Second Sunday after Christmas

Opening Prayer

Let’s open with prayer. If you have a prayer concern, just offer it up out loud in this space. It can be a situation, a need, a family member or friend. When I sense we are finished I will close out our prayer.

Lord, grow us to be people open to your Spirit and ready to answer your call. Amen.

Introduction

Julie and I are bringing in the New Year with some dear friends in Oklahoma.

Wanted to bring this word on the second Sunday after Christmas as we look at what it means that God is with us. I’ve called the message The Struggle for Awareness.

When the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive, he said the child would be called Emmanuel - God with us. And truly God came near in the birth of Jesus. And in the present reign of Jesus God is still near to us.

So in one sense God is with everyone. He came to save all - as we read last week “as many as received him”. However, and unfortunately, God’s nearness will never register with them.

The Herod’s who seek their own power and promotion. Who are more concerned with their personal kingdom than God’s kingdom. Not looking because their life is wrapped in on itself.

The religiously blind. Those who have become so sure of their conviction, so certain that they are right, that they become unteachable, hardened to the HS.

The city. The unaware, who live clueless that a momentous thing has happened with the birth of Christ. Henry David Thoreau wrote "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them." What he means is that most people miss what life is really about.

It’s not that God is not with them. He is, but they are not hungry, are not seeking, are not caring. So they shut themselves off from God’s nearness. He is near, but they remain blinded to that reality. It’s as if they are vaccinated against any kind of awareness of God.

In another sense, however, God’s nearness is felt tangibly by some. Here the story of the wise men, and their struggle to find the new born king of the Jews, has something to say to us. Who IS God with?

He is with outsiders

Babylonian - ancient enemies

Used the stars to divine the future - something forbidden by OT law

Gentiles

All these things placed them as outsiders. To the Jews they were “other”. They would not have been welcomed at the Temple or the synagogue. Yet these are the first people to recognize and pay homage to the Messiah-king of the Jews.

Being outside, being fringe, doesn't keep you from experiencing “God with us”. God reveals himself and is near to just such people. The leper, the adulterous woman, the tax collector - Jesus came near to each of these, touching them, welcoming them. His touch didn’t make him dirty, it made them clean. It didn’t make him sinful, it made them whole. It didn’t force him out, it welcomed them in.

If you feel like the outsider, like you are on the outside looking in, the unincluded, the ignored, this message from the magi is that you can know for certain that God is with you.

He is with seekers

The magi were looking for something. They searched the stars to find portents and signs. I’m not saying God advocates their methods, but he certainly responds to their heart. I’m not sure if they knew exactly who or what they were seeking, yet they set off on the journey just the same.

God is near to the seeking heart. Jesus told two short parables about seekers and the kingdom of God. The kingdom, he said, could be compared to a person who stumbled upon a treasure in a field, and then quickly hid it and went and sold all he had to buy the field. The kingdom is also like a person searching for a priceless treasure, who upon finding it sells all he owns to purchase it. Both are seekers in a sense. One knew there was something missing in their life and searched for what it might me. The other didn’t appear to be searching, but was restless nonetheless, and stumbled upon what would make life complete.

God promises his nearness to the seeker: Jer 29:13 “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart,” All of us who have come to faith have come as seekers, even when we didn’t know what it was we were seeking. Whether we stumbled upon Jesus or desperately sought him out, we must look back and see that we were actually the ones being sought after. God was seeking you, and he is near to those who seek.

He is with those who are far from home

This may be a little harder to flesh out but let me say it like this. There runs throughout most of the old testament the theme or the idea of exile. The Jews went into exile into Babylon in 526 BC. Their temple, the place where the presence of God dwelt, was destroyed. Eventually they were allowed to return to their land and they built a new temple. However, the spirit of God did not fill the second temple like he did the first temple or the tabernacle in the wilderness. And so while they were back in their land there was still a sense of separation from God. It was at as if they were still in exile. And not only had God not return to his temple to be present with his people but throughout many hundreds of years they lived under the thumb of foreign invaders. And so there’s this perpetual feeling of exile in this longing and belief that only when the Messiah comes would their days of exile be over.

I think many of us still feel this sense of exile. It’s this awareness that not everything is as it should be. Our hearts are not at home. We feel like there should be more and we want more - more of God, more of his presence - to put it in biblical terms - to see his glory break through in our lives and the lives of those we love. And so there is this longing for our heart’s true home.

This is what makes the pronouncement of the birth of Jesus and the recognition of his kingly authority by the magi so significant in Matthew’s gospel. What Matthew is declaring to them - and to us - is that what we have been waiting for has now arrived. The Messiah-king has come and therefore God‘s presence among his people is now returned and restored. The exile is over, and our hearts once again find their true home.

When I was a boy I asked my father one time where his home was. I think I was probably asking him where he was born or raised. But I’ll never forget his answer. He said, “anywhere you and your mom are, that’s my home.” Home for him was the presence of his family, where we lived in a trailer house or a mansion.

Here is where the birth of Jesus makes it impact most felt for us. For in the coming of Jesus, the coming of God himself, we understand that our exile is also over. Christ has come, and he is now our home. We don’t need to look any further. And even though we may sense that not everything is yet as it should be, we have the assurance in Christ that God is near, and if He is near, then He is at work bringing to fulfillment all of our hopes and dreams and expectations.

Curse of blessing?

Our tendency would be to see being an outsider, a seeker, a person far from home as a curse. But what if instead this may be God’s great blessing. That perhaps God has lead you into these places for it is here where you will know in the deepest part of your being that he IS with you. The birth of Christ reminds us that we are never too lost that we can’t be found, that we are never too distant that we can’t be brought near, we are never too dirty that we can’t be made clean.

Awareness of God can be struggle. Many won’t enter into the struggle. They live their lives of quiet desperation. But for the one who bravely enters the fray, here they discover an awareness of the God who has always been near to them. God is with you. Amen.

Ministry time...

Communion

God is with us. As we gather around this table this morning he promised to be with us in a particular way, embodied in bread and wine as the signs of his flesh and blood given for us. Here we re-participate in God’s saving work which he has accomplished through Christ and we hold fast to the mystery of the faith: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.

Words of Institution

The Lord’s Prayer