Sermons

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Fourth Sunday of Advent December 21 , 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
“Images from Isaiah” series
Isaiah 7:10-14

I love Christmas stories. I have a number of books chock full of them, and usually pick up another one each year. Some stories I have to read every year or my season is not complete. I brought snatches from a couple with me this morning. The first one is from the end of a book you'll easily recognize:

(Scrooge) had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before (soliciting money for the poor, he had been coldly and cruelly turned down by Scrooge) It sent a pang across Scrooge's heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"

"Mr. Scrooge?"

"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness" -- here Scrooge whispered in his ear.

"Lord bless me" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were gone. "My dear Mr.Scrooge, are you serious?"

"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you."

The passage comes, of course, from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. My season wouldn't be complete without reading it again, or hearing George C. Scott's gravely voice in the movie at least once:

"Mr. Cratchit!"

Scrooge is transformed from a hoarder into a giver, and it's a remarkable transformation.

Or perhaps your mind moves to O Henry's The Gift of the Magi, and the poor young couple wanting to love each other by the giving of gifts. The young woman Della cuts her long, beautiful hair to sell it to have money to buy a watch chain for her husband Jim…and simultaneously, Jim is selling the watch to buy a set of combs for Della's long, beautiful hair. And O Henry writes at the end of the story:

"…let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest."

We know the stories, we read them and watch them, and they convince that once again we need to learn more deeply the lessons of giving. After all…that's what Christmas is all about, isn't it? Giving?

And we have the Bible to back us up:

"God loves a cheerful giver."
"It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Jesus).

And of course, the three wisemen who started it all by giving the costly gifts to Jesus.

I'm going to be honest with you. I love to give. But if I'm honest, I also must admit that often I love to be in a position to give. Giving is infinitely easier than receiving. Most of my life, I have been in a position to be a giver. I have had the money, the time, the resources, the self-sufficiency, the ability or whatever…to give. It is a great joy.

But it is also worthy of reexamining from time to time. Because always being on the giving end means facing at least three temptations:

• to give with strings attached,
• to give only in reciprocal relationships and
• to become a little arrogant about your own generosity.

When you receive, without the ability or thought of giving back…it is much harder. Giving is the easy part.

I am reminded of this rather frequently by God. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine ended up in the hospital. He's a man who has faced a lot of difficulty in his life, and has no family. He called me on a Friday afternoon to tell me that he was in the hospital. We chatted a bit, and I told him I would be up to see him, but not until Sunday. I asked if I could pray for him over the phone, and he was eager for that, so I prayed for him.

Having given what I could, I started to say goodbye. He said, "Dan, could I give you a blessing?" I was a little taken back. I was being moved from giver to receiver. Not knowing what to expect, I said "Yes." Here is what came through the phone:

"May the Love of God flow from your life and to your life always,
May your children smile on you,
May your days on the earth be remembered as good seed, well-planted, that brought forth much fruit."

Is it all about giving? I want to say it's not. It's about receiving. It's nearly Christmas now. And we've been preparing and singing and hearing the story of the first Christmas, before the three wisemen with gifts ever hit the scene.

It took a Jewish rabbi, Michael Goldberg, to remind me this week that the impressive thing about the gospel accounts of the nativity is "how utterly passive the actors were."

God had seen the gaping hole in people. God had seen the inability to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. God had seen the failure of people to come back to himself. And so God did something which many would not receive: he gave himself. In absolute love, and total forgiveness.

And the people that "got it," the people that "get it today," are those who for one reason or another, are able to receive a gift which they could no more reciprocate than they could jump off a roof and fly. The Bible calls this gift grace. John Wesley rightly said long ago that "Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace." All one can do with grace…is receive it. Or not.

In the text from Isaiah, you may remember that King Ahaz was facing a number of difficult choices in choosing between an unhealthy alliance, being overrun by the alliance partners if he refused to join, or putting himself at the mercy of the superpower Assyria. And the prophet Isaiah was speaking over and over to him God's word:

"Don't do these things. Quit looking to Assyria to be your savior, and look to God. Put your trust in God, not in alliances, politics or armies."

God says that, in fact, he will give to Ahaz a sign, any sign: "Choose your sign!" God says to Ahaz, "just ask." Literally, the words say, "Go deep in asking, and I will move heaven and earth to show you that you can trust me." Ahaz refuses. But God won't be ignored, and so He chooses the sign Himself:

"Behold, the young woman (many translations say "virgin") is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel."

So here, in the midst of armies and alliances, plotting and politics, divine intervention and difficult decisions, is yet another of Isaiah's powerful images: a baby. A simple baby.

William Willimon, the Dean of the Chapel at Duke Divinity School, says that at this point Ahaz must have taken a deep sigh. What he needed, with enemies on every side, was a good army…not a baby. What was a baby, after all? Helpless, dependent, trusting. Ahaz could not realize that this was God's gift, the sign of his presence. Willimon continues:

"This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn't need, which transform us into people we don't necessarily want to be."

We've talked for several weeks now about how the prophecies of Isaiah so often have both a present and a future meaning. In Isaiah's day, this passage may have referred to a future king (though scholars can't agree on which one). But by the time of the New Testament, the gospel writer Matthew clearly applies these words to Jesus Christ.

The angel who spoke to Joseph in a dream said that Mary "will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins…" All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet (this prophet, Isaiah, and this passage): "Look the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God with us."

Ahaz did not welcome the sign in his day. Many in Jesus' day did not welcome him. And many in our day still do not. That does not change the gift in the slightest. Ultimately, you see, the gift of God comes to us as sheer grace in Jesus Christ. We either receive it, or we don't.

And here at Christmas, it strikes me that we must again stare at this gift. And we must decide if we are weak enough, dependent enough, needy enough to receive God's gift of love in Jesus.

I want to give you an invitation. Sometime in this handful of nights between now and Christmas, go take a walk, or go to a quiet place looking out over the city or the water. Breath in a little December air, see if you can see some stars in the sky, watch a lit up ferry go across the bay. And come before God, just you and Him. And acknowledge, whether for the first time or the 1,000th time…that he is the giver. And we are the receivers. There won't be anything else to do…except perhaps, to say "Thank you."

"And you shall call his name Immanuel, which means, God with us."

"And the word became flesh and dwelt among us."