Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
Christmas Eve: Being Found- Ian Graham
Pastor Ian Graham tells the Christmas story as a story of God's seeking us.
Friends, we're glad you're here tonight. My name is Ian. I have the joy of being the pastor here at this church, so if you've never been here before, truly we're just glad to welcome you and pray that you feel welcomed with the welcome of Jesus as he greets us here as we anticipate his birth. So we're so honored to have you here and, for those of you who are here all the time, honored to celebrate Christmas with you. This, in so many ways, is the fulfillment of so many dreams as we started this church several years ago. And to be here gathered to celebrate the birth of the Messiah Jesus what a beautiful thing. So we're glad you're here tonight, wherever you're coming from, as the kids are making their way out to have a snack, I get to tell you just a little bit about the story of why we are here and for many of us, we gather every week here on Sundays and worship and celebrate who Jesus is and what he has done and what that means about who we are. But I also know that for some of us we don't know the story about all that, the reason behind that, and so, wherever you're coming from, again just honored that we get to tell this story and proclaim this good news.
Speaker 1:And one of the definitions of our age is the illusion of the limitless. The walls have been dissolved. What to listen to a song tonight? What song do you want to listen to? Because you can choose between any song that's ever been recorded in the history of humanity. Do you want to watch a show tonight? How about you watch eight hours of a show and then, when you're done, the algorithm is going to recommend three shows that are just like it but just different enough to catch you. You want something to eat tonight? Well, here's every restaurant within a 25-mile radius that will deliver to you. Or if you want to cook something, all the ingredients from all over the world, even things that are out of season, you can get delivered to your doorstep within the hour.
Speaker 1:Now, I know these things may seem trivial and, honestly, are kind of awesome, right, like it's kind of great being alive this time in history. But you'd be surprised how these seemingly subtle features create larger assumptions in us about life. Life, we are told, is what you make of it, Anything is possible, and the mission becomes to optimize, to maximize, to never settle. Limitless consumerism makes us unlimited consumers, never satisfied, always searching, looking for the next thing or experience that will placate us Life as a journey, as a quest for some of us, as a project, is common vocabulary in our world. We posture ourselves, the seekers, the center of the story.
Speaker 1:We are the ones on the quest for truth, and the story of Christmas has its famous seekers. We know them as the magi. The kids in their play called them the three kings, these mysterious nobles who see in the stars the sign of something significant happening, and they set off following the signs that they have seen in the heavens. We know little about the origins of the Magi, but the church calendar date of Epiphany, which is 12 days from tomorrow, after the 12 days of Christmas, the church calendar celebrates the season of Epiphany, which acknowledges that Jesus, in being born as the Jewish Messiah, has fulfilled the covenant to Abraham that promised Abraham that not only would Abraham, this barren man, have a family, but that through his family all the nations on the earth would be blessed. And we find the Magi in Matthew's Gospel, and I want to read a little bit of their tale to you tonight, as we anticipate the birth of Christ. Matthew writes In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.
Speaker 1:Magi from the east came to Jerusalem asking when is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage. When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. And they told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it had been written by the prophet. And you, bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people, israel. Then Herod secretly called for the Magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem saying Go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage. This is said in the most sinister kind of voice that I may also worship him. This is said in the most sinister kind of voice that I may also worship him. Herod is a puppet king, allowed to rule locally by the Romans, but ultimately has no real power when they, in verse 9, when they had heard the king, they set out, and there ahead of them went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chest, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and, having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Speaker 1:The Magi were seekers, and it seems on this Christmas Eve night that it's the Magi who do the finding here, following Herod's instructions, search diligently. We in our age like to posit ourselves as the seekers Because, though the quest has all the veneer of the unknown, the thing around the bend that we can't quite foresee, the quest ultimately puts us at the center and puts us in control of the story. It's quite a different thing to admit that we in and of ourselves are not good, are not wise, are not capable, that we ourselves are lost. And there's something beautiful that happens in this story as the star that has been moving. The star that has fixed the attention of the magi stops moving and it rests over this one that has been born in Bethlehem. The Magi follow the signal of the star, but as they see the star come to rest, they behold not something that they have found or discovered, but they behold the maker of the stars.
Speaker 1:Isaiah 49, verse 6, I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. You see, the star did not set them out on their journey, even though that was the inciting incident. God set the star in the sky to welcome them as a beacon home. And there's a nobility in considering ourselves, the seekers. It has all the air of humility that, oh, we've never quite settled on something that we're sure about, we've never quite come to rest from our anxious seeking.
Speaker 1:But all along, the subtle reversal of the gospel stories, one of which we've read tonight, is that it is we who are lost, we who are stranded and we who are in the dark, and it is God who has been seeking, who has been pursuing us. He comes to us on this Christmas in surprise and wonder, and surprisingly, especially against the trappings of our supposedly limitless age. God does not come to us as the unlimited creator that he is. Come to us as the unlimited creator that he is. He comes to us in all of the finitude, the frailty, the limits of a Jewish baby born on the outskirts of an empire, born 2,000 years ago. And you see, friends, tonight the story of Jesus is not a philosophical system, it's not a religion, it's not suggestions about how to live an amazing life. It is news. The story is about something that happened.
Speaker 1:The specificity can scandalize our modernist sensibilities. How can there be one way, one life, one truth, so many people in the world right now, so many people that have lived throughout the course of human history? And yet you are saying that you know the one way that the infinite would put on the finite, that the uncreated one would step into creation, that he would become a descendant of Judah, born in Bethlehem to a virgin girl trusted to the care of a carpenter. That he would be born under the reign of Caesar Augustus and die under the reign of the emperor Tiberius. That Pontius Pilate would be the local Roman official that would authorize his execution on a Roman cross, a historical instrument of shame, torture and execution. And all of the details are telling us of the limits that the limitless one embraced in order to live out the good news, the good news that is of great joy for all the people, the good news that still gathers us in rooms like this one on nights like these to remember the wonder of God with us like this one on nights like these, to remember the wonder of God with us.
Speaker 1:God, in embracing the limits of our humanity, the word that spoke the world to life, taking on flesh, defies all the limits of our humanity. God, in taking on our frailty, overcomes sin and death by succumbing to that frailty, by giving his life on a cross, so that we might rest from our seeking and stop seeing ourselves as the center of the story and instead see that God has been pursuing us all along the star. Settling over that manger 2,000 years ago invites all of us to cease from our restlessness, our seeking, our illusions of life without limits, and to hear the good news that you have been pursued by the one who made the world and you've been found by him and welcomed home by him, and just like the Magi. This demands that we go home a different way, that we don't go back the way that we came because the story has fundamentally changed. I'm going to invite our music team forward again as we revel in what God has done for us.
Speaker 1:And there's something stark and jarring. You know it's easy to sentimentalize Christmas, because it's about light, it's about a baby born in a manger. You've got this barnyard scene and all its precious moments trappings. But looming over the shadow of the birth of this one we call the Christ, the Messiah, is that he has come to give his life on our behalf. And so we set these things next to each other Life and death, the gift of great joy, and yet the reality of our rejection. But in our rejection is God's embrace and welcome.
Speaker 1:In our mistaking Jesus, for who he's not, is God showing us who he is. And so we come, and each time we gather together we remember the whole of the gospel the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, this one that was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. And we come to this table and as you scroll through Jesus' life, you fast forward to the very end of it, and we see that on the night that Jesus was arrested, he took bread and he broke it and he gave it to his closest friends and he said this is my body, broken for you. And he took a cup and he blessed it and he said this is my blood poured out for the sins of the world. That as often as we eat, as often as we drink, we declare the good news, that is for the great joy of the entire world, that God has shown us who he is and he is thoroughly and fully and wholly self-giving, sacrificial love.