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Advent 3
December 14, 2003
A Sentimental Story
Zephaniah 3: 14-20
Isaiah 12: 2-6
Philippians 4: 4-7
Luke 3: 7-18
I would like to raise a word in defense of people who make it a point to appear in church on Christmas and Easter if not the rest of the year. The day of the Lord is hard to sustain, but it is better to practice it one day than not at all. The good soldier may be able to refrain from extortion the whole year and the tax collector the same, especially since the Senate hearings, but which of us having two coats habitually shares the second with the person who has none. We do well to muscle up to that bar one day a year. Does that mean we are moral weaklings? No, we are morally average. There is a sense in which we are all summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, some just better at it than others. So, let’s hear no chiding from the pulpit this year when the sanctuary is packed with seasonal worshipers. They don’t earn their living attending church. They do, however, honor a mysterious promise with their presence, one they couldn’t utter or explain.
“The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.” (Zephaniah 3:17-18) “Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 12:6) “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything...” (Philippians 4:5-6)
No one out there on Christmas is without the threat of enemy, human or otherwise. No one is self-sustaining in love. No one feels personally affirmed by the universe, hurdling as we do through space on a smallish planet by a yellowish star. We all need to shout and sing for joy. For how else will there be joy? We all need to shout and sing and believe, not one impossible thing a day before breakfast, but one improbable thing for life: “The Lord is near.”
Having felt the sting of credulity soundly punished by reality, having laughed with you at the folly of other faiths, having found some comfort in our own resources, don’t think us hostile because we peep around the door post at the manger and disappear another year. We found the promise irresistible that one night. Perhaps we will be so blessed as to die on such a night. I don’t know.
It is not a better show we come for. Rid yourself of that pressure. We don’t come enough to compare it with the last. We come because we haven’t lost hope, not all together. We like to hear it one more time. We like to hear it from your heart. We like to hear it from the Bible the way Luke and Matthew told it. We like to hear it in a way that would let us see what we’ve yet to see, the incarnation, not a baby, but God. We’re not sure what it is, if we have ever seen it. We are suspicious that it is little more than Santa Claus or any other sentimental story pretending to be profound. We need to hear more than Barrington Bunny, a metaphor of a metaphor. We need to hear something rooted in reality, rooted deeper than any reality we know.. We wish it were there. We sense it is there. That is why we will be there.
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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