Christmas

The Angels’ Song

January 6, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

The First Carols of Christmas – The Angels’ Song*
Sycamore Creek Church
Christmas Eve, 2014
Tom Arthur

Angel’s Song: Luke 2:8-14 NRSV

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Merry Christmas Friends!

What do you expect at Christmas? Often we don’t get whatever it is that we expect. I came across this prank that Jimmy Kimmel got his viewers to play on their kids. He asked them to give their kids the worst Christmas present. This is what happened:

I kind of cringe watching that video. It feels a bit cruel at times. But it makes a good point, whatever we get at Christmas is often not quite what we were expecting. It even feels cruel at times. Sometimes this is because our expectations are so high that they can’t realistically be met. Or sometimes it’s because we just have the wrong expectations. Did you catch that the angels came to the shepherds “by night”? Here’s a problem I want to deal with tonight:

Christmas can be a very dark time.

I think Christmas acts like a magnifier. It magnifies the good, but it also magnifies the bad. So if things are generally going well in your life, then Christmas makes the good even better. But if things are generally going bad in your life, then Christmas makes the bad even worse!

Christmas can be a very dark time. This is the case literally. December 21^st is the winter solstice and that’s the shortest day of the year. In the darkness of this time of the year, many suffer from S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder). For others Christmas is an emotionally dark time. Maybe you’re still grieving from a death in the family. Maybe this is the first Christmas you’ve had without a loved one. Or maybe an addiction is wreaking emotional havoc in your life. Or perhaps you’re struggling with something like depression. Christmas can also be dark relationally. Maybe your family is broken or maybe you don’t have any family and you’re just plain lonely. For others of us Christmas is a dark time financially. We have no money to celebrate Christmas or we have spent too much money celebrating Christmas and have taken on way too much debt to make Christmas fit our expectations. For many of us, Christmas is a dark time.

Christmas isn’t a celebration because everything is right with the world. We need Christmas for the very fact that we’re in the dark. The circumstances of Jesus’ birth are certainly in the dark. Jesus is born in poverty, placed in a barn feeding trough. He is born to an unwed teenage girl who lived in the affordable housing section of her day. The first people invited to Christmas were the night-shift shepherds. Shepherds were kind of like the garbage collection job of their day. And it wasn’t just any shepherds invited to Christmas. It was the night-shift grave-yard shift shepherds.

Maybe this Christmas is the worst Christmas or this year has been the worst year you’ve ever had. When you’re walking through your worst Christmas ever, where do you turn? If you don’t naturally turn to the story of the birth of the savior, then I’m even more glad you’ve come here tonight, to hear this story of Christmas. It’s my hope that in the midst of the darkness you might find some peace in the birth of Jesus. This leads to a basic question I want to deal with tonight:

Do you have more peace than you did last year?

Do you know anyone named Irene? Irene is Greek for “peace.” “Irene” was popular at the turn of the 20^th century but then fell out of favor. It’s making a comeback though at the turn of the 21^st century. Irene is the word that Luke uses in the angels song:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Peace means something that was once broken or fractured has been brought back together. In the New Testament portion of the Bible (that’s the part of the Bible that comes after Jesus’ birth), there are ninety-two different instances when the word “Irene” is used. About half of those references to peace refer to peace with God and the other half refer to peace between humans. I want to explore both tonight.

Peace with God
What does it mean to have peace with God? I’ll never forget Barb Smith. Barb came to our church in my first year of being pastor here. SCC welcomes everyone, but we tend to attract a younger crowd. Barb’s silver hair stuck out a bit. We send $5 gift cards to first time guests so I sent her a card. She sent it back and told me to give it someone else. Barb came back several weeks in a row and then I didn’t see her much. So a couple of weeks later I called her. When she picked up her phone she was in Missouri visiting family. She told me that she had just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was given three to four months to live. She was doing some last visiting with her family. The peace in her voice over the phone was palpable. I asked her if I could pray with her on the phone, and she really appreciated that, but what I really wanted to do was to ask this woman who seemed to have so much peace in the face of her imminent death to pray for me. A couple of weeks later she was back to her home in Lansing and asked me to meet with her to plan her funeral. They train you to plan funerals at seminary, but the training always assumes that the person has already died. While I sat in Barb’s living room planning her funeral with her, I saw again the peace that she had. There was some fear of the dying process and the pain involved, but Barb was not afraid of death. Her trust and hope was in Jesus, who also died but was raised from the dead by the power of God.

Friends, to be at peace with God means entrusting our life and even our death into the hands of God. Being at peace with God means trusting that we have been forgiven through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Being at peace with God means receiving the peace that passes understanding, a peace so deep that even when we look death in the face, we know that Jesus has already walked through the valley of the shadow of death and will walk alongside us too.

The angels said that “A Savior” would be born, but what will the savior save us from? During Jesus’ time, Israelites probably hoped to be saved from the Roman Empire. If you were around during the American Revolution, you might want to be saved from the British Empire. Today, if you are black you might want to be saved from the police. But Jesus doesn’t really promise to save us from any of these things. He promises to save us from us, from ourselves. Through Jesus we are saved from our narcissism that makes everything about ourselves. We are saved from our unforgiveness, which is like drinking rat poison and hoping the rat dies. We are saved from our bitterness that turns any joy into rottenness. We are saved from our prejudice and racism that steals the gifts of a rich diversity in our relationships. Ultimately we are saved from our rebellion from God, a rebellion that cuts us off from our creator, the very source of our being. At Christmas we cannot forget that Jesus is born to ultimately die, a death that rescues us from ourselves.

So here’s a big question for you this Christmas:

Are you more at peace with God than you were last year?

Peace with others
I mentioned that there are ninety-two references to peace in the New Testament. About half speak of peace with God, and half speak about peace between humans. So how are things going living at peace with those around you? What are you doing to push back the darkness? To bring peace to this world?

Sometimes we get really tripped up on the whole “world peace” thing. Right? I mean, who can really bring about world peace? We pray for it. We hope for it. But that prayer and hope is so big that we kind of give up on even trying. I like what Mother Teresa had to say about it. She encouraged us to do small things with great love. Small things don’t often seem like they’re fighting back the darkness but they may do more than you can imagine.

One of my favorite movie series is wrapping up this month: The Hobbit. Hobbits are small creatures about half the size of a normal human being. They’re called “Halflings” because of their size. They don’t seem like creatures who would save the world. They’re too small. But Gandalf the wizard sees something powerful in their smallness:

Gandalf says that Saruman, another wizard, “believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I have found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.”

Jesus lived and taught about peace in these small kinds of ways. He taught us to love our enemies. This isn’t about warm feelings, but about doing loving things toward them (even when they don’t deserve it). Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies. He taught us to turn the other cheek and to give someone our shoes when they steal our coat. He tells us to forgive over and over again, and the prayer he taught us tells us that we’ll be forgiven in the way that we forgive others. He told us to do acts of mercy to those who are in need. He told the story of a man who is robbed and beaten and thrown on the side of the road. Two church leaders walk by and leave him in the ditch. Then a Samaritan walks by and helps him out. Samaritans were hated by Jews. Jesus is breaking down racial lines and prejudices in this simple story about helping someone who is different than you, even someone who might not do the same thing for you.

Christmas isn’t just about being at peace with God. It’s about being at peace with those around us. So here’s a question for you:

Are you more at peace with others than you were last year?

I find that a benefit of being part of a faith community like SCC, a community that seeks to be curious, creative, and compassionate is that we’re always doing our best to provide opportunities to do small things with great love. This past year small groups socialized and sang carols at local nursing homes. Another small group offered coffee to the homeless or near homeless downtown. Individuals gave food, care, and rides to those stuck at home by health. Together we collected over 5000 items for Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank in Lansing. We served meals and built friendships at Maplewood Women and Children’s Center. We helped organize two different garden work days at North Elementary. Last year at Christmas Eve we received and gave away over $11,000. Over all our years giving away Christmas Eve offerings we’ve received and given away over $46,000. If you add in all the other offerings for missions that take place other than Christmas Eve, the total is more like $176,000 or about $12,000/year! This year our four Christmas Eve offerings will be entirely given away to three things:

1. Our Nicaragua Medical Missions

2. Local Emergency Needs

3. The Imagine No Malaria Campaign

We are seeking to be a compassionate community that is creating more peace in our world through small acts of kindness done with great love. So here’s another question for you this Christmas:

Are you creating more peace in the world than you were last year?

If you don’t know where to begin, then begin with prayer. Begin by asking God to help you have peace. Here’s a prayer that you might find helpful:

God, I want peace. I want peace with you and peace with those around me. Forgive me for the ways I’ve ignored you and not sought to live at peace with others. Give me the peace that passes understanding and help me walk in the way of Jesus so that I might have more peace in my life this year than last. Amen.

Friends, if you’re ready to live at peace with God and peace with others, would you let me know? Drop me an email (tomarthur@sycamorecreekchurch.org) or check out my blog post: So You Want To Follow Jesus.

*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Adam Hamilton

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, peace

Magnificat*

December 17, 2014 by Patricia Leave a Comment

The First Carols of Christmas – Magnificat*
Sycamore Creek Church
December 14/15, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas friends!

Have you ever sat in the back of a police car? Anyone want to claim that one? I will. I’ve only sat in the back of a police car once. It happened one night when I was in high school. Some friends and I decided to try to impress some girls one night by taking them to what we called “The End of the World.” “The End of the World” was a local quarry of some sort. There was a kink in the fence that we would sneak through and hang out near the “edge” of the world. As we finished up and were walking back to the car, we saw lights flashing and found police officers at our cars. We were questioned about what we were doing and when they found that we were not drunk or high, they let us go home on our own. I found out later that the company that owned the quarry was considering pressing criminal trespassing charges, but through my dad’s intervention, they dropped the charges. We deserved the charges. We had done the crime, but we were all shown some mercy that night.

Today we’re talking about mercy. Mercy is not giving or getting something bad that you deserved. This is in contrast to grace which we talked about last week. Grace is giving or getting something good that was unearned. A classic moment of grace is found in the movie, Les Miserables. Jean Valjean, a paroled convict, steals silverware from a bishop who offers him hospitality. When he is caught, the bishop shows him an amazing mercy.

So when was a time you received mercy? I asked my friends on Facebook about this and one friend, Tiffany, told of a time when she ran out of gas. She called her dad expecting to be berated for her mistake. Instead, he came and helped her saying, “We’ve all done it.” The mercy her dad showed her in that moment has informed all of her own parenting since. Another friend of mine, Marilyn, told the story of working in a high stress cancer clinic, having to do medical procedures and diagnostics she was not completely comfortable with. She was patiently helped by a more experienced and knowledgeable colleague who never seemed to get upset or impatient with her lack of knowledge. Another friend, Gretchen, told about a time when she was driving fifteen over and got pulled over. The cop only gave her a ticket for five over which saved her from getting points on her record.

Of course, the right mix of mercy and justice is not always clear. The struggle between mercy and justice is evident in places like Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City where Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson, Tamir Rice was shot by Timothy Loehmann, and Eric Garner was put in a chokehold and strangled by Daniel Pantaleo. Then there’s protests that have followed, most of which have been peaceful but the ones that get media attention turn violent. There’s a problem we all face: We are quick to demand justice for others and mercy for ourselves. Portia, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice says, “In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.” One thing we can all agree upon is this: The world is broken.

Enter the Christmas Story…

Today we continue in a series called The First Carols of Christmas. We like to sing Christmas Carols at Christmas but do you know about the first carols? The book of Luke is one of four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life. Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus reads like a musical. People are talking normally and then all of a sudden, they break into song. There are four songs in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth and one scene that was later turned into a song. Last week we looked at the scene of the archangel Gabriel telling Mary she would be pregnant that was turned into a song, the Ave Maria. Today we’re looking at the song sung by Mary: The Magnificat. “Magnificat” means to magnify, expand, or make great. In the Magnificat, we’re going to learn about God’s mercy. We’ll learn two things:

God uses his power in merciful ways.
God is merciful by using his strength to humble the powerful and lift the lowly.

Mary is one of the lowly. She is a young girl who is probably twelve or thirteen years old. In ancient days, girls married and had children much younger than today. Mary lived in Nazareth, the low income housing of Galilee. Nazareth had a population of about a hundred. God chose to come to a girl in Nazareth rather than Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee four miles northwest. In Nazareth we find the most affordable housing option on the market: caves. Mary was likely visited by Gabriel in a cave. Ten days before Mary sings the Magnificat, Gabriel shows up and says, “Hail Mary, full of grace…” You’re going to become pregnant and have a child. Mary has not been sexually active so she is a bit befuddled by this declaration. So Gabriel says God is going to cause her to become pregnant. Now this is a detail of the story that is so familiar to us that it loses its impact on us. Thomas Paine, one of the great founding fathers of America was a deist and skeptic of most things religious. He wrote in his book, The Age of Reason, “Were any girl, that is now with child, to say, and even to swear to it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed?” No. She’d be locked up in a mental institute. But back then she more likely would have been stoned by Joseph, her fiance’s family. Mary is terrified and goes to Elizabeth, her old cousin, who also has had a surprising pregnancy in her old age. Elizabeth lives a hundred miles away. It is not unrealistic to think that Mary’s family is attempting to cover up Mary’s unwed pregnancy. Mary comes to Elizabeth hoping to get some clarity on whether she is crazy or should be put death. Elizabeth is filled with God’s Spirit and tells Mary that she’s not crazy. Instead Mary is blessed. At this point, having Elizabeth’s confirmation, joy finally grips Mary and she breaks out into song—The Magnificat.

Now the Magnificat is not just a touching and beautiful little song. If you think that, you aren’t paying close attention. The Magnificat is a very dangerous song. It’s so dangerous that Kathleen Norris tells us that during the 1980s civil war in Guatemala, the military regime banned the reading of the Magnificat in public. It is said that elsewhere in Nicaragua peasants carried copies of the Magnificat during similar repressive regimes. The Chris Tomlin Song, My Soul Magnifies the Lord, a great song built on The Magnificat, cuts most of this dangerous stuff out. So now that you know the context of The Magnificat, let’s read it:

Luke 1:46-55 NRSV
Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

I think we can learn at least two things from The Magnificat. First, God uses his power in merciful ways. Second, God shows mercy by humbling the powerful and lifting up the lowly. In other words, God shows mercy to those without power, which in comparison with God is all of us. If we go back to Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, we see the same sentiment:

Earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy season justice
~Portia (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice)

Last week I asked this question: are you more grace-full this year than you were last year. Today I ask you this question: Are you more merciful than you were last year? I’d like to offer you three tips on nurturing mercy in your life.

1. Forgive
Forgive those who have hurt you. Let me give you a very small example from my own life. Several years ago Sarah and I had a Subaru Legacy wagon that had served us quite well over the years. It had nearly 200,000 miles on it and was rusting out in several places. There were literally holes in the body of the car. One day someone hit our car and put a dent in one of the body panels that was all rusted. Technically, it was my right to have that panel replaced. But this would have likely caused his insurance to go up. The car was already rusted. It had another dent in the hood from the time I hit a deer. It wasn’t worth it. So I just told him to forget about it and we went on our way. I used my power in that moment to extend mercy rather than exact justice.

I’ve spoken a lot about forgiveness in the past. Today I want to focus on one very practical indirect step: go watch the movie coming out on Christmas day, Unbroken. You don’t have to go on Christmas day, but go see it or rent it when it comes out. Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a WWII POW in Japan who forgives his captors even after horrendous torture. Louis Zamperini is a real person and the story is based on his life. Few of you have faced harder situations of forgiveness. You can learn powerful lessons about nurturing mercy through forgiveness from his story.

Become more merciful by practicing forgiveness in your life.

2. Advocate for those who have less power.
Second, nurture mercy in life by advocating for those who have less power. Recently I had the opportunity to meet Nate Aquino, a staff attorney at Legal Services of South Central Michigan. Nate’s job often consists of seeking mercy for others. Legal Services advocates in civil lawsuits for those who can’t afford to pay for an attorney. I learned that Nate could make a lot more money working elsewhere, but he likes making a difference and using his life’s privileges to serve those who haven’t had the same privileges. If Nate was a lawyer during Jesus’ time, it is likely that he would have been an advocate for Mary or her neighbors, because he does a lot of affordable housing legal work. One example of seeking mercy for the poor is in subsidized housing. Technically, someone who receives subsidized housing is not allowed to have anyone else live with them, but following this rule is not always as easy as it sounds, and if you are caught with someone else living with you, you will not be allowed to receive help with housing again. Nate advocates for people in this situation and is motivated by the bigger picture of showing mercy to those who don’t have as many resources in life. Nate’s work encourages me to be merciful by advocating for the poor.

I came across another moment of mercy when I was reading about the protests in Ferguson. Several black residents defended a gas station from looters that was owned by a white man. Of course, the white man was in the minority in that particular context, and his black friends used their power of being in the majority to defend their friend. While it may not be obvious from the media coverage, the peaceful protests outnumber the ones that turn violent. These are moments when people of all colors come together to advocate for those who have less power.

If you’re a supervisor, advocate for your employees. If you’re a husband, use your power to serve your wife rather than abusing her physically, verbally, or emotionally. If you’re a parent, advocate for children. If you’re in the majority, advocate for the minority. If you’re rich, advocate for the poor.

Become more merciful by using whatever power you do have to advocate for those who have less power.

3. Christmas Gifts
One last way to become more merciful is tied to how you celebrate Christmas. Every year I challenge you to give away as much as you spend at Christmas. This may seem a strange tie-in to mercy, but by nurturing a willingness to give up something (a gift a Christmas) to give something (a financial gift to a need), you nurture mercy in your own life. You are in essence, using the cultural power of Christmas gift giving to make a difference in our world. This Christmas season we’ll be receiving a special Christmas offering all the way through December, and especially on Christmas Eve, that will go to three things: our medical missions in Nicaragua, local emergency needs such as utilities and rent, and the Imagine No Malaria campaign of the United Methodist Church. Pauley Perrette from NCIS used her own celebrity power to advocate for Imagine No Malaria:

This year Sarah and I decided that it was time to change the way we celebrate Christmas going into the future for good. We wrote a letter to our families letting them know that we wanted them to no longer give us gifts for Christmas, but to give to our church’s Christmas offering whatever they would normally spend on us. So this week Sarah’s parents gave me my Christmas present, a check to our church for the Christmas offering. Together we all get the chance to become more merciful by giving Jesus a present on his birthday.

So three ways to nurture mercy in your life:

1. Forgive those who have hurt you.
2. Advocate for those who have less power than you.
3. Give away as much as you spend on yourself at Christmas.

A Community of Mercy
Imagine with me for a moment, a church full of people who were becoming more merciful. Imagine with me for a moment a church that was a training ground for forgiveness. Imagine with me a church that advocates for those on the bottom of society. Imagine with me a church where everyone gave away as much as they spent on themselves at Christmas. If you can imagine that, then you can imagine a church that blesses the community and region around us with God’s mercy. While we are not perfect, I believe we are a church that is on the mercy road. Why not extend an invitation to your friends, family, co-workers this Christmas to join us on that road of mercy? This Christmas Eve we’ll be one church in two locations over three days celebrating Christmas Eve with four services. Can’t make it on Christmas Eve because of family events? Come on the Eve of Christmas Eve. Can’t make it then? Come on Monday to Christmas in a Diner. Bring a friend and you both get a free $10 Christmas dinner. What three people can you invite to Christmas Eve this year? Would you spend some time praying about who you can invite and praying that God would open the door for you to invite them? Imagine with me a church twice our size helping more and more people to be more merciful this year than they were last year.

Here’s a favorite prayer of mine that speaks to God’s power and mercy. May it be true of us too.

O God,
you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
Grant us the fullness of your grace,
that we, running to obtain your promises,
may become partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

*This sermon is adapted from a sermon originally by Adam Hamilton.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, forgiveness, mercy

Ave Maria*

December 12, 2014 by Patricia Leave a Comment

The First Carols of Christmas – Ave Maria*
Sycamore Creek Church
Dec 7/8, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

What a way to start Christmas! Right? We are holding our first worship service in our new building! Thank you God! This building is a blessing to us, but as we will soon find out, a blessing is meant not to be held on to but to be given to others. Thank you God for the blessing of this building. Thank you God for the opportunity we have to use it to bless others too.

Today we begin a new series called The First Christmas Carols. We all love Christmas carols and singing at Christmas. We decorated our house this Thanksgiving weekend and put on our old favorites. I noticed that some radio stations were even beginning to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving!

Throughout this series we’re going to look not at the classic Christmas carols we sing at Christmas but rather the first Christmas carols in the Bible. Have you ever noticed that the story of Jesus’ birth in the book of Luke reads almost like a musical? People are having normal conversations and then all of a sudden they’re singing. There are four Christmas carols in Luke and one scene that has been made into a song. Today we begin with that scene that was made into a song, the Ave Maria. Let’s turn to the book of Luke and read.

Ave Maria: Luke 1:26-28, 39-42 NRSV
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgins name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings [ave], favored one [full of grace]! The Lord is with you.”

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

You may wonder where the phrase “Ave Maria” comes from. The early church used a Latin translation of the Bible and the word “Greetings” is “Ave” in Latin. Another way to translate Greetings or Ave is “Hail.” Maria is of course Mary. Thus, this is known as the Ave Maria. So let’s see what there is to greet Mary about.

Mary holds a special place in some Christian traditions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. While we are not Roman Catholics (we are catholic in the original sense of the word which means “universal” or the “universal church”), we can learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters. In the 2^nd and 3^rd century this phrase from Luke became part of the church’s liturgy (“liturgy” literally means “work of the people” although we generally understand it as the order of readings and prayers in worship). The church would recite this phrase from Luke: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

Later in the Medieval church, Mary became one who was deeply honored. In the 1400s and 1500s a phrase was added to the one from Luke: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” While we don’t generally pray to the saints, I don’t personally have a problem asking the saints in heaven to pray for us. Thus the church began asking Mary to pray for us. Today this prayer is called the “Hail Mary” or “Ave Maria.”

Mary was from a very small town called Nazareth. It probably had a population of about 100. Most people there probably lived in limestone caves. Limestone was easy to dig into. These caves were the ancient from of mobile homes. They were the affordable housing of their day. Nazareth was close to another better known town, Sepphoris. Sepphoris was the cultural center of the region. It was wealthy. There were plenty of shopping opportunities. It was kind of like the fashion mall of its day. Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, called it the “ornament of all Galilee.” And yet, God chose Nazareth, not Sepphoris.

Mary was probably about twelve or thirteen years old. While that seems very young by today’s standards to get married, it was average for its day when the life expectancy was thirty or forty. A girl was considered an adult when she had her first period and could conceive a child. Boys married a little older around fourteen or fifteen so that they had a couple of years in their trade or career to support the family.

Gabriel shows up to deliver a message to Mary. Gabriel literally means “Mighty One of God.” He is an archangel, or chief angel among many. In other words, he’s an important guy. He greets Mary saying, “Greetings favored one. The Lord is with you.” Mary “wonders what kind of greeting this might be.” Let’s unpack that greeting a bit more.

Another way to translate “greeting” is “hail” or “hello” or in Latin it’s “ave.” Thus, here’s where we get “Ave Maria.” Gabriel goes on to call her “favored one.” In Greek, the language that Luke was written, the word Gabriel uses is from the root word “charitoo” which is where we get our word “charity” which Thus, Gabriel is saying, “Greetings highly charitable one.” Charity can also imply grace. So Gabriel could be saying, “Greetings one full of grace.” So now you see where the Ave Maria or Hail Mary gets the, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

What does it mean to be “full of grace”? Well, let’s talk about what grace is. Grace is getting or giving something undeserved or unearned. Grace is in contrast with mercy (which we’re talking about next week) which is not getting something you did deserve. So grace is showing kindness and expecting nothing in return. Grace is my parents paying off my college debt when I did little to work on scholarships or pay for college myself. Grace is Sue Trowbridge, a local artist and pastor, giving me a painting of hers after I mentioned that I liked it a lot. Grace is the gift of cash in an envelope that we would get every year anonymously from someone at the church we worked at in Petoskey. Grace is coming home from the hospital with a baby when no one gave you a parenting test. Grace is charity, and not charity in the sense of giving to the poor, but in the sense that charity means Christian love, loving your neighbor as yourself. Grace is a blessing, a gift.

Mary, then is “one full of grace.” She is full of charity, full of blessing others, full of love for others. God chose Mary, not just because she was poor, but because since being a little girl she was grace-filled, or graceful. God has a tendency to use people who are graceful, or full of grace. In fact, God’s solution to the problems of the world is for us to be grace-filled. If someone is hungry, you give them food, not because they earned it but because it is a gift to them. Marriages survive on grace. We can’t expect to earn the love of our partner. We must give and receive it freely. People need basic toiletries and so SCC gives over 3700 items to Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank.

Each year as we look toward Christmas, we encourage you to be grace-filled. Give away as much as you spend at Christmas. For some of you this means rearranging your discretionary spending so that you just match what you spend. For others it means spending half as much so you can give half away. Remember, Christmas isn’t your birthday, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. Is there a gift to Jesus under your Christmas tree?

As usual, our church will be receiving a special Christmas offering this year. What’s different this year is that we usually receive this offering only on Christmas Eve. But this year we’ll be receiving this offering throughout all of December. You can mark on your giving envelop if you want to designate a special offering above and beyond your tithe to the Christmas offering. Then at our four Christmas Eve services (you heard me right, one church in two location over three days with four Christmas services!) all of the offerings those days will go to our special Christmas offering. We will then give 100% of this offering away. We’re going to give it to three different needs:

First, we have a long-term relationship and commitment to providing medical missions in Nicaragua. This Christmas offering will help us continue to support our medical missions in Nicaragua. Second, our conference (the United Methodist Churches in West Michigan) is focusing on the Imagine No Malaria campaign. Together we can literally eradicate malaria! Check it out here or watch this brief video. Third, we’ll use the offering to help with local emergency needs when people in our community are looking for help with rent, utilities, getting a car fixed, etc. This year and every year at SCC you have the chance to be grace-filled by giving to this special Christmas offering.

My family is taking this challenge to be grace-filled this Christmas pretty seriously. We recently wrote a letter to our family telling them of our intentions to try to celebrate Christmas differently this year and in the years to come. We asked them to give whatever they would spend on the adults (my wife and me) to our Christmas offering. We asked them to limit their gifts to our children to one each. In doing so, we invited them to participate with us in putting presents under the tree for Jesus.

All of this leads to one big question in my mind: Are you more “full of grace” than you were last year? Would the people closest to you say you are someone full of grace? If not, begin to pray that God would fill you with grace. You see, our nature is to hold on to stuff. Our nature is unwilling to give free gifts away. Our nature is to look out only for me and my immediate family. Our nature is a mixture of grace and self-interest. But God’s nature is different. God’s nature is to save. We are saved by grace, through faith. We don’t earn our salvation. We cannot do enough good works to save ourselves. And yet, our faith in God’s grace is expected to show itself in our good works to others. God’s presence with us, God’s Holy Spirit, fills us with grace in the same way that God filled Mary with grace and blessed her.

One warning before we pray. Being blessed often causes trouble. When Mary was declared to be blessed, remember where she was? She was at her cousin’s house, Elizabeth. Why travel ten miles to her cousin Elizabeth’s, rather than talk to her mother? Mary’s blessing meant that she was an unwed pregnant engaged teenager on the edge of losing her fiancé and being executed for her “unfaithfulness.” Mary doesn’t feel blessed, she feels burdened. Later on she ends up fleeing her hometown and becoming a refugee, alien, and immigrant in Egypt. Thirty-three years later Mary has to watch her son die on a cross. None of this sounds like a blessing. William Barclay refers to it as the “paradox of blessedness.” He says, “The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy…” When you are full of grace and blessed, that blessing will require something of you. You are blessed to be a blessing. Your blessing is to be a “pass through blessing.” You pass the blessing through to someone else. The more you try to hold on to it yourself, the more the grace will slip away.

So let’s go back to that big question: Are you more full of grace than you were last year?

Prayer
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.

Amen.

*This message is based on a message originally given by Adam Hamilton

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, giving, grace

Giving Up On Perfect

December 16, 2013 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday – Giving Up on Perfect *
Sycamore Creek Church
December 15/16, 2013
Tom Arthur
Luke 1:26-38

Merry Christmas Friends! Let’s dive into the Christmas story today…

Luke 1:26-38 NLT
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus.He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David.And he will reign over Israelforever; his Kingdom will never end!”

Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”

The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”

Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”

And then the angel left her.

We’re into the second week of a series called Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. Whose birthday is it? We all know the answer, but how many presents under the Christmas tree will have Jesus’ name on it? Instead of focusing on the birthday boy himself, what we end up trying to do is have some kind of perfect traditional Christmas. Our search looks something like this:

In the movie, Christmas Vacation, Clark Griswold is searching for the perfect traditional Christmas. He’s got an image in his mind that is similar to the image almost all of us have in our mind too. There’s a problem with our quest to attain this image of Christmas.

Mike Slaughter says, “In our attempts to create the magical Christmas experience we run ourselves into the ground emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally.”

Last year around this time someone turned in an anonymous prayer request that was so beautifully written that I saved it. It describes well the situation that many find themselves in while searching for the perfect traditional Christmas:

Please remember all those for whom the holidays are a difficult time. Perhaps they have lost loved ones whom they miss; especially when family gather at the holidays. There are those who have little or no family, or do not feel part of the family they do have. They may have major financial challenges that make it difficult to go see loved ones or to buy food for a nice dinner or gifts for their children. They may have both sad and happy memories of holidays past, but this year, they are sad and depressed and just getting through another day is a challenge. May our Lord be a strength and comfort to them! May we remember to extend a hand of hospitality and friendship, not knowing how much it may mean to those around us.

Speaking of the pain that many feel around this time of the year, how are your listening skills? Listening is probably one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox. If you could use some improvement on your listening and caring skills, make sure you check out the training we have coming up in February with John Savage. We’ll spend Thursday and Friday evening as well as all day Saturday learning how to listen and care for one another in more effective ways. John Savage has worked with our church in the past and is a retired United Methodist pastor, psychologist, corporate pain specialist, life coach, author of several books, and musician. Among all those things he is really just a very wise man. This is a can’t miss opportunity to improve your listening skills in your marriage, in your job, with your friends, and in your church. If you want more info, email Pat Brown (pat.orme@yahoo.com).

And yet amidst the chaos that is Christmas, Mike Slaughter reminds us that when we focus on the birthday boy himself, “Christmas is God’s vivid reminder that amid the uncertainty, God shows up to bring you peace, purpose, joy, hope, and wholeness.”

Unsanitary NOT PERFECT
So, friends, let’s give up on perfect. There was very little that was perfect about Jesus’ birth. The nativity was unsanitized, NOT PERFECT. Think about this for a second. Have you ever been in a delivery room? The two times I’ve spent significant time in a delivery room at the hospital, everything was squeaky clean. All the instruments used were wrapped in plastic and opened just for us. All the bedding was fresh and washed (at least to begin with!). The floor was spick and span. But this was not the setting that Jesus was born into. He was born in a barn. Have you been in a barn lately? It’s filled with flies and dung. And those flies had most likely been on that dung. Jesus was born in a very unsanitary situation. The public health officials would have had a heyday!

But our lives are not sanitary either, are they? Life is messy. The more we follow Jesus the messier it gets. Mike Slaughter says:

In turn, the Gospel of Luke makes it indelibly clear that walking in the way of Jesus is neither safe nor predictable. Sometimes we have the idea that when we do right, wrong is not supposed to show up. And if we are faithfully following Jesus, then life isn’t supposed to get messy, but it does.

Don’t for a moment think that just because you follow Jesus that life will get easier. It is likely to get harder!

Favored NOT Perfect
When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary he says, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28 NLT). Slaughter reminds us that:

God’s favor cannot be earned. God comes when we are doing everything wrong. God comes when we are doing nothing. God comes whether we are being naughty or nice. Why? Because God loves us and we are highly favored!

This announcement by Gabriel was not what Mary was expecting. She responds, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34 NLT). Mary wants to know how she’ll be pregnant if she’s a virgin. She had done everything right so far. She had saved herself for her future husband, and then she ends up pregnant? We too do everything we know to be faithful to God and then you lose your job, your spouse tells you they want a divorce, your four-year-old is diagnosed with leukemia, your kid’s high school counselor calls to tell you they think your teenager is using drugs, and you ask, “How can this be, God, when I have tried so hard to do what is right?”

Imagine Mary’s conversation with Joseph. Imagine Joseph’s response, “God did it?” Joseph doesn’t believer her. He plans to quietly divorce her. She might be stoned to death for adultery. Slaughter reminds us that, “Nowhere does the Bible promise that a life of faith will always make sense or follow a predictable path.” Mary is favored even though her situation seems far from perfect.

NOT Perfect but NOT Alone
Gabriel goes on to tell Mary, “What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month” (Luke 1:36 NLT). She will not be alone in this because she has community.

My son, Samuel Lewis, was born on July 5^th. I posted this on Facebook and noticed that immediately below that posting was my good friend Jon Van Dop’s posting that their son, Nic, was also born on July 5! We were not doing this alone. I was, however, one kid ahead of him, and he had sat through several meals listening to me go a little crazy about learning to live with a baby in the house. Next time we met, he said to me, “You know when I used to listen to you talk about how you were frustrated and angry and going a little crazy when your first son was born, and I would look at you like I understood? I didn’t understand but now I do!” God used that difficult experience I had of getting used to having a baby in the house (after thirteen years of being married with no children!) to be a help to Jon with his first baby. Jon didn’t have to do this alone. None of us do. We have a community called SycamoreCreekChurch.

We not only have the community of the church around us, but we also have the Holy Spirit. Gabriel continues, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35 NLT). The Holy Spirit is God’s presence with us. Mary is told her child shall be called “Immanuel” which means “God is with us.” Even if the community is not immediately available, God is with you. The Holy Spirit is God’s comforter, God’s advocate, God’s love and mercy and grace with you.

NOT Perfect but Faithful
Mary surely was not perfect as a human being. There was only one perfect person, her son, Jesus. But she was faithful. Mary responded, “‘I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.’ And then the angel left her” (Luke 1:38 NLT). This is the “divine consent.” Mary was willing to allow this to happen to her. She responded with faith even though the whole thing must have seemed a bit preposterous. And Mary continued to be faithful. Mary was faithful in bringing up Jesus by bringing him to the temple for the temple sacrifices, temple visits, and to study the scriptures. Mary was faithful when the religious leaders accused Jesus of heresy. Mary was faithful when Jesus was found guilty in a rigged trial. Mary was faithful when the appeal to Roman politicians failed. Mary was faithful while her son was flogged. Mary was faithful while her son was executed on a cross. Mary was faithful when her son breathed his last breath. Mary was faithful when Jesus was laid in the grave. Mary’s life was not perfect, but she was faithful to what God had called her to do: to be a loving mother.

Friends, we need to give up on the perfect Christmas. There is no perfect Christmas and the first Christmas was no image of perfection either. Slaughter reminds us:

So when Christmas comes around during an imperfect season of life, and you just don’t feel like celebrating, remember: it’s not your birthday; it’s Jesus’ birthday, and by celebrating Christmas, we are celebrating someone else who suffered too.

Instead of seeking the perfect Christmas, let’s seek to make Christmas about Jesus’ birthday and celebrate it accordingly. One way you can do this is to take our Christmas challenge: give away as much as you spend on yourself this Christmas. Some of you can do this by just being more generous. Others will need to cut your spending on yourself, your kids, your grandkids, and your boss or secretary in half so that you can give half away. Then bring that second half in on Christmas Eve and give it in the Christmas Eve offering. 100% of the Christmas Eve offering is given away. This year we’re giving it to our medical missions in Nicaragua, the second poorest country in this hemisphere. Twice a year we send medical teams down to do medical clinics. They bring life-giving and life-sustaining medicine and medical expertise to bring both physical and spiritual hope. Over the years on Christmas Eve we’ve given away over $31,000. Last year we gave away $3800. 2011 was our record year when we gave away $5800. Can we make 2013 a record year? Can we give away $6000? Can we make it a miracle year? Can we give away $10,000? If we can, it will be because you gave up on perfect and decided to celebrate Christmas like it’s Jesus’ birthday.

Jeremy Kratky, our worship leader, is gearing his family up to celebrate Christmas with some different traditions this year. He told me about a question his sister emailed him and how he responded. I asked him if I could share it with you. Here it is:

Tom,

My older sister asked me this question in an email earlier today: What does the Christmas season look like in your home?

Below is my response. Thank you God and Sycamore Creek Church for helping me see Christmas in a different light!

Christmas in my home is what you might imagine. It’s focused on relationships with some gift giving. Kristin and I have been convicted (in a good way) on how we spend our money around Christmas. Our church is currently in a series called, “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.” We’ve all been challenged to give away as much as we spend on Christmas to people who actually have needs. Or, to spend half as much on Christmas and give the other half away. It’s a huge challenge and we’re not there yet. We did incorporate, however, a baby step this year. Rather than spend money on a gift for each other this Christmas (approximately $50 each), Kristin and I elected to give that money to a medical missions team our church supports which provides life giving, life sustaining, and life altering medicines, education, and hope to people in Nicaragua. So our gift to each other this year is a date night, which is already built into our monthly budget (so we’re actually not spending any additional money). Rather than it being just another date night, our gift to one another is this make a craft or riddle that represents a date night surprise. For example, Kristin loves musical theater. So I’m thinking about buying tickets to a show at the Wharton Center. The craft or riddle I create would work in the theme or the title of the show we’re going to see. The beauty of it is that we’d be going on a date night anyway, but this adds a celebratory component to it that makes it a wonderful gift. Thus, the $100 we would’ve spent on each other is now available to bless others. Each year on Christmas Eve, Sycamore Creek receives an offering that goes to this Medical Missions Team. 100% of it! If all of us do even one little change this year on how we spend money, we anticipate a HUGE offering that will bless others. We’re dreaming the offering might be over $10,000! For a church our size? That’d be a miracle! We still bought our kids their presents. We read the Christmas story as recorded in Scripture and we’ll sing Happy Birthday Jesus. We have a beautifully decorated tree and poinsettias strewn about the house. We have our mantle dressed with Christmas-y stuff. It’s rather cozy. Outdoor Christmas lights. We’re letting go of some old traditions (Kristin and I buying each other a gift) and making some new ones with our children. Jonah, Nora, and I made Christmas cookies the other night at a cookie decorating party I attended with a Dads group I’m a part of. We dropped them off to firefighters on the way home. I want Jonah and Nora to really understand that Christmas is about giving, not necessarily getting. Giving cookies to those firefighters the other night was something that Jonah and I suspected was on Jesus’ wish list; for it’s His birthday, right? As you can tell, this message series has been very helpful to me and my family. I’m thankful you asked what Christmas looks like, for it is different this year, and hopefully for years to come.

We just ended a three year capital campaign here at Sycamore Creek for building/space needs. We’re tithing off the top 10% to local and foreign missions. So this Christmas our small groups (growth groups), who each have committed to service in mission to our local community, are having fun giving away $1000 checks to their respective mission that particular group supports. We feel it’s on Jesus’ wish list.

Love you,
Jeremy

This year we’re also giving away $1000/week to the local missions that our small groups support. This week we gave away $1000 to Open Door Ministry. Here’s that giveaway:

Will you give up on the perfect Christmas this year and instead seek to make it about celebrating Jesus’ birthday? May God work a miracle in and through Sycamore Creek Church this Christmas. Amen!

*This sermon series is based on the book, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday by Mike Slaughter.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, Missions, Money

Expect a Miracle

December 9, 2013 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Christmas Is Not Your Birthday – Expect a Miracle *
Sycamore Creek Church
December 8/9, 2013
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

Is it too early to say that? No way. Stores started decorating for Christmas weeks ago. We put our Christmas decorations up the week before Thanksgiving so they’d be up to enjoy over Thanksgiving weekend. So, Merry Christmas! It’s never too early to say it.

But what are we saying when we say Merry Christmas? What we’re really doing is saying, “Be merry because a birthday is coming!” But whose birthday? Your birthday? Your kids birthday? Your grandkids birthday? No, Christmas is not your birthday.

That’s the series we’re beginning today: Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. Over the next several weeks we’re going to look at how to celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ birthday rather than our own.

Here’s the problem we run into every year with Christmas: Christmas has become too predictable. What we need this year is a miracle! Christmas is the perfect place for a miracle:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6 KJV)

Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth the prophet Isaiah predicted a miraculous birth, the birth of a baby who would be God and who would bring peace. That’s quite a birth, quite a miracle! But how did we get from that, Jesus’ birthday, to this?

The traditional “perfect” Christmas today includes: chaotic consumerism, stressed shopping, a terrible to-do list, disastrous date books, awful agendas, and deep deep debt (a pledge of allegiance to an economic Christmas orgy of overspending and debt). Jesus was to be called the Counselor. Maybe we should call him the Financial Counselor? The traditional Christmas isn’t traditional at all. It’s a “mixture of…a little biblical truth…some eighteenth-century Victorian practices, and…a double shot of Santa theology” (Thank you Mike Slaughter) on steroids provided by Madison Avenue with a shot of eggnog to make it all go down.

We’re left with the question: What exactly does God look like if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called The Mighty God? God ends up looking like Santa Claus? God becomes a genie in a bottle with three wishes (if you’re good enough).

My own Christmas growing up was like this. I remember when my grandma would hand me the J.C. Penny Catalogue and tell me to circle the things I wanted from it. Now that I look back on this, it seems absurd to me. My grandma lived so simply that when she died all my mom had to do to clean out her possessions was to empty one drawer at the nursing home! And yet she bought into the whole traditional Christmas when it came to her own grandkids. Another aspect of the traditional Christmas with my family was that kids of divorced parents cashed in big at Christmas. Here’s how my Christmas schedule went:

Christmas Eve: Gifts with my dad’s parents
Christmas 6AM: Gifts with my dad and step-mom
Christmas 8AM: Gifts with my step-mom’s family
Christmas Noon: Gifts with my mom’s family
Christmas Afternoon: Gifts with my mom and step-dad.

Boom baby! It’s one of the few times that being a kid in a divorced family pays off. And of course, all these family members are doing their best to make sure that the other side of the family doesn’t one-up them!

So if this is how we celebrate the birth of the one called Mighty God, what does that God look like? Something is really jacked up, isn’t it? It’s jacked up because this baby wasn’t called Santa. This baby was called Jesus, the Prince of Peace. God doesn’t look like Santa, God looks like Jesus:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
~St. Paul (Colossians 3:15 NLT)

In Jesus we see God and also humanity, at its fullest. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your mind around God, but Jesus is easier. Jesus is a God I can believe in. And that’s a miracle.

The miracle of Jesus is that he was ordinary and yet extraordinary. He was ordinary in that he was born in an empire-occupied territory to an unwed mother. His parents were poor and lived as refugees in Africa amidst genocide back home. He grew up in Nazareth, a small town in the middle of the U.P. (OK, just kidding about the U.P. thing). He was a basic laborer. He worked with his hands as a carpenter. Jesus’ background was not extraordinary. It was about as average or below average as they come.

And yet Jesus’ birth was also extraordinary and miraculous.

All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).
~The Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14 NLT)

Jesus is God with us and he was extraordinary in so many ways. His message was a message of healing. Jesus’ first sermon was also from the prophet Isaiah. He stood up in the synagogue and read:

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
(Luke 4:18-19 The Message)

He was the son of God full of power and yet he reached out to those who were powerless. He was ultimately executed on a cross and resurrected three days later. He was ordinary but extraordinary. If God can work an extraordinary miracle through an ordinary Jesus, then he can work a miracle through any ordinary person, including you and me this Christmas. In fact, you are God’s miracle worker!

This miracle is going to take some preparing for. Christmas is Jesus’ birth and that means there is going to be a labor. Preparing for the miracle this Christmas requires the cost of labor pains. This birth was no “silent night.” In fact, that song is really just about as silly as they come. Sentimental, yes. Realistic, no. The birth probably looked more like this:

Jesus’ life cost him something. He lives. He taught and was persecuted by the religious establishment. He was executed on a cross. He raised from the dead. All of those who closely followed him were persecuted and executed as well, except one who was sent into exile. Those are some serious labor pains, not sentimental silent nights. As Mike Slaughter says, “The real Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety, not feel-good warm fuzzies.”

So this Christmas we need another miracle. We need the miracle of giving up on the “traditional Christmas” and building new traditions that put the celebration back on Jesus’ birthday, and this miracle is going to take some birth pains. It’s going to require you to give up some stuff that makes Christmas look more like your birthday or your kids birthday. It’s going to require you instituting some new traditions that look more like celebrating Jesus and what Jesus’ life was all about, his purpose.

What’s the goal or purpose of your life? Is it “the good life”? Retirement? Golf every day? Walking on the beach and collecting shells? Sitting in your man cave watching ESPN1, 2, & 3 on your 80 inch HD TV? Shopping till you drop? Lying around in a hammock? Those all might be OK for a season, but if that’s the ultimate goal of your life, then you’re life is going to get pretty boring pretty quickly. My step-dad just retired. He’s done good as a small business owner. He sold his business to one of his most faithful employees. He’s got a good life with my mom. They have a house in Indianapolis and two in Florida. They’re pretty set for the rest of their lives. But about two weeks into retirement he got pretty bored sitting in his living room with his iphone watching sports on his super huge TV. He told me that he was trying to figure out what to do with his life now that he’s retired. He went to his pastors and asked if they could use him volunteering fifteen or twenty hours a week. He wants his retirement to make a difference in somebody’s life. He wants to serve others. He wants his life to be like Jesus’ life.

As Mike Slaughter says, the new meaning and purpose of our lives at Christmas is that “We find meaning when we give sacrificially to those in need, because by doing so, we are giving to Jesus himself. It is his birthday after all!”

So take up a new tradition this Christmas: celebrate Christmas as Jesus’ Birthday! One way we’re doing this is by changing how we spend our money at Christmas. Most of us spend way more than we even have to spend. We go into debt to have the “traditional” Christmas. New rule: don’t go into debt to celebrate Jesus’ birthday! Rather, make this commitment: give away as much as you spend on Christmas. For some of you that means simply being more generous at Christmas. For others it means cutting your spending in half.

We’re going to give you an opportunity on Christmas Eve to give away as much as you spend on yourself. Usually our offerings all year long go to supporting the immediate mission and ministry of SCC, but at Christmas Eve we receive an offering and give it all away. This year we’re giving it all away to our medical missions in Nicaragua. Twice a year we send teams to Nicaragua to bring life-giving and life-changing medicine, medical expertise, and hope to individuals all across the second poorest country in the Americas.

Over the life of our church we’ve been able to give away over $31,000 in our Christmas Eve offerings. Last year we gave away $3800. Our record is $5800 in 2011. I’d love to see us smash that record this year. Can we do $6000? No, that’s too low. Let’s shoot for $10,000. Come on, if we give away as much as we spend at Christmas, we can easily do $10,000. Get your family and friends in on it. Give them an invite card to join you for Christmas Eve (one service at 5PM at Lansing Christian School and one service at 7PM at Jackie’s dinner with a $10 Christmas dinner), and tell them not to spend any money on you but to give it to our Christmas Eve offering. Now that’s a miracle!

During Christmas we’re not only focusing on giving overseas, but we’re also giving away lots of money locally. This is the last year in a three-year capital campaign at SCC to save money for a building. When we began the campaign we decided to tithe on what we received for the capital campaign, so we’ve been setting aside 10% for missions. We’ve received about $330,000 so we’ve set aside $33,000 for missions. Half of that is going to our medical missions in Nicaragua and half of it is staying here locally. Part of the local money is going to the ministries and missions that our church’s small groups have committed to. So over the course of December, each of our small groups is getting a $1000 check to give to their local charity. We’re going to show you a video each week of that miraculous moment when someone from our church gets to give $1000 to a ministry they’ve been volunteering at for a long time. You’re not going to want to miss that! That’s what your giving does. It changes lives both here in SCC, in our community, and our world. Here’s a miracle for Holt Senior Care:

*This series and sermon are inspired by Mike Slaughter’s book, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, giving, Jesus, miracle, Missions, Money

The Buck Starts Here – A Godly Perspective on Money

November 11, 2013 by Patricia 1 Comment

The Buck Starts Here – A Godly Perspective on Money*
Sycamore Creek Church
November 10/11, 2013
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

A little more money would make life a little better? Right? Dave Ramsey says, “Money is fun. If you’ve got some.” The problem is that most of us are strapped for cash. And the hard reality is that we’re strapped largely because we’ve done something stupid with money.

I’ve had my share of stupid purchases. There was the time I spent $18 on a Rainbow Brite Doll for my fourth-grade girlfriend, who then broke up with me. Afterwards I realized that a Rainbow Brite Doll was for a four-year-old, not a fourth grader. Then there was my job during college at The Gap. I spent all my paycheck on clothes while accumulating student loan debt. Shortly after I was married I spent $200 on Gore-tex waterproof boots that ended up being a little too small. I didn’t realize they were too small until after half a day on the trail through the dirt, water, and mud and aching feet!

I asked my friends on Facebook what stupid or unwise purchases they’ve made. Here’s the stories they shared:

Going to the casino and losing it all and not being able to get anything from the ATM on weekend.
Bought a house right before the housing market crashed.
Went to Costa Rica when I *really* didn’t have money to be doing that sort of thing.
Grad school?
Went to Divinity School.
Bought a new house before old house was sold. Two house payments. Not good.
There was the time the sales woman was hot at the Buckle in the mall. She was flirting really bad. I spent $300 of my graduation money. I went back the next day and asked her out. I thought she was interested, but she was with someone else!! Lol

We’ve all made stupid and unwise purchases. Check out this poem by George Bilgere called Unwise Purchases.

So we’ve all done it, but this is not a guilt series. We’re not here to shame you. Shake off the guilt. Shake it off. This is a practical series about how to manage and handle your money in a god-honoring way. It’s a series about:

The heart and money
Disciplines to help us to climb out of debt
Saving and what to do with it

The wisdom of the Proverbs says:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant [servant/slave/in bondage] to the lender.
Proverbs 22:7 NIV

“We’d love to [you fill in the blank]…but we don’t because we don’t have money.” That’s bondage. That’s being strapped.
We’d love to stay at home with the kids, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to adopt an orphan, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to buy a little bigger house for our family, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to go on a mission trip, but we don’t because we don’t have money.
We’d love to give a little more away, but we don’t because we don’t have money.

The average household debt is $136% of household income. The only institution that does this and gets away with it is the US government! The average credit card debt is $14,517. That’s a lot of ear rings, belts, shoes (to match the ear rings and belt), golf clubs, DVDs, and more. The average 21 year old is $12,000 in debt! $12,000! It gets worse. The average 28 year old is $78,000! $78,000! $78,000! The number of US households living paycheck to paycheck is over half at 55%.

If money is one of the best outward measurements of your inward spiritual condition (and I believe it is), then we’re in really bad shape spiritually. I was meeting with someone the other day who is reading through the Bible for the first time. He said to me, “There’s a lot in here about money!” He’s right! 2/3 of the parables deal with money and possessions. 1 in 10 verses in the gospels deal with money and things. 2300 verses in the Bible are about money. That’s five times the amount on prayer or faith! Money is an indicator of our spiritual condition, and there are two temptations we face when it comes to money.

Two Temptations of Money

1. We’re tempted to serve money. Jesus says:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 6:24 NLT

Money and things are the #1 competitors for our heart. If you bought something you didn’t need with money you didn’t have to impress people you didn’t like, you’ve served money. If you’ve ever hoarded money, you’ve served money. If I want to give my kids the life I never had, when all they ever wanted was your presence, you’ve served money.

2. We’re tempted to love money. Paul, the first missionary of the church, was a mentor to Timothy when he said:

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10 NLT

Money isn’t good or bad. It’s neutral. It’s the love of money that is wrong. There are a lot of poor people who love money. If you’re rich, it doesn’t mean you love money. You may just be good at what you do. If you have debt with low money, you will have more debt with more money. More money makes you more of what you already are. King Solomon who was known for his wisdom said:

Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
Ecclesiastes 5:10 NIV

We’re under the power and influence of money and we don’t even know it. Most of us don’t have an income problem. Most of us have spending problems. Which indicates a spiritual problem. We don’t need more money. We need more Jesus.

Things have got to change. Are you sick of it? Get sick of it so that you do something about it!

The Point
Here’s the whole point of the message today: If you’re a Christian, we don’t serve money, we serve God. Money serves us as we serve God. So how does money serve us? Four ways:

Money buys basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. These are basic NEEDS (not wants) that we must have in order to live life.
Money buys time. If you’re spending all your time focusing on food, shelter, and clothing, then you don’t have time to focus on “higher” needs like loving your family with your presence. Micah has recently begun saying to me, “Daddy, do you have time to play with me?” Time to play with Micah isn’t as basic a need as making sure he’s got food, clothing, and shelter, but it is a very important need.
Money buys options. Do you own a clunker car that you’re always afraid is going to give out on you, or do you own a dependable car that gets you to work and back each day? Dependable doesn’t mean BMW. It means just what it says, a dependable basic car. But if you don’t have the money to buy a dependable car, then you’re ending up with all kinds of other problems like not being a dependable worker and not having dependable income from that job to meet the basic needs of life.
Money buys blessings to others. When you’ve got your basic needs met and you’ve got more income, it is fun, yes FUN!, to bless others with what you’ve got extra. For example, check out this video about tipping:

Christmas

We picked this series to happen in November to help you prepare for Christmas. Christmas is one of those times when we throw out all financial wisdom and go big into debt and spend several months if not years trying to dig ourselves out of the hole we dug ourselves in. This Christmas I want to challenge you to do Christmas differently. We’ll be doing a series called Christmas is Not Your Birthday. You know that Christmas is not about you. It’s not even about your family. It’s about Jesus. Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. And Jesus’ birthday wish list has on it blessing others with your resources rather than buying into the greed, consumerism, and materialism of our culture. This Christmas we’re encouraging you to spend less so that you can give more away. If you usually spend $1000 on Christmas, give $1000 away. Or if you usually spend $1000 on Christmas, then cut it in half and give $500 away. We’ll be receiving a special offering on Christmas Eve that will go entirely to our medical missions in Nicaragua. Twice a year we bring life-saving and life-giving medicine and medical expertise to Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the Americas after Haiti. Use your money to bless others this Christmas rather than give more gifts to people who already have too much.

Paul, the first missionary of the church, said to the church in Rome:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.
Romans 13:8

Do you want to better honor God with what God has given you? Then take today’s message as a foundation to your life, and come back in coming weeks to learn basic practical steps for how to handle your money wisely. Today, set your will, set your mind, set your heart on getting your financial house in order so that you owe no one any debt except the debt to keep loving as many people as you can. And remember, this is first and foremost a spiritual problem. It’s a spiritual problem because our hearts are in the debt of sin, and Jesus must first free us from that debt so that we can get our financial debts in order. Have you asked Jesus to free you from the debt of sin? If not, do so today, and trust that with time and perseverance, and wise financial decisions, you can get to a place where you are blessing others financially because God has blessed you.

* This message is adapted and based on a sermon by Craig Groeschel.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, giving, Money, spending

Christmas Eve

December 29, 2012 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Carols Remix
Sycamore Creek Church
Christmas Eve, 2012
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Eve Friends!

Tonight we’re going to walk through four different classic Christmas carols and unpack them and explore them to help you hear them and the Christmas story in a way you’ve never heard before. We begin with the carol, O Holy Night.

O Holy Night
There’s a beautiful couple of lines in this carol:

The thrill of hope,
The weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks,
The new and glorious morn.

Here’s the problem about Christmas. You’re supposed to be celebrating and cheerful, but really you’re just weary and tired. We are a weary world. Several weeks ago I invited those in our worship service to write on paper snowflakes what is causing them weariness. I looked over the snowflakes later and read about hurt families, no money, no friends, no job.

We’re a weary people, but you’re not alone. The Bible tells many stories of people seeking God amidst great weariness. One such book in the Bible is the book of Lamentations. Tradition says that the prophet Jeremiah wrote it after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire. Jeremiah and many others were carted off in exile to Babylon. He writes:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:19-23 NRSV

Christmas is a new morning. It is a new beginning in the midst of the weariness that you feel. When you give your entire life to Jesus in adoration, you experience that new morning and it brings with it three things:

1. Exactly what you need.
2. The hope to keep going.
3. The help you’re waiting for.

This is the Holy Night before the new morning of hope in Jesus. Here’s a moment to contemplate those truths through the song, O Holy Night:

O Come All Ye Faithful
I’m guessing that when we think of the carol, O Come All Ye Faithful, that some of us, maybe even most of us don’t feel very faithful. In fact, the rest of that line includes the joyful, and triumphant and I know that many of us don’t feel very joyful or triumphant right now. Here’s the good news. Jesus doesn’t call the faithful, joyful, and triumphant. So who does Jesus call?

First, Jesus calls the sinners.

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew 9:12-13 NIV

Second, Jesus calls the weary and burdened.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 NIV

So maybe we should rework the carol to sing: O come all ye sinners, weak and overburdened! If that’s who Jesus calls to follow him, why do we feel like we have to have our lives all together to belong to a church? If you’re a guest here tonight at Christmas Eve, I want you to know that we try to be a curious, creative, and compassionate community. We’re curious about God – your questions are welcome. You don’t have to have all this God stuff figured out to belong here. We’re creative in all we do – we imagine, experiment, and make things happen. That means that we’re not going to get everything right all the time. And we’re compassionate to everyone – no matter who you are, where you’ve been, or what you’ve done, when you come here you’ll experience God’s compassion. You don’t have to have your life all together to belong here, because Jesus doesn’t call the have-it-all-togethers to follow him.

And yet Jesus does help us become more faithful, joyful, & triumphant.

Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith. His Spirit gives us joy which is different than happiness. Happiness has to do with what happens while joy has to do with Jesus. And the prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus will triumph:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.
Isaiah 9:6-7 NIV

Wonderful Counselor.
Mighty God.
Everlasting Father.
Prince of Peace.

That’s not the kind of triumph like a great general on the battle field, but it’s the kind of triumph that reconciles broken relationships, binds up wounded hearts, convicts of sinful attitudes, and gives strength to love one’s enemies. Jesus calls the sick and sinful, the weary and overburdened, that is all of us, and helps us become faithful, joyful and triumphant. Contemplate those truths through the song: O Come All Ye Faithful.

Away in a Manger
Away in a manger,
No crib for his bed,
The little Lord Jesus,
Lay down his sweet head.

I want to zero in on that phrase: little Lord Jesus. What does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord? When the shepherds were visited by angels this is what the angels said:

Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
Luke 2:10-11 NIV

Lord means controller, supreme authority. Is the little Lord Jesus Lord of a little of your life or all of your life? We say “little”, and I think at times that means to us that he is Lord of only a little of our lives. You can surrender partially or fully. Here’s what the partially surrendered life looks like from a verse in the partially surrendered Bible:

Trust in the Lord with some of your heart, lean on your own understanding, in some of your ways, acknowledge him, and you can make your own paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 PSV (Partially Surrendered Version)

But that’s not what it means to call him Lord. Lord means he’s Lord’s of all of your life. Here’s what the fully surrendered life looks like:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge [yada] him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV

When we say that Jesus is “little” it means that he does not coerce you into receiving him as Lord. He gives you the wonderful and terrible freedom to choose to receive his love and his lordship or to reject it. Actually, he already is Lord of everything. This is just a matter of you acknowledging it and living into it and then beginning to live like you mean it. So, is the little Lord Jesus Lord of a little of your life or all of your life? Contemplate that question through the song, Away in a Manger.

Emmanuel
O come, o come, Emmanuel.

An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream and says to him about Mary, his fiancée:

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel”—which means, “God with us.” Matthew 1:21-23

Emmanuel means God with us. Here’s the point of Christmas: God is, was, and will be with you!

Have you ever prayed, “God be with so and so.” The truth is that God is already with so and so. The trick is realizing it. God is with you. If you are alone, God is with you as your companion. If you are sick, God is with you healing you. If you are lost, God is with you as your guide. If you are hurt, God is with you as your hope. If you are weak, God is with you as your strength. If you are sinning, well, God is with you as your conviction and as your savior.

Which brings us to an interesting point. Sometimes God being with us means that God convicts us. Sometimes the comfort comes only after the surgery. As our doctor said to us while Sarah was giving birth, “I love you, and I have to hurt you.” And yet in each of these ways God is with you right now.

God was with you. Sometimes it is only clear how God was with you in hindsight. In the midst of the struggle it sometimes feels like God has abandoned you. You don’t get those tingles any more. You don’t get those warm feelings. Sometimes we get attached even addicted to the feeling of God’s love and God removes that feeling so we’re not loving the feeling of loving God but actually loving God. All this become clear only in hindsight.

God will be with you. What did Mary have yet to go through? Conception – God will be with her. Joseph’s acceptance – God will be with her. Her son getting lost in the temple – God will be with her. Her son leaving a perfectly good family carpentry business and going off to become a wandering homeless preacher – God will be with her. Her son’s unjust trial and execution – God will be with her. Day 1 in the grave – God will be with her. Day 2 in the grave – God will be with her. Day 3 resurrection – God will be with her.

What is in store for you this year? Graduation? Marriage? A child? Divorce? A new job? A lost job? Death of a loved one? God will be with you. Can any of these things separate you from God’s love? No!

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Revelation 1:8

So God is, was, and will be with you. There’s no question about that. The question is: are you with God? Here’s what it means to be with God. It’s like a wedding ring. I hunted around our families and found several rings that Sarah and I then used to create her engagement ring and our wedding bands. Even though those rings were of great cost to someone else, they didn’t cost us anything. And yet when we received them, they cost us everything, our entire lives. That’s what it means to be with God. So are you with God?

Contemplate that question through the song, Emmanuel.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, hope, love

Lament amidst Christmas – The Sandy Hook Shooting

December 15, 2012 by Tom Leave a Comment

A woman holds a child as people line up to enter the Newtown United Methodist Church near the scene of an elementary school shooting on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn. According to reports, there are at least 27 dead after a gunman opened fire in at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. The shooter was also killed. A web-only photo by Douglas Healey/Getty Images.

Dearest Friends,

In the wake of the horrific shooting yesterday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, it seems we are living afresh into the dark side of the Christmas story, the massacre of innocents (Matthew 2:13-23) by King Herod:

A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.
Matthew 2:18

Many of us, myself included, are asking God, “Why?” How do we bring such pain and so many questions to God in prayer? Often the church does a good job at celebration, but does not know how to lament. This is unfortunate because the Bible provides many examples of lament. Here is one from a book full of lamentations:

Cry out to the Lord;
Moan, Daughter Zion!
Let your tears flow like a torrent
day and night;
Let there be no respite for you,
no repose for your eyes.
Rise up, shrill in the night,
at the beginning of every watch;
Pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord
Lift up your hands to God
for the lives of your little ones.
Lamentations 2:18-19 NAB

We rarely know the answers to our questions of Why? this side of heaven. In times like this, our hope is in the resurrection. Jesus was born in a manger to ultimately teach and show a broken world what it means to live in right relationship with God and others. In the face of that perfect love, the world executed him on a “Good Friday.” But death could not hold him, and God raised him from the dead three days later. We trust that in our baptism we participate in the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. But right now we are living in that in-between time of trial, pain, and suffering when the body is still in the grave.

On Sunday (at Lansing Christian School @ 9.30 & 11.15) and Monday (at Grumpy’s @ 7PM) we will take some time to write notes and prayers to Sandy Hook Elementary School, and our fellow United Methodist Church, Newtown UMC, which is within walking distance of the school and has been a center of helping people grieve, lament, and seek God amidst this great tragedy.

I hope you will join us tomorrow as we continue to celebrate Christmas (don’t forget to bring in your used candles for our community Advent candle on Christmas Eve, which reminds us that Jesus was Light amidst darkness) but also take some time to lament this tragedy.

Peace,
Pastor Tom

P.S. Here are some resources that you might find helpful right now:

Why? – The best sermon series I’ve heard on the question of God’s will and suffering (by Adam Hamilton)

Newtown UMC – The United Methodist Church within walking distance of the school

UMC News – An article about Newtown UMC

School Violence Spiritual Resources – Compiled by the United Methodist Church

Filed Under: Ponderings, Worship Tagged With: Christmas, suffering, tragedy

O Holy Night

December 5, 2012 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Carols – O Holy Night
Sycamore Creek Church
December 2 & 3, 2012
Tom Arthur
Lamentations 3:19-26

Merry Christmas Friends! Would you rather give up Christmas or your birthday? That’s a question that was posed to me and the staff recently by a Would-You-Rather app I have on my phone. I was a little surprised to find that 63% would rather give up their birthday than Christmas. A minority of 37% would rather give up Christmas. Christmas is time filled with a lot of traditions that many of us cherish. One of those traditions is singing Christmas Carols.

Today we begin a new series simply called Carols. Each week we’re going to explore a different well-known Christmas Carol. We’re going to unpack it so that when you leave here, you’ll hear it in a totally new way. Let’s begin today with the carol, O Holy Night.

O Holy Night was written in the mid 1800s by Placide Cappeau, a French wine/liquor merchant and poet. He tended to be somewhat anti-church and religion, and was probably a bit surprised when his local priest invited him to write a poem to Luke chapter two, the classic retelling of the Christmas story. Cappeau decided that his poem really needed to be a song, so he invited another non-Christian friend to write the tune. The song soon took off and was extremely popular, even when it was learned who wrote it!

O Holy Night also has another historical distinction. In 1906, Reginald Fessenden, a thirty-three year old Canadian university professor did the impossible. He broadcast his voice over the airwaves inventing AM radio. It was on Christmas Eve. He read Luke 2:1 – In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Then he played O Holy Night on his violin, which became the first song broadcast live across the airwaves on AM radio!

Here’s a great music video to bring you up to speed on the song:

A Holy Night or a Weary Night?
Alright, this song conjures up all kinds of images from nativity scenes you saw as a kid. Let’s think about the night when Christ was born. Mary, pregnant, had traveled on a donkey some eighty to a hundred and twenty miles. When they finally arrive atBethlehem, there’s no room for them to stay in. So they stay in the “stable.” This was probably something of a cave cut into a rock face. It was unsanitary and full of unruly animals. The cattle were lowing. What is “lowing?” I have no idea, but I doubt that it was fun to listen to in the midst of giving birth!

Perhaps the night when Jesus was born was more like the night when my own son was born. My wife, Sarah, had labored for over twenty-four hours. She was exhausted. I remember at some point in the middle of the night in the midst of trying to make a decision while sleep deprived, we were gathered around Sarah lying in bed. The nurse was there, our doctor, Amanda Shoemaker (who is a member of our church), and our doula, Connie Perkins. I was a mess. Sarah was a mess. Someone, I don’t even remember who, suggested we pray. Now, I’m supposed to be the pastor. Right? Yeah, I’m supposed to be able to pray at any moment in any situation. NOT! I couldn’t pray. I passed it off to Connie, and while I don’t remember what exactly she prayed, I remember it was perfect for the situation. Thank God for Christian community amidst the weariness of the night when my child was born!

I suspect that a lot of you are pretty weary right now. I know you are. We’re weary with the daily grind. Our emotions are worn down. Our bodies are worn down. Our time is worn down. Our money is worn down. And we’re supposed to rejoice at Christmas! Spend time with family and various parties eating lots of food! And buy everyone and their mom a present with money we don’t have to spend.

An anonymous prayer request came to the prayer team this week:

This person puts the weariness of the time quite well. What I’d like to do is look at one line in O Holy Night that you may never have even noticed:

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Christmas at its essence (not all the cultural Christmas expectations) is a thrill of a hope amidst a weary world. It is a new and glorious morning! Where are you in need of a thrill of hope? Where do you need a new and glorious morning?

A New and Glorious Morning
I want to explore this idea of a new morning at Christmas in a place that you might not think to look at Christmastime: the book of Lamentations. Lamentations was written after the fall ofJerusalemin 586 BC. The Babylonian empire sacked the city and took the leadership and all the wealthy and skilled into exile. A most weary moment if there ever was one. Let’s see what the author of Lamentations says:

Lamentations 3:19-23 NRSV
The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

We’re talking about a major depression here. And what does he do about it? He calls to mind the truths of God. Sometimes when we’re weary we forget to call to mind the truths and promises of God. That’s all it took for the author to have hope! And here’s the truth and promise he called to mind: that God’s love never ends; God’s mercy goes on and on and on; God’s mercy and love are new every morning.

Christmas is a new morning because it is the birthday of Jesus, the son of God. And with Christmas comes the possibility for a new morning in your own life. A new morning with Jesus’ birth in your life brings:

Exactly What You Need

Lamentations 3:24 NRSV
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

“My portion” probably is a reference back to the manna that the Israelites received while wandering through the wilderness. After Moses led them out of slavery in Egypt, they spend forty years wandering around in the dessert. One need they had was food, and God provided it every morning in the form of manna. “Manna” literally means “What is it?” It was a kind of flaky bread-like substance found on the ground each morning. God told them to gather just enough to meet their needs for the day. If they gathered more it would rot. God wanted them to trust that he would provide what they needed, their portion, each and every day. The LORD is my portion. A new morning with Jesus gives you exactly what you need (not always what you want, but what you need).

When we pray the Lord’s prayer one of the lines we pray is: Give us this day our daily bread. That’s a request to God to meet our basic needs today. What needs do you have today? I’m not talking about a Red Rider B.B. Gun, but what basic needs do you have today?

Jesus is what your marriage needs. Jesus is what your children need. Jesus is what your past, present, and future needs. When you are weak, he is your strength. When you are lost, he is your way. When you are hurting, he is your comfort. When you are down, he is your joy. A new morning with Jesus brings exactly what you need. It also brings…

The Hope to Keep Going

Lamentations 3:24 NRSV
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

It has been said that you can live forty days without food, eight days without water, four minutes without oxygen, but only a few seconds without hope. We tend to put our hope in all the wrong places. We hope in the stock market. We hope in the biggest jackpot lottery of all time. We hope in the company we work for. We hope in a boyfriend or girlfriend, a spouse, a child, or even a pastor. Friends, I’m not your hope. That job description is already taken.

The author of Hebrews says:

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Hebrews 10:23 NRSV
We tend to let go of hope and hold on to our fears. But we’ve got to let go of the fear and hold on to the hope. Sarah and I have a friend who several years ago committed suicide. He took his life amidst a deep depression and circumstances that overwhelmed him. He did it while standing in the pre-dawn waters of the Little Traverse Bay, the same bay that Sarah and I had watched sunsets and sunrises a hundred times. I can’t help but think, if only he had hung on till the darkness of that bay had been eclipsed by the sunrise of a new morning, a new morning that offered the hope of Jesus. If you’re at that place today, hang on. Hang on till the morning. Hang on to the hope that Jesus is hanging on to you more firmly than you can even hang on to him. A new morning with Jesus brings the hope to keep on going. It also brings…

The Help You’re Waiting For

Lamentations 3:25-26 NRSV
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

Wait for it…wait for the amazing difference that one day can make. It can be the difference between life and death. Being lost and being saved.

Lazarus was dead for four days, and then Jesus raised him from the dead. A woman with an issue of blood for twelve years was healed when she touched Jesus. A man unable to walk for thirty-eight years was healed when he met Jesus while sitting beside a pool of water that supposedly healed people. There is only one thing in common between how all these things happened: they each encountered Jesus.

We are living in the darkness of the night. But Christmas reminds us that a new day’s coming! A new twenty-four! St. Paultells us that

…The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here…

Romans 13:11-12 NIV
O Holy Night are amazing words written by a talented poet. But while he knew the story of Christmas in his mind, he did not know it in his heart. It is possible to know about Jesus without knowing Jesus. To have the head but not the heart. This Christmas, give your life to Jesus. Follow him with everything you’ve got. Don’t just know the story in your head, but know it in your heart. Know the thrill of hope that a new morning with Jesus brings.

Prayer
Jesus, we are weary. We’re weary with all kinds of things. We’re even weary with the way our culture celebrates Christmas. But help us to encounter you amidst all the weariness of this Christmas season. Be our need, our hope, and our help so that we might follow you more faithfully Give us these things by the power of your Spirit at work in us. Amen.

O Holy Night
O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Christmas, hope, weary

Christmas String Theory

December 24, 2011 by Tom Leave a Comment

I am always amazed and deeply in wonder of our world. This little video by Dr. Kaku, the co-founder of string-theory and the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York (CUNY), does a great job of explaining some pretty complex ideas. If he’s right and there are multiple universes, a somewhat mind-blowing idea, why can’t we also believe that God became a baby at Christmas, a mind-blowing idea?

Filed Under: Video Tagged With: Big Bang, Christmas, creation, science

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Lament amidst Christmas – The Sandy Hook Shooting

O Holy Night

Christmas String Theory

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