Hail th'Incarnate Deity

Hail th’Incarnate Deity

(Matthew 1:18-25) 7 pm, Christmas Eve

Dec 24, 2012; Windsor UBC; J G White

It’s Christmas Eve! – A very traditional moment.  We do things now that we do only once a year. 

Much of our tradition is the seasonal music.  In 1739, preacher and poet, Charles Wesley, published a collection called Hymns and Sacred Poems.  He was 31 years old.  This was but a sample of Wesley’s lyrical career.  Some of his 6000 hymns continue to be popular.  The most popular of them all appeared in that book.  You know it; it is Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. 

Those great revival preachers gave many a sermon in the songs they wrote.  This carol is no exception.  We sang: God and sinners reconciled.  That’s a big theme in our rhetoric about Jesus.  Veil’d in flesh, the Godhead see.  God – beyond our explaining and complete understanding – is seen in human form.  Hail th’incarnate Deity.  Hail Jesus, sing of Him gloriously, join with all creation and spiritual realities in pointing to Him.  The original Wesleyan lyric said: 

Joyful, all ye nations, rise, Join the triumph of the skies;

Universal nature say, “Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Worship this infant, who is an incredible way for the God of the universe to come and meet us. 

The great genius of our faith is our experience of God as one of us.  God as a fragile baby who was born.  God as a child who grew up in a Middle-Eastern Family.  God as an itinerant teacher and miracle-worker, who called disciples to follow and do as He did.  God as a betrayed man, tortured and executed.

Then, this man, Jesus, alive again.  God and sinners reconciled:  in one body, one reality at last!

When I wrote the first page of our devotional booklet this year, I thought of the lyrics of a song that was popular 25 years ago.

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make his way home

We might not think of Jesus as a slob; but some of his critics, back in the day, called him a glutton and a drunk.  We might not imagine Him appearing ordinary, quietly looking out the windows while riding a Kings Transit bus; yet He did travel very cheaply up and down the Holy Land of long ago, and said He had nowhere to lay his head. 

And we might not want to say Christ is a stranger to us; but the final paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s pivitol, 1906 book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, says of Jesus,

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

As familiar the story of Jesus’ birth is, His life is imbued with mystery.  This is one very important life story.

I believe in the God who meets us as one of us: Jesus Christ. Tonight we celebrate His arrival, which was about 2016 years ago.  May you know the presence of the incarnate Deity, the God who is human.  And may you hail Him as such, when you meet Him.  

[Love All]

[Love All]

(Luke 1:46-55) 10:30 am, 4^th Sunday of Advent,

Dec 23, 2012; Windsor UBC; J G White

In the mid-1800s, Christian theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, penned this little parable. It is a familiar story, a story rewritten by many over the ages in many different forms.

A prince wanted to find a maiden suitable to be his queen. One day while running an errand in the local village for his father, he passed through a poorer section. As he glanced out the windows of the carriage, his eyes fell upon a beautiful peasant maiden. During the ensuing days he often passed by the young lady and soon fell in love.

But he had a problem. How would he seek her hand? He could order her to marry him. But even a prince wants his bride to marry him freely and voluntarily and not through coercion. He could put on his most splendid uniform and drive up to her front door in a carriage drawn by six horses. But if he did this he would never be certain that the maiden loved him or was simply overwhelmed with all of the splendor.

The prince came up with another solution. He would give up his kingly robe. He moved, into the village, entering not with a crown but in the garb of a peasant. He lived among the people, shared their interests and concerns, and talked their language. In time the maiden grew to love him, because of who he was and because he loved her first.

This is a story of Christmas – of the incarnation – of God loving so deeply He joins us, one of us, and bring us up to Him.

The season of Advent is almost over.  The time of waiting, of remembering Biblical promises, of feeling our hopes, of looking for signs of the Saviour.  Our scripture today from Luke goes back to the months before the now-famous birth.  Young Mary has been visited by an angel, and told of her child, the Saviour, the long-awaited Messiah.  She is such a model for us of receiving the love and blessing of Almighty God. 

If we are to be loving people, you and I, we must also receive the love God has for us: accept it, take it, enjoy it.

Catholic writer Richard Rohr points out for me so well that Mary does not say she’s “not worthy”. She only asks for clarification: “How can this happen? I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34). She never asks if, whether, or why!  It takes the whole Old Testament story to work up to this point, where this woman receives grace and love and favour from God so freely and purely.

What is the first thing Mary does after the angel’s message?    She responds to the news about her older cousin, Elizabeth, who is already pregnant.  Mary goes to her.  Already Mary is giving, caring, loving towards someone else.  She is so blessed, she becomes a blessing immediately.

While she is there with Elizabeth, she sings a song.  The Magnificat, it gets called, by it’s old Latin name.  This is what Natalie read a few minutes ago.  It’s one of the greatest hits from the Bible.  Said and prayed and sung billions of times in worship and devotion by millions of Christians through history. 

And you see what her lyric says?  God brings about three revolutions.  A moral revolution:  God was merciful to those who respected Him, and scattered the proud in their own thoughts.   A social revolution: God brought down the powerful, and lifted up the lowly.  An economic revolution: God filled the hungry, and sent the rich away empty.

Mary’s song celebrates what the Lord is about to do by rejoicing in what God has been up to all along.  What the Lord does sounds rather practical.  Very much attitude-adjustment.   Very peace and justice for all.  Very dollars and cents.

On December 17, part of my daily reading was Prov. 30:7-9.  I wrote it down on a bit of card and carried it with me for the day.

O God, I beg two favors from you;

    let me have them before I die.

First, help me never to tell a lie.

Second, give me neither poverty nor riches!

    Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.

For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”   And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.

I don’t think I’ve asked God for two favours like these very often!  Have you?

Mary knows so well how the Lord operates.  She was poor and young, but she was part of The Plan.  Perhaps she can be a teacher of God’s love and how to take it.  She knows how to receive the blessing.  She knows she is wonderful because of God, not because she made herself great.  Again, as Richard Rohr puts it:  God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good. God does not love you because you are good; you are good because God loves you.

And so, you and I are loving because God loves us.  This is stated explicitly in 1 John 4.  Verses 9 & 10: God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  And then, verse 19:  We love because he first loved us.

When Mary sang her praises to God at Elizabeth’s house that day, little did she know that the child would be born to die as Christ did.  As Mark Lowry’s song asks: Mary did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?  A sacrificial lamb.   

Mary saw the redemption of the world in the cross and the resurrection of her own son.  She stayed with her Son to the end, and beyond his life here, to the birth of the Church. 

Love came down at Christmas, yes.  But God’s love was only completed when Jesus was killed for one and all.  This is our preaching; this is our Gospel.  This must remain in our conversation, our awareness, our devotion that shines like little candle flames for others to see.  Jesus is the gift that is totally used up and spent for you and for me.  He is God, and He is the amazing demonstration of divine love.  Accept this love, accept Him, and your transformation blossoms.  The path of love and sacrifice opens up, a path that makes all the difference in the world.  We are made new, new men and women, by God’s grace.

The beautiful birth, the horrible death, the amazing resurrection:  we re-view the story of Jesus, and live, and love.  Have you ever heard a 1,700 year-old sermon?  Here is a quotation from a Christmas message of Gregory of Nazianzus, 380 AD.

This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God—that putting off of the old man, we might put on the new; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful. 

Perhaps there are people near you who have not found the way to accept the love God has for them.  They don’t yet know the power of Jesus’ shed blood in their lives.  Your ministry may be to share this good news.  There often is much personal, inner pain to go though to join Christ, to have healing in the human soul.  We must be so loving and caring with others around us.  God is.

God loves us first – and loves them first.  We understand this.  I can.  My stepdaughter is expecting a child; I get to be “a grandfather” in May.  The child apparently will be a boy.  He has a name already – Dryden Doucette.  Lots of clothes and things have already been bought for him.  And, according to the father, he will grow up to be a great hockey player.

The child, still in the womb, is loved already.  It has nothing to do with what he will be.  He is simply loved by us first.  So it is for us as God’s children on this planet.  He first loved us.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.  That’s Mary’s song: thanks for God’s love. 

Music is so powerful at this time of year.  This past Friday evening, there must have been two hundred people in the pews of Christ Church for a concert of carols and Christmas anthems.  Among them was this old English carol. 

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;

I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play,

To call my true love to my dance;

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,

This have I done for my true love.

So, why is this a Christmas Carol?  Who is about to dance?  Who is the true love of the dancer?

We can find the answer in the holy imagery of Revelation.  After the lyric of the Hallelujah Chorus, pay attention:

"Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. (19:6b, 7) 

Jesus is the one who dances.  His true love is us, His Church.

Then was I born of a virgin pure,

Of her I took fleshly substance

Thus was I knit to man's nature

To call my true love to my dance.

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,

This have I done for my true love.

That very old carol has many other stanzas.  They tell the story of Jesus, from birth to death and resurrection.   It is a love song.  It is a story of true love.

We are called to join the holy dance, the eternal dance, the dance of humanity and divinity.  It is a dance of love.  For God so loved the world … God’s incredible love for all.  All.  You are part of the all.  And you can join the dance.

[Give More]

[Give More]

(Luke 3:7-14) 10:30 am, 3^rd Sun of Advent,

Dec 16, 2012; Windsor UBC; J G White

Advent is the season of John the Baptizer, for he is one of the key Biblical characters who prepares the way for the Messiah.  Of course, he is dramatically preparing the people for thirty-year-old Jesus to appear on the scene.

Marilyn read a bit of John’s preaching and teaching.  He has harsh warnings.  So the people ask, “What then should we do?”  If you have two coats, give one to someone with none.  If you have food, give to one in need.  Tax collectors were to stop collecting more than the Roman tax from the people.  Soldiers were to stop extorting the people and be happy with their wage. 

Give.  Stop taking.  This was the way to make a turn-around and be ready of Jesus the Christ.  To spend less is to give more.  More of our money, more of our time, more of our energy and our capabilities.  What God gives us – Jesus, the Son – is our inspiration at this time.  Jesus – born a human, suffering and dying for us – breathes into us a change of heart, and fresh priorities.  Have you been appreciating how He paves the way for you to spend less and give more?  Or do we give to ourselves?

Did you hear Stuart MacLean’s story on the radio last weekend, The Hockey Game?  Or hear it last year on Christmas Eve?  A story about Dave as a boy of ten; the Christmas he saw the wooden hockey game in the store, like the one that used to be at my grandparent’s in Oshawa when I was a kid.  The smooth, curved, plywood game, with the players who could swivel completely around.

Dave had saved up a lot of money for a ten year old back then, about $27.  After checking for days the spot his parents hid the gifts in the basement, Dave gave up on them buying it for him; so he spent almost all his money on the last game in the store, wrapped it up, and addressed it to himself, from Santa Claus.  Just about out of money, he wrapped up his prized Yo-yo to his father, a ball-point pen from the jar near the phone to his mother, and his beloved baseball glove to his little sister.  He already knew she liked the glove. 

Early, early on Christmas morning, he snuck his gift to himself down to the Tree… and there, among the presents, was a gift to him from his parents, the exact size and shape of the hockey game.  They had got it for him.  He put the one he bought back in his attic hiding spot. 

So Christmas morning, the gifts were all opened.  His parents were confused by Dave’s gifts to them.  His sister was thrilled with the baseball glove.  Dave was not so excited about that hockey game he had been so wanting.  Later on, he was in his room, and his sister passed by.  He said, “You know, it was my favourite glove.”  He could have said, his “only glove.” 

“It’s my favourite present,” she said. 

He wanted to tell her the truth.  He wanted to tell her about the game in the attic. 

“I want to tell you why I gave it to you,” he said. 

Annie was seven years old that Christmas.  She stood at the doorway to his room and she stared back at him.  “I already know why you gave it to me,” she said.  “Everyone does.”  He stared at his sister, standing there so determined in her jeans and plaid shirt.  “You gave it to me,” she said, “because you love me…  And you knew that I loved it more than you.” 

She was right; he did know that.  He did love her.  It might not have been the whole truth, but it was a greater one.  “That’s right,” he said, “that’s right.”

They went downstairs together then, and they played his new hockey game for an hour.  And who would have guessed it: she beat him every game. 

How often do you give a gift to yourself?  It cost money, or time, or energy and creativity.   And yet, life with the Lord is more profound.  God has plans for each of us to let of go of giving to ourselves.  We strive for greater goals – loving and giving to others, completely, as God does. 

Give.  It is a way to prepare and train your own heart for the word that Christ will speak to you.  

[Spend Less]

[Spend Less]

(James 4:1-6) 10:30 am, 2^nd Sunday of Advent,

Dec 9, 2012; Windsor United Baptist Church; J G White

And forgive us our debts, and we forgive our debtors.  We just read it – prayed it – and we will sing it tonight.  I wonder how many people would like to pray for the forgiving of monetary debts this December: the bills, the credit cards, all those debts!  We have these debts that come from our spending. 

We also have indebtedness to others.  They send us Christmas cards; we have to send one to each of them.  They visited us; we’d better visit them.  They had us over for a meal; we need to pay them back.  We got a gift from that person; we have to give one too!

I think there is also a debt or duty of sorts we feel towards our society.   It is hard to be humble amid the ‘successful consumers’ who surround us.  Hard to give one or two gifts to our child, instead of five or ten, like other parents.  Hard to give a second-hand thing as a gift, instead of spending $50 or $100 on new stuff.  Hard to keep the decorations simple when you have a Clark Griswold next door, lighting up the whole neighbourhood with lights. It’s Christmas peer pressure!  Can we escape the festive rat-race?

To Spend Less is a theme of this Advent Conspiracy.  And it is a conspiracy against the trend in the marketplace of life.  It almost seems subversive, abnormal, humbug!

I chose the scripture reading for today from James 4.  James can seem a harsh and pointed little book.  There are many, many injunctions.  Do this, do this, do this; don’t do that, or that, or that.  I chose this particular paragraph because of one phrase, in verse 3: you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.   

We spend a lot on Christmas for pleasure, do we not?  Our pleasure.  There is the pleasure of giving (and getting) gifts.  Making others happy gets built into us, sometimes in unhealthy ways.  Do we really make others happy?  Do we feel good about ourselves by pleasing those around us?  We spend for the pleasure of being wanted and being appreciated. 

Do you know the short story called The Bachelor’s Dilemma? It’s an old tale, by Morley Callaghan, of a young executive who won a turkey on Christmas Eve from his favourite restaurant.  But what would he do with it?  He called his brother’s wife, where he was invited for dinner the next day, but she had a turkey already.  He called up various friends; each of them had a Christmas bird in the icebox.  Then he remembered some other friends who frequented a certain café.  He joined them and plunked the large bird on the table.  None of them needed it. 

The bachelor went home to his flat.  He felt irritated.  It was as if, he thought, all his friends had joined together to deny him the satisfaction of pleasing them with a gift.  He even tried to give it back to the restaurant from which he had won it, and to a local butcher, whose window was still full of turkeys. 

At Christmas dinner in his brother’s home, they were surprised to hear his turkey was still on his kitchen table; and he wondered why he felt ashamed.  When he got home, he hauled the turkey over to a church, and an old man who answered the door said, “I know a hundred poor families in the nieghbourhood who’ll appreciate a turkey.” 

As soon as he felt the weight of the turkey being lifted off his arms he understood why he had felt ashamed at his brother’s place.  He hadn’t been looking for someone who would appreciate a turkey.  He had been looking for someone who would appreciate him. 

So ends the story of many people’s Christmases.  Trying to spend what they have to be appreciated, esteemed, loved. 

We have also the basic pleasure of getting.  And the pleasure of food and luxury.  I’ve already mentioned the pleasure of avoiding embarrassment, when others expect something of you.  So we spend things for the pleasure of not ignoring the expectations of others. 

Christmastime also holds the pleasures of memory, childhood, longings, nostalgia, escape, hopes.   All these can be fine, when they do not manipulate us into greedy action.

We spend what we have on many things.  We spend our money.  We spend our time.  We spend our energy.  We spend our attention.  We spend our relationships. 

We are in an age of consumers, an economy based on consuming more and more, a culture of shopping and acquiring. 

I just happened to read Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World, a week ago. A utopian/dystopian story of the future, it describes a world that is completely organized around pleasure and consuming.  Infants and children undergo conditioning so that they will be consumers, through and through.  A Director in a city factory explains: ‘We condition the masses to hate the country… But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports.  At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus.  So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport.’ 

This novel took its title from a line in Shakespeare, O brave new world, with such people in it.  Our corner of the world today is filled with such people who love the Dollar Store, or Walmart, or good fashion, or technological gadgetry, or dining out. 

Is it possible that Jesus’ way, here and now, is different?  We may be aware of how often he spoke about riches and poverty.  His Kingdom is a life free from the rat-race, free from the kingdoms of this world: political & economic & social. 

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, after ‘the Lord’s Prayer,’ he taught: do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

I believe there is Good news about spending less.  It is an option.  It is possible to spend less.  Spending less is of God and His Kingdom. Listen to this poetry of Isaiah 55.

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;

And you that have no money, come, buy and eat!

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

And your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Jesus taught things like this:  When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14:12-13) 

Spending less benefits you.  We learn in our Faith that frugality is a spiritual practice.  In Proverbs 11 we can read, One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.  (11:24, 25)

Spending less allows for more giving, more sacrifice.  When I use less money on myself, I can give more in ways that help. 

       Explore with the Lord how your expectations can be different.  Expectations about healthcare, for example.  We hold very tightly to this, don’t we.  Do you ever think about the justice of having thousands and thousands of dollars put into healthcare for us, for when we need it?  Meanwhile, many people on the planet have no such luxury.  No X-rays, no MRIs, no Cat-Scans.  No cancer treatment, no knee replacement surgery, no psycho-therapist at the ready.  Would we ever think of Canada making sacrifices in our healthcare, for the sake of the healthcare of other nations?  Might sound ridiculous to us; but I wonder if that would be the way of Jesus’ Kingdom.

Spending less benefits others.  We’ll think through this next week as we consider how to give more when we spend less.

Spending less also benefits the planet.  Just listen to the science of our day, and do your own thinking about this.  Some of us have watched the short video with David Suzuki called The Test Tube.  It’s a warning about how we people are using up this planet, and the end of this cycle is getting very close.  Spending less of this planet for our way of life sounds like an impossible challenge to me.  How can I change this?  But with God, all things are possible.

 As possible and good spending less would be, I wonder about how.  And perhaps one key is found here:  God gives grace to the humble.  That’s James 4:6 quoting Proverbs 3:34.  It makes sense that humility is one of the roots of spending less. 

Andrew Murray, in his classic book, Humility, says in the preface, the Christian life has suffered loss, because believers have not been distinctly guided to see that nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing, so that God can be all in all.  It has not been made clear that it is not sin that humbles us most, but grace. 

The humility – to spend less – goes hand-in hand with the grace of God.  God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Better to consume more of the grace of God, than to spend everything we have on consuming things that don’t satisfy.  Dallas Willard says that the believer uses grace more than the sinner.  The believer consumes grace like a 747 uses jet-fuel on take-off!  Am I living, fueled by the grace of Jesus Christ?  I know my own stubbornness; I want to live my life happy and healthy, wealthy and wise.  But I try to get and keep these things my own way.  Pride is a hard master.

In the summer of 1986, two ships collided in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia. Hundreds of passengers died as they were hurled into the icy waters below. News of the disaster was further darkened when an investigation revealed the cause of the accident. It wasn't a technology problem like radar malfunction--or even thick fog. The cause was human stubbornness. Each captain was aware of the other ship's presence nearby. Both could have steered clear, but according to news reports, neither captain wanted to give way to the other. Each was too proud to yield first. By the time they came to their senses, it was too late.

For some, spending on Christmas can be like a ship, full steam ahead, with no change of course, no turning back.  It is the Living God who can warm the human heart, open the mind, and transform the soul.  It is God’s gracious work to bend the stubborn will and inspire humility in us.  How we spend our own lives changes as we appreciate how Jesus spent His whole life for us. He has paid the debt that matters most; we can be free.

And it is all because of divine love… for us.  James 4:5 is a verse in the Greek New Testament that is difficult to translate.  There are a few options.  I like the NRSV.  He yearns jealously for the spirit that He has made to dwell in us.  God longs for you so much!  Your spirit, your soul, you. 

Then, safe and secure with Christ, how we spend everything we have can be so new.  Thanks be to God!