December 24, 2011
Here Now or Gone Forever? - Luke 2:1-20
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadMy grandmother had a big field behind her house, probably about four acres or so. On the right side of that field was a fence. Now this was not any ordinary fence. This was what my aunt called a living fence. There was a power line on that part of the field, and under that power line was mother nature run amuck. And it was beautiful. I specifically remember it being full of wisteria and honey suckle. It smelled like heaven in the spring time. Rabbits nested at the bottom of it and birds at the top, and maybe an occasional field rat. It was an impressive fence, probably six feet deep and twenty feet high. Once a year, the power company would go out there and trim the living fence so as not to interfere with the power line, but they, too, seemed to respect the fence that took decades to grow. But one year the power company came out there and got word from a neighbor that they could just cut that fence all the way down, that we wouldn’t mind it, or maybe they thought we didn’t even own the fence, and if they cut it all down, they wouldn’t have to go back out there year after year. So sure enough, they cut it down. And we were devastated. What had taken decades to grow was cut down in fifteen minutes. It would take years, we thought, for it to come back.
I thought about that story earlier this week when I was reading a book by Eugene Peterson called Tell It Slant. One of the constant threads that runs throughout the entire Bible, according to Peterson, is that God wants us, but we don’t particularly want God. God created us and gave us this beautiful garden to live in, with one simple rule, which of course we don’t keep. So God eventually, after a tower and a flood, gives us Abraham to make a new people. Which he does, but those people rebel, and other people hurt them, and we end up in slavery, for four hundred years. So God raises up Moses to lead us out of slavery. And on the way, God gives us some rules so we don’t kill ourselves. But we can’t keep the rules. Over and over and over it goes. God wants us. We don’t want God. The constant question is, who wins out? Does God wanting us win, or does our not wanting God win?
Nowhere is that better illustrated than the Christmas story. The first seven verses of the Christmas story would be laughable if they weren’t true. Everything is wrong, and it’s all wrong ultimately because we don’t want God. We don’t want God, and therefore we don’t want each other, so life is exceedingly difficult. Mary and Joseph are poor. They come from way on the other side of the tracks. I am convinced that God is against the “train tracks” idea, where the higher ups live on one side, and the poor people on the other. Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, where Joseph was from, to register. It was about a four or five day trip, about twenty miles each day. Joseph was a carpenter, and they lived pretty much day to day back then, and I don’t know exactly how Joseph is supposed to work if he has to travel for ten days to feed Emperor Augustus’ ego. I’m convinced also that God is dead set against the Rome occupying the known world and oppressing its subjects. Even though it might be partially a result of Israel’s own sin, Rome is no better, and Mary and Joseph are paying the price for it. And, Mary is pregnant, and unwed, and a child. That’s a triple whammy, isn’t it? Mary is really the only one who is innocent in this story, and like many innocent people, she stands the most to lose. It wasn’t her idea to get pregnant, but in that day, unmarried pregnant women got stoned to death. Have you ever imagined what that’s like? What would happen to the baby? Mary Turner, a pregnant black woman who made somebody upset, was lynched in 1918 in Valdosta, GA. She was lynched, all right, and when the baby managed to come out, they killed the baby, too. It’s graphic, isn’t it? But that was Mary’s world. I am convinced that God was dead-set against that world, or at least that sin. And finally, even if she doesn’t get stoned to death, and even though she somehow slips through society’s righteous wrath and ends up in Bethlehem, there’s no place for her to stay there. You would think, would you not, that somebody would find a place other than an old garage for a woman to bring a baby into this world. But no, not in this world of sin. In this contest of God’s acceptance and our rejection, the cards are stacked entirely against God. Human sin and depravity most definitely seems to win the day in Luke 2.
And yet, Christ the Savior is born. That’s the amazing thing, isn’t it? Sin, evil, Satan, depravity… whatever you want to call it…, it’s all real. We deny that sometimes. We deny it within ourselves. Or, we look at it square in the eyes, we look at ourselves square in the eyes, we read the statistics, we read the newspaper, and we lose hope, because there is no hope and there is no peace. And yet, Christ the Savior is born, even in that world. The Light shines in the darkness, and even though the darkness is still there, and it’s still dark, it does not overcome that light.
That living fence, it came back. It was amazing. It really was. We thought it would take ten years for it to come back, but that later that Spring, it came back with a vengeance. The truth is, it never really went away. It got mowed over alright. It got decimated. But the roots stayed, and once it got some water, and the sun shined on it, it was back in a year. Is it here now, or is it gone forever, we asked? We thought it was gone forever, but as it turned out, it was here now, and was staying around for a while.
The darkness is still here. Our sin, our depravity, evil… you name it, it’s still here and it’s hard. And if we’re honest, we contribute to it. I heard recently that there are seven hundred Churches in Charlotte, and yet the bread lines are longer than ever. And all we can do is throw a few toys at them. We’re all part of the darkness. That’s the inescapable truth. We’re victims of the darkness, too. There’s no question about that. The darkness is here, and unfortunately, it’s going to be around for the foreseeable future. But so is Jesus. So is the Light. It shines brightly. It’s here, too. And it’s staying around forever.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
