Making Room for Christ (Dec 6,09)
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CHRISTMAS M1 December 6, 2009
TITLE: Making Room for Christ
TEXT: Luke 2:19
Props: Backpack, water bottle, books, pointer, EPIC, WV catalogue, concert invite cards.
BIG IDEA: We savour the Christmas story by worshipping fully and by a different kind of giving.
Kerry and Sarah Telford:
Christmas Concerts:
The movie Jingle All the Way is about a busy, inattentive dad named Howard Langston played by Arnold Schwarzenegger who is trying to get the 'hot toy' turbo man for his son Jamie...
After breaking his word again by missing Jamie's karate award, Howard resolves to redeem himself by fulfilling Jamie's ultimate Christmas wish…buying an action figure of Turbo-Man, a popular children TV superhero. Howard had promised to buy that figure earlier in the year, but then promptly had forgotten about it. Turbo-Man toys are the must-have gifts of the season, and stocks of Turbo-Man toys are quickly drying up all over the country. Desperate not to disappoint his family again, Howard embarks on an epic city-wide quest to find the toy everyone's looking for. Howard competing with another dad… in their race for the last action turbo-man toy!
Not of all us will be fighting for the last turbo-man at Christmas, but Christmas is a busy time for most of us.
We can feel the pressure of feeling like we need to buy presents we can’t afford (sometimes going into debt), wrapping them, writing and sending Christmas cards and letters, attending parties, and all extra events to attend. All good things, in and of themselves, but taken together we can cause us to feel stress, anxiety, and be more likely to snap at others.
Ironically and sadly, our busyness can cause us to miss the Saviour… the very reason for the season.
In the frantic pace of this time of year, I am drawn to the example of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced an extraordinary amount of stress the time around Jesus’ birth, the time we now refer to as Christmas.
Mary was betrothed to Joseph. In their day, betrothal was considered very close to marriage and the couple was legally bound to each other. Mary became pregnant. Joseph was not the father. In their time, that would have been scandalous. People would have assumed that she had been sexually unfaithful to her betrothed, which in her day was tantamount to adultery. The penalty for adultery was death by stoning. This is why Joseph, before he became aware that Mary had conceived because the Holy Spirit had come upon her causing he to conceive, wanted to quietly divorce her, so as not to subject her to public disgrace and endanger her life.
We also read in Luke 2:1-5 that in those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Anyone who was considered the head of their household had to go to their home town to register. So Joseph and Mary (who was 9 months pregnant) traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is about 100 kilometers as the crow flies (MAP). Samaria lay between Nazareth and Bethlehem. There was so much animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews that any sane person travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have travelled east (MAP), crossed into modern day Jordan, and then travel south along the east side of Jordan River, and then crossed back west into Bethlehem. And so, with Mary nine months pregnant and travelling by donkey, would have required about a week, or more. (Now technically, Mary did not have to accompany Joseph to Bethlehem for the census because she was not considered the head of her household, but perhaps because of the scandal surrounding her pregnancy, she felt she couldn’t stay in Nazareth alone.)
When they are in Bethlehem, Mary goes into labour, but Bethlehem is now filled with people who are there because of the census, and so Joseph and Mary are not able to find any room at their relative’s home or at any of the motels in town. They end up going to a cave where animals dwell and Mary places her newborn baby in a feeding trough used by the cattle.
When Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had some unexpected guests—shepherds. Shepherds were despised in Mary’s day. When people thought of shepherds, they thought of “thieves.” Some shepherds would steal a sheep and report to its owner that it was lost or eaten by a lion; in fact, their reputation was so bad that their word was not considered as admissible evidence in a court of law. So the scandal, the travel, the stress of giving birth to a firstborn child in a cave surrounded by animals and by shepherds could have easily have distracted Mary.
But we read in verse 19:
19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 2x
We read earlier in Luke 1:46 that after Mary learns she will become the mother of the Saviour figure, Mary sings:
46 "My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
Mary savours the birth of her son, the Saviour of the world.
When I am talking with a couple who is about to get married, there is one piece of counsel that I always give them about their wedding day. It is a piece of counsel that I received before I got ready for my wedding day. It is simply this: “Savour the day. Be present in the moment.” A wedding day can be so busy. A person can be so focused on looking right, walking down the aisle without tripping, reciting the vows correctly, being able to get the ring on his finger, forgetting to thank someone important at the reception… that they are not present for one of the greatest moments of their life.
So Mary’s savouring birth in her heart is a call for us to savour God’s gift to us, to be present and fully attentive to it.
Simone Weil, the French mystic, defined prayer is paying absolute attention.
As a mentor of mine says: “If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, the snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is ‘given’.”
When we look long enough at Christ, something is given.
One of the ways that we savour Jesus is by making space to pay attention to Jesus by simplifying our lives at Christmas. I know that simplifying our lives at Christmas sounds like a contradiction in terms because there is so much to do at Christmas.
But some things, even good things, are worth dropping at Christmas so we can pay attention to what matters most.
Before becoming a pastor here at Tenth Church, I interviewed a British minister that I have deep respect for, Dr. John Stott. I was working on an article where his ideas were being featured. After the interview I stopped the tape recorder. I turned to Dr. Stott and said, “I have been called to serve as a pastor at Tenth Avenue Church. I am young and inexperienced. I am wondering if you might have a word of counsel for me.” Dr. Stott paused and said, “Don’t get caught up in a frenzy of activity. Practice planned neglect. Study the Word in the world.”
We can practice some planned neglect at Christmas.
In my late teen years, our family with five kids decided that instead of buying gifts for everyone in the family--we would draw names. One gift for one person. We would draw names from a hat and buy one gift for one person in the family (If my younger brother would draw your name—you knew you’d be getting some of his homework for Christmas—one of his art assignments—where he had blindfolded himself and thrown paint backwards at the canvas.). Less shopping left more time for other things. Planned neglect.
I remember Charles Swindoll, a pastor with a well known radio teaching ministry, once said, “I don’t send Christmas cards and I don’t attend Christmas parties.” I am sure that the reason that he made those decisions was so he would not neglect his family and the people closest to him at Christmas. Hearing Chuck Swindoll saying that liberated me from feeling the need to write Christmas cards--on top of everything else. Though I enjoy attending Christmas parties, it liberated me from the feeling that I needed to be at every Christmas event. (One Christmas I spoke at 18 different events. I was too frazzled to attend to the mystery of Christ myself.)
Planned neglect creates the space for us to savour the Saviour.
Mary savoured the birth of Christ that first Christmas.
We can savour the Christ through planned neglect by paying attention to Christ in the Scriptures that describe his birth in Matthew, Luke, and John. Through prayer and meditation. Through worshipping in community as we are doing today.
A movement that encourages us to spend less time shopping more and more time worshipping the Christ is advent conspiracy:
ADVENT CONSPIRACY VIDEO (Show Video HERE):
The advent conspiracy calls us to a new tradition (it’s actually recapturing an older tradition): spend less, give more, love all, worship fully.
We can savour Christ through planned neglect…by simplifying our lives, by shopping less and so we pay attention to Christ and worship fully.
We can savour Christ by giving in different way.
Spending less which most of us we likely agree is a good thing, doesn’t mean we won’t give at all Christmas, it simply means w will give in a different way.
Mary gave a lot that first Christmas.
As every mother here would know, or someone who has cared for a newborn baby would know, Mary gave Jesus, God, the gifts of her body--her womb for nine months and beyond that as she nursed him. She gave him the gifts of his swaddling cloth that he was wrapped in as her new born son. She gave up sleep for him.
And Mary savoured the birth of her son, the Christ, through the gifts that she gave him.
And others gave gifts to Jesus too. The shepherds in Luke 2 brought the gift of their presence.
The Magi, also known in tradition as the three Kings, of course, featured in Matthew, brought gifts of their presents: gold and frankincense and myrrh to Jesus.
Part of the way that we can savour the Christ is by offering gifts that would honour him.
Savour Christ doesn’t mean that we don’t give gifts; it simply means we give in a different way, in a way that would honor Christ and express his love.
It is possible to become so preoccupied in buying gifts that creates more stress than joy, that makes us feel like we are being drawn away from Christ, rather than to him. If that’s the case, we do well to practice some planned neglect here so we can savour Christ.
But, it’s also possible to find and give gifts in a way that enable us to savour Christ as we express something of his love in our giving.
Before Sakiko and I got engaged to be married, she assumed that because I am a Christian pastor I was so deeply spiritual that I would have seen it as beneath me to actually buy her a ring. But as my sister (who was living in Japan at the time) can tell you, and Sakiko’s sister can tell you, with their help and without asking Sakiko, I discovered exactly what kind of ring she would like (by getting them to raid her jewelry box). I spent a lot of energy looking for rings in both Montreal and Vancouver to find the right one, that drew into space of joy and a sense of God.
As a young teen I was not a follower of Christ, but I remember how I really enjoyed buying (some jacking) gifts for my family. It was an expression of love that in a small way honored a God that at the time I wasn’t following.
Buying less can certainly be a way to savour Christ, but giving can also be a way to savour Christ.
We read in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, that when we give to the “least” of these, we actually are giving directly the Christ.
Sometimes the “least of these” is a member of our own family or someone in some kind of need. We can give them a gift of our presence or some other kind of gift they may need.
But many of the “least” in the world are people we have never met and live geographically (or culturally) distant part of our world.
Kerry Telford Morrissey (show photo), a medical doctor in our community, loved to give.
Kerry had worked as a doctor at the Bridge Clinic for refugees in here Vancouver.
Kerry spent time each year for the last 9 years as volunteer doctor serving the rural poor in jungles in Peru as part as a part of a Catholic mission there.
Kerry gave to Christ by giving to the least.
As you will see as you read this edition of EPIC, some people in our community at this time of year love to give clean water, classroom books for kids, or goats for underprivileged people in the developing world.
Some of the most meaningful Christmas gifts that I have been able to give (actually, in most cases given by others in my name) have been offering live chickens or lamb to underprivileged children through the World Vision catalogue.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Goat
One healthy dairy goat can yield up to 250 litres of milk annually to provide essential protein and life-changing income. Two goats can be bred to produce from 2 to 3 kids a year and eventually multiply into a whole herd.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Piglet
Everybody loves the practical gift of piglets. They're simple to raise, can plump up to 90 pounds in three months, and are a great source of protein. One sow can produce a litter of piglets every year to sell at market. One pig is great--and three are terrific—to help a family break the cycle of poverty!
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Sheep
Sheep are great providers for a family in need. They produce lots of wool for making warm clothing—plus protein-rich meat and milk. Sheep often birth twins or triplets, which can be sold for income or bred to produce a whole flock of woolly grazers.
I’m getting these images from the World Vision Canada website (www.worldvision.ca) which you can find at the bottom of the sermon outline in your program. There are a few World Vision catalogues at the back of the church.
If you want to give something to someone in need more locally, every year people at Tenth help fill back packs (show) to fill them with such things as a toque, a sweater, socks, snacks, a rain coat.
Another way you can give to someone local, of course, is by opening your heart or home to someone.
Marian and Jonny B, a couple in our community, have three children Sammy, Lukas, and Gracie.
This couple, as many of us enjoying doing at Christmas, invite people who have no family in the area to celebrate Christmas with them.
One year in the midst in the midst of their own financial challenges they had 26 people over for Christmas dinner in their relatively small home. (I have been there a few times).
We can savour Christ this Christmas through planned neglect, worshipping fully, and by giving in a different way.
Pray.
CHRISTMAS M1 December 6, 2009
TITLE: Making Room for Christ
TEXT: Luke 2:19
Props: Backpack, water bottle, books, pointer, EPIC, WV catalogue, concert invite cards.
BIG IDEA: We savour the Christmas story by worshipping fully and by a different kind of giving.
Kerry and Sarah Telford:
Christmas Concerts:
The movie Jingle All the Way is about a busy, inattentive dad named Howard Langston played by Arnold Schwarzenegger who is trying to get the 'hot toy' turbo man for his son Jamie...
After breaking his word again by missing Jamie's karate award, Howard resolves to redeem himself by fulfilling Jamie's ultimate Christmas wish…buying an action figure of Turbo-Man, a popular children TV superhero. Howard had promised to buy that figure earlier in the year, but then promptly had forgotten about it. Turbo-Man toys are the must-have gifts of the season, and stocks of Turbo-Man toys are quickly drying up all over the country. Desperate not to disappoint his family again, Howard embarks on an epic city-wide quest to find the toy everyone's looking for. Howard competing with another dad… in their race for the last action turbo-man toy!
Not of all us will be fighting for the last turbo-man at Christmas, but Christmas is a busy time for most of us.
We can feel the pressure of feeling like we need to buy presents we can’t afford (sometimes going into debt), wrapping them, writing and sending Christmas cards and letters, attending parties, and all extra events to attend. All good things, in and of themselves, but taken together we can cause us to feel stress, anxiety, and be more likely to snap at others.
Ironically and sadly, our busyness can cause us to miss the Saviour… the very reason for the season.
In the frantic pace of this time of year, I am drawn to the example of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced an extraordinary amount of stress the time around Jesus’ birth, the time we now refer to as Christmas.
Mary was betrothed to Joseph. In their day, betrothal was considered very close to marriage and the couple was legally bound to each other. Mary became pregnant. Joseph was not the father. In their time, that would have been scandalous. People would have assumed that she had been sexually unfaithful to her betrothed, which in her day was tantamount to adultery. The penalty for adultery was death by stoning. This is why Joseph, before he became aware that Mary had conceived because the Holy Spirit had come upon her causing he to conceive, wanted to quietly divorce her, so as not to subject her to public disgrace and endanger her life.
We also read in Luke 2:1-5 that in those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Anyone who was considered the head of their household had to go to their home town to register. So Joseph and Mary (who was 9 months pregnant) traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is about 100 kilometers as the crow flies (MAP). Samaria lay between Nazareth and Bethlehem. There was so much animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews that any sane person travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have travelled east (MAP), crossed into modern day Jordan, and then travel south along the east side of Jordan River, and then crossed back west into Bethlehem. And so, with Mary nine months pregnant and travelling by donkey, would have required about a week, or more. (Now technically, Mary did not have to accompany Joseph to Bethlehem for the census because she was not considered the head of her household, but perhaps because of the scandal surrounding her pregnancy, she felt she couldn’t stay in Nazareth alone.)
When they are in Bethlehem, Mary goes into labour, but Bethlehem is now filled with people who are there because of the census, and so Joseph and Mary are not able to find any room at their relative’s home or at any of the motels in town. They end up going to a cave where animals dwell and Mary places her newborn baby in a feeding trough used by the cattle.
When Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had some unexpected guests—shepherds. Shepherds were despised in Mary’s day. When people thought of shepherds, they thought of “thieves.” Some shepherds would steal a sheep and report to its owner that it was lost or eaten by a lion; in fact, their reputation was so bad that their word was not considered as admissible evidence in a court of law. So the scandal, the travel, the stress of giving birth to a firstborn child in a cave surrounded by animals and by shepherds could have easily have distracted Mary.
But we read in verse 19:
19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 2x
We read earlier in Luke 1:46 that after Mary learns she will become the mother of the Saviour figure, Mary sings:
46 "My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
Mary savours the birth of her son, the Saviour of the world.
When I am talking with a couple who is about to get married, there is one piece of counsel that I always give them about their wedding day. It is a piece of counsel that I received before I got ready for my wedding day. It is simply this: “Savour the day. Be present in the moment.” A wedding day can be so busy. A person can be so focused on looking right, walking down the aisle without tripping, reciting the vows correctly, being able to get the ring on his finger, forgetting to thank someone important at the reception… that they are not present for one of the greatest moments of their life.
So Mary’s savouring birth in her heart is a call for us to savour God’s gift to us, to be present and fully attentive to it.
Simone Weil, the French mystic, defined prayer is paying absolute attention.
As a mentor of mine says: “If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, the snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is ‘given’.”
When we look long enough at Christ, something is given.
One of the ways that we savour Jesus is by making space to pay attention to Jesus by simplifying our lives at Christmas. I know that simplifying our lives at Christmas sounds like a contradiction in terms because there is so much to do at Christmas.
But some things, even good things, are worth dropping at Christmas so we can pay attention to what matters most.
Before becoming a pastor here at Tenth Church, I interviewed a British minister that I have deep respect for, Dr. John Stott. I was working on an article where his ideas were being featured. After the interview I stopped the tape recorder. I turned to Dr. Stott and said, “I have been called to serve as a pastor at Tenth Avenue Church. I am young and inexperienced. I am wondering if you might have a word of counsel for me.” Dr. Stott paused and said, “Don’t get caught up in a frenzy of activity. Practice planned neglect. Study the Word in the world.”
We can practice some planned neglect at Christmas.
In my late teen years, our family with five kids decided that instead of buying gifts for everyone in the family--we would draw names. One gift for one person. We would draw names from a hat and buy one gift for one person in the family (If my younger brother would draw your name—you knew you’d be getting some of his homework for Christmas—one of his art assignments—where he had blindfolded himself and thrown paint backwards at the canvas.). Less shopping left more time for other things. Planned neglect.
I remember Charles Swindoll, a pastor with a well known radio teaching ministry, once said, “I don’t send Christmas cards and I don’t attend Christmas parties.” I am sure that the reason that he made those decisions was so he would not neglect his family and the people closest to him at Christmas. Hearing Chuck Swindoll saying that liberated me from feeling the need to write Christmas cards--on top of everything else. Though I enjoy attending Christmas parties, it liberated me from the feeling that I needed to be at every Christmas event. (One Christmas I spoke at 18 different events. I was too frazzled to attend to the mystery of Christ myself.)
Planned neglect creates the space for us to savour the Saviour.
Mary savoured the birth of Christ that first Christmas.
We can savour the Christ through planned neglect by paying attention to Christ in the Scriptures that describe his birth in Matthew, Luke, and John. Through prayer and meditation. Through worshipping in community as we are doing today.
A movement that encourages us to spend less time shopping more and more time worshipping the Christ is advent conspiracy:
ADVENT CONSPIRACY VIDEO (Show Video HERE):
The advent conspiracy calls us to a new tradition (it’s actually recapturing an older tradition): spend less, give more, love all, worship fully.
We can savour Christ through planned neglect…by simplifying our lives, by shopping less and so we pay attention to Christ and worship fully.
We can savour Christ by giving in different way.
Spending less which most of us we likely agree is a good thing, doesn’t mean we won’t give at all Christmas, it simply means w will give in a different way.
Mary gave a lot that first Christmas.
As every mother here would know, or someone who has cared for a newborn baby would know, Mary gave Jesus, God, the gifts of her body--her womb for nine months and beyond that as she nursed him. She gave him the gifts of his swaddling cloth that he was wrapped in as her new born son. She gave up sleep for him.
And Mary savoured the birth of her son, the Christ, through the gifts that she gave him.
And others gave gifts to Jesus too. The shepherds in Luke 2 brought the gift of their presence.
The Magi, also known in tradition as the three Kings, of course, featured in Matthew, brought gifts of their presents: gold and frankincense and myrrh to Jesus.
Part of the way that we can savour the Christ is by offering gifts that would honour him.
Savour Christ doesn’t mean that we don’t give gifts; it simply means we give in a different way, in a way that would honor Christ and express his love.
It is possible to become so preoccupied in buying gifts that creates more stress than joy, that makes us feel like we are being drawn away from Christ, rather than to him. If that’s the case, we do well to practice some planned neglect here so we can savour Christ.
But, it’s also possible to find and give gifts in a way that enable us to savour Christ as we express something of his love in our giving.
Before Sakiko and I got engaged to be married, she assumed that because I am a Christian pastor I was so deeply spiritual that I would have seen it as beneath me to actually buy her a ring. But as my sister (who was living in Japan at the time) can tell you, and Sakiko’s sister can tell you, with their help and without asking Sakiko, I discovered exactly what kind of ring she would like (by getting them to raid her jewelry box). I spent a lot of energy looking for rings in both Montreal and Vancouver to find the right one, that drew into space of joy and a sense of God.
As a young teen I was not a follower of Christ, but I remember how I really enjoyed buying (some jacking) gifts for my family. It was an expression of love that in a small way honored a God that at the time I wasn’t following.
Buying less can certainly be a way to savour Christ, but giving can also be a way to savour Christ.
We read in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, that when we give to the “least” of these, we actually are giving directly the Christ.
Sometimes the “least of these” is a member of our own family or someone in some kind of need. We can give them a gift of our presence or some other kind of gift they may need.
But many of the “least” in the world are people we have never met and live geographically (or culturally) distant part of our world.
Kerry Telford Morrissey (show photo), a medical doctor in our community, loved to give.
Kerry had worked as a doctor at the Bridge Clinic for refugees in here Vancouver.
Kerry spent time each year for the last 9 years as volunteer doctor serving the rural poor in jungles in Peru as part as a part of a Catholic mission there.
Kerry gave to Christ by giving to the least.
As you will see as you read this edition of EPIC, some people in our community at this time of year love to give clean water, classroom books for kids, or goats for underprivileged people in the developing world.
Some of the most meaningful Christmas gifts that I have been able to give (actually, in most cases given by others in my name) have been offering live chickens or lamb to underprivileged children through the World Vision catalogue.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Goat
One healthy dairy goat can yield up to 250 litres of milk annually to provide essential protein and life-changing income. Two goats can be bred to produce from 2 to 3 kids a year and eventually multiply into a whole herd.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Piglet
Everybody loves the practical gift of piglets. They're simple to raise, can plump up to 90 pounds in three months, and are a great source of protein. One sow can produce a litter of piglets every year to sell at market. One pig is great--and three are terrific—to help a family break the cycle of poverty!
Your browser may not support display of this image.
Sheep
Sheep are great providers for a family in need. They produce lots of wool for making warm clothing—plus protein-rich meat and milk. Sheep often birth twins or triplets, which can be sold for income or bred to produce a whole flock of woolly grazers.
I’m getting these images from the World Vision Canada website (www.worldvision.ca) which you can find at the bottom of the sermon outline in your program. There are a few World Vision catalogues at the back of the church.
If you want to give something to someone in need more locally, every year people at Tenth help fill back packs (show) to fill them with such things as a toque, a sweater, socks, snacks, a rain coat.
Another way you can give to someone local, of course, is by opening your heart or home to someone.
Marian and Jonny B, a couple in our community, have three children Sammy, Lukas, and Gracie.
This couple, as many of us enjoying doing at Christmas, invite people who have no family in the area to celebrate Christmas with them.
One year in the midst in the midst of their own financial challenges they had 26 people over for Christmas dinner in their relatively small home. (I have been there a few times).
We can savour Christ this Christmas through planned neglect, worshipping fully, and by giving in a different way.
Pray.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:57 AM
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