|
This sermon title comes from the third verse of the Bethlehem carol:
| “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given, so God
imparts to human hearts, the blessings of his heaven…” |
|
| To imagine that we humans can know anything about God, much less about
how God does anything, is a bit outrageous. But we try. Christmas is a
great time for it. |
| At Christmas we set our minds in dream-gear. We accept the poetic and
mythical statements of God’s intersection with human kind. And that’s OK,
to a point. |
Sometimes we get kicked out of dream-gear, like happened to me while
meeting with a family to prepare a funeral. The kindergarten age grandson
asked point blank:
| “Why did God kill my granddad?” |
|
| Getting that kind of question, or any kind of real question about why
God did or didn’t do something, throws you out of dream-time into real
time. |
| We say these questions miss the point. But do they? If there is a God,
and God has anything to do with this speck of a place, why in the name
of someone doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t God at least let us know
that someone is really there? |
The Text for all this is from Psalm 19. It says more about Christmas
than anything in Isaiah about how God imparts to human hearts. Give a listen:
| “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims
his handiwork.” |
|
| Let me confess that—for me—my root faith in the possibility and nature
of God has come from my sense of wonder as I look out into the star-filled
night sky, or wade the seashore, or watch the setting sun. “The heavens
are telling…and the firmament does proclaim.” |
The psalmist goes on to say something about the God of this place and
how that God works:
| “There is no speech, there are no words, their voice is not heard.” |
|
| Who believes if a person-type God? Who believes in a God built like
ourselves? Speech and words and voice are human things. We want God to
be like computers that talk with a voice instead of in letters and codes.
Even our listening devices aimed into outer space are not listening for
speech or a voice. They are listening for codes and signals. |
The psalmist has a radical theory. It is his faith.
| “Yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to
the end of the world.” |
|
The idea is that God, somehow, does indeed become known, even though
there are no words.
| “No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls
will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” |
|
| In other words, if we are to discern the holy presence among us we
are going to have to look and listen in new ways. |
| Christmas tells us that we are going to have to look for signs of God
in human flesh. That’s hard to accept. That doesn’t mean that we have to
worship those in whom we detect something of the divine. We just need to
recognize the divine where we see it. |
| Like two news stories I read a few years ago. One was about Jim Bakkar,
the since-defrocked evangelist. The other was about Elizabeth Taylor. You
know of her many lives. Would you expect to find a sign of God in either
one. Bakkar was asking listeners to send in their diamonds to finance a
Praise the Lord Club, House of Diamonds. He wanted the best for God. He
was directed by God, he claimed. |
| Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor had received a million-dollar diamond ring
from Richard Burton. A few days later, according to the news, at Burton’s
50th birthday party, Liz moved him to tears with her gift to him. She would
sell the diamond and donate the money to build a medical clinic in South
Africa in Burton’s name. |
| Two diamond stories. Does your heart detect the voice of God in one
of them? |
| Christmas stories try to help us understand a deep faith. It was a
faith that the writers learned from Jesus. They are telling us that although
it seems God does not act and is silent, that’s not really true.
God in fact appears among us in the most unlikely places and people. Where
compassion is, God is. Look in a baby’s crib. Look in a baby’s crib in
a manger in a barn. Or look into the compassionate act of a lady not known
for holy acts. When diamonds are turned into hospitals, it’s a greater
miracle than turning water into wine. The word has become flesh and dwelt
among us and we have beheld God’s glory, even in Liz. |
| Finally (beware of preachers who say finally more than once!) Christmas
is not about the birth of a baby that grew to be a great man. It can be
that, but it is more. It is about one in whom we detect evidence of God. |
| Imagine hearing on the evening news that our great planetary listening
system has received a definite signal from outer space, revealing the existence
of some kind of intelligence. It would be the news of all history. We have
wondered about it. Many believed it, but had no proof. Many doubted it
absolutely. Many thought there would never be a way to know. |
| We would not hear words, but some kind of signals. We would be trying
to understand the signals. We would wonder about the senders. But the main
truth that would thrill us (and chill us, maybe) would be that there was,
in fact, somebody out there. |
Christmas is that kind of story. A sign to us. In this case, a babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. This wonder-babe has
been seen by Christians as one in whose life we can glimpse God. His birth
is a symbol of a breakthrough of the distance between the human and divine.
We see what we had completely overlooked. The possibility that God has
been in and among us all the time. Christmas is a wonder story of how God
imparts to human hearts.
“No ear may hear his coming, but in the world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” |
|
|
- Art Morgan - Christmas Sermon
|