First Reading: Isaiah 52:7-10 7How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” 8The voice of your watchmen — they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion. 9Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem. 10The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Psalm 2 1Why are the nations in an uproar? Why do the peoples mutter empty threats? 2Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt, and the princes plot together, against the Lord and against his Anointed? 3“Let us break their yoke,” they say; “let us cast off their bonds from us.” 4He whose throne is in heaven is laughing; the Lord has them in derision. 5Then he speaks to them in his wrath, and his rage fills them with terror. 6“I myself have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” 7Let me announce the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son; this day have I begotten you. 8Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. 9You shall crush them with an iron rod and shatter them like a piece of pottery.” 10And now, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. 11Submit to the Lord with fear, and with trembling bow before him; 12Lest he be angry and you perish; for his wrath is quickly kindled. 13 Happy are they all who take refuge in him!
Second Reading: Hebrews 1:1-12 1Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. 5For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? 6And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.” 7Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.” 8But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. 9You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” 10And, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; 11they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, 12like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.”
Gospel: John 1:1-18 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. 9The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15(John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
No Time for a Sermon
First let me begin by once again saying, Merry Christmas! Unless you go to the sermons tab on the Church’s webpage, you probably don’t know that each sermon I prepare has a title. I’m not normally one to worry about a title, but it does make cataloging them easier, so I chose this one based on another sermon of the same title. As I was preparing for today, I read an old sermon with the title “Christmas Day is no Time for a Sermon.” So, what do you think?
Now to be clear, it’s not that there’s no time for a sermon because of all the wonderful music Diane has added to the service, nor do I believe that there’s no time for a sermon because it took too long to seat the “Christmas crowd.” It isn’t because the critters in neighbor’s pasture got loose and started eating our Christmas decorations, nor was the snow so deep that we couldn’t get here. The reason I say that, on this Sunday, there’s “no time for a sermon” is because on Christmas Day, there’s only time for one thing, as Mary Oliver in her poem “Praying” says, it’s time for “a silence in which another voice may speak.” Today is the time for us to feel the gift of Christmas, from the top of our heads to the tip of our toes, not simply “hear” about it with our ears.
The true meaning of Christmas is something that sneaks up on us at unexpected moments. It may come in the wee hours of the morning after having spent a long night wrapping presents. It may come while we’re waiting for a traffic light and listening to “canned“ Christmas music and watching our fellow commuters who are wearing way too much red and green. It may come when our child, or grandchild, or a neighborhood kid, suddenly offers a small gift and a spontaneous hug, instead of a hurried “hi” and scurrying away.
Until we experience our “Christmas moment,” the secular holiday has been our focus, and we’ve been consumed with “to-do” lists, shopping, shipping times, stress tests, concerns over credit limits, and on-line access. Until that “Christmas moment” happens, we’ve been concerned with the news accounts of sad people who are trying to cancel Christmas, about skyrocketing retail prices, political wrangling, and if traveling, whether the weather will spoil all our plans or not. Until we experience a true “Christmas moment,” Christmas will always be crazy and chaotic. But my hope is, that the “Christmas moment” does happen for each of us. And “the hopes and fears of all the years are met” in that moment in each of us.
In today’s Hebrews’ text, the author describes the cosmic significance of “the Son,” Jesus, the Son of God. “The Son” who is described in this morning’s epistle reading so is much more than an angel, so much more than a prophet, so much more than a superhero, so much more than a national redeemer. This “Son”, God’s only Son, is the very essence, the very image, of God the Father. This Son was there at the onset of creation, and as our gospel reading from St. John’s gospel tells us, “all things were made through him” and is the same Son who is with us, personally, each moment of every day.
Because in Jesus, all things are held together (Colossians 1:17), He can easily move from the manger to the marketplace, from Bethlehem to the breakfast table. Jesus, the “Son” who was present at creation and is present always and everywhere, was born in a stable and yet He is always and eternally present with His people everywhere. When there’s “no time for a sermon” there is time for His presence. Christmas wakes us up and makes us take responsibility for the gift we’ve been given. The question we must ask ourselves is, are we opening ourselves up to the presence of God, allowing Him to enter once and for all into our lives? What we find is, when we open ourselves up fully to God’s presence in our lives, there’s suddenly no room for anything else. What we find is that God supplies all our needs, so there’s no need for other distractions.
On the night before Christmas, theologian Karl Rahner hears God whispering to us: ‘When you celebrate tomorrow say to me, “You are here. You have come. You have come into everything that exists, into everything that we are.” That’s the message of the Hebrews writer this morning. We need say only that one thing. Immanuel, God with us. When we say this one word, we can then sing the carols, light the candles, and celebrate the fact that Jesus has come among us. He in whom all things hold together, has come to reconcile all things to the Father and to be with us. All we have to do is welcome Him, believe in Him, and obey. That’s it. That’s why there is “No Time for a Sermon.”
“No Time for A Sermon” is the title of a sermon I read that was first delivered more than fifty years ago at Williamsville United Methodist Church in Buffalo, New York. The person who delivered that sermon did so every year for the course of his ministry in Buffalo; his name was Luther Ridgeway. To no surprise, Luther had the sermon memorized. And I’d like to share that same sermon with you today.
“The Bishop has issued no edict of prohibition, the General Conference has taken no official position, the District Superintendent has issued no directives, the Administrative Board has not met to consider the issue, the Choir has not threatened to strike, the staff is not in rebellion, no irate parishioner has threatened to leave, no mistake, typographical or otherwise, has been made in the bulletin, and to the best of my knowledge at this point in time, no demonic force has contrived with the mimeograph to produce the topic, “No Time For A Sermon.”
It is not that Daylight Savings Time has come early, taking with it our hour together, nor that the other elements of worship have taken all the time there is, nor that we began late, nor that the preacher overslept, nor even that the offering was so great that the ushers required an additional twenty minutes to gather it. It is none of these, yet the topic remains in all its validity, “No Time for a Sermon.”
There is a moment that comes, just before Christmas, a moment when we find ourselves at “the still point of a turning world.” It may come in the wee hours of the morning after having spent a long night wrapping presents, or while we are waiting to catch the bus, or at that most precious time of all when we recognize that the wonder of the day can only be seen in the eyes of a child.
Until the [Christmas] moment comes, we have been too busy giving out and taking in, worried that we may not have remembered everyone who gave us a gift or sent us a card last year, wondering if Aunt Matilda might not think the color of the sweater we sent a bit too old for her when we know, full well, that it is altogether too gay for her advanced years. Until that moment comes, we have been concerned with fuel shortages and high prices, wondering if we had enough gasoline to get home for the holiday or if the weather would turn freakish and spoil the whole season. Until then we are about ready to conclude that Christmas may be a tiger we caught by the tail, or a revolving mirror that won’t stop long enough for us to get out.
And then it happens, the moment of tranquility comes, always when we least expect it. Suddenly we know what Christmas is all about and why we cannot do without it and why we would invent it if it did not exist. Sometimes it comes at a moment when the postman brings us word from a person or incident in the almost forgotten past, or when we begin to think of other Christmases in other places. An open invitation to its coming is when a child cuddles close and warm in the evening. And, with the moment comes the realization that fossil fuel is not the only item in short supply on the American scene.
It is in this moment that the bells ring loud and clear in our hearts that Christmas is people needing people, people condemned to love and be loved, people under compulsion to speak of their love, however brokenly, however hurriedly, in whatever form or pattern may come to hand. Those who have witnessed this moment, even in a dimly remembered past, will attest to the position here taken, that of all the responses contrived in the human mind for other occasions that this is no time for a sermon.
For a sermon, you see, is meant to inspire, to challenge or to comfort. It is meant to admonish or to instruct. And Christmas is none of these, but rather a feeling deep down in the uncharted regions of the human soul, a place taboo in our sophisticated scholarly surroundings. Yet, wise men and simple shepherds alike responded to the call to the first Christmas. They heard the announcement flung out to the far corners of the earth “GOD is with us. God IS with us. God is with US” . . . upon whatever word the emphasis was placed the proclamation was clear, for when God is with us, nothing else matters.
If the time ever comes when we take seriously these words echoing from the ancient Judean hills, then we will have heard our last sermon and preachers join the ranks of the unemployed, followed quickly into extinction by soldiers and missile experts, newsmen and broadcasters, politicians, and insurance salesmen. For if we took the good news of the incarnation into the many worlds that we inhabit, we would so free the human spirit that at long last man could become the only thing he ever was or was ever meant to be, a child of God.
In the meantime, the world is waiting for us with its balance sheets of inventories and back orders, of debts and credits, of cops and robbers, of paycheck and time payments, of marked time and deadlines. Yes, the world is waiting. And I say, let it wait!” We need to all thank Pastor Luther Ridgeway, for this reminder that Christmas is indeed “No Time for a Sermon.” It’s a time to do more than simply hear the story yet again, it’s a time to feel and experience the presence of Immanuel, God with us.
Today is the time for us to feel the gift of Christmas from the top of our heads to the tip of our toes, not simply let the story flow in one ear and out the other. Christmas is a time to welcome our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into our homes and into our lives. So, I encourage you to sing the carols with joy and share with all you know the words of our hymnist, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing, let heaven and nature sing, let heaven and heaven and nature sing. May God enrich you with His presence as you welcome Him into your hearts and homes this season as we celebrate the Nativity of our Lord.
Merry Christmas!