December 10, 2006
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Christmas and Covenant
Luke 1:68-79
In the song of Zechariah (father of John the Baptist) the
Scripture says he was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: “Praise be to
the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago). . . to show mercy to our
fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father
Abraham” (Luke 1:67-73). Zechariah, in this song called “The Benedictus,”
correctly saw that what God was doing, was not an isolated incident in the
history of the world, but wonderfully connected to a process and plan which God
had been carrying out from the beginning. It was not something new, but a
continuation of what God had always been up to in the world. God’s plan in the
beginning was always to create for himself a people with whom he could share his
life. We begin to see this most clearly in God’s relationship with Abraham.
God comes to Abraham and does something with him that becomes the norm for God
establishing a relationship with someone — he establishes a covenant.
A covenant is not just a mutual agreement between two people,
like a contract. It was a binding agreement that the parties involved committed
themselves to under pain of death. It created a binding relationship between
them. The covenant was based on the character of the persons involved. God’s
part of the promise was that he would fulfill the covenant and redeem his people
by bringing his Messiah into the world, and this Messiah would bring God’s
people back to him. As he said, “This is the covenant I will make with the
house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their
minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my
people” (Jeremiah 31:33).
Christmas was the fulfillment of God’s covenant with his people.
He was bringing to pass what Zechariah now understood: God had come to redeem
his people, raise up the horn of salvation and fulfill his holy covenant with
Abraham. There are several surprising things about a covenant. And the first
is: This means that God is relational. Sometimes we think that since God
is God, he does not need anybody. I would suggest to you that because God is
God, because he is perfect, he needs people. So the closer to
perfection we come, the more we need other people. It’s the nature of a perfect
and holy God to be in relationship — so should it be with us. This is why God
longs for us. It’s why he puts up with us. The Bible assures us: “As a father
has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear
him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm
103:13-14). If our relationship with God depended on us, there would be no
relationship, for we tend to run and hide from God. We are sinful and
unfaithful, and want to avoid relationships. But God makes himself vulnerable,
and opens himself up to a relationship with us. This is why he says over and
over again that he wants to be our God, and wants us to be his people.
But over and over again God’s people reject him, and want to be
independent of a relationship with him. You will remember that Jesus grieved
over Jerusalem, saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and
stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing”
(Matthew 23:37). This kind of God was seen as strange by the people who
worshiped other gods and goddesses. Their gods delighted in dominating people.
They were full of intrigue and cruelty. They loved to punish their subjects.
The better ones were merely distant and aloof. But here is a God who is in
constant pursuit of his creation. Jesus said, “The Father himself loves you
because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from
the Father and entered the world” (John 16:27-28). What this means is that God
is not content to stay in his world and leave us alone. He was not willing, as
some like to say, to wind the world up like a clock and walk away. This is not
an impersonal god, this is a God who is intensely personal and relational.
Solomon was overwhelmed by the intimate love of God when he prayed, “O Lord, God
of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below — you who
keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in
your way” (1 Kings 8:23).
In one of our home groups this week someone shared how many years
they had been in church and never had a personal relationship with God. They
taught Sunday School, came to church, helped other people, but never had a
personal relationship with God. Before, it was all about keeping the rules and
doing what was right. Now, they said, they have come to know God in a personal
way and it has made all the difference in their life. They see things in a
whole new way. That is the point, and to miss the fact that God wants a
personal relationship with you is to miss the core of the Christian faith.
The second important thing we need to understand about Christmas
and covenant is: This means that God is faithful. This is one of those
things we think we understand and believe, until a time of testing comes, which
forces us to wait on God. We are placed in a situation where we have to trust
the faithfulness of God. Then it becomes more than just a phrase which people
repeat to each other. What we do not understand is that God is faithful
regardless of what other people do or do not do. The Bible says, “If we are
faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy
2:13).
One of the interesting things we notice about God’s covenant with
Abraham is how one-sided it was. The common practice of making a covenant in
that time was to take a few animals (In Abraham’s case: a goat, heifer and ram,
along with a dove and a pigeon), and cut them in half from head to tail. The
halves were then placed in such a way as to form a path between them. The
parties making a covenant with each other would walk the path between the
pieces, and in effect say, “If I break the terms of this covenant, so may this
be done to me.” The animals were then prepared and eaten as a covenant meal.
Both parties would commit themselves to the covenant in this way. But what is
interesting in the covenant with Abraham is that only God walked the covenant
path between the animals. The Bible says, “When the sun had set and darkness
had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch [representing the presence of
God] appeared and passed between the pieces” (Genesis 15:17). Abraham is never
said to have walked between the pieces, and the reason is that Abraham could not
keep the terms of the covenant. This would have to be a unilateral covenant.
So even if Abraham and his descendants did not keep their side of the covenant,
God would keep his. The Bible says, “He remembers his covenant forever, the
word he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with
Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to
Israel as an everlasting covenant” (Psalm 105:8-10). This is our faithful God.
The Bible admonishes us: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for
he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).
The news carried the story this week of a faithful father. James
Kim was an editor for CNET. CNN reports: “On November 25 the Kims had begun a
drive home to San Francisco, California, after a Thanksgiving vacation in
Oregon. They missed a turn and found themselves stranded in snow and lost on
one of Oregon’s treacherous mountain roads — an area that is rarely plowed
during the winter. At some point, James Kim tried to back up the car to where
there was less snow to block them. But snow was falling so fast and furiously
that he had to open his door to see, authorities said. Over the next few days,
the snow and rain fell unrelentingly, Kati Kim told searchers. The family ran
the car sporadically to keep warm as temperatures dipped below freezing at
night. After running out of gas, they set a spare tire on fire and eventually
burned all four tires for warmth. When the weather let up briefly, they burned
magazines and driftwood.” But after waiting a week for rescue, James Kim got
out of the safety of the car and began to walk to get help for his family. His
desire to save his family, and his faithfulness to them, cost him his life.
I went on CNN’s blog site to see what people were saying about
this story. The blog was in response to the question: “What would you do in the
same situation?” A former Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape
(SERE) Instructor, sent in what has been called the rule of threes: “You can
survive 3 weeks without food; 3 days without water; 3 hours without shelter; 3
minutes without air, but not three seconds without hope.” We have hope, and we
not only survive, but we thrive, because we have a faithful father who has
sacrificed his life in order to save us and bring us out of the mess we are in.
The third thing that we need to understand about Christmas and
covenant is: This means that God is on the move. Some of the religions
of the world believe that the history of the world is cyclical, that is, it just
keeps happening over and over. It’s sort of like Groundhog Day on a cosmic
scale. We just keep doing it over until we get it right. There is no real
purpose or destiny to life. It all ultimately ends in a puddle. Here is one of
their religious symbols — a snake or dragon eating its own tail. It’s meant to
show the endless cycle of life, but it also shows their view of the futility of
life. The snake is named Ouroborus — “tail swallower.” For these religions,
life is a vicious cycle. You would think that these people would realize that
this cannot go on forever, and that at some point you are going to come to the
end of it. These are philosophies of pessimism and despair.
It is like C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
where the White Witch has frozen Narnia. Mr. Tumnus tells Lucy that it is now a
place where it is “Always winter, and never Christmas.” But Aslan is on the
move, and Narnia soon will turn to Spring. There are battles to be fought, but
the White Witch will be vanquished and Narnia will once again be a place of
warmth and joy, and the true princes and princesses of Narnia will be recognized
for who they are.
Just because we cannot see it or understand it does not mean that
God is not very much on the move. He is excitedly and expediently working out
his plan. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “He has made everything beautiful in
its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom
what God has done from beginning to end. . . . I know that everything God does
will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God
does it so that men will revere him” (Ecclesiastes 3:11&14).
The Christian faith teaches that history is headed somewhere.
God is up to something. There is meaning and destiny to life, and God is in
charge of it. There is a loving God at the heart of the universe, and we are
the objects of his love. God is not sleeping on a cloud somewhere, he is
watching over us. The Bible says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout
the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2
Chronicles 16:9).
The gospels are full of Jesus’ admonitions to be alert and
watchful, and the reason is that God is on the move. He does not act or come
when we expect. He comes at an unanticipated hour. Jesus said, “It will be
good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes” (Luke
12:37). He says in the book of Revelation, “Behold, I come like a thief!”
(Revelation 16:15).
We prefer a god who does the expected and is predictable. We
would like a god we have some control over, or at least one we can figure out.
But this God breaks out of all our boxes. He is all about making good his
promises and fulfilling the covenant that he made with us, and he will use
whatever means are at his disposal, which means he just might do anything at any
given time. “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will
once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will
shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come’” (Haggai 2:6-7).
Hardly anyone expected the coming of Messiah when he
came. A covenant fulfilling Christmas was not running through their minds. But
the Lord announced his plan to a virgin named Mary. The Lord assured a peasant
named Joseph. The skies opened and the angels came, and Jesus broke the night
air with a baby’s cry. It seemed like such a small thing, but it was God’s
thing, and it changed the world.
Henri Nouwen said in an article in the New Oxford Review:
“I realized that songs, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big
dinners, and many sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying ‘yes’
to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to a
hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or
feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work, and
not mine.”
The other evening we watched The Polar Express with our
grandchildren. It is the story of what it means to have childlike faith. It is
not only a journey to the North Pole, but a twelve-year-old boy’s journey from
doubt to belief. In the movie, the boy struggles with his belief in Santa
Claus. He is in bed on Christmas Eve wishing that Santa was real, but becoming
more cynical as the minutes tick by. His doubt is growing, but he is still
listening for the sound of the bells on Santa’s sleigh. Suddenly, he is
awakened by the thundering arrival of a train pushing back the snow in his front
yard. It’s the Polar Express. As he walks outside, the boy is greeted by a
conductor, who asks, “Well, are you coming?” He reluctantly boards the train,
but with a jerk the train begins the trip to the North Pole, where Santa will
present the first gift of Christmas. The boy continues to be skeptical during
the train ride, even though he is on a magical journey. He is deciding whether
to believe, or not believe. At one point he even pinches himself hard, thinking
it must only be a dream. There are some salient moments in the film. At one
point, the conductor says to the boy: “It doesn’t matter where you’re going;
what matters is deciding to get on.” Near the end, the conductor punches his
ticket and hands it back. The boy looks at the ticket and sees that the
conductor has punched out the word “BELIEVE.” He now believes, because he has
seen with his own eyes, but the conductor reminds him: “The most real things in
the world are the things we can’t see.” When he arrives back home he crawls
back into bed, and on Christmas morning, one of the things he unwraps is a bell
from Santa’s sleigh. His parents cannot hear the beautiful chiming of the bell,
but he can, because you can only hear the bells of Christmas by faith.
Jesus invites us to get on the train, but the decision is ours.
No one can stop Christmas, even by their doubt and unbelief. But no one can
enjoy Christmas unless they believe.
Rodney J. Buchanan
December 10, 2006
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
Mulberry
Street United Methodist Church