Emmanuel

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 7: 10-16, Matthew 1: 18-25, NT page 1 Sermon Title: Emmanuel Preached on December 18, 2016 I had to make some changes to my sermon this morning. Just in the last hour or so I was adjusting it, and I had to – at the early service I put three people to sleep. Now one? One is OK, but three is over my limit. You know, I get to go preach at some of the African-American Churches in town. St. Paul’s up the street and Bethel AME kind of by the cemetery and there I know when the sermon is good because I can hear it. Based on what the congregation shouts out to me I know that the sermon is good and that no one is falling asleep. According to an old Fred Craddock story – they’ll let you know if the sermon is bad too. You know that the sermon is bad if the choir starts singing. Dr. Craddock was a guest preacher at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta – that’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, and after the service he says to his host preacher, “I didn’t know the choir was going to sing during my sermon,” and the host preacher says, “We thought you needed a little help.” This morning at the early service I needed a little a help. Presbyterians don’t shout out if the sermon is good but they do fall asleep if the sermon is bad and 1 is OK but 3 is too many so I changed my sermon. And now maybe some of you are saying – it’s up to the person listening to pay attention, and sometimes that’s true. I had my annual review last month. Each of the Elders reviewed my performance in several different areas. One of those areas was communication, and one elder gave me a 2 out of 3 I think, but left the caveat – “I’m not sure how Joe could ever be completely successful in communicating with us, because so much of the time we just don’t listen.” That’s true – I don’t know how many times I’ve announced that the Christmas Eve service will be at 5:00 but still – I guarantee you, that I will be asked that question from now until next Saturday every time I run into a member of this church in Kroger or anywhere else. But communication – it’s not just that sometimes congregations don’t listen and sometimes preachers are too boring to listen to – it’s that there is a chasm here – a divide. I’m up here in this pulpit and week after week I’m wondering to myself – “How can I help the congregation see how good this Good News is? How can I preach so that the congregation hears?” My job is to take the world of Scripture and to make it accessible, but week after week I struggle because preaching hinges on communication and communication is hard. There’s a divide that must be bridged. And we use words sometimes to bridge the divide – so you can hear and relate to me and so I can hear and relate to you, but that’s a challenge. I’m up here and some of you are way in the back. It’s a difficult gap to bridge. But there are so many difficult gaps to bridge – think about the gap between Washington D.C. and Columbia, Tennessee. General assumption says that those career politicians don’t know us and can’t relate, and how will they ever? Or here’s a bigger one – think about God way up in heaven and us all way down here on earth. Do you know how small we must be from God’s view? Like ants scurrying around the earth – but then we hear this word – Emmanuel – by this name we know that God has bridged the divide for Emmanuel doesn’t mean God way up there. Emmanuel means God with us. I think it’s something like this: In the movie I wrote about this week in an Advent Devotional, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” There’s a Nazi officer is promoted to the office of commandant of a concentration camp in the countryside. He and his family live in a house nearby. The commandant’s son, Bruno, can see the barbed wire fence of the camp from his bedroom window. From there he can also see what he thinks are farmers who are working inside the fence wearing what he assumes are “striped pajamas.” As the family’s home is remote, there are no Arian friends for Bruno to play with. Lonely then, despite his father’s prohibition, Bruno curiously explores what he calls “the farm” and meets a young boy his age wearing those striped pajamas. The two boys become friends. At the end of the movie, Bruno so values his friend that he puts on striped pajamas himself and digs under the barbed wire fence to help his friend find his father. Now there’s a substantial divide – a fence with a free German on one side and an imprisoned Jew on the other, and yet Bruno puts on the clothes of his friend, digs under the fence, becomes on his friend’s kind and the fence is gone. What has God done? The choir just sang: See amid the winter’s snow, born for us on earth below; Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies; Here I am struggling to preach, and with my words, to bridge the gap between you and me – to say something that you can relate to – to say something clearly that has meaning and substance, and yet here I am, a servant of God the who built the starry skies and comes to lie in a manger that the gap between us and him would be no longer. That’s what Emmanuel means – that’s why we sing for him to come – because God understands us – sees us – yet our world is full of division. We can’t understand each other, we struggle to be understood and to understand. There are divisions of culture – there are divisions of race – there are divisions of husbands and wives – liberals and conservatives – Christians and Muslims – we’re all failing to understand each other and how will the distance ever be bridged? Think of Joseph and Mary now – the account from the first chapter of Matthew that we just read begins with Mary’s miraculous pregnancy that Joseph, at first, isn’t sure is so miraculous. He is a kind man, and so he plans to have her dismissed quietly, but when you think about husbands and wives you should wonder how it is that one moment a wedding is being planned and the next moment the punishment for adultery is considered. We are understood one moment – loved one moment – but how often do we come home from work or school – walk in the door and fail to see the person waiting for us? I got to see A Christmas Carol last Sunday. It was at the college – produced and directed by Kate Foreman who so many of you know. The story is all too familiar it’s the one with Ebenezer Scrooge, and by way of the Ghost of Christmas Past we learn that Scrooge’s great ability to ignore the suffering of others – that of the poor and his co-worker Bob Cratchet especially – had its root in this one great moment when he chose his work again and again and the woman he loved finally walked away. She was invisible to him. He ended up in one of those situations where he didn’t really hear her, and as the years went by Dickens describes what he turned into: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.” Who then was his neighbor? No one now, for time had blinded him to the needs of others – time had even blinded him to the need for love that he himself had. But fortunately for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and Joseph in Matthew – a dream came upon them and they changed course. Scrooge could see his neighbor as himself and he saved both himself and Tiny Tim from imminent death. Joseph knew that what Mary had told him was the truth for her claim was verified through the voice of an angel, and before he got to dismissing her quietly as he had planned, he took her as his wife. But what about us? How will we ever hear each other. How will we see each other clearly? How can we recover our sight to see the humanity in the other? How can we see our brother and become friends? How will we ever see that our neighbor really is us, just as we are our neighbor? See amid the winter’s snow, born for us on earth below; See the tender Lamb appears, promised from eternal years; Hail, thou ever blessed morn; Hail, redemption’s happy dawn; Sing through all Jerusalem, Christ is born in Bethlehem. Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies; He who, throned in heights sublime, sits amid the cherubim: Sacred infant, all divine, what a tender love was thine, thus to come from highest bliss own to such a world as this: Teach, O teach us, Holy Child, by thy face so meek and mild, Teach us to resemble thee, in thy sweet humility. In listening – in striving to understand – in valuing the people around us, we are continuing the work that our God began. Amen.