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Theme: Seeking Christ in Christmas“Christmas is Just the Beginning”

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – based on a sermon series by Adam HamiltonDecember 23-24, 2013 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

VIDEO The Real Night Before Christmas

Luke 2:1-20

1 At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

8 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. 17 After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. 18 All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, 19 but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. 20 The shepherds went back to their

Jeff Huber’s Sermon –December 23-24, 2013

flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.

VIDEO Seeking Christ in Christmas Eve Sermon Starter

SLIDE Christmas is Just the Beginning

When will you begin taking down your Christmas decorations? Last year I left our Christmas lights up through the month of January I think until the neighbors called and asked when we were taking ours down so she could make her husband take theirs down! Sometimes we wait until the 12th day of Christmas which is January 6. Sometimes we wait until New Year's Day weekend. Sometimes we start taking them down on December 26. We get this attitude of, "Okay, they have been up for a month now so let's get on with life."

In our house we get the tubs out of the garage and it's my job to make sure everything is packed up just right, mostly because I am a bit obsessive-compulsive about this kind of thing. We take down the lights and the Christmas ornaments and the Nativity scene and the fake garland everything goes in its appropriate box. We take the live dead tree outside and hopefully get it to the recycling drop before they close it for the season. Last year's tree actually sat in our backyard until July when the neighbors brought in a chipper for a bunch of trees they were cutting down in their property.

After all the Christmas stuff is put away and done we can go on with life. Christmas is over until next year and in some ways that is a relief because of the stress and anxiety this season can bring, depending on how you celebrate.

What I want to suggest to you tonight is that if we rightly understand Christmas, even though we will of course be putting away our decorations, Christmas is not really done on midnight of December 25. December 25 is actually just the beginning of Christmas. You may not know this, but the church year actually begins with the season of advent which has been the four weeks prior to Christmas. The church has always understood that Christmas is actually the beginning of the year and not the end.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor living in Germany during World War II. He was an opponent of Hitler's regime and for that he was arrested and put in prison. He was executed two days before the Allied forces liberated Nazi Germany and Hitler was killed. He was actually a part of one of the first plots to assassinate Hitler even though he was a pastor.


While he was in prison, he was writing meditations on Christmas. They were collected in a little book that I have called, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. In one of the meditations there is a haunting quote where Bonhoeffer says this.

SLIDE (Graphic of God in the Manger book on left) It is not a light thing to God that every year we celebrate Christmas but do not take it seriously.

Tonight I would like us to take Christmas seriously. Let's pause for a few moments and think about what this night really means and how is December 25 only the beginning of Christmas?

SLIDE Christmas is just the beginning

Let's begin with the big scandal of Christian faith when it comes to Christmas. On the surface, the claim is absurd and almost unbelievable that the God who said, "Let there be light," and set the galaxies in motion in the cosmos, who designed life itself and sustained it by his power, actually visited our planet in human flesh. That's what Christians believe. We call this the doctrine of the incarnation which is that God was actually here in the flesh and walked among us. God did this to say to each one of us, "I really do exist. Look at me." It is as if God is saying, "In case you were confused, this is what I am like. In case you have forgotten, I really am with you."

This is the claim and we either believe it or we don't believe it, but this is what we Christians claim at Christmas. We believe that God visited this planet in Jesus Christ. The gospel writer John puts it this way.

SLIDE 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

God's desire was to reveal himself and become a human being that was living and breathing, so when we look at Jesus we can see God the Creator. Matthew puts it this way in his version of the Christmas story.

SLIDE 22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: 23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

That's a big and scandalous idea that seems absurd just by itself. But then it


gets even more interesting. This is because we expected God would show up in the flesh he might show up with Morgan Freeman for those of you who are old enough, George Burns. More likely we might think of God showing up like Thor, the mighty warrior from heaven cast down from Mount Olympus to fight the forces of darkness and defeat them once and for all. But that's not what the Christmas story says.

The Christmas story says that God came into the world in an ordinary way. There was an egg that was miraculously fertilized and a child begins to form in the womb. Brain tissue and fingers and hands develop, along with feet and toes. Finally, a child that is kicking in the womb burst forth into the world and no doubt cries as he enters a broken world. God came and visited this planet as a baby, just like each and every one of us, and that is really hard to wrap your mind around if you're honest.

Until you start thinking about the impact that babies have upon us. This year I've had the privilege of baptizing a number of babies and we always bring them here to the middle of the congregation as part of the baptism ritual. You gather round the baby and we say some words together as a church about how we will help this child grow and know who God is together. We pray over the baby and the family and I get to see the look on your faces as you surround this child. Several of you look at me like you just want to reach out and grab the baby and hold him or her for herself, and it's probably a good thing that you don't, but you can see the look of love in your eyes. Children can call love out of our hearts that we don't even know that we have. That is how it is been with my two children and maybe this is why God came as a child, because somehow children just change us.

Children can often break down walls and barriers. It doesn't matter whether they come from Africa or Asia or Ukraine or Iraq or Afghanistan. Little children can break down even the tallest of walls.

The Scriptures tell us that God came into the world as an infant, totally helpless and dependent upon others to feed him, to change and clean him, and to love him—totally vulnerable. This God who came to us in Jesus would someday crawl and scrape a knee and cry. He would be scared of things that went bump in the night and would have nightmares. He would one have had the chickenpox and cursed the day that God created chickenpox. As he continued to grow he would no doubt be teased by his peers and made fun of at school at times. He would have his heartbroken hundreds of times and would on many occasions say, "This


is the worst day of my entire life."

He would grow up to be a teenager who would disobey his parents on at least one occasion and run off without telling them. He would have hormones running through his body and be confused by those feelings that were going on inside of him. He would one day be tempted with greed and lust and pride and all the things that each of us wrestles with as human beings. Maybe that's why God came as a child, so that we might know that he knows what it's like to be one of us when we pray.

The truth is that Jesus experienced life in a more difficult way than most of us. Today babies are born in almost like luxury hotel accommodations with birthing rooms in hospitals. But when Jesus was born, he was born to a poor peasant couple. There was no room anywhere in town and so he was born in a stable, a first century parking garage. His first bed was the feeding trough for animals that looked something like this. It was where the sheep came and ate, and where the shepherds knelt before him in awe that God would send a Savior like this.

That’s the Christmas story, and we pray that each of our children born and raised in this community, would come to know that Jesus as they grow up.

The Scripture says that God came to us like this so that we might know that he knows what it's like to be one of us. The writer of the book of Hebrews says this.

SLIDE We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. No, we have one in Jesus who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin.

How powerful is this story which tells us that God understands. God doesn't just understand. When he left this earth he said, "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will always be with you. I know. I understand. When you mess up you can come to me because I get it. When you hurt you can cry out to me because I know what it's like to feel your pain. I am. I exist. I am with you always."

That is the message of Christmas which goes much deeper than anything we can imagine. How do you box that up on December 26 and say, "I don't really need that until next year"? Don't you need that every single day?

This is the first idea in the Christmas story I would lift up to today. The second idea is something I shared with you last Christmas Eve but I want to


remind you about today. In the gospel of Luke the writer tells us three different times what kind of bed Jesus had on his first night here on Earth. Who does that? Who has a baby and then tells everyone what kind of crib the baby used? Why did Luke mention this fact three times in just a handful of verses, that Jesus was put to sleep in a manger?

Many of us envision the feeding trough as being made of wood but in the first century in Israel wood was hard to come by, so typically mangers were carved out of stone or made from stones like the one you see on the video screen.

SLIDE Manger Stones

They were carved out of stone or made from stones so animals could come and eat from them. This was the Christ child’s first bed. What was being said by this and why was it important for Luke to tell us this fact?

I think the first thing that Luke was doing was pointing to the fact that the Christ child was poor, as was his family. This is about as low as you can get, that when you were born your bed was a place where the animals would eat. In this Jesus was identifying with the 1 billion people on our planet who live in serious poverty. For every little baby who was born in a homeless shelter or on the streets or in the African bush with a piece of plastic placed underneath the woman who gives birth in a hut, Jesus says, "I know what it's like to be you. That's how I came into this world too."

But there is another level I think Luke is pointing to as he gives us this fact in the Christmas story. Luke is pointing to the fact that Jesus was placed in the place where God's creatures eat. He was inviting us to listen carefully to the story, that the child who came into this world as God in the flesh will satisfy the hunger that you have in your heart. We are meant to remember this as we read the Gospels.

One day Jesus is tempted by the devil who wants to give him everything if you will just give up his mission and follow the devil. But Jesus says, "We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

In other words, all of our needs are not just physical. We need more than food and drink. There is something more that our hearts desire and need to be fulfilled. Jesus went on to say, "I am the bread of life. Those who eat of me will never go hungry and those who drink of me will never go thirsty."


We struggle with what this means because it sounds strange. What is Jesus talking about? He is not talking about the physical hunger in our bellies, but something that is happening inside of our hearts. He is talking about the needs that go deeper like the needs of meaning and purpose and joy and love and grace and hope. If we are honest, we recognize that each of us hungers for something more in life than just what we get under the Christmas tree and the food that we eat on Christmas day.

There are times in our lives where we really feel it because in many ways we have everything and we try to fill those deeper needs with other things. "If I could just find the right partner and be married to just the right person; if I could just live in the right house and in the right neighborhood; if I could just drive the right car or have the right cell phone then I would be happy and be satisfied."

But it becomes quite terrifying when we get all of these things and we realize that we are still not happy. There is still something inside which hungers for something more and we can't find a way to satisfied.

Jesus, at the Last Supper took bread and he said, "Take this and eat because it is my body given for you. This is the bread of life." Jesus is telling us that he came to satisfy a hunger which nothing else can satisfy in this world. We know this because we are aware that those things underneath the tree will only satisfy us for so long before we are hungering for something more. How long will those things satisfy you? Maybe they will satisfy you for a day or two or a week and then you will be hungry for something else which will fill this place in your heart.

Jesus came to satisfy the hunger of our hearts. I think of a little girl named Alyssa who was told by her parents that they were going to take her Santa Claus so she could tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. Alyssa ran up the stairs into her bedroom and wrote a note to give to Santa. She went to the mall and she sat on Santa's lap like many of us do as children. Santa said, "Well little girl. What do you want for Christmas?"

She handed Santa a note and Santa opened up her note and he read it and he smiled. He asked, "Is there anything more that you want for Christmas?"

Alyssa said, "No, thank you very much." Then she slipped off his lap.

This is what she wrote on her letter.

Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is for my family to be happy, and to have a wonderful Christmas together. From Alyssa, and by the way, this letter is


for the real Santa!

Alyssa had figured out that nothing that she could ask for from Santa was what she really wanted ultimately in life. What she really wanted was for her parents and her siblings to be blessed. She wanted their lives to be filled with joy, all of the stuff that you can't quite find shopping online or at the mall or at Walmart. That kind of joy is what comes from Jesus Christ who was God in the flesh and who came to satisfy every hungry heart.

When we look at the Christmas story we recognize that Jesus came to give us life and to give it abundantly then how do we put that in a box on December 26? How do we say the day after Christmas, "I don't really need that anymore? I will just put that away until Thanksgiving next year." Of course we know that we are not supposed to put that away.

There is even more to this crazy story about the birth of Jesus and that has to do with his name. Sometimes we name our children after other members of the family. I was getting my haircut today and the person cutting my hair just had a baby a few weeks ago and she said they named him Jackson because it was a family name. But in the case of Jesus, there were no family members named Jesus. There were only these strange messengers from God who spoke to both Mary and Joseph and said separately to them, "You are to call this child Joshua." Joshua is probably the closest pronunciation for it than what we say in English. In Hebrew it was Yahshewah which means, "Yahweh saves."

In Greek it was Yesus which became Jesus in English. The word means Savior, so this child who was born in a stable, was born to be a Savior. Some saviors were like mighty warriors who fought battles against the powers of darkness. But that's not exactly the kind of Savior that Jesus was, instead the Angel said that Jesus would, "save his people from their sins."

That word "sin" sometimes troubles us but the word simply means to, "stray from the mark,” or to "miss the mark." This means that God has a dream and a desire and when he created us he hoped we would live into that, but most of us end up wandering from that path. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, talked about this as being separated from that path or separated from each other or separated from God. When we do things we wish we hadn't done or say things we wish we hadn't said that causes brokenness in our lives. That is sin and there is really none of us who hasn't done that at some point. We sometimes find ourselves hurting other people or hurting ourselves. We feel that separation from


each other and from God and even from who we want to be. We sometimes find ourselves trapped or stuck in doing the same things over and over again that we don't want to do. They suck the life out of us and Jesus came to save us from those moments that can drain us.

Charles Wesley was the brother of John Wesley and he wrote several thousand hymns during his lifetime. One of his most famous powerfully conveys this message.

He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free.

This is the kind of Savior that Jesus came to be. He came to be a Savior to set us free from guilt and shame and set us free from those things which have a hold of our hearts and won’t let us go. At the end of his life, this baby will hang on a cross and as he does so he cries out to his father, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Jesus sets us free.

When you all give to our church we are able to support ministries of the global United Methodist Church and we can do so much more together than we can by ourselves. One of those ministries is the Healing House which was started by a woman named Bobby Joe in an inner-city area. She was a prostitute and a drug addict for much of her life, having lived on the streets. She founded Jesus Christ and he changed her life. He saved her from a life of prostitution and drug addiction and he gave her a new life for her old life. She very clearly heard Jesus say, "I love you and I forgive you and I want to set you free and give you a fresh start." She was born again and changed from the inside out.

During this same period in her life her mother got gravely ill and passed away, leaving her an inheritance. Bobby Joe knew many other women who are living on the streets but they had nowhere to go. They would start to try and clean up their lives but then they would get pulled back in. Many would end up in prison or addicted to drugs and at the mercy of a pimp. Most of them would end up back on the street even though they were trying to turn their life around. It was a cycle that just kept repeating itself.

SLIDE Healing House (graphic)

She thought, "I wonder if I could take the money for my mother's estate and buy a place for women like me to live." She found an old, abandoned house with boarded-up windows. She bought it and rehabbed it so that it was livable


and invited these women to come and live with her. You can see a picture of that house on the video screen which they began to occupy in 2003. She wanted to be able to share with them the news of a Savior who could change their lives. Their lives were changed as they got jobs and as they began to help each other. Pretty soon there were more women than could fit in that one house and so she found people to help buy another house and they bought another and another until today, 10 years later, they have more than six homes. They also bought an abandoned storefront which they remodeled into 4 residential family units, 4 businesses that the women can participate in and a place for career training for the women. They now have 75 women and more than 30 men and their lives have been transformed. They hold church services in their building and they are living, breathing testimonies of the power of a Savior who changes lives and gives people hope and new beginnings.

Every year at Christmas the men and women who live at the different Healing Houses take up an offering and they buy Christmas presents to deliver to the homeless who live under overpasses. Many of them are still embroiled in lives of prostitution and they give them those gifts and they say to them, "There is always hope because there is a Savior who loves you."

I read that last year they were delivering these presents and they stopped to get gasoline in their van and the police officer was there at the gas station filling up as well. He looked at the woman putting gas in the van and he said, "Hey, don't I know you? Didn't you used to work the streets?"

She replied, "Yes, that was me."

He exclaimed, "I thought you were dead!"

He then looked inside the van and he said, "And you, I thought you were dead!" He called his partner to come over and he pointed at each of them in the van and said, "Remember them? We thought they were dead and here they are, alive and well."

In a sense, the people those police officers knew were dead. There was a new person in their place who looked the same but they were very different because the Savior was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

The truth is that I don't know what it is you need to be saved from and I can't save a single soul. But I am pretty confident that all of us have something that we need to be saved from. I don't know your places of brokenness but I know mine. Some of them are in my heart and some of them are on my hands. Some of


them are things I have done and some of them are things I should've done but didn't do. Some of them are things I have said and some of them are things I did not say but should have.

What I do know is that all of us have those places of brokenness which is why you can't box up Christmas and put it in storage until next Thanksgiving, because you're going to need this Savior again and again. Jesus the Christ child offers new beginnings and fresh starts.

That brings me to one last dimension of Christmas that we can't put in a box in storage for the year. John tells the Christmas story in his gospel in this way.

SLIDE 16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

In other words, he is telling us that Jesus came as an expression of the love of God and he did not come to judge but to save. This is why John describes God as a father who longs for his children to come home. God is longing for and begging and pleading that we might come back to him so that he can love us and we can experience that love deep inside of our hearts. This is why we read these words in John 1.

SLIDE 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

Christmas expresses the deep, deep love of God for every one of you. God knows your name and God knows your story. God knows all the ugly things about you already and he loves you with all of those warts. God knows the pain you have experienced and he longs to love you through those moments.

On October 31 of this year one of our church members lost a granddaughter. Ashli Ward was 19 when she passed and she had suffered from cerebral palsy from a very young age. That didn't stop her from being a child who was filled with life and enjoying music from the Bar D Wranglers to Alanis Morrissette. I visited with her grandmother Wendy Klemm and her great-grandmother Barbara Krayenbrink shortly after Ashli passed and they share with me how much life and joy she brought to their families life even though she was confined to a wheelchair all of her life and needed constant care. I told them how


saddened I was for their loss. They told me they knew from a very young age they wouldn't have Ashli forever and they were determined to fill her life with as much love as they could every single day.

As I heard them share Ashli's story I saw this picture of the love of God. God knows that you are not going to live forever here on this Earth and he wants to fill your life with as much love as you could possibly handle. Even though Ashli could not use verbal language she spoke clearly to them as she laughed when family members would say, “I love you.” Their love for Ashli didn't keep her from experiencing pain or difficulty. They knew the day was coming when this life would end for her but they continued to pour love into her life. I love this picture of her used during her funeral. I think it captures the love of God for us.

SLIDE Ashlie Ward (graphic)

I think that's Christmas. I want to thank Wendy and Barbara and Ashli’s parents Kim and Chris for letting me share her story.

SLIDE Christmas is just the beginning

Do you really think you box up the love of God and put away until next Thanksgiving? Or do you, every single day, walk in that love and allow God to love you and allow that love to transform your life? That's what Christmas means and why it is just the beginning.

I will leave you with one last reminder. Our Christmas Eve offering this year will go to help add on to the Manna Soup kitchen here in Durango, helping those who go there for food learn to cook and gain some life skills to help them get off the streets. It also will go to buy food for children in the Spring Valley slum outside of Nairobi that we sponsor. Finally, it will go to help buy medical supplies for the clinic we have helped to build in Guatemala. I shared with our congregation last weekend that our newest ministry is Winter Haven which will see us partner with several other churches to provide housing for homeless families. One of our church members has spearheaded this ministry because we discovered there are no less than 58 children who sleep in cars or other places that are not permanent because they are homeless in our county.

We do all of these things because the baby was born in Bethlehem would be a man who would say some very specific things about what it means to be human. He would not only teach us about who God is but he would say, "This is what it means to be a human being. First, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Second, and just as important, love your neighbor as you


love yourself. Your neighbor is anybody who is in need and to love them does it mean to have warm, fuzzy feelings for them. It means that when you see they have a need, you stop and you help."

When we see someone who is hungry we give them something to eat. When we see someone who is thirsty we give them something to drink. When they are sick or in prison we visit them. When they are naked we find them some clothing. When they are a stranger we welcome them. Jesus said, "In is much as you have done this to the least of these, you have done it unto me."

This is what it means to be human. We forgive not just once but 7x70 because that is what Jesus does for us. We demonstrate humility and grace. We let our light shine before others so they might see our good works and give glory to God in heaven. On the night that Jesus was to be arrested, he gets down on his hands and his knees and he washes the feet of his disciples. He illustrates what he has taught them many times, but the ones who would be great you must become servants. This is what it means to be human and it is what we are called to model and live out as we seek to be Jesus Christ to the world.

We also remember that the one who is the Savior didn't promise that we would go through difficult times and struggles in our life. He did promise that he would walk with us through the dark moments. Because of Christmas we know that God is with us, Emmanuel, and there are great things in store. Because of Christmas we know that the worst thing in our lives will never be the last thing in our lives.

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and I'm the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. I am the outside and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first of the last. I died and behold I am alive for evermore."

The message of Christmas is that there is always hope. The worst thing will never be last thing because Christ is Risen. You don't think you will need that until next Christmas? You want to put that in a box in storage?

I invite you this Christmas to treasure and savor that gift every single day. I'm going to give you two invitations as we close. First, I want to invite you to leave at least one part of your Christmas decoration up for the rest of the year. Find your favorite Nativity scene or something else and put it somewhere that you will see it every day, to remember that Christmas day is just the beginning, and we need this story every day.


Finally, I want to invite you to say yes to the story, to simply say, "I want Christmas. I need it. I need you God."

SLIDE Prayer

So let's take a moment to pray. As you pray and if you believe this is what you want, to say "yes" to the Christmas story and to say "yes" to Jesus Christ than why don't you just say this prayer quietly under your breath with me. You can just whisper it if you like.

Thank you God for Christmas. I trust in your love. I trust that you are real—that you can satisfy my hungry heart—that you are willing to save me from myself and my broken places. I trust that you are always with me, and that in you there is always hope. Thank you God for Christmas. Thank you for loving me.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.


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