Glory to God in the Lowest (Luke 2:19)
- Christmas is a time of surprises
- there was a lady who was preparing her Christmas
cookies
- suddenly, there was a knock at the door
- she went to find a man, his clothes poor, obviously
looking for some Christmas odd jobs
- he asked her if there was anything he could do
- and she said, "Can you paint?"
- "Yes," he said, "I'm a rather good
painter"
- "Well," she said, "there are two
gallons of green paint there and a brush, and there's a porch out back
that needs to be painted. Please do a good job. I'll pay you whatever
the job is worth"
- "Fine," he said. "I'll be done quickly"
- she went back to her cookie making and didn't think
much more about it until there was a knock at the door
- she went, and it was obvious he had been painting:
he had it on his clothes
- "Did you finish the job," she asked
- he said, "Yes"
- "Did you do a good job," she asked
- he said, "Yes. But lady, there's one thing
I'd like to point out to you. That's not a Porsche back there. That's
a Mercedes"
- well, Christmas is a time of surprises
- I think that's a good thing, because life at its
best is not really measured by the breaths you take, but by the breaths
you miss
- it's those times of amazement and astonishment when
suddenly your attention is carried away and your breath is as well
- it's times like Christmas, fantastic times, when
there's a song in the sky and a baby in the feedbox, and everything
is gloriously topsy turvy, when the things that can't be are
- have you ever realized that in the whole narrative
of Christmas in Luke 2, Mary couldn't speak?
- in all of Luke 2, there's not one word of Mary recorded
- it's as if what happened to here was too deep to
be expressed in syllables
- (Luke 2:19) But Mary treasured up all these things
and pondered them in her heart.
- she was caught up in her mind, and her thoughts
were centered upon the miracle that God was performing right in front
of her
- this sort of experience is uncommon today
- in our busyness, we are too busy to stop and think
and ponder
- we spend much more time doing than being
- our faith has become a very exterior thing with
much more commotion than devotion
- I remember the first time I bought a hollow chocolate
egg
- I could not believe the size of the egg for the
price I was paying
- but there was one problem: I didn't understand what
"hollow" meant
- so I bit into the egg and quickly found out that
the egg was impressive from the outside, but it had no core or inner
substance
- many of us are like this: we're impressive Christians
on the outside, but there's no inward substance
- we're not like Mary, who silently pondered these
things in her heart
- but friends, eternity is silent
- we are noisy, and the speed and noise of our life
signal weakness
- especially around Christmas, but for some of us
all year long, the pace of our lives make us deaf to God
- but Christmas is a time when we can sit back and
follow Mary's example
- she held her son to her breast, and leaned against
the warm damp earth, and pondered everything that had happened in her
heart
- I THINK SHE PONDERED, FIRST OF ALL, THE QUIETNESS
OF GOD'S ARRIVAL
- he did not come with noise and clamor
- there was no Bethlehem spectacular
- while the angels sang, there were only some shepherd
boys to witness it
- it's interesting that nowhere in Scripture does
God knock anyone's door down
- instead, it says:
- (Revelation 3:20) Here I am! I stand at the door
and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come
in and eat with him, and he with me.
- there's a painting of that by Holman Hunt in the
British National Gallery in London
- Jesus stands there, gently rapping at a door, the
door unopened
- a little boy was standing in front of that painting
with his father
- "Daddy," he said, "why don't they
answer the door?"
- the father replied, "I don't know why"
- after a moment's pause, the little boy said, "Maybe
they're making too much noise to hear him knocking"
- that little boy was probably right
- you see, the infinite power of God always moves
in silence
- God moves in quietness
- that's why we best think of him when we look at
flowers, or walk in woods at evening, or listen to soft poems or the
gentle breezes that blow about high mountains
- God is often where the least noise is
- that's how God often speaks to us, isn't it?
- he nudges us in our experiences
- he whispers to us in the sweetness of common sense
- he appears to us through the gentleness of some
new idea
- God talks in the gentle things of life, not in the
big moments, but in the quiet Spirit-filled times
- and so it was with Mary
- that's what Christmas should ideally be like
- take away the trees and cake and Elmo's
- and what you have is a time when the whole world
holds its breath and tries to hear once again the soft cry of a baby
- God comes quietly, then and now
- I THINK SHE ALSO PONDERED THE LOWLINESS OF HIS
ARRIVAL
- Jesus was born in what was probably a cave, one
of many in that area
- we usually think of the clean smell of fresh hay,
but probably a truer Christmas smell would be the smell of layers of
animal dung as the floor
- a short distance away, within sight, was Herod's
great palace built on top of a mountain, a huge structure with a pool
twice the Olympic size
- but Christ was not born there, we was born among
the smell of cattle dung in a dark and damp cave
- there was a European monarch who, a couple of times
each year, would take off his royal garb and, dressed as a peasant,
would go out amongst his people
- his advisors worried about this, but the king said,
"I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live"
- God came as a baby in a cave
- I read of a Hindu, who could not believe in Christianity
because he could not contemplate a God who would so humble himself
- then one day the he came across an anthill
- he tried to get close enough to study it, but every
time he bent low, his shadow caused all the ants to scurry away
- he recognized to himself that the only way in which
he could ever come to know that colony of ants would be if he could
somehow become an ant himself
- and that was the moment in which his conversion
began
- what is amazing is that Jesus looked down, and saw
it all - becoming a little baby, living as a man, dying on a cross,
and the shame
- and yet he tumbled into our midst, taking all of
our wars right into the midst of heaven's peace
- when Mary thought about this, she just might have
prayed, "Oh God, I do not want heaven if you are here on earth"
- AND I ALSO THINK THAT MARY PONDERED THE LOWLINESS
OF HIS AUDIENCE
- the first ones to learn of Jesus' birth were the
shepherds
- if Jesus had been born in his hometown of Nazareth,
after the custom of that day, there would have been musicians to serenade
the birth
- but it was not so there in Bethlehem
- only shepherds
- the Pharisees of that time said there were six professions
that were unworthy
- one of those was being a shepherd
- a shepherd was not permitted to give testimony in
a court of law
- a shepherd was not permitted to enter a synagogue,
because his activities were considered ritually unclean
- people did not have dealings with shepherds
- shepherds in that time were usually very young,
just as David in the Old Testament was only a boy
- the shepherds, of course, could not have grasped
what happened
- you can't capture Niagara in a teacup, or the ocean
in a single straw
- but they were the first to know of it
- and you know, this reminds us that at the center
of the gospel is the truth that the knowledge of God is not essentially
an intellectual exercise
- it's not something that God only gives to the powerful
or the intelligent
- it's to the shepherds
- it's to the ungood
- some children wrote to Santa
- one child wrote, "Dear Santa, you did not bring
me anything good last year. You did not bring me anything good the year
before that. This is your last chance. Signed, Alfred"
- another one said:
- "Dear Santa, there are three little boys who
live at our house. There is Jeffrey; he is 2. There is David; he is
4. And there is Norman; he is 7. Jeffrey is good some of the time. David
is good some of the time. But Norman is good all of the time. I am Norman"
- but we're not Normans
- we're shepherds
- we need to learn humility
- when we read about the immensities of space and
realize that our lives are only the flaring of a match against eternity's
darkness, we are humbled
- I have no political significance
- I have no distinguished vocational accomplishments
- I look at my inner life and I see weakness and ugliness
and sin
- but Christmas speaks to all that
- Christmas says that God chose what is foolish in
the world to shame the wise
- that he chose what is weak in the world to shame
the strong
- that he chose that in the world that is low and
despised, even the things that are not, to shame the things that are
- Christmas is the announcement that we are worth
enough to God for him to come
- we are sending out space probes to remote areas
of our solar system
- as they go behind the moon and see parts of the
universe that we've never seen before, we find that it is black and
barren and broken and cold, containing nothing but death
- these vehicles we send off carrying sophisticated,
exotic equipment send back signals that tell us that other atmospheres
are acrid and heated, and that there are volcanoes that spew forth noxious
fumes, and there's nothing in these places but fog and ash and ice
- then we look at world, where we see friends and
fields and forests and fruits and seas and mountains, and musicians
that write songs, and painters that paint pictures, and philosophers
that think thoughts that haven't been thought before
- we have dreamers who dream, visionaries who build
castles in the air, and engineers who go out and put foundations under
them
- and suddenly we realize that we are the visited
planet
- this Christmas, I urge you to ponder like Mary -
gentle Mary, who is ready for anything because she put her trust in
God, who didn't hesitate to say that she needed the help of others because
she knew that the greatest waste of life is to try to go through it
all alone
- strong Mary, who sang the victory song of the human
spirit, which announced that the proud will be put down, and the righteousness
and the justice of God will prevail
- and, at the end on that night itself, loving Mary,
who kept all those things and pondered them in her heart
- if I could give each of you a Christmas gift this
week, it would be the pondering heart of Mary, who lay there silent
on the damp straw and suckled her child and thought of the quietness
of God's arrival, the lowliness of his arrival, and the lowliness of
his audience
- glory to God in the lowest!
- I want to wish all of you a Mary Christmas
- a M-A-R-Y Christmas
adapted from a sermon preached by Bruce W. Thielemann
