“What's In A Name: Son”
The most precious package you'll ever receive
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Text: Luke 2:21-33
I don't know if you have noticed as I have that nearly everything you buy these days comes as a package or a package deal. And by package, I do not mean actual physical wrapping, I mean metaphorical packages that make you buy things you don't intend to. For example, not long ago I had to renew my cellphone contract. All I wanted to do was call my office once in a while, speak to Marial, have a chat now and again and be reachable in an emergency. When I went in and spoke to a salesclerk, I heard something entirely different: “You can have, along with that, 250 free minutes of calling between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m. anywhere in the world.” (My normal calling times, I might add.) And if you are willing to mortgage your family and for an extra $29.95 and also the selling of your soul, you might be able to call who you want, when you want.
Have you tried to buy a cable TV package lately? I only watch about 10 channels, but you have to buy 159 just to get the 10 you want. And you get all manner of things you never want to see and you have to flip through, looking for that one channel. When you think you signed a deal and everything is all right, you realize that only when the moon lines up with Jupiter and everything is working in complete harmony in the universe do you get the actual channels that you want - all that for $100, and of course, your soul!
But where it really came home to me was (and this is a private matter, I might add, and I hope that Marial doesn't hear this). When I went to buy a gift for her at a department store. Sitting on a shelf was the most beautiful ladies' toiletry bag. I was so excited and I went in to purchase this, only to find out that the bag was actually free, but you had to buy $200 worth of perfume to get it! I said to the clerk, “Can you do sort of a deal under the table, because all I really need is the bag?”
She said: “No, Reverend, we don't do deals under the table.”
You always get a package when all you want is something simple. And often, these packages obscure things rather than reveal them. You get extraneous things, just to get the thing that you really want.
Well, my friends, this morning I want to talk about a package. It's not a package that obscures, it's a package that reveals. The package is God's great gift to us. And in giving us this gift, God wraps this package in His Son. Over the last few weeks of reading from the Gospel of Luke, it's as if one layer after another has been unwrapped in getting to the heart of the gift. We had the visitation to Elizabeth and we heard the story of her bearing John the Baptist. We read the story of Mary and the Magnificat and that wonderful passage of liberation and hope. We heard the story of Zechariah and his announcement of the birth of his son, John the Baptist, who will prepare the way for Jesus. We heard the announcement of the angels to the shepherds on the hillside that they will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
But now we come, in the story that I read this morning, to the climax of the whole of the infancy narrative. It is the moment when Mary and Joseph bring baby Jesus into the temple. The custom is to read this passage after Christmas, but I believe that because it is the end of the infancy narrative in Luke, it should be the climax that tells us who the package really is. For when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus into the temple and present Him to Simeon, all the words that we have used to describe Jesus: the Dayspring, the Saviour, the Babe, coalesce into this one moment, causing Mary and Joseph to marvel. For when Simeon holds Jesus in his arms he realizes that he is holding the Son - the Son of God.
In this glorious moment of revelation, where the gift is not obscured but revealed, I want us to look metaphorically at this package through the eyes of Simeon, to see that what he held in his arms has meaning and power and purpose for the world, and for our lives in particular. In this revelation of the Son is a declaration about the nature and the purpose of God: first and foremost, to be the God of freedom .
When Mary and Joseph took Jesus into the temple you will notice in the text it keeps saying “... according to the law.” The custom of bringing a child into the temple dated back to the Book of Exodus, Chapter 13, where the people of Israel were told that after the Passover and after the liberation of the people from their bondage in Egypt children must be presented on the eighth day after their birth as a sign of thanksgiving and a memorial to God's Passover - to God's saving of His people. So Mary and Joseph, like good Jews, were taking their child into the temple and dedicating him to God, because it was their custom to celebrate the liberation and the freedom of God.
But when Simeon picked up this child he realized that this was a child unlike all others. Yes, this was a child of Israel, this was a Jew, this was a boy born of the house of David, but more especially this was the fulfilment of all that he had dreamt of and believed in - this was the sign of the Incarnation - the presence of the God of freedom.
This gift of freedom is also, as we find in the text, a warning. Sometimes God comes into our midst to tell those who are oppressive that they must repent, but in this case He does it in a gentle, vulnerable and loving way.
I once read a delightful message sent out by an electric company. (Many of you don't know this but the power went out here at the 9:30 service this morning. This story is so fitting, let me tell you.) The message that went out to all the customers was: “We would be delighted if you would pay your bills and if you don't, you will be... ” (Takes a moment, doesn't it?) It was a warning coached in the loveliest of ways.
The coming of Jesus was a warning. It was a warning to those who did not believe in the freedom of God, those who believed in the power of darkness and oppression. The coming of the Christ Child was a serious warning. Mary echoed it in her Magnificat. She sang, for example, that the proud would be scattered in the imagination of their hearts by the coming of this child. Simeon in holding Jesus in his arms sang: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel.” The Christ Child's coming was a warning. It was a warning that God's freedom will always prevail, that God's liberation can never be expunged. It was a warning that life is greater than death, that light is greater than darkness, that hope will always supersede despair, that peace will always conquer enmity, that in the end, when the empires and the powers of darkness, of heaven and earth come and go, the love of the Christ Child will always remain. That is why when Simeon held Jesus in his arms, he said: “My eyes have seen thy salvation.”
As I sat in my study reading this passage over and over again this week, and I saw the images on television of Saddam Hussein crawling out of the hole in the ground, it reminded me again and again that anyone who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Those who oppress won't be able to get away with it in the end. There is always accountability and consequence, because light is always greater than darkness and freedom always a more powerful force than tyranny. When Simeon held Jesus in his arms he knew that the things he hoped and dreamt all his life would come true. This was the child he had waited for - the Son revealing the freedom and the power of God - but it was also a profound message of hope.
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian, was in prison during the last few months of his life, he wrote some love letters to his betrothed, Maria Von Wedemeyeer. They are some of the most revealing and touching letters I have ever read. During Advent, 1944, he wrote: “A prison cell in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside.”
Not a bad picture of Advent - for, indeed, what Advent tells us is that God in Jesus Christ comes into our midst from the outside and dwells on the inside. Wherever there is tyranny and oppression, sin and the things that constrain us, there the power of God comes in the Child and dwells among us.
I don't know how many of you have seen my favourite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. It stars Ralphie, a boy who dreams of getting a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. As Christmas approaches his hopes of getting this toy dim. Santa doesn't want him to have it, his parents don't want him to have it, his siblings don't want him to have it, and the local bully keeps tormenting him by telling him that he will never get it. Everything goes bad for Ralphie and he believes that Christmas is going to pass without his realizing his dream.
One day in an alleyway, the bully who had been picking on him and his brother goes a step too far and Ralphie snaps. He's had it! All this bad news has built up and he jumps on top of the bully and punches him into oblivion, expletives pouring out of his mouth. Meanwhile his mother is standing just a few metres away. When Ralphie turns around she invites him into the house. As he goes in, his brother Randy says: “Dad is going to kill you.” Ralphie goes to bed, crying. Finally the father comes home and asks the mother: “What sort of day have you had?”
She said: “Well, it's not been a great day. Ralphie got into a fight, but it's okay, it's the sort of fight that little boys get into. And by the way, do you know that the Green Bay Packers are playing the Bears tonight and it's going to be on television?” (To deflect his anger).
Little Ralphie continues to cry in his room. He feels his life is going to come to an end. Finally his mother goes into his room and looks at him with forgiveness in her eyes and the adult Ralphie, doing the narration says: “I slowly realized that I was not about to be destroyed. From then on things were different between me and my mother.” Ralphie had been forgiven.
My friends, when Christ comes into our midst it is as if things are now different between God and us. We have been forgiven. For people who live under the tyranny of guilt or who find that Christmas is a difficult time, if they've lost a loved one or if they are lonely or depressed, the words of Simeon are: “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” While I have been tortured and burdened by the oppression of darkness, holding this Christ Child in my arms I am now free from whatever holds me in bondage. Christ is come and things are different between God and us.
But this is also the story, as we have lit the candle this morning, of great joy. It is the story of the wonderful things that are in God's heart for all of humanity.
I read a lovely story of a little girl who was struggling with the Lord's Prayer. She prayed: “Our Father, who art in heaven, how do you know my name?”
My friends, there are a lot of people in this world (there might be people listening on the radio today) who wonder whether their name is known by God, wonder whether their life is of any value. In a time when human life is often treated with disdain, when there is violence and there are insurgencies and insurrections and oppression and injustice, people sometimes wonder: Does God really know my name?
When Simeon took Christ in his arms, when he held the consolation of Israel, he knew from that moment on that all the things about which he had dreamt were coming true. God knows us because He has become one with us, and by becoming one with us, He has shown that we are valuable in His eyes. The gift - the package - that God gives us is: He knows our names. He had come in Jesus, the name above all names to let us know that.
This past week on 60 Minutes II, the composer John Rutter was being interviewed about all the different music he has written and the beautiful, joyful pieces he has written for Christmas. When asked what Christmas meant to him, he said: “For a few days, we have the world as it should be.”
Christmas, my friends, can often be sentimental. Sometimes Christmas can be reduced to the ordinary, and one might be forgiven for being a little bit cynical when one sees what happens in the days following Christmas. But Christmas is a reminder of the world as it should be - the world of the Christ Child. The world of the Christ Child is a world of love and joy. God comes into the midst of this world to show that and to reveal that in His Son.
Twenty-three years ago I had one of the most unusual experiences of my life. My mother and father were still living in South Africa and I had only recently moved to Nova Scotia and was a student minister. Things were getting very dangerous in South Africa for my parents and they needed to leave the country, but if they were to leave at any time, they would not be allowed back into the country and all their assets would be seized. It was my father's desire to return to Canada and continue a ministry here. The only problem was he couldn't come to Canada for an interview with a church and then return to South Africa. My father had no idea what to do.
He was in a perilous situation. Then a church in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia had a stroke of brilliance. They decided that if they could not meet my father, maybe the pastoral relations committee could interview me instead. Not to hire me but to hire my father. And so I phoned my father and said: “Dad, this is a first. Are you willing to let me be interviewed for a job for you?”
The silence was deafening! In faith, realizing he had no other option, he agreed. I drove down to the Annapolis Valley on a snowy Wednesday, the week before Christmas. The Pastoral Relations Committee was waiting for me in someone's living room. They sat me down and thanked me for coming. Their first question was: “Now, tell me, do you listen to your father's sermons, and what are they like?”
I never listened to my father's sermons! It was bad enough living with him without having to listen to his sermons. What minister's child or spouse listens to the sermons? But I said: “Yes.” I lied. I said: “He's very good.” They then asked me about his moral rectitude. They asked me whether he was an upright citizen. (How do you answer that on behalf of your father?) I said: “Yes, he's upright, all right.”
The interview went on. They asked a number of questions and I spoke well of my father, that wasn't difficult. But then the telling moment of the interview came. One of the people on the committee asked me: “Tell me, is your father proud that you are a minister?”
I thought about it and unequivocally said: “Yes, he is.”
And they said: “In that case, he will be our next minister.”
I went home and phoned Dad: “Dad, you've go the job.”
They'd seen the son but really they wanted the father.
Christmas is just like that. We have the Son and in seeing the Son we see the Father. The Son has come in love and the Son has come in joy and the Son has come in peace and the Son has come in freedom and the Son has come for us. Therefore we see the Father and we have joy. Thanks be to God. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.