Christmas Is On Top Of A Steep Hill - Luke 2

Christmas Is On Top Of A Steep Hill
Sermon by Maxie Dunnam

Luke 2 : 21-40
Christmas 1*, Christmas Octave: Holy Family, January 1 - Circumcision of our Lord, January 1 - Holy Name of Jesus*, January 1 - Octave: Mary, Mother of God

Now will you hear the scripture lesson of the morning, from the 2nd chapter of Luke’s gospel, beginning with the 22nd verse and reading through the 35th verses? “And when the time came for their purification, according to the Law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that opens the womb shall be called Holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord. A pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s price. And inspired by the spirit, he came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now lettest that servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory to they people, Israel.’ “And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, ‘Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel. And for a son that has spoken against, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also. And for a son that has spoken against that thoughts out of every heart may be revealed.” Thus endeth the reading of God’s word. May it be your word and my word today. Let us pray.Lord we wait, we long, we anticipate, we look for your coming. You have come, you will come, and yet you’re constantly coming to us. And we pray that during this Advent season, your coming to us will be more complete and more full than ever before. In Jesus’ name. Amen.There is no more exciting world than the world of children. That’s the reason I’m happy that in every worship service of this church we have so many children with us in worship. And I hope that these children, though they may not understand everything that goes on, will feel that they are as much a part of our congregation as anyone else who worships. Last night we had a wedding here, we have weddings here rather often. Rebecca Triplet and David Grants were getting married, and it was a small family wedding in the chapel, and therefore after the ceremony, everybody had a chance to visit rather intimately. And I picked out one little fellow, I’m sure he couldn’t have been more than four years old. Children usually respond to adults in one of two ways – they may shy away from those adults or they may be open to those adults, and while not aggressive, open to any kind of aggression that the adult might make as far as friendliness is concerned. This young man was neither of those at 4 – he was aggressive. And it was obvious that he wanted to visit with this strange fellow that had on this outrageous garb. And so he and I struck up a conversation. We spent a delightful 10 minutes together, as he told me about David and Rebecca, that’s the couple that were getting married. As he told me about David and Rebecca, about whom he had been studying in Sunday school, he told me all about them. There is no more exciting world than the world of children. Notice who will be most wide-eyed about Christmas and who will be moving through these days ahead with the most joy. I don’t know anyone who perceives and probes the world of children and garners from it such great truth and wisdom as Charles Schulz in his Peanut cartoons. One year during the Christmas season, he put into drawing and dialogue one of those common exchanges between children that has deep and uncommon meaning. Sally asked Charlie Brown, “Is it Christmas yet?” “Four more days,” responds Charlie Brown. “How come it takes so long?” Sally wants to know. Without even looking up from the TV, Charlie Brown gets off one of those off-the-cuff philosophical statements that one can chew on all day. “Christmas is on the top of steep hill,” he said, “and the closer you get to it, the steeper the hill is.” The answer baffled Sally, but it sounded profound, so she is convinced and she repeats it to Snoopy. Christmas is at the top of a steep hill. Now every child can identify with that. For us adults, it seems as though we pick the last bit of meat from the turkey bone and made a cold sandwich at Thanksgiving time before we rush to finish our Christmas shopping. Christmas leaps out of hiding seemingly and rushes at us, taking our breath away. But we don’t have to jostle our memories too hard to recall how as children the days after Thanksgiving would drag endlessly on – poking along. And it seemed as though Christmas would never come. Charlie Brown captured the sentiment of children – Christmas is on the top of a steep hill and the closer you get to it, the steeper the hill is. Well my word to you today is this. Charlie Brown’s word is not alone the sentiment of anticipating children who anxiously await Christmas morning. That’s the truth about the real Christmas – it’s anchored at the top of a steep hill. This was certainly so with the first Christmas. The birth of Jesus was on the top of steep hill, not literally, though Bethlehem is on a hill. Men had longed and prayed for the Messiah. The years of sorrow and suffering, darkness and death had dragged endlessly on. Men had groped through mazes of confusion and indirection, they had grappled with mystery and meaning. God was speaking to them, but they couldn’t understand his words. His words were muffled. He was coming to them, but his being was blurred. Then the time was fulfilled and Jesus came. One of the most moving episodes in the nativity narrative has become almost a side event, and that’s the reason I read that episode for our scripture lesson today. There was an old man in Jerusalem named Simeon. The scripture said that he was devout and righteous. I think of all the people in the Christmas story, other than Mary and Joseph, I would have liked to have known Simeon. The way the scripture talks about him is so beautiful. He was a simple man, he was devout and righteous, and he was always doing exactly what the Lord told him to do. All his long life, he had looked for the consolation of Israel – that is the coming of the Messiah. So when Mary brought the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem for the act of purification and sacrifice, old Simeon led by the Spirit, was there waiting, acting as a priest. And I want you to relive that scene. He took that little baby in his arms, blessed God and said, “At last Lord, at last. You can dismiss your servant in peace as you promised, for my own eyes have seen your salvation.” For Simeon, Christmas was at the top of a steep hill. And Simeon is not only the personification of the longing, groaning hopes of Israel, he incarnates our modern longing and need. Get the original setting in mind. There was not a Jew alive when Jesus was born who did not regard his own nation as the chosen people. Yet the Jews saw quite clearly that by human means, their nation would never attain to the supreme world greatness, which they believed their destiny to be. By far, the greater number of them believed that because the Jews were the chosen people of God, some day they were bound to rule again, to become masters of the world, and lords of all the other nations. To bring in that day, some believed, that some great celestial champion would descend upon the earth and take control. Some believed that there would arise another king out of David’s line, all the ancient glories of Israel would be revived. Some believed that God himself, in some sort of cataclysmic way, would break into history by supernatural means, thus enters Simeon. And this is another reason I like him and identify with him. He was among a few people in Israel of that day known as the quiet of the land. They had no dreams of violence and of power and of armies with banners. They believed in a life of constant prayer and quiet watchfulness until God should come. All their lives they waited quietly and patiently on God. Simeon was like that, in worship, in humble and faithful expectation, he was waiting for the day when God would comfort his people. God had promised to him through the Holy Spirit that life would not end on earth for him, before he had seen God’s anointed king. In the temple that day, he stood on the summit of a steep hill of Christmas. In the baby Jesus, he recognized the long, desperately awaited Messiah, and he sang, “Lord now lettest thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people, Israel.” Now there’s an ocean of meaning there. And all during this Advent Christmas season, we’re going to be exploring it. The central sounding to which we will return again and again, is the refrain of Simeon’s song, ‘for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’ Now let’s bring it down to where we are this morning. I want you to clear your mind now, and I want you to listen. I want you to hear two sentences, and I don’t want you to ever forget these two sentences. I want them to be a vivid part of your consciousness throughout this Advent season, but more than that, I want them to be a vivid part of your consciousness forever. Two sentences – a diagnosis and a prognosis of our lives. The diagnosis – listen. We have plenty of everything, except what we need to make what we have worthwhile. You want me to say it again – we have plenty of everything, except what we need to make what we have worthwhile. That’s the diagnosis. Now the prognosis. Christmas is possible, when we realize that the best we have without Christ is not enough for salvation, not enough to give us abundant life. We need a Messiah, a savior, a life giver. Christmas is on the top of a steep hill of acknowledging our need. And when we acknowledge that all of our getting and spending, our humdrum and routine, our accumulation of things, our continuous going and coming to relieve the boredom of staying where we are, the way we excuse our selfishness, our efforts at self justification, the continuous energy we spend to prove ourselves, the way we go about trying to rationalize our uninvolvement with the needs of the world, the way we seek salvation in so many places. When we realize that all this is futile, and like Simeon, we wait and we pray in expectation and openness, then we will see the salvation of the Lord. I was moved last week by the witness of Harold Hughes. You who were in the congregation will remember his dramatic experience of coming to the end of his row as a hopeless alcoholic and deciding to end it all. He was going to do it with a shotgun. Realizing what a mess that would make in the bedroom, he decided to get into the bathtub and shoot himself there. Something happened as he prepared to pull the trigger, and he told us about that last week. How he was moved to pray. The way he told of that whole experience in his book is so beautiful and dramatic and powerful I want you to hear it again. Let him tell his story. “Climbing out of the tub, I knelt on the floor and laid my head on my arms, resting on the cool tub rim. Oh God, I groaned, I’m a failure, a drunk, a liar, and a cheat. I’m lost and hopeless and want to die. Forgive me for doing this. I broke into sobs. Oh Father, please take care of Eva and the girls. Please help them to forget me. What an awful prayer to have to pray – that you’re wife and your children would forget you. I slid to the floor convulsing in heavy sobbing. As I lay face down on the tiles crying and trying to talk to God, my throat swelled until I couldn’t utter a sound. Totally exhausted, I lay silent, drained and still. I do not know how long I lay there, but in that quiet bathroom a strange peace gently settled over me. Something that I had never experienced before was happening, something far beyond my senseless struggles. A warm peace seemed to settle deep within me, filling the terrible emptiness of my life, driving out the self pity and self condemnation. My sins seemed to evaporate like moisture spots under a hot, bright sun. God was reaching down and touching me, a God who cared, a God who loved me, who was concerned for me despite my sins. Listen to this image now. Like a stricken child lost in a storm, I had suddenly stumbled into the warm arms of my father. Joy filled me, so intense it seemed to burst my breasts. Slowly I rose to my knees and looked up to him in the awe of gratitude. Kneeling again on the bathroom floor, I gave him myself totally. Whatever you ask me to do father, I cried through the hot tears, I will do it.” He could have added, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. Ours is not the same situation, but the need is precisely the same. The need of savior. We have plenty of everything, except what we need to make what we have worthwhile. As we realize that Christmas is possible, when we acknowledge that the best we have without Christ is not enough to save us and give us abundant and eternal life, we will be climbing the steep hill of Christmas, on the top of which we will be able to say – for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. A part of that journey, in fact a very rewarding part of that journey, begins now as we come to the table of the Lord, to sit in the presence of him who sits at the top of the steep hill of Christmas, to give us that salvation we so desperately need. Let’s begin the climb. The climb of the steep hill of Christmas. Let us pray.