Good News of the Apocalypse
December 16, 2012Anything Can Happen When Faith Meets Doubt
December 30, 201224
Dec.
2012
A Child-like Wonder
The great British writer G.K. Chesterton once said, “When fundamentals are doubted…we must try to recover the ….wonder of a child; the objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, we must try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new. Things that may well be familiar so long as familiarity breeds affection had much better become unfamiliar when familiarity breeds contempt. (Then) we must invoke the most wild and soaring sort of imagination; the imagination that can see what is really there.”
Christmas is a time for children of all ages to rediscover their sense of wonder, their innocence, their imagination. Let us pray. Gracious God. On this magical night when love came to call in the cry of a baby, we ask that your Holy Spirit be present with each of us to inspire and lead us to rediscover our role as your children. In your Holy name we pray. Amen.
We gather here tonight to hear the Christmas story. We have heard it before. We know the Roman census caused a young common Jewish couple to head to Bethlehem where they gave birth to a son in an out of the way stable because they had no better option. We know shepherds were given news and courage by a group of angels and went to celebrate the infant. We know and find the Christmas story from Luke familiar and comforting. Sort of like Christmas itself. We adults know how Christmas goes because we plan our Christmases. Many of us have been planning for weeks. We put up the tree, we wrap the presents, we schedule the parties, we cook the dinner. We know how Christmas goes. Most of us find that its traditions breed affection if we like them and contempt if there is somewhere else we’d rather be. But they rarely breed wonder.
Until one year, you decide to do something different. You travel someplace or let someone else in the family have a turn at hosting. You start a new tradition or you throw out the plans and do nothing more than be present with the people you love most. Or you keep the ritual and the routine but you choose to engage Christmas as a child would, rather than as an adult.
Each year I read Christmas books to the children in our church nursery school. This year one four year old told me his favorite reindeer on Santa’s team are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Commit, Cupid, Donner and Nixon. That Santa would name a reindeer Nixon seemed a bit too grown up. On the other hand, children have a lot to teach grownups about Christmas. During the book reading, one boy told me his favorite part of Christmas is that “anything is possible.” I asked him what he meant. He said that at Christmas you can have anything you dream of. My reaction was to teach him saying, “We usually can’t have everything we want.” But later I thought perhaps I have something to learn from that child about not limiting what is possible at Christmas.
Children understand the mystery of Christmas. The whole world is new to them. Their lives this time of year are full of flying reindeer and dancing snowmen; talking lions and riding Grinches. Children don’t place limits on what is possible. Their Christmas experience is full of mysteries of how presents get under trees. How people climb down chimneys. How blessings arrive.
Children do not take Christmas for granted. They experience it with wonder. This is what Chesterton meant by the wonder of the child, the objectivity of innocence, the imagination to see what is there and to believe that all sorts of things are possible.
But children today grow up more quickly than they used to. We spend so much of our youth trying to grow up and then, as the Apostle Paul put it, we “put away childish things,” including the wonder. I met with two young adults recently both trying to find their place in the world. And both having crises of faith because as they grow into adulthood they want certainly. Post enlightenment adults crave that don’t we? Many feared the apocalypse last week because they believed with certainly that we can know when the world will end.
We seek certainty when what makes life so special is the appreciation of the mystery. That somehow there was a birth at Christmas and somehow we were born. That somehow we die and we don’t know exactly what is on the other side. And in the meantime we feel emotions we cannot describe, make connections we cannot explain and every once in a while feel love we cannot contain. Christmas is about uncontained love.
And so when it comes to the Christmas story, that God would choose to come into our world as a vulnerable child, to bring light to people who walked in darkness, we have to decide from what perspective we are going to view that story. We can view it with affection, like an old friend we visit every year. We can view it with contempt, as a tale that couldn’t possibly be true. Or we can view it with wonder. That what is born to us today is salvation, a Savior, Christ the Messiah, the Lord.
Notice in the Christmas story in Luke’s Gospel that the angels don’t tell the shepherds initially that a baby is born. They tell them that salvation is born, “a savior, the messiah, the Christ, the Lord.” That is the emphasis. And the sign to them that salvation has arrived is that they will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
What is born at Christmas is salvation. God enters through a child but what has come is the possibility of your being saved. The child signals that. And even if that child grows up to be placed on a cross and dies, that doesn’t remove salvation from the world. Indeed it assures it. Salvation has come into the world to stay and that changes our lives.
If salvation has come into the world, then hope is now available to you. Your life is full of new possibilities. Your doubts can be eased. You can forgive your spouse and save your marriage. You can make the tough decision at work or about your children. You can face the addiction. You can figure out the financial problem. You can help society solve serious problems related to gun violence, poverty and fiscal responsibility. You can find your place in the world. You can be the person you know you can be.
But to experience that, you have to believe that salvation is possible. That grace has entered our world. You can’t write off the Christmas story as fiction. Or see no difference between fantasy and mystery. Or assume you are too afraid to let go or say yes to God. Or conclude that because no angel visited you that there is no good news. Think hard about that. Who were the angels who entered your life this past year? Like Mary, ponder these things in your heart.
At a time when our hearts here and throughout our nation remain broken by the tragedy in Newtown Connecticut, we are acutely reminded of how precious children are. That the perspective of a child has power. The way John’s Gospel tells the narrative of the incarnation of Jesus, the word becoming flesh we celebrate tonight, is by saying that those who trusted in Jesus gained the power to become “children of God.”
What is the power of a child? Why would we want to become children of God? For the same reason Jesus said “whoever welcomes a child welcomes me” and told his disciples that unless they “become like children they will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” Because to be saved you have to believe in the mystery. You need to believe that something extraordinary is plausible for you. You have to be open to the possibility that through Jesus salvation has entered the world. And that whatever you are struggling with now, is not the last word. God’s love has come and cannot be taken away. True salvation comes from knowing that in Jesus Christ God comes to you. And that makes everything else is possible. So love him, trust him, as a child.
Walter Issacson wrote that “Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature.” “People like you and me never grow old,” Einstein wrote a friend later in life. “We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”
The great mystery into which we were born is the same mystery into which Mary and the shepherds entered when the divine came in human form 2000 years ago in a stable. It’s about how we make sense of our relationship with our world and with the God of creation.
And in that a child-like wonder gives us power. As Chesterton put it, “What has happened to me over my life has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experiences of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life over time. It happened in this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce those things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. And the explanation was that a certain being people called Santa Claus was favorably disposed toward me. What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking. Now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room and the room in the house, and the house on this planet, and the great planet in the void.” That is bringing child-like wonder to the adult world.
So what attitude will you bring into Christmas and into the new year? Recall that the ones who enjoy Christmas the most are the children. They don’t get upset if the tree leans too far or the table isn’t set. They are only concerned about the gifts. They know that Christmas is actually about receiving. When Christmas morning comes all that children want to do is run downstairs and uncover the mystery of what is in all those wrapped boxes. Were you any different as a child? So why does your attitude towards life need to be any different now?
What Christmas is ultimately about is what we have received from God. It’s about the mystery that God brings us possibilities. That Salvation has come into the world as a light for all people and the darkness will never be able to overcome it. That unto us a child is born. And I hope that within each of us this night, a child will be reborn. May it be so. Amen.