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27.12.2009_English
| 28.12.2009, 22:58 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 148; 1 Samuel 2:18–20, 26; Colossians 3:12–17; Luke 3:12–17 Life After Christmas A little girl went for a walk in the city with her family to enjoy the various homes, decorated with bright holiday lights. They stopped at one church and went in to look at the remarkably beautiful nativity scene. "How amazingly beautiful!” said her grandmother. "Look at the animals, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus.” "It’s very pretty, grandma,” said the girl, "but something isn’t right. Can it be that the baby Jesus never grows? He’s just as tiny as he was last year!” This observation of the girl touches on a very important problem regarding Christmas. People worship before Christmas nativity scenes; cherish the romantic image of the baby Jesus, who remains a part of Christmas; remains only in memory and only as a baby, as soon as the festivities are over. Many put away the "baby Jesus” until next Christmas, without so much as thinking about the fact that in their lives as well, he’s never more than a baby and there’s no place for Him after Christmas, no life after Christmas. Today’s texts from the scripture come together in a remarkable way to make us consider what God has done and continues to do. The scripture doesn’t allow us to leave Jesus a romanticized babe in the manger and forces us to ask ourselves about the life of Jesus after Christmas and how our lives should be after Christmas. The passage from Samuel and the passage from Luke’s Gospel tell two stories about sons and their mothers from two different periods of Israel’s history. Samuel was born in a dark time in Jewish history – one might say at a crossroads in the history of God’s people. The events in the Book of Samuel follow close on that which is described in closing verses of the book of Judges – the sad state of affairs of the Jewish nation. Despite the many times when God interfered on their behalf, His desire to save His people, the condition of the Israel left much to be desired. It was said that Israel had no king and therefore the situation was quite unstable and the people were constantly under the threat of aggression from their enemies/neighboring states (mostly Philistines). Furthermore, internal disunity and wickedness ruled the day, for "each did that which was right in his own eyes.” It was precisely in this dark, dismal period that God gave the promise of salvation through the house of David – a fact mentioned in passing in the story of Ruth, who was chosen to be a part of God’s people and became a great-grandmother of King David. We are told this story of Samuel and his mother, Anna, with the background of this pessimistic picture of the Jewish nation, afflicted with a vacuum of leadership, danger from all sides from enemies, and lawlessness ruling in the hearts of the people. You may recall that Anna was childless and prayed for a son, whom she promised to dedicate to God’s service if He would bless her with a child. Her personal tragedy, her story, parallels the general tragedy of the nation and its story and the prayer of Anna, although it is above all directly connected to her personal barrenness it brings out the lot of Israel which is without savior and king, Samuel becomes God’s answer to Anna’s prayer. Not only an answer to her personally as a mother, but also to the Jewish nation. Samuel doesn’t become a king, who will save his people, but he is one whose life serves as a bridge between the Jewish past of lawlessness and lack of leadership and its future under the direction of King David, who was anointed by God. We read that while Samuel was still a child and serving in the temple, his mother came every year to Siloam bringing a new Ephod expressing thereby not only her dedication and care for her son, but showing her belief in the promise of God given when she dedicated Samuel to God’s service. Her faith in God gives birth to and feeds the faithfulness of her son to God. It is, after all, said of him "the boy Samuel was growing in stature and in favor both with the Lord and with men.” The son is confirmed in faithfulness and in service to God by the faithfulness of his mother to God. And, through Samuel, God will change the story of the Jewish people. The Gospel of Luke also tells us a story of a child, growing remarkably in wisdom and love before God and man. This is the only story in the Gospels in which we see Jesus already not a babe, but not yet a man. He’s 12 years old in this story and has come with his parents to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. This was the most important holiday for the Israelites. After all, it served as a reminder for the people of the time when God led them forth from Egyptian slavery after visiting their Egyptian captors with 10 plagues, the last of which was the death of the firstborn. You may recall that God told his people to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts as a sign that God’s people lived in that home and the Angel of death would pass over that house and the firstborn would not die. This is what is meant by the Hebrew word Pesakh (Paskha in Russian) - "Pass over.” So each year Joseph and Mary faithfully came to celebrate this holy day, to worship God for his faithfulness and his salvation. Each year they passed on that faithfulness to their son. This particular year they were returning with other pilgrims after the celebrations, when they discover that Jesus is not with them, but has remained in Jerusalem. Having realized this, they return awash in worry and stress they search until they find him, sitting with the teachers of the law in the temple, talking with them and stunning them with his wisdom and answers. When his mother asks, "How could you make us worry like that?” Jesus answers, "Didn’t you know that I must be doing my Father’s business? These words are not completely clear, but one thing is abundantly clear – God and God’s work were a priority for Jesus, because God is His Father. All else is secondary. This isn’t, however, just a story about the praiseworthy childhood of Jesus, who was from early years a spiritual child. In this story from Jesus’ childhood, Luke shows how God will soon act to save His people. Luke tells of Jesus coming to the temple for Passover three times: The first time, when his parents bring him there as a babe; the second time, when He comes with his parents as a youth; and the third, when he comes with his disciples. That last time isn’t simply remembrance and celebration of the fact that God saved his people by the blood of the Passover lamb, but Jesus Himself has become the Passover Lamb, who will save His people with His own blood, not by dabbing it on doorposts of homes, but by washing the doorposts of their hearts with it. All this is still ahead and an as yet incomplete chapter in the story of salvation, which God initiated long before the life of the youth Samuel. Yet in Samuel’s story we get a foretaste of the radical devotion that Jesus’ disciples preach to their listeners. That, to which the full-grown Jesus calls his followers, is already evident in the life of Jesus the youth in the story from Luke. That which has eternal value interests him so much, that all else is put on the back burner, because God is about to do something astonishing. As Samuel appeared in a dark time for Israel, to be a man who will point out and anoint David King, so Jesus is born to become the fulfillment of the promise of God to David, heralding the beginning of a new era, a transformation, and the completion of God’s wonderful plan of salvation. Reading this story from the childhood of Jesus, we aren’t simply trying to draw out the Christmas season for another week or to show our appreciation for the praiseworthy childhood of Jesus. It that was all it was, this text would be a harmless little story. However, today’s scripture calls us to remember the incredible, life-changing effects of the incarnation. The effects for Jesus himself, his family and all those round about him. This small bit that we know of his adolescence isn’t call for creating an idyllically nice picture of a boy in the Victorian style. On the contrary, he appears in this text amongst theological scholars, who are stunned, amazed, maybe even convicted by what they hear – but the main thing is that they take Him very seriously and take seriously what He says. There is yet another unsettling element along with Jesus’ wisdom and understanding: the inability of those around him to grasp what the life of this youth meant for Him and for them. Luke says that his parents didn’t understand the words that He said to them. But he also says that Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. These events confused her, bewildered her, and unsettled her, but she didn’t leave all of that at the temple that day. She carried these things with her into her everyday life, mulling them over and over, trying to understand what God was doing, what would happen, who Jesus would become, where God would lead him and what would life be like after the birth of this child. Christmas celebrations will come to an end in churches, but rather than switch our spiritual lives into autopilot and glide to Easter, we are called to start a journey on which we will again and again search for Jesus along with Mary and Joseph, worrying, remembering, and understanding better all the time, who He is and why He came into the world. Christmas awakens us to the truth that this child is from God, but, with Mary, it calls us to be ready to listen and strive to understand what it means to live after the birth of Christ. In the Gospel Jesus the young man knows that he was chosen by God and that He must be about His Father’s business. As he grew, he grew in wisdom and in love before God and man. Samuel was chosen by God to be part of His plan and becomes by the power of God an instrument in God’s hands for the salvation of His people. It’s interesting that in the Epistle to the Colossians, the church is called the "chosen of God”. God enacted and continues to effect salvation and transformation for His people. This is why Paul calls us to not relax after Christmas, but to prepare ourselves to live with Jesus; to not only await His return. Paul also tells us in this passage about how to live with Christ: As saints of God, then, holy and dearly loved, let your behavior be marked by pity and mercy, kind feeling, a low opinion of yourselves, gentle ways, and a power of undergoing all things; Being gentle to one another and having forgiveness for one another, if anyone has done wrong to his brother, even as the Lord had forgiveness for you. And let the peace of Christ be ruling in your hearts, as it was the purpose of God for you to be one body; and give praise to God at all times. And whatever you do, in word or in act, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving praise to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12). God came to mankind in Christmas, incarnate in a babe, not to give us a romantic celebration, but to give us new life in Him after Christmas. In 1976 James Watkins wrote this short sketch: Christmas 1976 Christ walked into a department store recently. His eyes blinked in amazement as He wandered though the silver evergreens, while red, yellow, and blue stars blinked above His head. Surely, this was not the way He had remembered it at that glorious time of creation. Relief filled His heart as He glimpsed familiar shepherds, But they were lifeless, hard and hollow; not anything like His Father had made. They bowed before the silent angels revolving on steel wires above their heads. It was all so cold and heartless. Plastic shells of humanity. I came to give life, to give it abundantly, He pondered as electronic ornaments beeped "Joy to the World." "Don't you want life?" He called out to the villagers. But they just smiled with their hand-painted expressions as they hurriedly shopped for more plastic and vinyl and stared past the life in the manger. Today Jesus still chooses us, calls us. His call transforms us, makes us new creatures. Today he still wants us to see the life that he brought, when He became flesh as a baby, the life that He wants us to live after Christmas. He calls us and by His power we become the people that He had in mind when He created us. By God’s power we are freed from the slavery of sin and may become as Jesus is in essence – children of God. Don’t put away the Christ Child from your life until next Christmas. There is life after Christmas – life with Him. Live that life! | |
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