stories
and focus on the cuteness of the newborn child
rather than the awesome mystery of the Incarnation.
If we can get behind all the bad Christmas card art
to the biblical stories themselves, however, we will find
that they are remarkable in their resistance to sentimentality.

William C. Placher

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One of the things I love about Christmas is the books. I love books. So do most of my close friends and family, and so at this time of year there is no lack of good books being exchanged as gifts. You get to see what’s new and what everyone is reading. One of my mother’s favorite authors is Anna Quindlen and one of my mother’s favorite subjects is dogs, so when Anna Quindlen published a short book this year about her dog, it was no surprise that a copy made it into my parents’ house.

The book actually isn’t so much about dogs as it is about life. Quindlen reflects on how her life has unfolded in tandem with her dog Beau’s and on the lessons she’s learned by watching him. The pages are filled with reflections on family and love, what it means to appreciate the simple things, and what it’s like to grow old. She calls the book A Short Guide to a Happy Life, and its message, or one of them at least, is that we can learn a lot from the familiar things in life, like our dogs, if we look a little closer and listen a little harder, if we pay more attention to the present.

That’s a great lesson. It’s the first line of the lesson I read to you this morning, and it resonated with me because it’s really what we, as ministers, hope to help people to do. We hope that you will look a little closer and listen a little harder to the everyday things that happen to you. We hope that, in the midst of this busy world, you’ll slow down enough to look closely and listen well. We hope that you’ll approach this book, the Bible, that way and not just listen to the familiar parts of the story, but look and listen well enough to hear the stories in all of their richness.

Pay attention. Look and listen. It’s a great message and a great hope. But I’m not sure if it’s the easiest message to hear this week; I’ll let you be the judge.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a strange one, isn’t it? Today, along with the Sunday after Easter, are the two infamous “Low Sundays,” when most people, having been to church more than usual because of Advent and Christmas Eve, take a break to stay home and catch up on some sleep. Ministers are equally guilty on this count: I can promise you that this isn’t the only congregation in town where you’ll see the youngest minister in the pulpit this morning!

I can see the need for a little R and R, a little recovery time, this week. The Christmas season has become such a rush for so many of us, and even though we’ve been busy since Thanksgiving, there’s a sense in which, even though we’re constantly on the move, nothing gets done between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so almost before the holiday is over, there’s an instant feeling of the need to get back to work. To make matters worse, one week after Christmas, New Year’s resolutions kick in, so you don’t just have the old work to catch up on, but you may have new challenges you’ve set up for yourself.

It’s an exhausting week. Many of us don’t feel like we’re prepared for it all to start back up again, so today, for all of you brave souls who have come on Low Sunday, bringing your New Year’s stress, I simply want to tell you a story. I want to tell you the Christmas story one more time, and I want to tell it to you in a way that I hope will give you some courage, some fortitude, and perhaps even some peace as you prepare to dive headlong back into reality. I hope you will hear a story about people who may have been a lot like you.

The Christmas story isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a real story. It’s a story that has much more to do with us than you think. Our tendency, I think, is to see the story as something that happens “away in a manger” with a beautiful baby boy who lays down his sweet head. But something is lost if we allow the story to end there. Theologian William Placher says that “the danger is always to sentimentalize the Christmas stories and focus on the cuteness of the newborn child.” In so doing, we miss the point that the Christmas story is actually “remarkable in its resistance to sentimentality.” It’s a story that meets us right where we are, in the middle of our busy, stressed-out lives. The world into which Christ comes is as messy as ours. And the people involved in the story are as confused and worn out as we are.

Hear the story one more time. Look and listen. Pay attention.

Matthew 1:18—“Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

Mary becomes pregnant, and if you’ve been here the last couple of weeks, you’ve heard John Buchanan talk about aspects of that: how Joseph was a righteous man and Mary, according to custom, had been promised to him in marriage, so when Mary becomes pregnant and it isn’t by Joseph, it’s a huge scandal. But because Joseph is warned in a dream and told the significance of the child Mary will bear, he doesn’t reject Mary; he chooses not to have her killed. People probably did not understand Joseph’s actions. His decision surely wasn’t an easy one to live with. But he sticks with Mary, and she becomes more and more pregnant.

Luke 2:1—“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.”

When it’s just about time for Mary to deliver—when she’s really pregnant—Joseph brings her some great news. He says she needs to get on a donkey and they’re going to ride to Bethlehem. If Mary asked Joseph why, the answer was because they have to go there and pay their taxes.

Luke 2: 6–7—“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

When they arrive in Bethlehem, it’s a busy time, because everyone is traveling to pay their taxes (and because it’s Christmas Eve), and they can’t get a room. You can see Joseph tying the donkey to the port cochere outside the hotel in Bethlehem, Mary waits for him on the donkey. He comes out a few minutes later and says to his very pregnant wife, “Well, they don’t have any rooms here either, but they’re going to let you give birth in the barn out back!” Once they get over that great news, Mary gives birth to her son, wraps him in bands of cloth, and lays him in the manger.

Matthew 2:1–3—:In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is this child who has been born king of the Jews? . . . When King Herod heard this, he was frightened.”

The first people to come visit are shepherds, and shepherds were essentially looked upon as thieves in the ancient world, so maybe their visit wasn’t as pleasant a surprise as we thought. The next people to visit are wise men from the East, who come bearing gifts—that’s a significant improvement from the shepherds. The bad news is, according to the story we read today, the wise men stopped by the royal palace on the way, because the palace, and not a barn, seemed like the sensible place to find a king. And now that King Herod knows that there is someone else claiming to be a king, Mary and Joseph have to take their child, get back on the donkey, and flee to Egypt because the king is going to try to have the child killed.

Now, certainly I’ve used my imagination in the way I’ve filled in some of the gaps in the story, but you can’t deny the point: This is not a sentimental story. It’s a real story. Christ comes into the real world, not “away in a manger,” but right here in the messiness of life. God doesn’t wait for things to slow down. God doesn’t take all the conflict out of life. God comes now, ready or not. And that’s tremendously scary, because you might not be ready for God right now. But it’s tremendously comforting too, because you’ll never be ready for God.

If Anna Quindlen’s book is a short guide to a happy life, this is a long guide to a good life. God coming into the world isn’t a promise of short-term happiness, but it is a guarantee that God isn’t way out there anymore. God is right here with us because we don’t need God out there in the future or back there in the past; we need God now. As William Placher notes, “The idea that God comes into the world in Jesus Christ means just that—God comes into the world. And the story is as gritty as it is to show us that “the humanity in the least of persons is now transformed.”

Of the lessons Anna Quindlen learned from watching her dog, the one I thought was the simplest and yet the best was this: to measure herself not in terms of the past or the future but the present.

There’s certainly something to be said for taking an honest look at our past; the Christmas story, after all, is grounded in history. Throughout Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus, we hear that things happened so that the Hebrew scriptures would be fulfilled. Jesus is born as the prophets foretold that he would be. He is born in Bethlehem, he escapes to Egypt, and he returns to grow up in Nazareth. Those references seem random until we consider what Matthew is saying. This is promise God has made to us all along. But when the king comes, he is born to an unmarried couple; he is found in a barn, not a palace; and immediately, he is hunted for his life. The Old Testament references are there because Matthew wants us to know that this is the one we’ve been waiting for, and Matthew doesn’t want us to miss him because he looks so different than what we have expected in the past. The one who comes to save you may come in a way you don’t expect.

So pay attention and don’t lose sight of this: that God comes into the present.

Perhaps the wisest thing about measuring our lives in the present is that, according to the Christmas story, that’s how God measures us. God doesn’t wait for us to be ready. Christ comes. Christ comes and finds us right where we are, and if we are willing, like that young couple and those poor shepherds and curious wise men, Christ will lead us places we never expected we might go, if we are willing to follow him. In the midst of the messiness of life, in the bleak midwinter, Christ comes.

What can I give him; poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd; I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man; I would do my part;
Yet what can I give him; give my heart.

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church