This Year's Advent IV Sermon

Sermon on the Birth of Jesus “Welcome to the Future”
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
Morristown, TN
19 December 2010
Henry G. Selby

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord my strength and my redeemer.” AMEN

Good morning, brothers and sisters! Welcome to the future! Is this the way you pictured it? In English classes we sometimes use a device called a “story starter”. It’s the opening line that is designed to propel the students toward creative thoughts. In research papers this same idea is usually referred to as a thesis statement; in creative writing for younger writers it’s a “story starter”. Opening lines are critical for engaging the attention of readers and listeners. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” “Call me Ishmael” “Two houses, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene.” Here’s one of my all time favorite first lines. It’s from Peter Pan: “All of this has happened before”. That great opener causes the listeners to lean forward in expectation.

And what did we just hear?

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”

And everyone leans forward to hear the story again. Do we ever tire of this? This year we have St. Matthew’s account of the Christmas story. Matthew is brief and to the point: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” And seven sentences later he’s done with the entire birth narrative. If you’ll come back for one of our Christmas services you’ll hear Luke’s or John’s account . . . and no doubt you’ll lean forward to hear that version again. What a great story it is!

So how are you getting along here right before Christmas? Are you serene? Are you full of hope? Do you look forward with a mild combination of subdued excitement and an overriding sense of peace? Or are you more like I am?

I’m excited, but I’m also nearing what my mother used to call “chronic nervous exhaustion.” Just here at All Saints, the church, I counted 121 calendarized events for December. How many more are not specifically mentioned on our calendar? And if you’re one of those people who have children or pets or a job or friends or relatives or clubs or health issues, then the opportunities for you to join me in chronic exhaustion are numbered like Abraham’s descendants!

It’s a busy time of year. And much like we all lean forward to hear “the greatest story ever told”, we also want to lean forward and share how busy we all are . . . and how terribly WRONG it is for us to be so busy. Advent MUST be a reflective time if we are fully to grasp the story that Matthew tells us. The story is one of hope . . . of anticipation . . . of a birth. Of the future unfolding.

This morning we are gathered for an hour or so in a time and place where the madness can stop. We have chosen to hear God’s word, to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, and to pray together. [deep breath]

Immanuel: God is with us.

When I was a little boy I was full of hope for the future. My saintly first grade teacher, Mrs. Kiser of room 106, told me that I could be president if I wanted to be. We didn’t have a television until I was six years old, and in the first grade, and the used, black-and-white TV received three channels if one turned a controller to point our
rooftop antenna in the direction of the broadcasting station. That was 1961. And that television, along with Mrs. Kiser and my parents and my church, fed my hopefulness.
I was interested in how things were just getting better every day. On Sunday nights we would gather in the living room and watch ABC’s Wonderful World of Disney. My favorite shows included such people as rocket scientist Werner von Braun telling us about how trips to Mars would be commonplace by the 21st century, along with flying cars and “sleep learning!” Hadn’t my father just told my brother and me about the 103rd element, Lawrencium, being synthesized at Berkeley? It was just one exciting triumph after another. Man, those were the good old days!

Not like now. The economy’s a wreck. There are gangs of hoodlums, not just in L.A., but here! There’s massive nuclear instability emerging everywhere it seems. Somebody out there in the congregation has serious health problems, or an aging parent that you just don’t know what’s the next right thing to do is. Or bills to pay. Or an addiction that’s ruining lives. I turn on the television now and the word is hopelessness. What happened to the flying cars and sleep learning?

There were, in fact, lots of bad things happening in the world then: an atomic reactor blew up in Idaho (yes, back in 1961), the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, Freedom Riders were being arrested, the Berlin Wall was built, and the first American helicopters arrived in Saigon that year. But I didn’t pay any attention to Walter Cronkite or the Huntley-Brinkley report. I was more interested in exciting news. I actually thought it was exciting that my family built a fallout shelter in our basement! Sandbags covered the sunken casement windows, shelves were lined with row after row of canned goods, drinking water, and paper products. What a world!

So when I think back on the “good old days” of 1961 I have to remember that, along with Disney, Judy Garland’s “comeback” concert, and Gus Grissom rocketing into space during the Mercury program, there were a lot of bad things happening as well. It was years later that I learned Werner von Braun was a member of the Nazi party.

That sort of truth really messes up my recollections of the “good old days”. And I think you can easily see where I’m going with this: if we choose to live in the negative world of hopelessness, God will let us. If we choose to live in the hope of our calling as God’s children, our outlook will be quite different. In psychology 101 everyone learned this truth: people see what they want to see. People see what they want to see. And in Flip Wilson’s television character, Geraldine, we have an equally powerful truth: “Honey. What you see is what you get.”

So welcome to the future. Advent IV, A.D. 2010. We’re here now. What’s next? I’ll tell you. It’s what has always been, always is, and always will be. Immanuel. God is with us. We never really knew this until God became flesh, as a little baby in a manger, and dwelt among us. Now that we know it, to what should we be looking forward?

Sisters and brothers, we stand at the door of Christmas. Particularly in the Anglican communion worldwide, we insist that Advent be a reflective time for just one thing: looking forward to the only thing that matters. Truth is, the future is not what it used to be . . . at least from the world’s point of view. But from the viewpoint of all eternity, it has never changed. Immanuel. God is with us.

I wonder if this hour or so that we have together this morning is enough to help us put aside the hustle and bustle of the holidays for reflection. I don’t know. But what I DO know is that we have this time right now to consider the implications of a Creator God so majestic, so awesome, so mighty and powerful, so eternal that words defy a description of God’s greatness . . . who came into our world as a little baby . . . and then in time, gave himself for you and for me.

Please understand that I’m not suggesting that we live in some Pollyanna world, denying the awful things around us. But by the same token I would ask you to consider that it is one’s perspective that makes all the difference. Do I want to focus on the negative or on the positive. Advent is the perfect reflective season to answer that question. What’s next? In our annual pageant, the pageant of the church year, the next scene is the birth of Jesus, the messiah. A savior. A God become man who says “look to the only thing that matters: Union with your creator. Immanuel. God is with us.

When I am finished reflecting with you in just a few minutes we will have the opportunity to affirm our faith in the Nicene Creed. We will have an opportunity to get out of ourselves as we pray for others. We will offer each other a sign of peace and offer our gifts to God. And then? Then we will do what Jesus himself commanded us to do for Union: we will make Eucharist. For you see, brothers and sisters, Jesus had to be born in order to give himself for us. And that is why, as important as we make his birth, we declare his resurrection as the queen of feasts. Yes, right here at the end of Advent, we declare ourselves an Easter People.

Welcome to the future. We have been given NOW as our time to make a decision. To see the baby who saves us, or to squander our NOW in hopelessness and despair.

Let us walk together to the manger in Bethlehem, full of hope about what we will see there. Let’s think together as we walk . . . about the meaning of it all. Let us choose to approach the world around us with a sure and certain hope of our salvation. And as we walk, let Matthew tell us a story. It starts like this: “Now the birth of Jesus the messiah happened in this way.”

And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed as is most justly due, all might majesty, power, dominion, and glory, both now and evermore. AMEN