Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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A Baby Changes Everything
Luke 2:1-14
I was at Houghton College in upstate New York in the mid 1970’s when Gabe was born July 16, 1976.
I
remember taking a trip to United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, to visit and make arrangements to
attend there.
There was a moment I’ll always ponder, after I had finished all the meetings, that I went and sat at
the curb of the driveway of the seminary grounds and thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?”
I
had been married only a couple years.
Now I had a baby and responsibilities to provide for a family, far away
from home.
A baby changes everything.
We moved to Lockington, Ohio to begin, as pastor and to start
seminary.
My first Sunday in the pulpit was December 18, the Sunday before Christmas, 45 years ago.
Just as
babies forever change the lives of their parents, the birth of Jesus Christ changes the world.
For Mary and Joseph, parenthood was all about caring for their baby, like any new parents and much,
much more.
Besides the usual new-parent adjustments, they have to contend with visits from a couple of
angels.
One of these divine messengers matter-of-factly informs Joseph: “The Child conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).
Well, that’s unusual!
The angelic message plunges Joseph and Mary, and
their relationship, into not a little confusion and disorder, such as they’ve never imagined.
But they get through
it.
For those two, love triumphs over suspicion.
Faith triumphs over doubt.
Courage triumphs over fear.
Country-music singer Faith Hill captures the strangeness and the terror of Mary’s experience with these
lyrics: Teenage girl, much too young - Unprepared for what’s to come - A baby changes everything
Not a ring on her hand - All her dreams and all her plans - A baby changes everything …
The man she loves she’s never touched - How will she keep his trust?
A baby changes everything …”
Aside from angelic proclamations, first-time parenthood is a life-changing experience for anyone.
Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner has this to say about the experience of his generation, when fathers
weren’t so often present in the delivery room.
“When a child is born, a father is born.
A mother is born too, of course, but at least for her it’s a
gradual process.
Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what’s happening.
She becomes
what’s happening.
But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once.
On the other side of
the plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to
see for the first time.
…The memory will remain with him to the grave.
He has seen the creation of the
world.
It has his mark upon it.
He has its mark upon him.
Both marks are, for better or worse,
indelible.”(impossible
to remove)
Yes, a baby changes everything.
No one’s ever ready for it.
There’s no course you can take that tells
you how to do it perfectly.
There’s no way to obtain a certificate or diploma ahead of time, declaring that
you’ve been trained, tested and fully prepared to shepherd a new human life through the perils of mortal
2
existence.
It’s the most important job in the world, and no one is adequately trained ahead of time.
So we all
make the best of it.
And that’s exactly what Mary and Joseph do.
They make the best of it.
Mary certainly learned a few
things from her older cousin, Elizabeth.
She and her husband Zechariah received their own bombshell angelic
announcement about her conceiving a child in her old age.
Zechariah, a local priest, was so shook up, he lost
his voice for a while; quite the occupational hazard for a man who relied on his voice for a living.
Not many months later, Mary and Joseph learn of the need to travel to Bethlehem.
Nine months
pregnant, Mary continues to make the best of it, as does Joseph, pounding on the door of every inn and guest
house in Bethlehem until he finds that grumpy old character who leads them to the stable and shows them the
pile of clean straw that will serve, in a pinch, as a delivery room.
“And she gave birth to her firstborn Son and
wrapped Him in bands of cloth and laid Him in a manger.”
A manger, a feeding trough, is surely not the cradle
Mary imagined for her little Jesus!
But it’s the place to which the Lord has led her, so surely, it’s the right
place.
The news Mary received from the angel, which seemed so remarkable at the time, is no less remarkable
today.
It’s not so much Jesus’ miraculous conception, which is, after all, only the first small detail in the fuller
story, but rather the greater miracle we call “incarnation.”
Literally, the Latin word means “in the flesh.”
The
Christian church has always maintained as a central doctrine, that God, in the birth of Jesus, entered the world
in the same way each of us entered it.
We’ve grown used to hearing about the incarnation over the years, so our
response may be, “Ho hum, tell me something I haven’t heard.”
But try for a moment to imagine - what that claim must sound like - to anyone hearing it for the first
time.
God becoming human.
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