Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

What’s your worst Christmas memory?

I know mine for sure - it was Christmas Eve, and I was living in Columbia, MO.

I was a youth pastor, and it was our annual Christmas Eve worship gathering.

As we were concluding, I looked down to see I had missed calls and a text message: mom has been in an accident.

I called my sister back to find out my mom and step-dad had been t-boned by car that jumped a median and three lanes of traffic to hit them on the driver’s side of the car.

They were both in the ICU.

My mom had a few broken bones.

My step-dad had been driving, and they weren’t sure he’d survive the night.

I jumped in my car and hurried home to pack - I hadn’t been planning to make the 2 hr trek to their house until the next morning.

I remember going in to see my mom.

She was in pain, but conscious and coherent.

Because she was in the ICU, only two of us were allowed back at a time.

A couple of her close friends arrived not long after I did, so I led them back.

When she saw them, she hugged them tight.

And what I remember most about that night was what I saw when I was closing the door to her room - she collapsed into sobs in her friends’ arms.

She had been holding herself together for her kids.

We spent Christmas day between the hospital and their house, too worried to think about the usual sorts of Christmas festivities like carols and presents.

In fact, I honestly don’t remember much about Christmas at all.

Not the lights, the gifts, whether I got a new ornament that year.

I remember the hospital.

My stepdad hovering at death’s door.

My mom’s tears.

All these years later, we’re all okay.

Both my parents survived and made a full recovery.

We don’t even talk that often about ‘the Accident’, as we’ve come to call it.

But I always think back to that awful Christmas during this time of year.

It’s a reminder for me that - no matter how well we prepare, there’s no such thing as the perfect Christmas.

And maybe that’s for the best.

Maybe our quest for the perfect Christmas is a fool’s errand.

Today, I want to explore that idea - the possibility that Christmas has never been perfect, and that when we stop trying to get that postcard perfect holiday, we can attend to the God who came into our world because we’re a mess.

The Good News of Christmas is that God is Immanuel - God with us.

Mess and all.

Message

Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent.

Advent is the beginning of the Church year.

Advent is a season of preparing for Jesus’ arrival - Christmas.

Think about that for a moment: the beginning of the Church year is marked by waiting.

By preparing.

That in and of itself is counterintuitive.

We mark New Year’s by making resolutions - we’re going to be slimmer, richer, bolder, smarter in the new year!

We do, do, do.

But faith says, “Let’s begin by waiting.

By watching.

By preparing.”

Let’s let life be a response to God’s action.

We’re preparing for Jesus’ return to Earth, what Christians call the Second Coming.

And for a couple of thousand years, we’ve thought the best way to prepare for Jesus’ second coming is by looking back at how God’s people prepared for Jesus’ first coming.

So: Advent to prepare for Christmas.

A time to look forward by looking back.

This year, our series is called, “I’ll be Home for Christmas.”

We’re going to be looking at the Gospel of Matthew.

In the passages this Advent season, we’re going to hear about what the world will look like when God returns, and how we can be preparing even now for that life.

We began by affirming the central truth of the Christmas story: this world belongs to God, and we are all part of God’s great rescue mission.

God has not and will not abandon the world.

Then we explored the necessity of repentance in our preparation for Christmas.

Do we produce fruit consistent with a life rooted in the Spirit?

Last week, we saw Jesus’ mission to heal the world, and faced the reality that it’s not finished yet.

We acknowledged the reality that our hope and hurt go hand in hand.

Today, at this final Sunday before Christmas, we realize we still have a whole week until Christmas Day (since it falls on a Sunday this year).

That’s either great news or causes a little panic - maybe both.

We’re doing our last-minute shopping and wrapping and making sure if we’re travelling that all those ducks are in their rows and maybe still putting some finishing touches on some decorations and… How many of us, by the time we get to this last week of Advent just want New Year’s to get here already?

Either that or we’re sort of just trying to survive.

There’s real pain around the holidays - family we have to see or we know we won’t see or we’re trying really hard to avoid seeing.

Or financial constraints that feel particularly burdensome these days.

Or we’re just feeling the weight of the state of the world on our shoulders and we’re really struggling to find any good cheer.

What does Christmas look like for the weary and the worried?

Is there actually peace on earth for the tired or the troubled?

Anything worth celebrating for the broken or the broke?

Tur with us to Matthew 1.

Today, we’re looking at Matthew’s version of the announcement of Jesus’ birth.

Luke is the one who gives us Mary and her holy yes, her visit with cousin Elizabeth.

Matthew is much more terse, and to the point.

Let’s read together:

Let’s talk about this virgin birth prophecy.

Because it’s where a lot of folks get tripped up.

Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus (Luke says this too).

So we fight about it (what else?).

A bunch of people say, “This is a scientific impossibility.

Jesus has to have a mother and a father, so this is a story made up to justify his divinity.”

But Jesus isn’t the only person in history to be alleged to have been born of a virgin.

Alexander the Great’s mother was allegedly impregnated by Zeus’ thunderbolt.

Plato was allegedly born of a virgin and Apollo.

Romulus, the founder of Rome, was the son of a virgin and Mars (the Roman god of war).

Even Caesar Augustus, the ruler when Jesus was born, was said to be the son of Apollo.

Of course, there’s a problem there: Alexander the Great, Plato and Romulus were humans.

Augustus was worshiped as a god, but only after death.

He was explicilty elevated to godhood.

He wasn’t a god on earth.

And even some of the ancient heroes like Hercules were what they called demigods - half human and half god.

But Matthew is doing something different here: because Christians have never said that Jesus was only human.

Or only God.

And certainly not a demigod.

No, Christians have always said that Jesus is both fully human and fully God.

He’s 100% both - the impossible math where 1+1=1.

And we see Matthew hinting at that when he insists that it’s not God the Father who is the source of Jesus’ life, but the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit in the Bible is the one who moved across the primordial waters at creation.

The Spirit is the one who came upon the judges when they set out to liberate God’s people.

The Spirit is always a sign that God is up to something new.

So too here.