Love Came Down

This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, December 24, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS.  Listen to the audio here.

Read Luke 2:1-20 here.

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How many of you love Christmas carols?

I want to share with you my favorite carol:

I want to know what love is.  I want you to show me.

Poignant words from the ‘80s from the band Foreigner.

What is love?  How do I show you?

Love is our Advent theme today.  Love is the major theme of the Bible.  God is love (1 John 4:8).  Which is easy to talk about, but how do we show what love is?

This time of year the most obvious answer is to give you something, a gift for Christmas.  Many of us have spent a lot of time and money over the past few weeks making sure we have gifts for everybody on our list.

Even if we haven’t been hanging around church much, we’ve also probably heard the Christmas story from Luke that Gordon just read for us.  If you watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” you heard it there from Linus.  Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem and while they’re there, Mary gives birth.  Angels appear to some shepherds.  The shepherds go to see the baby.

It’s really easy for the shopping and wrapping and gift-giving to feel totally disconnected from that 2000-year-old story. 

The most obvious connection is that God showed us his love for us by sending us his son.  That baby born in Bethlehem - God’s greatest gift to us, and so we give gifts to one another.  Sometimes I think we get caught up in trying to match God’s gift.  We try to be the greatest gift givers.

If we can’t do quality, we try to make up for it with quantity.  The more there is to open, the more people will know we love them, right? …which if we’re doing it to show our love is wonderful, but we have to make sure we don’t have other motivations, because without love our actions fall flat (1 Cor 13).

The thing is, we can’t out give God.  No gift is ever going to be as big as the one God gave us. 

 There are other gifts of love being given in Luke’s story.  It’s a story that covers a lot of ground. Throughout Advent we focus on different parts of it.  We talk about Joseph’s willingness to disregard Jewish law and tradition to take Mary as his wife, even though she was pregnant, even though he hadn’t played a part in the pregnancy.  We talk about Mary’s willingness to be the mother of God.  This week, though, I’m fascinated by those shepherds.

Maybe we can all relate to them.  They’re just average workers, out-standing in their field, minding their own business, or rather, minding their sheep. 

Really, although we tend to treat the shepherds as bit players in this story, Luke gives them more space in the birth story than Mary or Joseph.  Maybe that’s because throughout the Bible, shepherds are the main characters.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were shepherds. Moses was a shepherd, and King David, the most revered of all the kings and the ancestor of Jesus, was a shepherd.  In the psalms, we are reminded that God himself is our shepherd.  In Ezekiel, God gets angry with those who are supposed to be shepherding the people of Israel, but instead are only looking out for themselves, and says that he will be our good shepherd.

So here in Luke we see that shepherds again play an important part in the story.  They are the first to receive the good news.  They immediately respond and go and see.  And they don’t keep the good news to themselves.  They go and tell.  They share.  They are good shepherds. 

We sometimes think of shepherds as being somewhat similar to today’s homeless people.  In reality, shepherds were highly regarded.  The Jewish philosopher Philo who lived in Jesus’ time wrote:

Indeed so good a thing is shepherding that it is justly ascribed not to kings only and wise men and perfectly cleansed souls, but also to God the All Sovereign. The authority for this ascription is not any ordinary one but a prophet, whom we do well to trust. This is the way in which the Psalmist speaks: ‘The Lord shepherds me and nothing shall be lacking to me’ (Ps 23.1).[1]

The Lord IS our good shepherd.  And the presence of shepherds in the Christmas story reminds us that this baby that the shepherds are telling about would grow up to one day tell us, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11,14).

We live in a world that needs to know love.  The words of the Foreigner song could be the words of anyone.  “I want to know what love is.  I want you to show me.”

The shepherds in this story help us see how to show love.

1.     Love shares the good news.

The angels tell the shepherds about the baby, the messiah, born in Bethlehem.  And then they go back to tending their sheep.  NO!  They go running off to see for themselves.  And then they go back to tending their sheep.  NO!  They DON’T!  They go tell more people about it.  They don’t keep it to themselves.  They share this amazing news.  THAT is showing love.

They saw and then told.  This news was too good to keep to themselves. The savior of the world was born that night.  Why wouldn’t they tell everyone they could find about the one who’d come to save us all.

Jesus said in John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And before he ascended to heaven, Jesus told us to go and make disciples.  Love tells the story of the one who came to save us all.  The shepherds show us that love shares the good news.

Shepherds are kind of passé for us in the church….sort of a that-was-then-but-what-about-now kind of thing, but I follow a shepherd on twitter.  He’s quite popular, actually.  He has something like 15,000 followers.  One of his recent tweets pointed out to me that it’s still important to go out and tell.  The Herdwick shepherd posted a picture of sheep that he was shipping to Belgium.

Notice what he says about why he is shipping them there.  “Important for the breed to have wider geography.”  These sheep were a breed that was brought to England by the Vikings.  They are herdwicks.  To keep the breed going they have to share them.  Just like we have to share the good news about Jesus to keep our faith going.  God showed his love to us and we show love by sharing it.  Love tells the story.

The shepherds show us how to love in another way.

2.     Love pursues us.

Good shepherds go after their lost sheep.  Psalm 23 spells it out for us.

Goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life. Psalm 23:6 CEB

In fact, God’s pursuit of us is shown by the birth of Jesus:

God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Love pursues us.

3.     Love sacrifices for us

Again the shepherds are the example.  Jesus tells us in John 10:11

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus laid down his life for us, just as a shepherd would to protect the sheep.

Giving your life for someone is huge.  It’s an amazing way to show what love is.  Really, though, we can do this every day even in small ways by the ways we put others before ourselves. 

One Christmas there was a mother who did this.  Her daughter was eleven and the daughter was obsessed with getting presents at Christmas.  When she thought no one was looking, she checked the tags on every single present under the tree to see which ones were for her.  When it came time to open presents, the mother said apologetically, “We’ve had a tough year.  There aren’t as many presents this year.”  Her daughter already knew that from checking the tags and counting.  So she knew when her mother handed her a present that wasn’t hers.  She hadn’t seen her mother that morning taking the tag off and quickly putting on a new tag with the daughter’s name.  The daughter looked to the mother quizzically.  Her mother nodded.  “Go on.  Open it.”  Inside the package was a blow dryer.  It wasn’t a big present to most people, but the daughter knew her mother needed one, and the daughter knew that her mother was giving this one up for her….a seemingly small sacrifice, but to an 11-year-old who was entirely focused on receiving, it was incredible that someone would give up their only gift for her.  Years later as an adult looking back, this was the gift she most remembered. Her mom’s simple act meant the world to her.^[2]

Kids learn how to show love from watching how we show love to them.  And kids can surprise us with their ability to learn to show sacrificial love.

There was a dad who had been trying to teach his kids about love in action.  One day he took his 8-year-old daughter Helen and 5-year-old son Brandon to the mall.  When they first arrived, the kids saw the petting zoo that had been set up especially for the holidays and got excited. “Can we go in, daddy?  Can we?”  So the dad gave them each a quarter, and seeing the opportunity for some quick shopping alone, went into the store nearest the petting zoo.  Not long after he got inside, he turned around to find Helen following him.  “Why aren’t you at the petting zoo?” he asked.

She looked up at him with big, clear brown eyes and said sadly, "Well, daddy, it cost fifty cents. So, I gave Brandon my quarter."  No one loves cuddly, furry animals more than Helen, but she had given that up so her brother could go in.

The man finished his shopping, and then he and Helen went back to the petting zoo. They stood by the fence and watched Brandon go crazy petting and feeding the animals. Helen stood with her hands and chin resting on the fence and just watched Brandon. The dad had fifty cents burning a hole in his pocket; but he never offered it to Helen, and she never asked for it. Helen gave her quarter to Brandon and wanted to follow through with her lesson, seeing her love in action.[3]

How do we know what love is?  We see it in all the big and small ways that people are willing to sacrifice for others.  This ability to sacrifice comes from God’s love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

We have the Holy Spirit through our faith in Jesus Christ, that baby given to us out of love for us, that baby who grew up to be our savior, willing to give his life so that we could be forgiven of our sins and have peace with God through him.

How do we know what love is?

As I was pondering this question, a picture came to mind of a beat up old van sitting in the middle of an empty church parking lot just as the sun was coming up in the morning.  This is the picture that greeted my husband Rob and I on many Sunday mornings as we arrived at church.  Inside the van was a man who earned a meager living playing drums at night at clubs in downtown Los Angeles.  He also played drums for our worship services.  He would finish playing at the clubs sometimes as late as three or four in the morning, and then drive to our church and sleep in our parking lot so that he wouldn’t miss being there to play for worship.

This is love…

…not only that God loves us so much that he sent us his son Jesus,

…not only that Jesus loves us so much he gave his life for us,

…but also that we would return that love to him,

   sharing the love that he put in our hearts through our willingness to sacrifice

… for him.

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[1] Harris, Sarah. 2012. "Why are there shepherds in the Lukan birth narrative?." Colloquium 44, no. 1: 17-30. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 23, 2017)

[2] Adapted from Jennifer Yardley Barney, ‘Tis Better to Give https://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/christmas-stories-wonder-love/

[3] Adapted from Dave Simmons http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/l/love.htm

Something There Is That Doesn’t Love A Wall

What do you get when you cross an English major with a pastor?  Someone who reads the Bible and sees parallels to literature.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall[1].

This is the first line of a poem called Mending Wall by Robert Frost, the poet who’s probably best known for his poem The Road Less Traveled.[2]  In the poem about the wall, a man and his neighbor meet at the wall between their properties, as they do each spring, to repair the gaps that have opened up during the winter, replace stones that have fallen out, and maintain the barrier that they have built between them.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.  In this poem, that “something” is portrayed as the forces of nature, but to me it is actually someone who doesn’t love walls.  God doesn’t love walls.  Walls keep us from each other, and from God.

Something else God doesn’t want are people getting in the way of people seeking God.  Throughout the Bible those people are being challenged.  Some of those people had been appointed to lead people to God and weren’t doing their job.  They are often referred to as bad shepherds.

Jesus is the antithesis to walls and bad shepherds.  He says in John 10:9, “I am the door” and in verse 11 “I am the good shepherd.”  And he expands on that by also telling us, “I came that you might have life, a life lived to the fullest” (10:10).

It helps us to understand what Jesus is saying better if we know more about the environment in which he is speaking.  There are two aspects of that situation in Jerusalem at that time that give us a broader picture.  One is that it is Hanukkah, and the other is that Jerusalem in is the middle of a desert.

Hanukkah is the celebration that remembers a time when the Jews were trying to regain control of the temple.  When they finally did, one important task was to relight the flame that was supposed to be burning 24/7 to symbolize the eternal presence of God.  Special oil was required for this sacred flame.  God had given Moses specific instructions for preparing this oil, and the process took seven days.  They could only find one day’s worth of oil that was already prepared, but they lit the flame anyway, and that one day’s oil lasted until the new oil was ready.  A miracle.  That’s why Hanukkah is 8 days long—celebrating how that oil lasted. 

During Hanukkah celebrations in Jesus’ time, one of the scriptures that would have been read was chapter 34 of Ezekiel which chastises bad shepherds.  Bad shepherds had allowed the Jews to fall away from God and lose the temple.  They would have also read God’s promise in Ezekiel 34 that he himself come be the good shepherd.  In Ezekiel 34:16 God says, “I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.”[3]  And in the midst of this Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd,” affirming that he is God and he is the one who God promised.

The other aspect of the situation here is that Jerusalem is in the middle of lots of desert.  Shepherds taking care of flocks of sheep in this region are doing this in a desert.  It’s rough terrain.  There are lots of rocks and cliffs.  It’s hard to find water or grass.  A shepherd would have to keep the sheep from wandering off cliffs, rescue them—maybe using his shepherd’s crook—if they feel into a crevice or off a cliff, and lead them to water and to grass.  Jesus says in the midst of this, “I am the good shepherd.”  I will lead you to what you need.  I will help you find water and the way to life lived well.

Shepherds also had to bring the sheep into enclosed areas to rest.  This might be a pen with a fence, or a ravine with rock walls on three sides.  To get them there the shepherd had to show them the way in, and then sometimes the shepherd would stand or sit or lay across the opening in lieu of a gate, making sure sheep got in, and predators stayed out.[4]  Jesus says, “I am the gate,” or “I am the door.”

So a shepherd, a good shepherd, is a caretaker, making sure sheep have what they need, and making sure they stay together and don’t get lost, and don’t get eaten by predators.  A shepherd is kind of like a mom.

Isaiah 40:11 says that God “tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.”

We may have lots of people in our lives who function like a mom or a shepherd to us, who make sure we have what we need and show us the way.  Parents, teachers, pastors, bosses, mentors, grandparents, other family members, friends, people in our church, neighbors.  In a broader sense our governments are also like shepherds called to promote the general welfare, establish justice and tranquility.  Make sure we can get what we need and are protected from predators.

As you are reading this, you are probably thinking of specific people who fill these roles, and maybe thinking how that person is a good shepherd or maybe how that person is not such a good shepherd.  Or maybe thinking about how we ourselves fill these roles.  Every one of us has been shepherded by someone in some way, and every one of us is a shepherd in some way to someone.

It would be wonderful if all of us and all the people we’re thinking of were all good shepherds.  But the reality is that all of us and all of them fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).  We celebrate about the ways in which we have been shepherded well, and are thankful for the good shepherds in our lives, and thankful for the opportunities to be good shepherds.  At the same time we need to have grace for all the ways in which we fall short, and ask God to help us forgive ourselves and others for all the ways in which we were not good shepherds and forgive all those who were not good shepherds to us.  We’re all human and none of us is perfect.  Even with the best of intentions, we will fall short of the glory of God.

Forgiving ourselves and forgiving others isn’t always easy.  That’s why Jesus said we need to forgive someone 70 x 7 times.(Matt. 18:21-22)  We may have to keep forgiving, and keep asking God to help us forgive….ourselves and others.

Through grace and forgiveness we move forward into the future seeking the better life Jesus offers.  We accept grace and forgiveness, and follow Jesus to a better life, a fuller life, not weighed down by our faults or the faults of others, trusting Jesus to guide us.

The way to a better life is by following Jesus.  He is the door, and the only perfect shepherd.

Something else about doors.  They can be open or shut.  I think sometimes we fall into thinking of Jesus as a door that’s closed.  Keeping out the riffraff, maybe.  But Jesus says in verse 16, “I have other sheep that aren’t among us yet.”  There are more sheep out there.  That’s why he also said, “I came to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10, Matt. 18:11)

A closed door might just as well be a wall.  Nobody can come in if the door is shut.  But we see throughout the gospel stories that Jesus was inviting people in.  He is the OPEN door.  He loves us all so much that he laid down his life in order to be that open door.

The door is open—Jesus is the door—but someday it will shut.  There will be a day when Jesus comes again and the time for going through the door will end.  And there will be no more opportunity to step through ourselves, or to show other people the door.

Maybe going through the door sounds like a bad thing to some—going into an enclosure, a pen, being confined.  Psalm 23 paints a different picture.  On the other side of the door is abundant life with the Good Shepherd who leads us beside still waters, leads us to green pastures, and protects us from our enemies.

The last verse of that psalm says “Surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives.”  That word “follow” doesn’t quite say enough.  A shepherd doesn’t follow, he leads.  And that’s why some translations instead use the word “pursue.”  Surely goodness and mercy will track us down!  Jesus said he came to SEEK the lost.  To find them and not leave them out wandering in the desert all alone.

He is the good shepherd who calls us to enter by the door.  He is the door.

…who calls us to a better life.  He is the way to goodness and mercy.

…who calls us to forgive ourselves and others for falling short

…who calls us to help others find the door, to offer hope, to show the way to that hope.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

…because walls keep people out.  Walls divide us.  Walls keep us from God.

Jesus is the door, the open door, waiting for all to come in.

Walking through the door and being forgiven and forgiving and thankful for all of that are important.  And just the beginning.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Jesus came to break down those walls, but like the men in the poem we can be people who rebuild them.  Who shut doors or just simply fail to open them.

There’ve been some very famous walls in our world.  The walls around the city of Jericho.  The Great Wall of China.  Hadrian’s Wall that divided England and Scotland.  The Berlin Wall.   Most of those wall have come down.  But what continues to divide us are the walls that we can’t see.  The walls of difference and misunderstanding.

You probably know the story of how God helped Joshua and the Israelites break down the wall around the city of Jericho.  There was a Sunday school supervisor who went to visit a classroom and see how things were going, and she asked one of the children, “Who broke the walls of Jericho?”  And one little boy said, “I didn’t do it.”  The supervisor was dismayed that the boy didn’t know about this Bible story that she expected was already being taught in the Sunday school, and so she went to talk to the curriculum committee about it.  Someone on the curriculum committee said, “I know that boy and if he said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it.”  Frustrated with the lack of understanding, now the supervisor went to talk to one of the church elders and tell him what the boy said about the walls of Jericho.  The elder said, “I don’t think you need to worry.  I know this boy’s family and if he said he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it.  Now, let’s work on getting that wall fixed.  I’ll get 3 quotes.”[5]

It can be hard to know where we will find barriers to communication and understanding.  Where we will find walls that need to be broken down.

Even the steps across the middle of the front of the church can be like a wall between the people up above and the people down below.

If we let them, they can be barriers.

Jesus came to be the way through those barriers.  His mission and ours is to make sure the doors are open and the way is clear for each of us, and all of the people we meet outside the doors, to know God and know the hopeful, merciful, goodness of God’s love and grace.  To seek the lost sheep and show them the way.  To tell about God’s great love for all of us that came to earth in Jesus Christ.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. 

Jesus invites us all to come in.

May you have the courage to step through the door to accept your forgiveness and grace and mercy, to forgive others as we have been forgiven, and to show others the way to abundant life lived with you.  May God help you to see where there are walls and barriers that need to come down and to have God’s eyes, to see the people around us the way he sees them, as people for whom his son laid down his life, as people God loves and who God wants to know how much he loves them. 

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[1] Adapted from sermon preached May 11, 2014 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Galveston TX entitled “This Way to a Better Life” based on John 10:1-18 and Psalm 23

[2] http://www.bartleby.com/104/64.html

[3] Burge 286 and http://levhashem.org/hanukkah.html

[4] Burghe, NIV Application Commentary: John (Zondervan), 289.

[5] Adapted from http://www.jokes4us.com/kiddiejokes/littlejohnnywallsofjerichojoke.html