12-20-2020 -- “How Did We Get from There to Here?”

Rev. Diane Lee

FUMC Online Church

Luke -- Advent • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

Luke 1:26–38

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12-20-2020 — Fourth Sunday of Advent

WELCOME/DATE LEAVE UP UNTIL 10 A.M.

GREETING AND ANNOUNCEMENTS CHANGE SLIDE

ANNOUNCEMENT — Advent Bible Study LEAVE UP FOR ANNOUNCEMENT DETAILS

The final Advent Bible Study will wrap up the book we’ve been studying on Christmas in the Four Gospels Homes. Call Donna Campbell to get the ZOOM link at 806-789-1008. CHANGE SLIDE

CENTERING OUR HEARTS IN WORSHIP LEAVE SLIDE FOR A FEW WORDS

With it being the Sunday before Christmas, we’re going to be singing a verse or two or several Christmas carols. We’ll start with the old favorite, “O, Come, All Ye Faithful.” We’ll sing two versesSong Introduction CHANGE SLIDE

FIRST HYMN – “O, Come, All Ye Faithful” (Two verses) CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 1

O, come, all ye faithful,

Joyful and triumphant!

O, come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.

Come and behold Him,

Born the King of angels. CHANGE SLIDE

Chorus

O, come let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord! CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 2

O Sing, choirs of angels,

Sing in exultation!

Sing, all that hear in heaven

God’s holy Word.

Give to our Father

Glory in the highest. CHANGE SLIDE

Chorus

O, come let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord! CHANGE SLIDE

GATHERING PRAYER — LEAVE SLIDE UP

Let us pray.... We come to worship you, God, and we long for comfort in your arms, this morning in this troubled time when it seems life will never be “normal” again. t is good to be together, God, on these screens, with these people, together listening for your voice, united by Your Spirit. In this time of worship, tell us about Your kingdom of kindness so that we can seek it. Show us Your justice, so that we can ensure justice for all. We want to walk with You, humbly, closely, daily. Remind us again, Lord -- that You hold us as Your beloved children, and You promise us life, life eternal, life with You. May these promises guide our thoughts and our prayers this morning, we pray in the blessed name of Jesus, our Savior and Friend. AMEN. CHANGE SLIDE

ADVENT CALL TO WORSHIP CHANGE SLIDE

WE LIGHT THE ADVENT CANDLE OF LOVE CHANGE TO CONTENT SLIDE

PASTOR: Our God goes before us and guides us. CHANGE SLIDE

PEOPLE: God works within us and through us and His great love is always with us. CHANGE SLIDE

PASTOR: God’s love crosses boundaries of culture and tradition and enables us to share that love with others. CHANGE SLIDE

PEOPLE: In this Advent Season, we give thanks for the hope that comes in Christ, the peace that only He can bestow, the joy poured into our hearts, and the ways God’s love is made known in our lives. CHANGE SLIDE

PASTOR: We now light the fourth candle of Advent, the Candle of LOVE. Light the other candles if you have them there — the candles of HOPE, PEACE and JOY. CHANGE SLIDE

LIGHT THE CANDLE OF LOVE DO NOT CHANGE SLIDE

And now let us say together and Advent prayer that will continue over three slides. CHANGE SLIDE

ALL: O God, you so loved the world that you gave your only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. CHANGE SLIDE

Grant to us the precious gift of faith so that we will love the Son of God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.CHANGE SLIDE

Give us courage to turn that love outwards to neighbors far and near, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN. CHANGE SLIDE

OLD TESTAMENT LESSON — 2 Samuel 7:1-16 LEAVE UP FOR INTRODUCTION OF PASSAGE

David, the humble shepherd boy who fought Goliath, is now King of Israel, and he has built himself a palace. But he is apparently feeling guilty about his sumptious surroundings, because he talks about God lving in a tent. Actually, he s peaks of God’s Chest — the Ark of the Covenant — being housed in the tabernacle, which was nothing more a large tent. David wants to build God a home worthy of God’s majesty and power, and he initially gets the go-ahead to do that from the prophet Nathan. But then God speaks to Nathan, saying he never wanted “a house to live in.” Instead, God wants to make David and his throne a home forever for the people of Israel, a place of peace and rest, where the people’s identity and homeland will be tied to David and his throne and it would be a kingdom established forever. God is making a new covenant with David, a covenant that expands upon the covenant made with Abraham and renewed with Isaac and Jacob. We’ll go into more detail later in the sermon. For now, let’s listen to 2 Samuel 7:1-16, reading from the Common English Bible. CHANGE SLIDE

2 Samuel 7:1–16 CEB

1 When the king was settled in his palace, and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, “Look! I’m living in a cedar palace, but God’s chest is housed in a tent!” 3 Nathan said to the king, “Go ahead and do whatever you are thinking, because the Lord is with you.” 4 But that very night the Lord’s word came to Nathan: 5 Go to my servant David and tell him: This is what the Lord says: You are not the one to build the temple for me to live in. 6 In fact, I haven’t lived in a temple from the day I brought Israel out of Egypt until now. Instead, I have been traveling around in a tent and in a dwelling. 7 Throughout my traveling around with the Israelites, did I ever ask any of Israel’s tribal leaders I appointed to shepherd my people: Why haven’t you built me a cedar temple? 8 So then, say this to my servant David: This is what the Lord of heavenly forces says: I took you from the pasture, from following the flock, to be leader over my people Israel. 9 I’ve been with you wherever you’ve gone, and I’ve eliminated all your enemies before you. Now I will make your name great—like the name of the greatest people on earth. 10 I’m going to provide a place for my people Israel, and plant them so that they may live there and no longer be disturbed. Cruel people will no longer trouble them, as they had been earlier, 11 when I appointed leaders over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. And the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make a dynasty for you. 12 When the time comes for you to die and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your descendant—one of your very own children—to succeed you, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He will build a temple for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever. 14 I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. Whenever he does wrong, I will discipline him with a human rod, with blows from human beings. 15 But I will never take my faithful love away from him like I took it away from Saul, whom I set aside in favor of you. 16 Your dynasty and your kingdom will be secured forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.

CHANGE SLIDE

SECOND HYMN — “The First Noel” (TWO verses) LEAVE SLIDE FOR A FEW WORDS

Now we’re going to sing another familiar carol, this one about the very first Christmas:” The First Noel.” There’s be a short introduction, and then we’ll sing two verses. CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 1

The first Noel, the angel did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay --

In fields where they lay keeping their sheep

On a cold winter's night that was so deep.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Born is the King of Israel! CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 2

They looked up and saw a star,

Shining in the east beyond them far.

And to the earth, it gave great light,

And so it continued both day and night.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Born is the King of Israel! SONG ENDS, CHANGE SLIDE

CENTERING OUR HEARTS IN PRAYER

Sharing Joys and Concerns CHANGE TO CONTENT SLIDE

LORENZO

Continue to remember Billie Jo Bownds. She has now come home from Carillon and is recovering there. Monty Roberts continues to improve. Suzanne Foust’s brother David and his family are being treated for COVID, so prayers needed there. And the family of Josie Guzman continues to need prayers. The Cates are doing much better, and we’ve taken them off the list.

RALLS

Keep Angela Arthur in your prayers. She’s hobbling around, but is still experiencing pain from her recent foot surgery. We’re taking Justin and Danielle Sproles off the list. They’re both doing better.

Keep all of those in your prayers, and let me know if there’s somebody I need to know about. Let’s take all these joys and concerns to the Lord….. CHANGE SLIDE

PASTORAL PRAYER LEAVE UP DURING PASTORAL PRAYER

…We pray these things in the name of the one who taught us to pray, saying… Amen. CHANGE SLIDE

LORD’S PRAYER CHANGE SLIDE

Our Father, Who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen CHANGE SLIDE

TITHES AND OFFERING CHANGE SLIDE

Announcement about offerings LEAVE SLIDE UP A FEW SECONDS, THEN CHANGE SLIDE

Announcement about Enchanted Tree LEAVE SLIDE UP FOR ANNOUNCEMENT, THEN CHANGE SLIDE

In addition to its lighted Chrismon tree, Lorenzo always has a completely bare tree. Members take their offerings a Sunday or so before Christmas and place them in colorful envelopes and hang t hem on the bare tree. These funds are used to help pay the church’s apportionments for the year and cover expenses. Handle any Enchanted Tree offerings as you would a regular tithe or offering, but indicate that the gift is for Enchanted Tree. CHANGE SLIDE

DOXOLOGY

Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise him all creatures here below; CHANGE SLIDE

Praise him above; ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen. CHANGE SLIDE

EPISTLE LESSON — Romans 16:25-27 LEAVE SLIDE UP FOR INTRODUCTION TO PASSAGE

Paul usually began his letters with a greeting to the members of the church he was writing to, and he usually ended his letters with a blessing or benediction. That’s what we’re seeing in our Epistle lesson today — a benediction of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. He speaks of the mystery that was kept secret and has now been revealed. Through all the prophetic writings of scripture to the Jews, Christ now has been revealed to the Gentiles as well, so that all people, of all backgrounds, may be faithful to God and that all glory and honor be given to God, through His Son, Jesus the Christ. CHANGE SLIDE

Let’s hear what Paul says in Romans 16:25-27, reading from the Common English Bible. CHANGE SLIDE

Romans 16:25–27 CEB

25 May the glory be to God who can strengthen you with my good news and the message that I preach about Jesus Christ. He can strengthen you with the announcement of the secret that was kept quiet for a long time. 26 Now that secret is revealed through what the prophets wrote. It is made known to the Gentiles in order to lead to their faithful obedience based on the command of the eternal God. 27 May the glory be to God, who alone is wise! May the glory be to him through Jesus Christ forever! Amen.

CHANGE SLIDE

THIRD HYMN — “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” {2 VERSES) LEAVE UP UNTIL AFTER SONG INTRODUCTION

Charles Wesley, the brother of John Wesley and a co-founder of the Methodist movement that resulted in dozens of different denominations and what became the United Methodist Church, wrote more than 6,000 hymns. One is a familiar Christmas carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” I’ll refer to it later in he sermon, so pay attention to the words, as we sing two verses. CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 1

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!"

Peace on earth and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled.

Joyful, all ye nations rise,

Join the triumph of the skies.

With th' angelic hosts proclaim,

"Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!" CHANGE SLIDE

Verse 2

Christ, by highest heav'n adored,

Christ the everlasting Lord.

Late in time behold Him come,

Offspring of the Virgin's womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,

Hail the incarnate Deity.

Pleased as man with men to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel,

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!" CHANGE SLIDE

CENTERING OUR HEARTS IN THE WORD

“How Did We Get from There to Here?”

The children were putting up a manger scene in the corner of their Sunday School classroom. They set up a little barn, complete with real straw and clay figures of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Wise Men, and all of the animals – with all turned to face a tiny manger/crib with a baby doll to represent the baby Jesus.

But one little boy wasn’t involved in the preparations -- he kept going back and forth before the display just staring, with a puzzled look on his face. Finally, the teacher noticed him and asked him what he was thinking. “Is there something you’d like to know?”

The boy kept his eyes glued on the manger scene, and slowly said, “What I’d like to know is, Where does God fit in?” (Jeff Strite from his “Where Does God Fit In?” sermon series)

That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Where and how does God fit into the story of that first Christmas? And the answer is — He’s everywhere. In every time, and every event, God is present, if you’re looking for Him and looking to Him. Last week we read in the Gospel of John that God became flesh and dwelt among men. John was talking about the ever-eternal Jesus.

This week we’re studying Luke, who tells HOW God came into the world in the person of Jesus the Christ, to dwell among men. Luke describes the Angel of God coming to tell Mary that God had chosen her to bear His Son – the one to be named Jesus, whose ultimate rule over Jacob’s house (and later David’s house) and the rest of the world would have no end. Luke also gives at least some of the details as to how that would happen. But how do we get from there to here? Or in the words of the little boy, “Where Does God Fit In?”

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD...

“In the beginning, God …” But what “beginning” are we talking about? The beginning of the universe? That wasn’t even dreamed of as we understand it today back in Old Testament times. Scientists measure that beginning by measuring the universe’s oldest light, which they say is about 14 billion years old. Or the beginning of the earth? Rocks discovered in northwestern Canada date back about 4 billion years, plus or minus some 50 million years. No exact days are available. Or are we talking about or men and women populating the earth, which came between 5 million and 7 million years ago. (from articles on Wikipedia)

But the Gospel writer John is talking about an entirely different question. Basically, he’s asking WHO created the universe and the earth and the men and women on the earth? And John’s answer is profound on so many different levels. God was there all the time. GOD created the universe and the earth and the human beings. We live in a finite world. All we can really know is the finite amount of time we have here on this earth. Oh, we can know the history of our families going back many generations, and we can read history books about things that happened in history, but the fact is that we weren’t there and we didn’t experience those things. Our finite minds need beginnings and endings, and something not having a beginning is something we can’t wrap our minds around. But that is exactly what John is saying.

So let’s listen to those familiar but hard-to-understand words we read in John 1:1-5, found in the Common English Bible, and we’ll explore what it means.

1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. 2 The Word was with God in the beginning. 3 Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being 4 through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

THREE MEANINGS FOR “LOGOS” — “WORD" = “JESUS” = “GOD”

John was writing to Greeks, who could care less about Jewish Scriptures or traditions — they knew nothing of a Messiah, which was core to the Jewish faith. The Gospel had gone out to the greater world by this time — within 30 years after Jesus died, Christianity had gone by way of Asia Minor and Greek to Rome, and John’s readers would be mostly Greek. Commentator William Barclay says “By A.D. 60 there must have been a hundred thousand Greeks in the church for every Jew who was a Christian.” John needed to get their attention in a different way.

The way he chose was to capitalize on the Greek word “logos.” It could mean “word” — and that was the way Jews saw it — God would speak and things would happen. But the word also means “reason.” And that’s what the Greek saw when he looked at the world — what commentator William Barclay called “a magnificent and dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path; nature had her unvarying laws. What produced this order? The Greek answered unhesitatingly, The Logos, the mind of God, is responsible for the majestic order of the world.” Continuing that thought, “What is it that gives man power to think, to reason and to know?” and again the Greek answers unhesitatingly, “The Logos, the mind of God, dwelling within a man makes him a thinking rational being.

“John seized on this. It was in this way that he thought of Jesus. He said to the Greeks, 'All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like.’ John had discovered a new category in which the Greek might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in the form of a man.” (William Barclay (Ed.), 1975, “The Gospel of John” (Volume 1, p. 8-26), The Westminster John Knox Press, Philadelphia, PA) It’s amazing and beyond human comprehension how God uses frail human flesh to communicate divine love to the world in Christ Jesus. He used John the Gospel writer and He can use us, as well.

TENTS TO A TEMPLE AND GOD’S PLAN

At some point after He created the earth — the sun, the moon, water, the animals — God created male and female, in HIS image. Later, He began building a nation, a nation of His people, presumably to be a blessing and a light to other nations that would point them in the direction of God. It failed more often than it succeeded. God started with one man — Abraham — calling him to leave his home and his family to strike out for a new land and a new life. Most of the first part of the Old Testament traces that family — Abraham’s son Isaac, his son Jacob, and Jacob’s 12 sons, which included Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers but God used that to raise Joseph to power in Egypt so that Jacob’s family could be preserved when a terrible, region-wide famine hit the area. Jacob’s family lived in Egypt some 400 years, most of it in slavery, until God raised up Moses to bring His people out of Egypt and to the land promised to Abraham hundreds of years before.

Eventually, God raises up David — many generations removed from Abraham, but from that lineage — to be king of Israel, arguably the greatest king Israel ever knew. He was a man of God — the Bible calls him the “apple of God’s eye — although he was a flawed man who committed adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers, and then had her husband killed in action so they could marry. It proves God can take ANYONE and use them, because David went on to do great things for God after that happened.

David is living in a house made of cedar, a luxurious wood only for the rich, but he wants to honor God and build a temple in God’s honor. We read that Scripture earlier, but the gist is that God doesn’t want a house made of wood — or the stone that the temple would eventually be built of. No, God wants a different kind of house. God’s plan is more than anything David could have imagined. When God says, “I will build YOU a house,” He means that it will be the House of David — his descendants — would become the place where God dwells. God wants a temple of flesh and blood.

David wanted to replace the canvas tent and the ropes and tent pegs of the tabernacle tent and build a huge house of stone for his God. How could God want something of flesh and bone, that eventually turns to dust. But as one pastor put it: “If God is eternal, then surely it is fitting that the houses we fashion for the Almighty must share some of the same attributes!” And we read some of those attributes in John 1: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. “

We’ll come back to that in just a minute. But think about it. We all long for permanence, for structure, for what we call today “normalcy.” But nothing in our world is permanent. Even stars burn out, and stone eventually crumbles. And half of our country went to war against the other half to maintain “normalcy” — to keep things the way they were used to but were built on human slavery. And even today, there are people fighting to keep things the way they were in the ‘50s — a fond remembrance of the “good old days” that weren’t so good for much of the population. And today, in the midst of this pandemic that has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide, and over 300,000 in the U.S. Just since mid-September, the number of deaths in the U.S. has grown from 728 a day to nearly 2,600 a day. I read this week that an American dies every 33 seconds of COVID. That amounts to five people dying during the singing of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” (Philip Bump, “A Death Every 33 Seconds,” The Washington Post, 12/19/20)

But what is “normal”? And is it possible that “normal” looks different for the Christian? Is it possible that what we consider “normal” is NOT what God had in mind for us? Is it possible that our understandable desire to be back together in worship — our “normal” — is NOT the way the early Church was, that being “together” was not their primary purpose — and God’s purpose for the church?

And that brings us to Christmas and what we call the “incarnation.” That’s when “the Word became flesh and lived among us ... full of grace and truth.” But how did that happen? How did we get from “In the beginning” to the Word becoming flesh? and the answer is that God Makes It Happen.

GOD MAKES IT HAPPEN

God has determined that the best way to reach people is to come earth as a human — to experience all of human life. So God became human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, who ultimately would die for the sins of the world so that all could be reconciled to God and live forever with Him. To do that, God chooses a simple Jewish teenage girl to give birth to this baby who would be both human and divine. In our Gospel lesson today, God sends an angel to Mary to give her the news. But Mary was contractually bound to Joseph, the carpenter. That is, in that day, she was “engaged” to Joseph, but for all practical and legal purposes, they were married —they just hadn’t consummated the marriage. Joseph considers breaking off the engagement, so God sends an angel to Joseph “to convince this very righteous man that, for once, doing the righteous thing according to the law may not be the most loving thing.” Joseph continuing the engagement would ensure the very survival of the baby that was to come, not to mention Mary’s well-being. The Gospel reading tells of the visit of the first angel to Mary. Let’s read how Luke 1:26-38 tells it, reading from the Common English Bible. CHANGE SLIDE

26 When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a city in Galilee, 27 to a virgin who was engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David’s house. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 When the angel came to her, he said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” 29 She was confused by these words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Mary. God is honoring you. 31 Look! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. 33 He will rule over Jacob’s house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.” 34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen since I haven’t had sexual relations with a man?” 35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son. 36 Look, even in her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. This woman who was labeled ‘unable to conceive’ is now six months pregnant. 37 Nothing is impossible for God.” 38 Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

ust a reminder — Elizabeth is a relative of Mary, and she and her husband are an old couple with no children. A few months earlier, an angel had come and told them that they were going to have a child who would be the forerunner of the coming long-promised Messiah. That child grew up to be John the Baptist. God is preparing the way with these births, which would see culmination some 30 years later as the two boys grew up.

But there’s another reminder to keep in mind. This isn’t a spur of the moment kind of happening. As Jeff Strite put it: “For all that to happen … a lot of planning had to take place. A lot of planning by God. 1 Peter 1:20 says “(Jesus) was foreknown before the foundation of the world” and Galatians 4:4 tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son.” This thing had been in the works for centuries. Everything in that Bethlehem story had been meticulously planned since the foundation of the world. On top of that, everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the coming Messiah: His birth, His life, His death… and the resurrection of Jesus. All that had been predicted. There were over 300 prophecies declared: “He’s Coming! He’s Coming!!!” And one of those prophecies is in Isaiah 7:14 that declared: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Immanuel means: “God with us,” which means God stepping down from heaven to live among us. God was taking on “flesh” to become one of us, to prove how much He loves us, and to do something for us that we couldn’t have done for ourselves. Our sins, our putting ourselves first, before God and others, kept us from being reconciled to God, and God made a way for that to happen, through Jesus Christ, who came to die for our sins.

But, again from Jeff Strite: “Of course the problem is this. God (by definition) can’t die. And while men can die, not one of them is sinless – and we need a sinless sacrifice… so no ordinary man can die in our place. Only GOD is sinless, and He was willing to die for us -- but being God, He couldn’t die. So how could God do that for us? How could God possibly die for us? Well, FIRST… He’d have to become mortal. And that brings us to Jesus.

I’ve heard this quote dozens of times, and nobody seems to know who said it originally, but someone told of a scientist making a plea for exchange scholarships between nations, “The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a person. That person was Jesus — and while His story begins before the beginning, this part of the story starts with Mary, who would be the human mother of Jesus. And the father is God. The angel told Mary… “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”

Later, the author of the letter to the Hebrews would describe this wonder in more theological terms: Hebrews 1:1-3 says: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

“It’s a strange and beautiful thing God has done, sending the message of salvation to us templed in flesh! So many things could have gone wrong with this plan! Eventually, of course, something did, as cruel and evil men took the human body of Jesus of Nazareth, this frail flesh that embodied the message from God, and whipped it and beat it and hung it high on a cross. here he died. And there, it seemed to his followers for a few brief days, the message itself had failed. Yet, as we all know, on the third day Jesus rose again, and God’s living Word continues to speak.

Charles Wesley was trying to describe the wonder of the Incarnation in poetic terms, and he write in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity, pleased in flesh with us to dwell, 'Jesus, our Emmanuel’.” As one writer put it, “Godhead” is, of course, an old expression for the Trinity. But a veil? A veil is that filmy substance we can see through only with difficulty, as in a bridal veil.

When people looked to Jesus in his own time, all too many of them failed to discern the message sent from God. They saw only a human being, like any other. Those of us who have heard the Good News and can marshal the Spirit-inspired imagination to see beyond the veil will be rewarded with a message from God that is of infinite depth and complexity, yet summed up in the simple declaration that he is Lord of all and the Savior of each one of us.

That’s the power of story of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. It’s the story of our God: A God who cared for you, who died for you, and who WANTS YOU to be where He is.

OUR HEARTS RESPOND TO THE WORD

So how do we respond to the Word that we have heard? What does this all mean to us? The Word is saying it should make a difference in our lives — in the way we recognize God in our lives, in the way we respond to need in the world and reach out to the people God has put in our lives. It means we can’t go back to “normal.” We need a NEW “normal.

In addition, we can respond to God Word by saying what we believe. Join as we say the Apostles’ Creed together: CHANGE SLIDE

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH CHANGE SLIDE

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. CHANGE SLIDE

DOXOLOGY -- GLORIA PATRI

Glory be to the Father, And to the Son, And to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, Is now and ever shall be, World without end. Amen. Amen. CHANGE SLIDE

INVITATION CHANGE SLIDE

INVITATION HYMN “Love Came Down at Christmas” ( THREE VERSES) LEAVE SLIDE UP UNTIL AFTER SONG INTRODUCTION, THEN CHANGE SLIDE

The song I picked for our invitation hymn is not a traditional Christmas carol — in fact, it’s fairly new to the United Methodist Hymnal, although the words were written by poet Christina Rossetti acouple of centuries earlier. But it sums up exactly what we’ve been talking about today: “Love Came Down at Christmas.” God, Himself, came down to earth in human form to show His love for us. It may not be as familiar to everyone as some of the Christmas carols we’ve sung this morning, but we have sung it several times a year at both churches. I will note that in the third verse, the man sings “gentlemen,” but I left it as “neighbor,” which is the way it appears in the UMH. There’s a short introduction before we begin singing. CHANGE SLIDE

VERSE 1

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas:

Star and angels gave the sign. CHANGE SLIDE

VERSE 2

Worship we the Godhead,

Love incarnate, love divine;

Worship we our Jesus,

But wherewith for sacred sign? CHANGE SLIDE

VERSE 3

Love shall be our token;

Love shall be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and neighbor,

Love for plea and gift and sign. CHANGE SLIDE

BENEDICTION CHANGE SLIDE

FINAL SLIDE LEAVE FINAL SLIDE UP

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