CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Rev. Drew Smith, Pastor
December 24^th, 2006, 11:00 AM
SERMON TITLE: “Peace: Christmas Worries”
Micah 5:2-5, Luke 1:67-79

Gracious God: Open our eyes, our ears, and our very hearts to experience you, to feel your touch that you might lead us, might show us the way to find Jesus in the midst of the chaos, the peace that only He can bring in the midst of our own brokenness. In Jesus we pray, Amen!

As I read through these passages and considered the season and this, the 4^th Sunday of Advent, one where we look for Christ, where we look for Jesus, where we look for the peace that only He can bring, the picture that came to mind was of a rescue operation. In a real way, Christmas is God’s ultimate act of rescue to all of us who are in the midst of a disaster. Now we see rescue operations all the time. We know a lot about them having the Coast Guard in our back yard. We see them going out for fishermen who have been stranded; we saw a lot during hurricanes Katrina and Ivan. We heard a lot about them in the news this week, about the mountainclimbers on Mount Hood and folks were out searching for them among snow covered mountains. Eventually the rescue operation had to turn into a recovery operation. They were no longer seeking to rescue living human beings to bring them back to life. They were looking, now, simply to recover their remains. But in any of these rescue operations, the first piece of advice, the first word to those whenever we would happen to be in a dangerous, a perilous situation, the first charge, the first commandment to being in a dangerous situation, in need of rescue is to ‘stay calm’. Stay calm! Don’t panic!

If you are on one side of a locked door and on the other side is a child who can’t get out, who had been locked in and can’t figure out how to unlock the door and they are screaming and hollering because they’re locked in the bathroom or the closet of their own room, you come to the door and your first words are, “it’s OK, we’ll work this out. Don’t panic! Be calm!” That’s the word of the 4^th Sunday of Advent! We’re the children in a world that’s broken; in a world that’s messed up. People who are broken, who are sinners and God tells us, “Be at peace! It’s OK; it’s all right! The rescue operation has already occurred. You are rescued! You are free!”

That’s what Zechariah is celebrating. You may remember that Zechariah was punished (not punished necessarily) but he was given a particular sign so that he would know that Elizabeth was carrying John the Baptist because he was rendered ‘mute’, unable to speak for those 9 months. Now, he’s free to speak so he’s had a lot of time to think about what he’s going to say. So he presents this song of celebration of rescue that God has sent the ‘choppers’. He has sent the boats. He has sent the climbers. The rescue team is already on the way and you’re going to be OK.

Look again at verse 71, talking of the prophets from ‘of old’, saying that God would save us. “His Holy Prophets from ‘of old’ said that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered his holy covenant”. Verse 74, “That we being rescued from the hands of our enemies might serve him without fear, and holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Now that’s really the picture right there. Those 4 or 5 verses, the rescue operation has already occurred, God has started the plan. It’s in place. God in the flesh is already growing in the womb of Mary’. John, who was just born, is going to be the one to prepare the way. The rescue boats are on their way. Relax! You can be at ease! Salvation from our enemies and from those who oppose us; deliverance from the hands of evil; it will occur just like God has promised all the way back to Abraham. Those promises are going to be fulfilled and they are being fulfilled right in front of Zechariah’s eyes. He knew that his son was the one to announce it and that the one to follow was Jesus Christ, ‘God in the flesh’. God incarnate was the one who was going to carry it out.

Now, note in verse 74, the purpose of this. It’s not so that we can then pursue our own dreams, pursue the American dream; it’s not so that we can have that peaceful, easy feeling but it’s so that - verse 74, “being rescued from the hands of this evil world from our enemies that we might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days”. Now this is a key difference that this is a rescue operation and not a recovery operation. Sometimes in the Christian church we get a sense that this is a recovery operation; that Jesus comes down to save us poor folks so that we can then be in heaven and enjoy God forever. That’s not it! The rescue operation is so that God can save us and rescue us and we can enjoy God forever starting today. It’s so that we might be able to serve God today without fear; in righteousness and holiness all the days of our life, not when we get to heaven, but starting now.

You see, we are in a dangerous situation. We are in a world where principalities and powers – those are the enemies that Paul presents to us. He takes this and understands the enemies, the evil hands being the ones of evil around us, the evil influences that are around us. We are in a dangerous situation, always tempted by those evil ways because we are called to follow Jesus in a world that crucified him. And not much has changed in our world since then. As we are called to live a life of obedience to God, we will face the same opposition, the same enemies, and the same evil hands that Jesus faced. We live in a messed-up world and each of us is broken too.

Now it’s easy for us in our wealth, in our relative peaceful situations to live in a bubble and to forget just how messed-up our world is. Well, maybe it’s not for you but it certainly is for me. As I consider the war in Iraq over the last three years, I have not felt and recognized the pain of tens of thousands of Iraqis who died, nor have I felt the pain of the 2,324 Americans who have died. Oh, yeah, I have faced it. I have read it and all that’s bad but it doesn’t impact my life. Nor have I faced the pain of the messed-up world of the hundreds of thousands, the millions of people who have died in Palestine, Israel, Nigeria, the Sudan, and Congo, just in the last year because of war, because of military operations in each of those nations and areas. It’s because I live in a bubble. We’re not really faced with those issues. Even last night 10,000 children around the globe, under the age of 5, died from malnutrition. We live in a messed-up world and what we celebrate, what we’re reminded of during Advent is that God has rescued us. He has secured us. He has saved us in the midst of this messed-up world. He didn’t just send us a life-rope. He didn’t send us a video to watch. He didn’t send us a nice book to read and to follow 10 steps of staying safe. What God did was enter this messed-up world. He entered this messed-up world not as a king, not as a military figure, not as some political leader. He entered it as the son of a carpenter, born and laid in a feeding trough, in a little no-nothing town, Bethlehem of Ephraithah. He lived that life of perfect love, of perfect peace, of perfect hope and of perfect faith. He lived that life before us, among us, in the midst of a messed-up world and was killed for it. Then in the greatest sign of love and power, He was raised to new life to say to us, this fourth Sunday of Advent, as we’re looking for Jesus, as we’re looking for peace, Jesus the Risen Christ, says, “Here I am, don’t give up! Don’t panic! Don’t worry. The rescue has already been accomplished. Now you can live in assurance, a certainty of your rescue. You can live without fear in the midst of this messed-up world and do it in righteousness and holiness’.

The great picture here at the end of Zechariah’s prophesy, he’s--verse 76 and 77--he’s talked about his son but then he turned to--78 and 79--to the one to come. “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Really, it’s saying here the same thing, ‘this One to come is the dawn of light’.

Do you remember at any time in your life being awoken by a nightmare? Then, when you wake up in a cold sweat and you don’t know where you are and you’re in your bed, especially when you’re a child. You wonder what’s happening and you’re just paralyzed by fear. I remember one time camping out on Mount Chehaw and waking up in the middle of the night in my sleeping bag and in my tent and hearing noises outside and my imagination went crazy. I didn’t know if it was ‘big foot’ or a ‘pack of wolves’ or a bunch of crazy people ransacking our campsite but I didn’t move. I don’t think I even breathed for an hour or so. There was no way I was going back to sleep. I know I didn’t even blink my eyes. I was just in a cold sweat sitting there just scared to death not knowing what was happening to all the rest of the people in the camp and just waiting for something to attack me. I stayed in the tent until the sun started to shine--until the sun broke through--until dawn came up. Isn’t that the great reliever of fear from nightmares and from bad nights? You sit there until the dawn comes up and then--ah, wait a minute, maybe it’s OK! So I unzip my sleeping bag and get out and lo and behold, nothing has been destroyed or ransacked; nobody was mauled or anything. It was probably just a great imagination and a little bit of wind. That’s the picture that Zechariah is celebrating, his feeling in that moment. The dawn from on high will break upon us and will give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to bring us peace in that moment, freedom from those fears but not just that. Like I said, it’s not just to give us a nice peaceful, easy feeling but to guide us; to guide our feet into the way of peace; to lead us forward; to live according to the way of peace in a world that would much rather turn to war and to anger and to fights.

The fourth Sunday of Advent is to celebrate and remind us that Christmas is the dawn of God’s rescue mission; the sun shining in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of our messed-up world and in the midst of our brokenness in sin to realize that we don’t have to be paralyzed by fear, hiding behind our security gates and alarms, but we can go forward in peace in the midst of death and darkness because of God’s faithfulness, because God’s rescue mission has already been accomplished and it will be all right, it will be OK.

There’s a great scene in the movie, “The Hurricane”. Denzel Washington was in it. It was in the late 90’s I think. It was about a professional boxer--a true story of Reuben Hurricane Carter, about his life. He was falsely accused of murder and was convicted. He was an African-American. There was a racist plot against him. The Police Force, Judge and jury sentenced him to prison for the rest of his life. Hurricane Carter wrote an autobiography from jail, sent it out, tried and tried again to get a new trial. He spent 20 years in jail pursuing justice in the face of injustice. While he was in prison he met a young man Lezara, who had read his book and was incensed by the injustice so Lezara comes to visit Carter over and over again and the friendship deepens over time. Lezara even connects Carter with some other attorneys and some detectives and they worked with him and finally arranged, after Carter had spent 20 years unjustly in jail, they arranged for a new trial and when the trial was over, Carter is still in jail, and they are waiting for the verdict. Lezara is meeting with Carter in that jail visiting room with the glass between them on the phone and Lezara looks at Reuben and says, “I want you to know that if this doesn’t work, I’m going to bust you out!” “You are, you’re going to bust me out?” “That’s right, I’m going to bust you out of here”, Lezara says. Carter looks up at Lezara and says, “So, hate put me in prison but love is going to bust me out!” Lezara responds, “Well, just in case love doesn’t, I’m still going to bust you out of here!” Again Carter laughs, Lezara is crying, tears running down his face just incensed with the injustice and Carter looks up at him and puts his hand on the glass and says, “Lezara, you already have! You already have busted me out of here”! Reuben Hurricane Carter is a perfect picture of Christians, followers of Jesus, in this day and age. Still imprisoned in a messed-up world, in our own broken selves, but we’ve been busted out of that by love. Reuben Carter was a man at peace, free whether on one side of prison bars or the other side of prison bars. So, too are we, people of peace!

There are great enemies around us. Great enemies that want to take away that peace, that want to have us live according to some other way than the peace of Jesus Christ; envy, jealousy, materialism, busyness for sure. One author puts it this way, “The greatest enemies to follow in the way of peace of Jesus today are hurry, crowds, noise, fear and loneliness”. We could make a list that goes on and on of the enemies who oppose us from living the way of the peace of Jesus; of recognizing we’ve been rescued in a world that’s looking everywhere else for their rescue.

Let me share with you one more story, one of my favorites about a Christian saint in the earlier part of last century, Maximilian Colby. He was born in Poland, in the l890’s and became a Franciscan priest. Eventually he was arrested by the Nazis and put in a concentration camp. In there, as a Franciscan priest, in his mid to late 40’s, he only had one lung because he had had different diseases in his life. But there he still continued even though he no longer wore the Franciscan garb, (he wore the prisoner garb) he continued to carry out his work as a priest. He led prayer times, received confession, even times of worship, all underground, all in secret gatherings but eventually things would get out and they’d get caught and he would catch a lot of the beatings, a lot of the flack, and even then when he was sent to the Medical places, places where they took care of those who had been beaten a half inch from their death. Even in those settings he would receive confession, and lead in prayer meetings.

(Note from the typist.) Something happened to the tape at this point so I was unable to type the rest of the sermon. However I believe the sermon was almost over and the closing paragraph is all that was not audible.