[Propertalk] Sermons for Christmas 1 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Christmas 1
 
Matthew 2:13-23 - "Back to Real Life"
Matthew 2:13-23 - "Dream Power" by Leonard Sweet
 
Matthew 2, the sermon titled "Back to Real Life"  
 
It's hard not to feel a little let down on the day after Christmas. 
 
A few days after Christmas one year Presbyterian pastor Jon M. Walton was noticing that all the Christmas decorations at one of the local pharmacies had been removed. These decorations already had been replaced with Valentine's Day trinkets and cards. Red boxes of candy, teddy bears with big hearts on them, red candles for romantic lighting.  The clerk behind the counter was complaining to another of her co-workers, "I hate Valentine's Day," she said. "I never have a boyfriend and I hate Valentine's Day."
 
Then Walton goes on to comment with these words, "Nothing is as over as Christmas when it's over. The empty boxes, the pretty paper on the floor, the stray tinsel from the tree with which the cat has played and left abandoned on the sofa, the empty cartons of eggnog stuffed into the trash bag. Life has come back to normal, whatever that is, and it means that the diversion of the past few weeks, the frenzy and fuss, the lights and glitter are packed away once again like the star at the top of the tree; taken down and carefully wrapped, padded and protected in its ample box. And what is left? A war in Iraq [and Afghanistan], homeless people sleeping in door stoops, hungry people begging for food, worries about health, kids that concern us, jobs that wear us down. We're back to where we left off before the holidays . . . Like the folks who were left in town after the Lone Ranger had been for a visit, we may ask out loud, "Who was that masked man?" Or better said, "Who was that babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, left lying in a manger?"
 
Well, we haven't moved that far from Christmas yet. We're just one day away from celebrating Christ's birth.  But there is the inevitable letdown. So much was packed into the four weeks of Advent. We can talk about keeping Christmas all year long, but who could handle it? We don't want the clogged streets around the mall all year.  And who could maintain the pace of eating? In fact, many of us are already planning our diets to begin January 2.  
 
Actually, we need a little respite from all the busyness, don't we? Mary and Joseph weren't allowed to reside permanently in Bethlehem and neither can we. It's back to the real world...
 
The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com. 
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Matthew 2:13-23, the sermon titled "Dream Power" by Leonard Sweet 
 
One-third of our lives is spent not having any idea what we are doing. 
 
All right, admittedly many of us spend even greater percentages of our lifetimes clueless. But officially, we all have one-third of our lives basically unaccounted for.
 
Why? Because we are sleeping. 
 
Sleeping is required by every creature with even the most rudimentary or remedial brain stem. Yet we really don't understand why we sleep or what sleep is for.
 
All we really know about sleep is that if deprived of it for just ten days, we're dead. That's right - dead. Three minutes without air. Three days without water. Ten days without sleep. These are the physical limits of life. 
 
Sleep isn't just a big shut-down, a turn off, The Great Reboot. Sleep has degrees of depth. Sometimes we are all but comatose. Other times we are right on the edges of consciousness. But no sleep cycle is complete until we get a dose of REM-sleep. "Rapid Eye Movement" sleep is characterized by the shifty, darting back-and-forth movement of our eyes and by the electrical brain activity that reveals we are dreaming. 
 
We do not just need to sleep. We need to dream. If we are awakened before we reach REM sleep, there will be no rest of body, no refreshment of spirit. Our bodies are set up to get the deepest sleep as soon as we slip into our sleep mode. But as our sleep progresses, our rested brains require some down time to themselves. That is dream-time. 
 
During REM or dream sleep, our brain pulverizes and paralyzes the rest of us. That is why in our dreams we can jump out of planes, or run away from monsters, or fly off of mountain-tops. All that our sleeping body does is slightly twitch or flinch. Our brains keep our bodies safe while escaping in amazing dreams. Far from being a time-stopped stupor, our mandatory sleep-dream cycle puts us into a heightened anabolic state that promotes good growth and rejuvenation. In other words, a "beauty sleep" is a real thing! Dreaming boosts the immune system, and promotes the optimal functioning of the nervous skeletal and muscular systems. 
 
So yes! You do need a good night's sleep before the big game.
 
Long before electroencephalograms told us about our sleep cycles, human beings have known dreams were important. While only a select few may have been "called" to be shamans, or prophets, or seers, we have all been "called" to be sleepers. And all sleepers dream. Every night. Sleepers all dream. 
 
In this week's gospel text Matthew finds and features the power and promise of dreams...
 
The rest of Leonard Sweet's sermon can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com 
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The Challenge of the Babe
 
Throughout December each year we now witness a different kind of Christmas tradition that has become an annual event: we see all the protests that get lodged about this or that nativity scene that is on, or is too close to, public property. Some respond to this by asking, "How could anyone be against something so pretty and beautiful and hopeful?" But maybe the people who protest such things are more in touch with the deeper challenge that the Babe in the manger presents than we ourselves are at times. If you don't want your world turned upside down, if you don't want to be assailed for your sins and proffered a bloody salvation on a cross as the way to have those sins forgiven, then you won't want to see the manger scene. God's grand and cosmic challenge to sin and selfishness, to violence and greed, is very much on display at Christmas.

Christmas is about the One who would ultimately give up his own life to save everyone else. The wider story does not end in death. At the end of the day, life triumphs because the very little Jesus who elicited this firestorm of hatred from the sinful people of this world found a way to unmake hatred and violence from the inside out. By letting himself get caught up in this world's web of violence and deceit, of death and destruction, he managed to defeat these powerful forces in a way brute force itself could never have done.

Jesus' birth right in the middle of this world's suffering is the only hope we've got for now or any future time. 


Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations 

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God on The Run!
 
My copy of the Bible entitles this sub-section of Scripture, "The Flight into Egypt." Cruel Herod the king had been threatened by the birth of Jesus, apparently fearing that Jesus would become a competitor for his own crown. Since that was an intolerable possibility to him, and since he could not be absolutely sure which baby boy was Jesus, he ordered that all the male children in and around Bethlehem who were two-years old or under be killed. Thus it was that an angel of the Lord directed Joseph to take Jesus and Mary and to "flee to Egypt."
 
Can you imagine it? God on the run! Jesus, the Christ, fleeing for his life!... He is running for his life...
 
If this scene is shocking for you - and I confess that it is still shocking to me - then hold on, for there is more to come. We can imagine Joseph escaping into Egypt with the  b a b y   Jesus. But, surely, we think, if Jesus were only a full-grown man, he would not run from Herod. The evidence, however, does not completely support our thought.
 
There were times, even as an adult, when Jesus ran away. During the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem one winter, some people wanted Jesus to tell them "plainly" if he was, indeed, the Christ. When Jesus answered, "I and the Father are one," they took up stones to stone him. We read, "Again they tried to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands." (John 10:39) Notice that word - again; apparently Jesus had  to run away on other occasions, too.
 
There is no getting away from it: Christmas tells us that God chose to make himself vulnerable when he revealed himself in a person who, sometimes, at least, had to run a way from people like Herod and the stone-throwers.
 
Before we go any further, however, we should say this: Please do not make the mistake of thinking that the vulnerability of Christ is a bad thing. It is not! It is a tremendous thing. In fact, it is the greatest thing in the world. For we are saved by a Christ who "took the form of a servant . . . and humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." What men called "the weakness of God" was "the power of God unto salvation." It is a Christ who was willing to risk becoming as vulnerable as we are, who is able to save us from sin by identifying with our human condition and showing us the way back to fellowship with God.
 
The vulnerability of Christ is a great thing also because it makes it easier for us to admit our own vulnerability. We may like to think that we are super men and women, but we are not. There are powers and people who can hurt us and destroy us. There are times when we need to run away! You see, running away is not always cowardice as many of us have been taught to believe. Running away, at times, may he part of a very wise strategy. As the old saying goes: "He who runs away lives to fight another day."
 
There are times, of course, when we cannot run away. There are times when we must not run away. There are times when running away is cowardice. Jesus did not run away from his betrayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are times when we must stand our ground, no matter what the cost.
 
Nevertheless, there are other times when it is wise to run away. Timing has a lot to do with it. So do our intentions about returning. For after the time of running away, there should always be a time of returning.
 
John Thomas Randolph, The Best Gift, CSS Publishing Company, pp. 39-40
 
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