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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Good news of great joy to all the people
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
I want to look at one of the phrases from the Christmas story to help us celebrate this night.
When the angels appear to the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem, the first thing they say is one of the most frequent phrases in the Bible. “Do not be afraid.” That encouraging sentence shows up in the Bible 365 times—one for each day of the year—to remind us that we do not need to let fear control our lives because fear is the opposite of faith. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear is the opposite of faith. Doubt is a natural part of faith and it is good to bring doubts and questions to our faith and to our churches because that is how we grow beyond a third grade theology.
“Do not be afraid. I am bringing you good news of great joy to all the people.” What a comforting Christmas message!
This is GOOD news, this arrival of the messiah, the one who saves us from ourselves and from a superficial existence. How often church folks have said they have good news but it really turns out to be judgmental news, bad news: sometimes it sounds like this: you are a no good, useless worm. You are a bad, bad person. You are totally unworthy, you do not belong, and you are just barely able to come in the church door! In fact, if you don’t do exactly what we say, and believe in every little detail we will teach you and even vote the way we tell you, you are going straight to hell!
For some of us that does not sound like the good news! What sounds more like GOOD NEWS to me is that God loves and accepts each of us and that God wants the absolute best for us and has sent us Jesus Christ to be teacher and example and the one who can save us—such a loaded word because it has come to be only about the afterlife for people instead of saving us from our greed and consumerism and selfishness, saving us from majoring in the minor concerns of life. Jesus saves us from saying at some time in our lives, “Is that all there is?”
The birth of that kind of savior is good news, even great news!
It is news of great joy-joyful news. What a difficult time in our country’s history to talk about joy: more and more stories of personal loss, lay offs, unethical Wall Street figures betraying the trust of their investors and leaving people with no financial security and no retirement.
We try to find joy in the passing things—getting just the right piece of electronic gear or the right wide screen TV, just the right toy. The Christmas story reminds us that kind of joy is temporary. It does not last. The Christmas story says this: JOY IS AN INSIDE JOB. Great joy comes from discovering and getting to know not just the baby Jesus but the adult Jesus who came so we can have the best life. Great joy comes from getting to know him and following him and living by his teachings of compassion and courage and integrity and kindness to others. Christmas reminds us that when we take ourselves out of the center of the picture and make room for God and others, we find real life. We know that best this season when we take time to do good for others and when we live the truth of Jesus’ words that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving!
The final phrase is where it gets a little uncomfortable. This good news of great joy is for folks like us—right? People who look like us and think the way we do and who agree with our theology and our politics—that is who it is for, right? Here is the place that this Jesus pushes our comfortable boundaries: good news of great joy for ALL THE PEOPLE!!
Look at the people who are gathered around the manger: a working class couple who later in the Christmas story become homeless refugees fleeing to Egypt to save their lives. Jesus’ parents were for a while, poor, homeless refugees. The shepherds had no status. Shepherds were the lowest of the low on the status ladder, yet they were the first people to hear the good news of great joy for all the people. It was the outcasts, the nobodies who first got the good news. And in Matthew’s gospel who were the folks who came later bringing gifts? Hold your breath: they were Iranians, Persians, magi from which we get the word “magician”. They were priests of the Zoroastrian religion! Pagans!!
This story is from the gospel of Luke. Luke tells us about a savior who is willing to associate with anyone! He touches the lepers!! You don’t do that. He welcomes women into his band of disciples—you didn’t do that and some churches still don’t. He even makes, in two of his stories, a Samaritan the hero of the story!! Samaritans were unclean, they were impure, and they were outcasts. You don’t include and welcome Samaritans do you? Jesus did and Jesus does! Jesus includes some people we try to exclude. This news is for all the people. Jesus’ birth is for all the people!!
And Jesus tells a story about a no good, selfish, son who takes his inheritance and leaves home and wastes his life and does the worst thing a Jewish boy could do—gets a job feeding the pigs. He is ashamed and decides to go back and apologize to his father and try to become a servant in his family home. And he starts back practicing his speech all the way because he is so ashamed. He does not know how he will be received; he has been alienated from his father for so long.
What happens? His father sees him returning when he is a long way off and runs to meet him and welcomes him home with a party—much to the anger of the loyal older son who hates this foolish brother. Why does the father do this? Because the one who was lost has come back home and because this good news of great joy is for ALL THE PEOPLE, not just the people who came on board early and faithfully, but for ALL THE PEOPLE even the latecomers.
We will be taking a group of people to Israel next fall. It is a life changing pilgrimage. It is transformative. We will see the fields outside Bethlehem where the shepherds may have been. We will see the other sites that we read about in the Bible. But one of the transforming things that happen is that we see people from across the world and we hear languages from all over the world and we see how the Christmas story we celebrate really is for ALL THE PEOPLE.
Something else happens to me in Israel each time. I look at how people come to Bethlehem and worship at the traditional place of birth and feel so moved there and at the other places like the Sea of Galilee. I wonder, what will happen after they leave? Will this be a temporary spiritual high or will they and we really be changed, changed so that we become like Jesus, become more kind, more welcoming, more compassionate, more courageous, more willing to stand for what is right and ethical no matter if it is popular or not, more willing to put God at the center of our lives and not on the fringes?
It is the same question we can ask ourselves. What will we do after we light our candles and sing Silent Night? Will we leave here with a new sense of grace and compassion so that we can also proclaim and live by this GOOD NEWS OF GREAT JOY FOR ALL THE PEOPLE? Dear God may it be so!!