Finding Love in Our Differences

Rediscover Christmas – Week 4

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

This week we are wrapping up our advent series talking about love, and most specifically “finding love in our differences.” I wondered this morning if we might jump in thinking about the last time we struggled to show someone love. Can you remember when that was? What was the challenge? Was it the other person’s political view? Something they said to you that was hurtful? Was it perhaps racist? Or something about your family? Perhaps worse than that maybe someone is indifferent towards you or just flat out doesn’t seem to acknowledge you or the things you find important. Love can be a struggle. Many scriptural principles are challenges to us because they call for us to display attributes like love, joy, peace, or hope in the times and places where it’s not exactly easy to do so. Today as we continue our journey through Advent, we are focusing on the love that Jesus brought into our world and our lives.

(DON’T SAY) The Whole Cast of Christmas: Love United

As we’ve journeyed through Advent, we have been looking at different people in the Christmas story. This morning I’d like to look at all the people in the biblical account of Christ’s birth. When we do, we realize that the birth of Christ brings together a wide variety of people across many different divides and contrasts.

If we walk through the story in order, we start with Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Joseph—the old and the young. The prophets and covenants of Israel’s past... and the fulfillment of the promise of the Messiah and the new spiritual future.

Then we meet the shepherds and the angels, the beings of earth and of heaven, the physical and the spiritual. And today we look at Matthew's account and meet the Magi. Let’s take a look at Matthew chapter 2 verse 1.

Text: Matthew 2:1–6 “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; For from you will come forth a Ruler Who will Shepherd My people Israel.’ ”” Matthew 2:7–12 “Then Herod secretly called for the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.” After hearing the king, they went on their way; and behold, the star, which they had seen in the east, went on ahead of them until it came to a stop over the place where the Child was to be found. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And after they came into the house, they saw the Child with His mother Mary; and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And after being warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way.”

PRAY?

Who were these wisemen? We’re not entirely sure, but we know they had followed a star a long distance to find and worship the promised Messiah. The Magi are noble and wealthy men who demonstrate God bridging even more divides. The Magi are the esteemed opposite to the lowly shepherds in human social structures. They are also Gentiles, not Jews, and their inclusion in Jesus’s birth story echoes the radical idea that Christ the Messiah brings salvation and restoration to all people, not just the Jews.

The Magi are also holy men of some sort, but they contrast the spiritual Jewish leaders of the day. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the spiritual VIPS of the time weren’t invited to Jesus’s birth. Instead, there are these travelers of a different race who are willing to disrupt their lives with a great journey and humble themselves to worship the baby of a poor, unassuming couple in the countryside. Jesus united so many divisions simply by being born. And in so doing, God revealed a few things about His love that I’d like for us to explore today. And the first is…

1. Jesus Christ is love embodied.

The Bible talks about love in many places. God is love… and the Bible is His love story for all humanity. From Creation, God made people and shared time with them in the garden as companions and children. When sin entered the world, bringing death and separation from such a close companionship with God, He continued to work with us. Through generations and generations, He worked His plans and promised a Messiah to make a way to restore His relationship with humanity. That way is Jesus… and this relationship with God that He brings us into… is a relationship of love. It is a reunion with love itself.

The book of 1st John is loaded with ideas about God’s love. God IS love. God personifies it. Love is His nature, and He has shown it to us by sending Jesus. When we come to Jesus, giving Him our lives, we are restored to love. We are fulfilled in love. We live in Him, and He lives in us. We can count on God’s love; it won’t let us down. It fills us and fuels us. It calls us and enables us to love each other. And that brings us to our second point.

2. Love defines us… or it doesn’t.

Jesus brought this reconnection and restoration to love Himself when He entered the world. Near the end of His earthly ministry, as He is gathered with His twelve disciples for their last Passover meal together, He tells them in John chapter 13… A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

As Jesus teaches His disciples, He wants to make sure that they love like He does. And here’s the most important part: How will people know that they are followers of Jesus? By the love they show to other people. You’ve heard this before. How will people know we are Christians? By our love.

Love is what defines us. It marks us and characterizes us. At least it should. Let’s try something this morning. I want you to think of how other people view you. What if they had to use one word to describe you? In other words Jonathan is… what would they say. What if we told someone to keep saying whatever words came to mind to describe you… How far down the list would they have to go before the word “loving” came up… Wow! That hurts a little doesn’t it? The way I’m understanding it is, that if the Bible says that the one way that people will KNOW we are Christians is by our love, anyone who isn’t seeing Christ in me has something to do with my lack of being as loving as I should be, is that fair? (Let me repeat it) So whatever else about us clouds people’s lens of seeing us as loving, well we have to do something about it right?

We have to find all the opportunities we can to allow God’s love to flow through us to others.

With that challenge in mind, let’s move to our third point.

3. Love them... not just us.

There’s Lots of us’ and them’s aren’t there? race, family, age, gender, class, I wonder when you think of us’s and them’s where the lines might fall?

It seems like the more time goes on the more divided we are. It seems our culture, our nation, our world, our people have multiplied the ways to divide us. It’s by no means an excuse, but throughout history, our world has been filled with wars and plunder and oppression. There have always been the weak and the powerful, the haves and the have-nots. There has been too much us versus them since Jesus’s day and even farther back in history… Sadly, there still is.

(Perhaps become emphatic) That’s why Jesus’s teaching was so radical. That’s why God’s love is so radical. In Matthew 5 Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.

Jesus crossed divides. He reached across the cultural, spiritual, political, and racial divisions and today, calls us to do the same. He taught us the kind of love John describes later in 1 John 4: He says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18-19, NIV).

Jesus’s love is a fearless love that calls us and enables us to cross the borders, to tear down the barriers, to reach out above the disagreements. The fear that is driven out by love is the fear within ourselves. Love overcomes the fear of the other, who may not look like us or sound like us or share the same perspective or experience as us.

Maybe reaching across the divide begins in your family. Maybe in your home or neighborhood or workplace or community. Maybe it means walking across the sanctuary to someone you sit with in this church. Jesus calls us together into His loving presence and invites us to make room for all, whether WE think they deserve to be there or not.

Conclusion

There is a humility in love, a willingness to put someone else first. Sometimes love means taking the simple step of building that bridge through an invitation. Sometimes it’s being willing to listen and not defend. It is always being willing to choose to see someone else, not as “other,” but as us, equally loved by God, equally welcomed into His presence, equally drawn into and propelled out of His miraculous, divine, all-consuming love. This is God’s love. This is the gift of Christ…. This is the heart of Christmas.

The challenge for all of us this weekend is to rediscover Christmas by rediscovering the overwhelming, all-encompassing, all-welcoming love of God. And in turn make sure we are exhibiting that love just as freely and willingly to others.

In every relationship you have the opportunity to build bridges or build walls. The walls go up naturally, but the bridges take some intentionality. Where can you build bridges this coming week instead of walls? THIS CHRISTMAS WEEKEND WHAT BRIDGES NEED RE-BUILT, WHAT WALLS NEED TO COME DOWN? We talked about some us’s and them’s but unfortunately showing love is often the greatest struggle in those relationships with whom we are closest. Are you showing love to your children? Not just saying you love them, but showing them love. How about your spouse? Your parents? That challenging in-law relationship?

(INVITE TEAM) AND DAD

Start Communion - Sacraments?

We are going to shift gears and prepare our hearts to take communion together. If you did not get the sacraments and would like to participate today, would you slip up your hand and we will get those to you. Communion has been called the love feast. We can experience a great sense of God’s love and reciprocate that love during a time of communion. THis morning as we prepare our hearts for communion we must remember that communion with God and others is not possible when walls remain between us. As we often do we are going to give you a chance to pray, worship, and reflect before we take this time together. The group is going to sing this song, the altar is open. Let’s prepare our hearts, and then we will continue together.

SONG

Jesus told his followers, his friends, that as often as they took communion to remember Him. Frequently we talk about his death, but today we also remember his birth. We take bread and cup to represent his flesh and blood. The significance of His birth has much to do that He became flesh and blood and walked with us, he died for us, and He rose again for us. He went to prepare a place for us, and He’s coming again for us. Going to the cross for us was a monumental act, but stepping down from heaven’s throne was no smaller consideration.

I’m going to ask my father to bless the bread and then we will take it together.

Dad pray for communion

Where there is new wine there is new power, there is new freedom, and the kingdom is here. Jesus said i won’t drink this cup again with us until we drink it again together in the kingdom of God. And so i say that as we take this cup together today we pray His Kingdom come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Let’s pray together, and then we will take the cup.

Post Prayer

As we leave today, go with this thought… True Love… God’s Love always has to have a way to express itself. Let’s go this week and show God’s love to someone that perhaps might not be expecting it. Let’s show the love that will leave no doubt that we are Christians. Merry Christmas!