Good News of Great Joy
Luke 2:8-20
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
December 24, 2008

Are you ready?  Are all of the presents wrapped, or do you still have to sneak in some wrapping tonight?  I’m done.   (I have to admit that Charlotte does 99% of it.)  In previous churches, we had families who opened their presents and really celebrated family Christmas on Christmas Eve.  Do any of you do that?  We are getting together with the children and grandchildren, and then with my brothers and their families.  Music. Candlelight services.  Decorated trees.  Lights. Those are some of what I associate with Christmas.   What to you think of when you hear the word Christmas?

I invite you to sit back in the pews.  Now, everyone take a slow deep breath.  Take another.  Relax the muscles. Turn off the hurricane in your mind.  Let’s reflect about living and the birth of Jesus.

“What does Christmas mean to you?” 

You get to see the family.  You are home from your new world, and get to see old friends.  You love the parties, and the food.  You drive around on a clear night, as Charlotte and I did on Monday, to see the decorated houses.  You get to shop, and bake, and open presents.  Christmas is happy days.

Or, are you anxious over Christmas and New Year’s Day – just want them to be over?  Why?  Because you dread the confrontations at the family get-togethers, you dread the empty chair at the dining table, you dread the loneliness.

Or, another possibility, are you relieved by the Christmas dash?  All the parties, bright lights and extra activities distract from inner meaninglessness.  You love the added parties, the shopping, the decorating, the energy, having a purpose.  January and February, those you dread -- when your thoughts will torment you. 

What does Christmas mean?

It is God’s message of Good News intended to bring us joy!

In Christmas God addresses two common needs: the need to be loved and the need to feel worthwhile. 

Several years ago, I had a surprising and strange sensation.  It was during a rough period of ministry.  There was a group in the congregation who wanted me out.  I was in my latter fifties and churches do not call senior pastors that close to retirement.  I was stressed and feeling pretty worthless.  Charlotte had an aunt and uncle who lived near Albany, NY, who took us to the New York State Museum.  There, I stood in front of the elephant-sized stuffed mastodon and read the sign about its existence millions of years ago. A weird sensation made me shudder.  Surprised me.  Creation is huge!  Time is incomprehensibly long!  Why did I react?  Peculiar.  Had to think about it.  It was because I sensed that you needed an electron microscope to see me!  It felt as if I screamed to no one, “I am not trivial!  Care that I am!”   

How do you attempt to compensate for your insignificance, your mortality, your inner vacuum?  We do, you know.  All of us need to feel loved and worthwhile. 

When the elders of this church asked me to come out of retirement to serve you and the Lord as temporary pastor, the timing was right.  I had done most of what I needed to do in the new house.  Life had settled into a routine.  And, I was asking, “Now what?”  I was having the first feelings of being useless, and therefore somewhat worthless, a feeling common to retirees, to empty nesters, to the unemployed or under-employed, to people caught in hopeless situations.  My father-in-law comes to mind.  He was an energetic and very social man.  He retired to take care of his dying wife.  After she died, he was lost.  I recall him saying more than once, “I am like an old horse put out to pasture, useless.”  So, what did he do?  He volunteered thousands of hours at the hospital that had cared for his wife.  He found another job.  He joined two choirs.  He became church treasurer.  He danced three evenings a week.  Much social life, volunteer work, and even careers are driven by the need to be loved and to feel worthwhile.  It can be a powerful positive force.  And, yet underneath, when the night is quiet and the soul speaks, we ask, “Is this all that there is?  Do I really matter?” 

Or, we may avoid the discomfort of the question by hiding in whiskey, cocaine, or marijuana, by being couch-potatoes in front of the TV, or chasing promiscuous relationships.  Why not?  It helps to stuff the haunting question, “Do I really matter?”  Jesus quoted a rich farmer in one of his parables, who said, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”  But, does it really work?  Jesus said that was a dead-end approach.  Jesus called that man a fool, because that night his life would be demanded, and then what good would his property be. 

The need to be loved and feel worthwhile drives us to positive and destructive behaviors.  God knows us.  God understands.  Therefore, Christmas!  In the Christmas message God addresses the need to be loved and to feel worthwhile.  God has news for us.  Good News!       

The angel sang it:
Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

A favorite story of Paul Harvey goes this way:
A man was sitting in his easy chair one Christmas Eve, the snow falling heavily and his wife and family gone off to church.  He heard a noise at the front window; when he checked it out he saw sparrows huddled on the window sill.  The bush where they had been sleeping had broken under the weight of the snow.

Feeling sorry for the birds, he opened his garage door so they might find shelter.  But they didn’t move.  So he tried the Hansel-Gretel trick, a path of bread crumbs into the garage.  It didn’t work.  Then he got a broom to chase them into the lighted garage but they scattered into the dark.  He thought, “If only I could talk to them, tell them I want to help, want to save them from the cold.”  He realized he couldn’t unless he became one of them.

Suddenly the church bells rang and he realized it was Christmas.  It came to him that this was what Christmas was all about.  He knelt in the snow and prayed, “Thank you God for becoming one of us.”   (F.A. Lawrence in The Presbyterian Layman, N/D 1987.)
God cares for us!  Why else would God come to be one of us?  Think about it.

If you are feeling unloved and worthless, look at Jesus! 

He was born in the stable.  (The details of the birth of Jesus are not accidental.  God chose the persons and the setting deliberately.  They are the communication medium.  Much of the Christmas message is in the drama.) There was no room for the mother who was ordered to travel five-days walk by a foreign power when she was nine-months pregnant.  He had a stable for his delivery room.  He had a jackass’ feed trough for his crib, dirty hay for his mattress, and the odor of manure for his first scent.  Strip away all the romance of modern nativity scenes and think of what was.  You don’t get any lower!

Had the incarnation, God become human, taken place in the White House, or in a Fifth Avenue penthouse, or a Beverly Hills mansion, the message would be that God loves the same people whom the world loves: the rich, the powerful, the beautiful, the athletic, the successful.  And, the vast majority of us would not celebrate Christmas!  Why would we? There would be no good news in Christmas for us.  The people who already have it would be getting more! 

Thank God for Christmas!  Through Jesus’ birth, God shouts to all, “I love you, whoever you are!  Be you shepherds having to work nights to protect your sheep, be you wise men of means and education, be you born in the ghetto or a mansion, be you the user of the VIP lounge in airports or the user of food stamps, I know you.  I love you!  You are my family.”

Through Jesus, God shouts: “Life is more than the world of your personal stables.  Your worth ultimately is not limited to earth, not in whether you become stars, win the lotto, are beautiful, or rich, or successful. You don’t even have to have a tombstone.  Your life, and with it your ultimate significance, is located in me, God.”

In God, you and I enjoy being loved and worthwhile, and they extend into our eternal destiny.

This is Good News of great joy!  It makes us glow.

There is a legend concerning a worm.  This tiny creature – so the story goes – was present at the birth of Jesus.  It saw the star in the sky.  It saw the shepherds who adored the Christ Child.  It saw the Magi who came with their magnificent gifts.  The worm wondered if it, too, might go to the manger and perhaps even bring a gift.

At that time the little worm was a very ordinary insect.  Yet it felt the glory and thrill of Jesus’ birth.  So it uncovered a seed of grain that it had hidden against a bad day.  This was its treasure.  The little creature would give it to the Christ Child.  Laboriously the worm made its way, pushing, carrying, pulling, and dragging the grain.  At last the worm arrived at the manger where the Babe lay.  The worm was so small that the human eye could hardly see it.  But baby Jesus saw it; and, as the worm made one supreme effort and pushed its treasure into His infant hand, a loving smile appeared upon the Baby’s face.  The tiny hand reached out and touched the little creature.  Immediately the worm began to glow.  It became the glowworm.

It glowed because it knew that it had been touched by love.  We glow when we know that we are loved.  We glow when we know that we will be welcomed by Jesus into the eternal kingdom where time does not limit us, where the sin of this world does not tempt us, where the evil of this world does not inflict pain, where we join with the saints in singing praise to God, where Jesus is our advocate and friend, where we will be whole.

What does Christmas mean?  God loves us!  That’s Good News!  Start there.  Stay with that message!  Never forget it!  Be joyful!  Glow!  And, thank and praise God!

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