John 14:27
The night Jesus was born, angels appeared in the sky to shepherds out in the fields with their flocks. This heavenly concert announced the birth of Jesus and what was it that the announcement said?
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
What incredible news! Peace on earth! This was great news to a world that was beaten up by war and rape and abuse and violence.
Rome had conquered Spain just a couple centuries earlier and women had killed their children rather than let them fall into the hands of the Romans. Israel also was occupied by the Romans. Every part of the world was at war with one country or tribe attacking another. The weak and poor got stepped on by the rich and powerful.
But good news! Jesus has come and with him peace.
Peace got off to a bad start when Herod sent his soldiers to kill all baby boys under the age of two in the area of Bethlehem. But surely it would get better.
In 61 AD, Boudicca, a British tribal queen, was disturbed because the wealth of Britain was being plundered by the Romans, freemen were being sold into slavery and more personally, her two daughters had been ravished by Roman officers. So she led a revolt against the Roman occupiers and killed 70,000 Romans before the Roman legion caught up with her and then 80,000 Britains were killed.
But, the message of Jesus had not had time enough to reach Britain, so that might be excused.
What then do you say about the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD? This was the center of Jesus’ ministry. But just forty or so years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the civilians of Jerusalem were slaughtered and all but the Western wall was leveled. Where was peace on earth then?
Maybe the message of Christ needed more time. Let’s jump 500 years and see what we find. Christianity had made it to Britain but they were still fighting. The legendary Arthur won a battle against the Saxons. The Persians and Romans were fighting. The Franks and the Visigoths, two German groups, were at war with each other. 30,000 people were killed in a revolt in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. Every part of the world was at war.
What do we find 2,000 years after Christ? At the time of Christ there was one Christian for every 250,000 people in the world. Today, there is one Christian for every eight people in the world. We should expect to see more peace on earth, don’t you agree? But 15,000,000 people were killed in WWI and 55,000,000 in WWII. A civilized Christian nation created the efficient extermination of 6,000,000 Jews. Stalin killed 20,000,000 people in his rise to power. 40,000,000 were killed in China under Mao Zedong. 8,000,000 were killed in the Congo at the turn of the 20th century. And the list goes on and on. In more recent times, 1,000,000 were killed in the Iran-Iraq war, 1,900,000 in Sudan and 3,800,000 in Kinshasa Congo.
What is happening this Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus? Followers of Christ are increasingly being persecuted as Islamic extremists move into the city. The places where Jesus walked and where he taught and healed are an unsafe hotspot in the world of conflict.
Peace on earth? I don’t think so.
The world is not safer than it was 2,000 years ago. There should be a warning label when you are born. As you come out of the womb and open your eyes, there should be some way in which you can read, Warning, being born into this world has been known to cause suffering, injustice and death.
What does this mean? Did Jesus fail in what he set out to do? If Jesus came to bring peace, why is the world not any safer or more peaceful than it was two thousand years ago?
Noreen Maxwell died this past Tuesday morning at 2 AM. She had an amazing life and the most amazing part of it was that she gave her life to Christ ten years ago at the age of 84. I had the privilege of meeting with her each week to read to her over the past seven years and it was a treat to see how she grew in her knowledge and experience of God.
What was the reward for her decision to give her life to Jesus? She and I prayed often, almost every week, that she would die before she lost her senses. That prayer was not answered. She lost the ability to stand and walk. Her senses slipped away. She began to be unable to distinguish between her dreams and reality. And then she slipped even further away and was unable to respond to those who came to visit her or who cared for her.
She had pains from a bad back she injured during WWII and these were aggravated by lying or sitting all the time. She developed an infection on her nose that became cancerous and spread and had to be cut out. Her legs and arms had sores.
Noreen committed her life to Christ but where was the peace for Noreen? Her body was at war, destroying her. Peace for Noreen was clearly not reflected in a comfortable existence.
In the same way that Noreen’s body was at war with her, so has the earth suffered these past two thousand years. The agony people in this world have suffered and continue to suffer would absolutely crush us if we were aware of it all. The world was suffering when Jesus was born and has continued to suffer through the ages.
It is to this suffering world that Jesus comes as a Christmas present,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
If this present was not the gift of world peace, what was it?
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and he will be called Immanuel
(meaning, God is with us).”
The Christmas gift of Jesus was not world peace, but Immanuel, God with us.
There will never be an end to war in this world. The world will never be at peace until the day that Jesus returns. It is good that the United Nations, of which Noreen was a part, works for world peace. It is good that governments meet to find ways to seek peace. We need to work for world peace but we will never find it. Working for peace makes the world a bit safer but it will never make the world safe.
The Christmas gift of Jesus was not world peace, but Immanuel, God with us.
Some might be disappointed by this Christmas present. It is like a boy opening a present and expecting a bright red fire engine that shoots out water and has a siren on it and a ladder that can be extended to rescue people trapped in tall buildings. But when the package is opened, it is only a piece of paper with a fire engine printed on it.
We tell God what we want for Christmas. We want money to pay bills and to buy a car and to take a vacation. We want health for ourselves and our friends and family. We want good grades. We want to be liked. We want to have friends. We want a husband or wife. We want children. We want a job. We want some nice electronic equipment. We want to travel without having the plane, car, bus or train crash. We want a life that is comfortable and secure.
We tell God in our prayers what it is we want for Christmas, but when the package is opened, all we get is a promise that God will be with us.
It doesn’t seem like much.
It doesn’t seem much to someone lying in a bed and suffering from pain.
“I am with you.”
“Thanks, and while you are here, can you give me something for the pain?”
It doesn’t seem much to someone about to lose their home or car because they cannot make payments.
“I am with you.”
“Thanks, and can you lend me the money I need to pay for the car?”
It doesn’t seem much to someone who has lost a child or spouse.
“I am with you.”
“Thanks, but can you bring back my daughter?”
What did it mean to Noreen that God was with her when she lay in bed suffering? I know she took comfort from her belief that God was with her, but she wanted to die. She wanted this life to end. She couldn’t understand why she continued to live. She was ready to die so why did she linger on week after week, month after month? How did it help her that God was with her when she wanted so much to die and be with him?
The boy who expected a fire engine for Christmas and got only a piece of paper with a fire engine printed on it did not discover until later that the paper was the title for a real fire engine. It took a long time for him to realize the extravagance of that gift.
In the same way, it takes us time to see the extravagance of the gift we are given at Christmas. I am certain that Noreen now appreciates the Christmas gift she was given in a way she never could when she was alive in this world.
Christians have one foot on the earth and the other in heaven. We live a life torn between the two worlds. As much as we talk about this world being temporary and heaven being eternal, we cannot pull ourselves out of this world.
When Noreen lived, she thought about not being able to walk. She mourned the loss of her eyesight and hearing. She summoned up her iron will to resist the pain she experienced.
In this physical world, her pain and loss of her senses was sometimes more real than her hope that she would one day be with Jesus. But through it all, God was present with her. When she was confused and thought her dreams were reality, God was present with her. When she lay in bed, unable to recognize anyone, God was present with her.
But now Noreen has been set free. She has never seen or heard better in her life. And now she sees clearly what we still see as a poor reflection in a mirror. With the clarity of sight that is now hers, she sees clearly how wonderful the gift is that was given to her ten years ago. All the pain and all the anxiety that she endured now seems completely insignificant compared to what she now sees so clearly, that God was with her through it all.
That is also the difficulty for us. We do not appreciate the gift we have been given. We do not know how to appreciate the gift we have been given.
Someone we love suffers and we ask God why he allows such a thing to happen.
We run out of money and ask why this should be happening to us.
We lose the job opportunity we thought was going to be ours and wonder why God is not helping us.
We suffer from depression and wonder why God allows us to muddle on without getting better.
Someone robs our home or robs us in a court of injustice and we wonder why it is that God is not helping us.
There are many people who are bitterly disillusioned with God because he did not deliver on promises. But they judge God on the basis of promises he never made. God never promised we would have an easy life. God never promised we would life a life where justice prevailed. God never promised we would escape heartache.
We think God promises us many things, but he really has promised us only two things. He will be Immanuel, God with us in this life and when we die, he will take us to be with him for eternity. Beyond those promises exists only what we make up in our heads.
The creator of the world who is all powerful, all knowing and all loving promises to be with us. Jesus who defeated death and rose to life and who will come again told his followers,
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
That is the gift of Christmas and you have never been offered a more precious, valuable gift in your life.
So what will you do with this gift?
Who do you think in the Christmas story understood the significance of the gift God gave of Immanuel, Jesus, God in the flesh?
The shepherds? Wise men? Herod? The innkeeper? Simeon and Anna? Mary and Joseph?
The innkeeper was too busy and missed the gift that could have been his. He had a million things to take care of and had no time to see a baby born in a stable.
The Wise Men came a long way bringing gifts and worshiped, but what did they take back with them? They wondered about what they had seen, but did that experience change their lives? Did it stay with them?
Herod was too threatened to see that a gift was offered. He saw a threat to the way he wanted to live his life and set out to exterminate the gift of Jesus at Christmas.
The shepherds went back rejoicing because what the angels told them they would find was exactly what they found. But what happened over the course of the year and the next year and the next ten and twenty years. When Jesus began his public ministry, were any of them among those who came to see Jesus? There is no record of that in Scripture and you would think if one of the followers of Jesus had been a shepherd who had witnessed the angelic announcement, that would have been recorded.
Anna and Simeon had prophetic utterances, but they were both quite old and presumably died within the next few years.
I wish there was more about Joseph. I would like to know what he thought and how he viewed Jesus as he grew up.
But Luke tells us how Mary reacted.
Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
I don’t think anyone could have been expected to do more than this at the birth of Jesus. A baby in a stable the King of kings and Lord of lords? That is really hard to believe.
This is why I like Mary’s response. Luke does not tell us she believed. He tells us she treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. “What does it all mean?”
The truth is that it is still difficult to believe that a baby in a manger or a man walking dusty roads getting hungry and thirsty, having to stop to go to the bathroom once in awhile, getting tired and needing to sleep, could be the King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is not easy to believe and so we believe, as did the father of the epileptic, “help us in our unbelief.”
We do well to treasure these things and ponder them in our hearts. We do well to reflect on what the mystery of Jesus being born means. It is not enough to simply accept as true what we were taught as children, we need to think, reflect and ponder.
Jesus said in John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
The gift of Christmas is Immanuel, God with us, and when we open this gift, we receive the peace Christ offers us.
This is not world peace, but it is peace of a much deeper kind. It is a peace that allows us to carry a candle safely through a storm. It is a peace that moves through wars and conflict and knows that it is OK because God is with me.
We are about to enter into 2007. A new year is coming and what will happen in this next year? We don’t know. I was sitting in Azrou having supper with a friend when I received a phone call telling me my mother had died. I was sitting at home when our daughter, Caitlin, called to say she was pregnant.
There will be good news and bad news in this coming year. This could be the best year of your life or the worst. You don’t know. Life is not predictable. Life does not offer you a money back guarantee.
Does this make you nervous? Then open your Christmas present. The gift of Jesus is a gift that will never leave you or forsake you. The gift of Jesus will allow you to sing in the midst of a storm.
At Noreen’s funeral, we stood by her grave as her casket was lowered into the ground. People threw flowers on her casket and then as we stood there watching, the grave diggers began to shovel dirt onto her coffin. We watched and heard the dirt hit the wood of the coffin. The coffin began to disappear. A man began to weep and then a woman began to sing one of the songs Noreen had requested to have sung at her funeral.
You shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace
The mountains and the hills will break forth before you.
There’ll be shouts of joy and all the trees of the field
Will clap, will clap their hands.
The peace of Christ allowed us to sing with hope the joy that we knew was Noreen’s.
Learn from the lesson of the grave. One day, sooner or later, we will also be in the position of Noreen. We will be lowered into the earth and the people standing by will hear the dirt hitting the coffin as it gets buried.
Your body will one day be returned to the earth and where will you be then?
Immanuel, God with us. This is your Christmas present. Open this present. Take the salvation Jesus offers you and embrace it. Treasure it and ponder what it means in your heart.
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Isaiah 9:6-7
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
