Love's Arrival

Advent - literally means coming or arrival.....and so in the four weeks leading up to Christmas we have found ourselves as we do each year in a season of preparation and waiting… Waiting for the arrival of Jesus Christ into human history..... This past Advent we have been journeying through a sermon series titled. What are you waiting for? And in those four weeks Pastor Jun and our three interns have invited us to reflect on that posture of waiting..... beginning with the theme that our waiting is to be active, then waiting for the Light, Waiting for Comfort, Waiting to be satisfied, and today we remember that our waiting has been fulfilled!

Remember the words of Isaiah the prophet declaring to God’s people, “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed.”

And on the first Christmas that declaration had come to pass.... her hard service has been completed.... God has come.... Consider the words of Paul in Galatians 4

Galatians 4:4

Galatians 4:4 (NIV)

4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman,

That time had fully come, now some 2000 years ago, and here’s Luke’s account of how God sent his son into the world and announced his birth.

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Luke 2:8–20 NIV

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

We began the Advent season with the question, “What are you waiting for?”

Well, I remember as a young boy, when Christmas Eve was getting closer and closer and some of these things appeared under the Christmas tree in our home, the days leading up to Christmas seemed to get longer and longer. Especially Christmas Eve. We always opened our Christmas gifts on the evening of Christmas Eve....and I was convinced that Christmas Eve was by far the longest day of the year! Because what I was really interested in that day was those presents!

Speaking of presents....did you notice this one? I wonder what’s in this present????...... well, I guess we’ll have to wait!

There’s lots of things we wait for isn’t there.... wait for food in a restaurant, wait in airports for our plane to leave or sometimes we wait there for family members or friends to return from a trip. We wait for doctors appointments…and these days that can take a long time…I don’t know about you, but if we want to make in an inperson appointment with our family doctor, it takes about 3 weeks! We wait for test results, for surgery dates. Couples wait to get pregnant, pregant mothers wait for their baby. Sometimes we just wait for the day to be over....we’ve all had those days haven’t we.....”ok Lord, when is this day going to end.”

Years ago in my previous congregation I sat with a gentleman whose marriage was going through a particularly difficult season, and at one point he shared a kind of lament, “OK, God, when are you going to show up in all of this marital mess.” His way of saying, “Lord, can you show yourself in some way to assure us that we’re going to get through this?”

Probably at various times in our life many of us have asked the question, “Lord, can you show / reveal yourself to me?”

What are you waiting for?

Well, about 2000 years ago, at just the right time.... in fact as you read the OT carefully, you see that the whole OT story has been leading up to this moment in history. This was the time when God would quite literally change the course of human history.

And remarkably glorious heavenly announcement that broke into human history in a remote Judean field just outside of Bethlehem came to shepherds! Not the religious elite, not the ruling elite, not the intellectual elite, but to shepherds…ordinary folk…people like you and me with 9-5 jobs, bills to pay, driveways to shovel, classes to attend.... ordinary folks.... shepherds.

And when the angel appeared to the shepherds, he said to them:

Luke 2:10–12 NIV

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

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As many of you know this past spring I was blessed with the opportunity to participate in a pastor’s study tour through Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. We traced the story of God’s people “out of Egypt into a good land”. And one of the things our tour guide George regularly invited us to do when we read the familiar biblical stories is to ask questions about the text. On one occasion when we were in Jordan, George led us to a shepherds cave. A cave still in use today where shepherds would lead their flocks before nightfall so they could find shelter during the night. The cave we were in would be very similar to the kind of cave one might find in the wilderness outside of Bethlehem, but of course that region has been built up significantly over the last 2000 years.

As he took us through the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke 2, he paused when he read v. 12....

Luke 2:12 NIV

12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

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And at that point he said, why does Luke mention the cloths....”you will find a baby wrapped in cloths” Why’s that there? Good question I thought.... it’s always been one of those little details that I hadn’t paid attention to. I guess I assumed the cloths were for keeping the baby warm..... I mean most babies are wrapped in some kind of blanket aren’t they? Which in some sense makes the question even more relevant.... if most babies are wrapped to keep them warm, why would Luke mention it?

Well this morning I’d like to focus on that little detail with you.

One writer that I came across as I was preparing this week also paid attention to this little detail and I found his musing helpful. It actually comes from an article in the magazine called Christianity Today, write about 4 years ago.

Several years ago, I decided to write a daily Christmas blog post on our church blog. So, I decided to tackle the theology of Christmas wrapping. I vaguely recalled that some cultures use cloth instead of paper to wrap gifts, which sounded intriguing.

That’s when I first learned about the ancient Japanese art of furoshiki. Feudal lords needed a practical way to bundle their belongings while using the bathhouse, and they displayed their family crests on the outer cloth to identify whose was whose.

Over the centuries, people adapted furoshiki into a beautiful means of presenting gifts. I realized that Jesus came to us in furoshiki, wrapped in cloths. The practice of swaddling crosses cultural lines and can be traced to the earliest civilizations.

For centuries, parents believed that wrapping infants tightly in place helped their limbs to grow straighter. Swaddling fell out of fashion in the 18th century, when physicians largely believed the tightness of the binding was not healthy. Babies need to be able to move somewhat freely for natural development.

It was new for me to consider this less pleasant side of swaddling. I can imagine Jesus in that manger, arms and legs straining against the unyielding bonds. What must it be like for a baby—particularly this baby, God incarnate—to be unable to move in any direction? What must it have been like to have your world shrunk and narrowed so severely?

The conditions of his advent were a small metaphor for his entire life. As the Son of God became flesh and bones, he experienced an unfathomable limitation of himself. The universe closed in around him, restricting him with time and space (see Phil. 2:6–8). Having a human body was like being swaddled, as it contained Almighty God in unnaturally small dimensions.

Possible Preaching Angle:

At some point, each of us meets the limits of being human. We all suffer the inescapable reality of sin and its fallout in this broken world. The simple image of Jesus, God’s gift to us, being wrapped up in cloths comforts me with the powerful truth: He understands the bindings on my mind and soul as only someone who has a shared experience can. The concept of Immanuel, God with us, takes on a new and profound clarity.

Source: Jeff Peabody, “The Gift of Wrapping,” CT magazine (December, 2018), p. 43-44

I like that. Maybe Luke includes the mention of this baby wrapped in cloths, to accent his humanity, more than that, Jesus came into the world as an ordinary human baby, wrapped like the rest of us.

There are a number of places in the Bible where we read about Jesus’ humanity. He was like us in every way, even tempted like us, but he was without sin. Jesus knew, sorrow, disappointment, joy, happiness, brokenness, Jesus even knew what it meant to wait...

If the cloths wrapped around Jesus in some way pointed to Jesus setting aside the power and majesty of his divinity.... Paul says Jesus emptied himself and became human....if the cloths point to Jesus entering into human limitations.... then that is particularly good news for us.

Why? Well we all suffer the reality of sin that is inexcapable. We feel its consequences. We experience brokeness, despair, and disease. Sometimes we find ourselves in seasons of waiting....we don’t know what the future holds....we don’t know how things will turn out.

I like how the writer from CT puts it: The simple image of Jesus, God’s gift to us, being wrapped up in cloths comforts me with the powerful truth: He understands the bindings on my mind and soul and body as only someone who has a shared experience can.

Yes, at Christmas we remember that God us WITH US in that deep sense.

POINT 1: Perhaps that’s the first point that we can be encouraged by this Christmas..... In Jesus, God has come to be with us in the very deepest sense.

Now let me take you back to that shepherds cave in Jordan when our tour guide George paused with us to focus on these cloths wrapped around baby Jesus.

He then shared with us another peculiar detail that we find in the bible, this one from Exodus 12.

At this point in the Exodus story, God’s people are leaving the Egyptians. They had just been instructed to celebrate the very first Passover meal, a meal during which all the firstborn males in the Egyptian families had been struck down, while all the firstborn males of the Israelite families were passed over or spared.

And after that night of terror Pharaoh says to Moses, “Leave my people, you and the Israelities…God and worship the Lord as you have requested.”

And we read there that:

Exodus 12:34 NASB95

34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls bound up in the clothes on their shoulders.

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The dough for the Passover bread, along with the bowls it was in, was wrapped up in cloths....

Isn’t that interesting? We know that the Passover bread is exactly what Jesus took when he had that last Supper before his crucifixion and he said, “this is my body”....and we know that Jesus himself is called the “bread of heaven” for us.... the One who gives us spiritual nourishment and strength....

Was Luke thinking about that when he mentioned the cloths that wrapped that baby Jesus. We cannot know for sure.... if he was, he did not give us any explicit clues in the text to suggest that he was.

But as student of the whole of Scripture, I find that a fascinating connection. This child that has come to us wrapped in cloths is truly the Bread of Heaven for us..... and in the same way that the Israelites took the dough for their passover bread with them on their journey, so too Jesus Christ is for us bread for the journey.... the Saviour, Lord and Christ....who has come to be with us in the fullest sense of that word....know our hopes and dreams, our frailties and anxieties. Jesus is our bread for the journey.

POINT 2: Jesus is bread for the journey...

Now let me come back to the question that we began our Advent series with:

What are you waiting for?

I’ll bet some of you are waiting for Pastor Andrew to open up this present!!

[open it up]

strips of cloth

Luke 24:12 NIV

12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Well, isn’t that interesting? At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel we encounter a Jesus who was wrapped in cloths lying in a manger, and at the end of Luke’s Gospel we encounter a Jesus unwrapped of his burial cloths standing beside an empty tomb.

Yes our Lord Jesus fully entered the limited and confined existence of the human condition.... but he came to break the chains of sin and defeat the power of the grave. He came to set us free from the power of sin that so easily can enslave us to behaviours and patterns of thinking that are not what God intended for us. These folded strips of linen that the apostle Peter found in Jesus’ empty tomb are visible signs that death could not hold Jesus and that means death cannot hold those whose lives are united to Jesus.

POINT 3 Jesus’ resurrection brings an end to the chains of sin that hold us captive to guilt and shame and sinful behaviours that are not what God intended for us.

This all sounds very interesting, Pastor Andrew, but perhaps you find yourself wondering how I might experience this in my own life....

Consider this story....as an encouragement to listen for how God might be calling you to draw near to him, and find in him the Saviour who knows us intimately, who nourishes us with his own life giving presence, and who enables us to escape the power of death through his glorious resurrection.....ensuring us that one day when he comes again to renew and restore all creation....our waiting will be over. We will see God! We will know Him in fullness, joy, hope, peace, life....

Use Mary Ellen Rothrock - story of coming to recieve Christ through a line from Handel’s Messiah.

In the 1960s Mary Ellen Rothrock was a grad student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1998 she wrote in Christian Reader magazine:

Despair seemed to permeate the student body, especially those in the humanities. A fellow graduate student summed it up cynically, "Playwright Samuel Becket is right. Man is just a piece of trash in a universe that's running down." In college, atheism became my religion. Yet when I got into grad school, I found myself seeking to fill a spiritual void in my life. I began practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM). I met periodically with a TM supervisor. After a year or so of meditating, I mentioned that I had a recurring thought when I was trying to concentrate on my mantra. ‘It's a line from Handel's Messiah. Something in my mind keeps repeating “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” To my young mind, not only was the music thrilling, but the words seemed to come from beyond this world. I loved the joyful language: ‘Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. ... For unto us a Child is born … And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.;”

Her TM supervisor told her to ignore the words that kept coming to her but “I told myself, ‘These aren't just random thoughts.’ It suddenly hit me. The phrase And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed was an invitation from a personal God of glory to seek him! Why couldn't he be ‘Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace?’

Within months, I met a woman who explained how I could have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “As I heard the words from the Bible, the words from the musical score made sense. The Holy Spirit convinced me of the truth: the God I'd hungered for, the personal God, loved me. ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.’”

Source:

Mary Ellen Rothrock, “The Lyric that Saved My Life,” Christian Reader, Nov-Dec 1998

Let conclude with these words..... I want to invite you to consider that all that you have been experiencing here this morning as an invitation from a personal God of glory to seek him. Consider responding to that invitation.... “Lord, will you be born in my heart today?” God loves to respond to those prayers.

People of God....receive the One who is Immanuel, God with us in the very deepest sense. Know that Jesus life and presence is bread for the journey. And know that his tomb is empty, he has triumphed over sin and death, your death and mine.

May all of us together experience a very Blessed Christmas.