The Fisherman, a sermon based on Isaiah 6: 1-8 and Luke 5: 1-11, preached on February 9, 2025

It’s hard to imagine Jesus recruiting His first disciples, considering how the Church has grown since this moment by the Lake of Gennesaret. At last count, in 2020, there were 2.4 billion professing Christians in the world. That’s more than 25% of the world’s population. We just baptized another one, Adeline Elizabeth Garcia. This room is full of His disciples. In just the city of Soel, Korea there are as many Presbyterians as there are in the entire United States of America, so while today, our world is full of His disciples, as we read this Gospel lesson, we are asked to imagine Jesus trying to recruit the first one. How did He do it? Where did He go? How did He start? Last Monday, at the funeral of Dr. Clem Doxey, who founded what became the largest dermatology practice in the state of Georgia, Dr. Bob Harper, who became his friend and colleague, told the story of Clem coming to Marietta and trying to recruit his first patients. Having few patients to care for in his new office, he spent time at Kennestone Hospital asking doctors to please refer to him some sick people. Today, we stand in line for our appointments at that same practice, but it started slow, and this is how it is for most everything in the beginning. The ministry of Jesus begins, and it wasn’t much different. Jesus wasn’t born having followers. He had to go out and find them. To do so, He didn’t stand in some grand pulpit like this one, waiting for disciples to come to Him. No, He went out into the world. Standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, He saw two boats there at the shore. The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore, so that He could preach from the boat. Our daughter Lily helped me to notice the significance of this detail of our Gospel lesson. Our daughters are preacher’s kids, so they’re a little different. We were discussing this Gospel lesson over the dinner table last Thursday night. Lily told me that she remembered a sermon preached on this same Gospel lesson by Sadie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame. When she preached on this Gospel lesson, she wisely observes that Jesus steps onto Simon’s boat and preached from there. Then Sadie Robertson asked, “What boat are you preaching from?” Jesus didn’t need some grand pulpit like this one to proclaim the Gospel. He went out into the world and preached the Gospel from Simon’s boat. What boat are you preaching from? If you have a desk job and know the Good News, then you can preach the Gospel from right where you are, and it serves the Kingdom for you to preach from your boat or your desk or your neighborhood walking group, for it’s out there where the people are who need to hear what is said within these walls. Jesus went out into the world looking for sinners to save. In the same way, Dr. Doxey went into the hospital looking for sick people to heal, but when Simon Peter saw the catch of fish that Jesus provided, he fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” I can’t get over this part of our Gospel lesson, yet this is the way it always happens. Maybe this is the way it always is. If you remember our first Scripture lesson, which tells the account of the prophet’s call to ministry, when God comes to speak to Isaiah, Isaiah is so amazed by the glory of God and amazed by his own sinfulness in comparison to God’s glory that he says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” I think about this because Jesus the Savior came to earth not looking perfect people. No more did He come looking for perfect people than Dr. Doxey was searching for perfect skin, yet Simon said to Jesus after Jesus provided him a catch of fish so large that their nets began to break, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” This is the power of shame. I read in a book about Alcoholics Anonymous that guilt and shame are different. Feeling guilty can be OK. Guilt tells us when we’ve made a mistake and provides the motivation we need to make it right again. Shame is more destructive, for while guilt tells me “I’ve made a mistake,” shame tells me, “I am a mistake.” This is another lesson that the Church needs to learn from AA, for it’s been said that “AA is to shame as a hot knife is to butter.” Reading our Gospel lesson and hearing the call of Isaiah, I realize that the Church should be no different than AA, for when we reveal to Him our brokenness, we are saved, only sometimes the Church makes such vulnerability even more difficult than it already is. Denominations will literally look at the demographic breakdown of neighborhoods before they’ll consider building a new church, looking at things like rates of college diplomas, value of homes, and median income, as though building the Church of Jesus Christ were no different than franchising the Publix grocery store chain. Now, I love Publix, but our call is not to sell fancy produce to rich people. The Great Physician came to heal the sick. As His disciples, our target is the lost and the lame, the blind and the hopeless, the poor and the afflicted, and yet church youth groups try to recruit the popular kids as though recruiting people for the church were just like recruiting players for a football team. My friends, when Clem Doxey went looking to build his dermatology practice, he was looking for people who suffered with skin cancer and melanoma. When you go out into this world and you find your boat to preach from, don’t try to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the people with perfect skin, but the people with broken hearts. I began this sermon saying that there are 2.4 billion professing Christians in this world. That’s true, but it’s also true that there are more than 800,000 people here in Cobb County, and more than half of them have no religious affiliation. Some of you remember the days when everyone in your neighborhood, or it seemed like everyone in your neighborhood, went to church on Sunday morning. I don’t remember that. That time in human history was already ending when I was growing up. The only business I knew of that was closed on Sunday was Chick-fil-A, and by the time I was old enough to buy beer, I could buy it any day of the week I wanted. The world outside our doors is not as full of disciples as many remember it being. For many, today, Sunday, is a day for playing soccer and going to Home Depot, and the way I hear people talk about Christianity these days, they’re describing a religion that barely resembles what I read in the Bible, for people suffer from a level of Biblical illiteracy that’s reaching epidemic proportions. But don’t let me get self-righteous here. That’s not what the world needs. The world is cloaked in shame. Many out there would respond to the Gospel the same way Simon did: with shame and misunderstanding, and while some have said that our religion is under assault, if we take that mindset, if we go out into the world defensive and braced for attack, then how will we comfort those who are just as full of shame as Simon Peter was? My friends, today let us take this account of the calling of the first disciple as an example for us, for the world is full of sick people who are suffering. Full of people who are isolated and alone. Full of people who are hopeless and distracted. Full of people who are anxious and afraid. So full of people who are hurting that rates of suicide in our community have risen by 14% in the last year. My friends, when Simon Peter revealed his brokenness to Jesus, Jesus stepped towards him. Jesus gave him a new name, a new identity, a new calling, a new purpose, yet when the church hears of brokenness, do we not too often step away? There’s a story that so broke my heart that even though I read it 15 years ago, I still remember it vividly. It’s a story that Bishop Gene Robinson told when he was interviewed by GQ magazine. I used to subscribe to GQ magazine, which explains why I’m so fashionable. Well, when the good Bishop was telling his life story to this journalist, he remembered how present the church was on the day he was married to the woman who became his wife. On their wedding day, the church was there in full force, celebrating that happy day, but on the day they were divorced, no one was there. There were no flowers. There was no reception. There was no music, nor singing, nor presents, nor words of encouragement, and as he looked back on it, he reflected that he needed the Church far more when he was going through his divorce than he did on his wedding day. My friends, when we step away from broken people, we do not bear in our actions the image of Jesus Christ. We do when we step towards them. You may have read this, but you need to know it because it’s miraculous. As we’ve been more and more involved in the Cobb County Jail, we’ve become more and more aware of the realities that the men and women who work there and who are incarcerated there face. We started with livestreaming our worship service, then after one of our members felt called to serve as a chaplain in the jail, he made us aware of the bare shelves of the jail library. You filled those shelves, and now hundreds of books are checked out every week. Then, more recently you were made aware of those men and women who are released from jail and are handed the clothes they were arrested in as they reenter society. If they were arrested in July but are released in January, that means they’re walking out of the jail in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. Those outfits are not warm enough for the winter, not to mention how those clothes carry the shameful memories of what happened the last time they were worn. My friends, when the call went out to provide the jail with seasonally appropriate clothing, you so fulfilled the call that after just a couple weeks, the jail has already said, “No more. We have enough. We have no more room to put these clothes!” I’m so thankful to be a witness to such an act of love. I’m so thankful for the way you have stepped towards the imprisoned. If there is a Simon Peter among those who you have clothed, I expect that by the grace of God, our world will be transformed by the ministry of that new disciple of Jesus Christ. May it be so. Amen.

The Divine Agenda, a sermon based on Nehemiah 8 and Luke 4: 14-24, preached on January 26, 2025

A good friend of mine is the president of the chamber of commerce in Bentonville, Arkansas. Every Sunday, he listens to my sermon, and every Monday, he calls to let me know how it could have been better. He’s a good friend. Last Friday, we were talking. He asked me how this sermon was going, and I told him that after reading and studying our Gospel lesson, “I can’t help but think that Jesus might care more about the poor than we do.” “I don’t think there’s any might about it, Joe. Jesus definitely cares more about the poor than we do,” my friend said, and he’s right. The Bible spends more than 300 verses telling us how much the poor matter to God, and Jesus, God incarnate, having been baptized by John and having turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, is now beginning His preaching ministry by declaring: Our God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. This is His divine agenda. This morning, let’s take time to realign ourselves with His words and His priorities because the human agenda and the divine agenda are not often the same thing. As we always have, we are distracted by issues that matter to us but hardly matter to God. There are more than 300 verses in Scripture concerned with the poor. Jesus begins His earthly ministry, declaring, “God has anointed me to bring good new to the poor,” and our church does a lot: We feeds hungry people every Tuesday, and our church members fill up the church vans with cold families looking for a warm place to sleep all winter long, yet think with me about why churches divide and what gets Christians really upset. I’ve witnessed near fistfights break out over the color the poinsettias should be at Christmastime. So much time and energy has been spent deciding who can serve as a church’s pastor and who cannot. The elders will ask, “Now, when is that meeting?” And the deacons will ask: “When I light candles, is it the right and then the left, or do I light the left one and then the right?” When Jesus stood in the synagogue to make plain His purpose, how close to the top of His agenda was lighting candles in the correct order? He was focused on the poor. He was focused on people. In this new year, let our agenda be realigned with the divine agenda. Let us take notice of the words of Jesus, who laid out His purpose clearly in the synagogue. He told the people clearly what He was about and what He had come to do. It was all rooted in Scripture, for He read from the scroll handed to Him. Likewise, the priest Ezra, in our first Scripture lesson, did basically the same thing. When the people returned from exile in Babylon where they were exposed to so many new ideas, where they had lived in a foreign culture, they returned home, and he read to them from the book of Moses, that their agenda might be realigned with the divine agenda. That’s what it takes. We return to Scripture, to see what it says, and to judge our agenda against the divine agenda. Our minds and our purpose must be realigned by what Scripture says and what Jesus said He had come to do because sometimes, our focus drifts to poinsettia colors and candlesticks. That’s just human nature. We are easily distracted, and once distracted, we get stuck in our routines. I’ve told you before about Neale Martin. Neale Martin sits in the balcony at the 8:30 service. He just had knee surgery last week, so he’s not here with us this morning, but I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Neale. Neale is an expert in human habit formation, and so he’s consulted with product developers who want to get their products on the grocery store shelves so that they can meet the daily needs of consumers and make a lot of money in the process. Neale told me that introducing a new product in a grocery store is incredibly difficult, and it doesn’t always matter how great your product is because it’s so hard to grab the attention of shoppers. A typical grocery store carries anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 products, but when we go to the neighborhood Kroger, we end up buying the same products again and again. We don’t spend time debating which mayonnaise to buy. There’s no time for that. We just buy Duke’s or Hellmann’s or the cheapest one on the shelf. There’s just not enough space in our brains to make decisions about everything. We walk into the grocery store and we’re thinking about stress at work or if our kids are going to get into college. We’re not thinking about the best toilet paper brands or a whole lot about which carton of eggs to buy. We’re just grabbing the same one we bought last time again and again and again, until the day a dozen eggs costs $7.50. The only time the masses are likely to entertain a new product is when we are shocked out of our patterns. We won’t consider having toilet paper delivered until it’s gone from the shelf. We’re not interested in raising chickens in our backyards until we have to take out a loan to buy a dozen eggs. Something has to happen to knock us out of our routines. Likewise, people are going to go about their business Sunday after Sunday. If they go to church, they’re going to go to the same one. If they don’t go to church, they’re going to sleep in. If anything disrupts their patterns, if suddenly they walk through our doors, it’s because they went to the shelf and the shelf was empty. If you break a habit and walk in here, it’s no small thing. The first time you came here, it’s because something big happened. You moved, or your old church didn’t feel right anymore, or your mother died, or you hit a dark time in your life. If you suddenly go from not going to church to going, it’s because you’re looking for something, so the work of the deacon is not to pay attention to the candles but to pay attention to the people who just walked in the door. The primary task of the elders and the pastors is not to review the words that they have to say or worry over the next meetings, but to greet the lost sheep whom the Good Shepherd is calling home. Pay attention to the people, Jesus was saying. Especially the poor ones, whom we are often slow to see. My friends, we all need a wakeup call. I need one, for I find myself worrying about the state of my car until I look out my office window to see how many people are waiting outside in the cold for the bus. I get stressed about how much work I have to do until a landscape truck drives by, and I remember that I used to cut grass and blow leaves for $7.00 an hour. I avert my eyes from some people walking towards me on the sidewalk, worried about making it on time to my next meeting, until I remember the divine agenda. Did you see the front page of the paper yesterday? My favorite reporter who writes for the Marietta Daily Journal is Hunter Riggall. His article made the front page, and there were these numbers: 1,535 – That’s the number of homeless students enrolled in Cobb County Schools. 259 – the number of homeless students in Marietta City Schools. 283 – the number of people living in tents within the city limits last January. Jesus said, God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The poor are everywhere. But do you see them? Do I see them? Or am I so stuck in my own concerns and my own routine that I am blind to God’s people? Maybe you’ve heard the story of the man who wrote that great hymn of salvation, “Amazing Grace.” The man who wrote it is named John Newton. His name is listed in your hymnal, for all the hymns in our hymnal list the name of the one who wrote the words and the name of the one who came up with the tune, if we know the tune writer’s name. Who came up with this great tune? Where did it come from? Well, you may know that John Newton sailed on slave ships. He made a living shipping people from the western coast of Africa across the Atlantic, and one tradition tells us that from the belly of that ship, he heard the tune sung by the men and women who were chained in the bowels of that boat. Can you imagine that sitting upon the deck of that ship while those people were taken from freedom to slavery, Newton heard the tune coming up from the people below and began to realize that he, who called himself a Christian, was complicit in putting men and women in chains? To the tune he heard them singing, he penned the words: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. My friends, we are all blind to the suffering of people, yet Jesus said, “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind.” Coming out of the 8:30 service, LouAnn Sago looked me straight in the eyes, and she said, “When I could no longer look away, He set me free.” When we recognize the poor as our brothers, the imprisoned, our sisters, and remember that their struggle is our struggle, we are made whole. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to feed hungry people and to pay attention to all God’s people in our midst, and that’s not just in response to their need. We serve in response to ours. I’ve had the recent pleasure of interviewing about 20 members of our church, several of them because they’re involved in our food distribution program, and I’ve asked them why they do it. Why do they give out food? Why do they come back again and again, in the rain and the cold, to help people they don’t know? Is it because Jesus told you to? Is it because of some sense of duty? They all said the same thing: “The reason I do this is because it makes me happy.” I used to be a kid most concerned with making the baseball team and having the right kind of shoes on my feet. Then, one summer this church took me on a mission trip to Mexico, and I looked into the face of the poor, and I was set free: set free from a culture that worships wealth and beauty, where people have so much stuff that we fill our attics, and when our attics can’t hold it, we rent storage units; where doctored pictures of beautiful people flood our consciousness and keep us chained by insecurity. Consider with me that the more money we have, the bigger the house, the bigger the yard, the more isolated we become. My friends, when He said, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captive, and recovery of sight to the blind, He was talking about setting all of us free. He was talking about setting all of us free from this consumer culture, where people are isolated and afraid, to care about each other again. Let us follow Him in the path of our salvation. Amen.

Every Wedding Needs a Miracle, a sermon based on John 2: 1-11, preached on January 19, 2025

Our second Scripture lesson is the account from the Gospel of John of Jesus’ first public miracle. The miracle takes place at a wedding, which is the perfect place for a miracle because every wedding needs a miracle. Every marriage needs a miracle, doesn’t it? Marriage isn’t easy. I’ve had the great honor of officiating around 200 weddings. At several of them, I’ve quoted Ruth Bell Graham, who was married to the great evangelist Billy Graham. Rev. Billy Graham traveled the world preaching the Gospel. Traveling like that can put stress on a marriage, so a reporter once asked Ruth Bell Graham if she’d ever considered divorce. “Divorce? Never,” she said. “However, I often considered murder.” Maybe you get that. I know my wife, Sara, does. She’s perfect, but she’s married to me, and I leave a lot to be desired. Marriage is hard. Think with me about marriage this morning. We just read that there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no more wine.” Now, it’s no surprise that the wine gave out at this wedding because something goes wrong at every wedding. As wonderful as weddings are, there’s always something that goes wrong, but when the problem comes along on the big day, it’s extra hard because we’re already tense. I remember well the reaction of a bride whose mother-in-law-to-be insisted on making the dresses for her bridesmaids but hadn’t finished them on time and was still working on them when the wedding was scheduled to start. The bride was panicked. Her father looked like he was going to have a cardiac event. I had to ask the congregation to talk amongst themselves for an hour or so until the bridesmaids could get dressed. Or there was a wedding at a Baptist church. The groom walked out into the sanctuary through the wrong door and fell into the baptismal font. On that occasion, everyone laughed, except for the bride’s father, who suddenly realized that he had been right about this guy all along. My point is that something always goes wrong. The preacher gets COVID, or the DJ has too much to drink. The bridesmaid’s gowns are sleeveless, and one has a giant tattoo of an AK-47 on her arm. The groomsmen leave their dip cups for the wedding guild to clean up, or the bride is showing that she has a baby on the way. All these things happen, but on the wedding day there is this pressure not to let the congregation know because while every wedding needs a miracle, no one wants to let the cat out of the bag. The wine has run out. Has anyone told Jesus? Bible scholars say that the entirety of the Gospel is here in this short passage from the Gospel of John. Everything that you need to know about the Christian life is right here in these 11 verses. Don’t worry about studying theology or Christian doctrine, just notice that the wine runs out and someone let’s Jesus know about it. That’s step one of being a Christian. Step one of being a Christian is admitting that we have a problem and need His help. There’s a great article written by a champion of Alcoholics Anonymous. You may know that churches have supported AA since the very beginning. Many churches started substituting grape juice over wine at the communion table because the AA groups who met in their buildings requested it. This article written to the church by a champion of Alcoholics Anonymous is titled, “What the church has to learn from AA.” You can google the article. It will come right up. It’s by Samuel Shoemaker, and while it was written many years ago, it makes the great point that every member of AA knows that she needs help and has come ready to ask for it. She has stopped the charade of pretending that everything is fine. How much healthier would our churches be if every member of every congregation felt that same freedom to let Jesus know that he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel? The wine has run out. We’re grasping at straws. We need His help because we’re lost, yet how many of us feel comfortable getting out of the car to ask for directions? Which brings me back to marriage. A few weeks ago, we were focused on the magi. The Church started calling them magi rather than the three wise men a couple generations ago because someone finally noticed that there were three gifts, but no mention of three men, and they probably weren’t all men because when they got lost on the road, they stopped in Jerusalem to ask for directions. Is that joke still funny? In another generation, no one will even get it because now we all ask for directions using our phones, but what we used to have to do was stop at a gas station, get out, and ask the gas station clerk, “How much farther is it to Lawrenceville?” and if you weren’t even close, he might laugh at you, and if he didn’t like people from out of town, he’d tell you to go the wrong way. I’m so thankful for these phones because I don’t have to stop to ask for directions as much as I used to, but what about when the wine runs out? Will I then have the courage to ask for help? Or will I be so out of the practice of being vulnerable that I’ll suffer in silence, afraid to let the Savior know that I need His help? In AA, they practice the art of confession in every meeting. They’ve all admitted that there is a problem in their lives that they need help with, and there’s less shame in that circle of folding chairs because everyone is doing it. Every wedding needs a miracle, but when the wine runs out, are you comfortable asking for guidance? Have you asked a trusted friend to pray for you? Have you sought out help from a counselor? There’s a book out by a divorce lawyer entitled, If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late. Don’t wait. Help is near. When the wine has run out, go find Jesus. Every wedding needs a miracle. Every mortal needs a miracle. Every marriage needs a miracle, and you can’t go looking into the eyes of your spouse expecting her to turn water into wine. Do you know what I mean by that? It’s hard for us to ask for help, so we’ll only admit that we need it to those we trust the most, which creates a second problem. If you only trust your spouse, might you be expecting a miracle from a mortal? Or might you be putting all your relationship needs on just one person? We know from studies that many men in this world work for years and years dedicating so much to their careers that they don’t develop any hobbies or make any real friends outside of the office, which puts so much pressure on their spouses once they retire. Do you know that saying, “I married you for better and for worse, but not for lunch?” There’s a lot of wisdom in that. While some needs should only be met within the bonds of marriage, while emotional and physical intimacy belong within the bonds of committed relationship, don’t expect a miracle from a mortal. Go and find Jesus when the wine has run out. Have friends. Play golf. Don’t count on one person to do everything for you. And this is just where the church fits perfectly into human life. This is where the Christian walk meets so many of society’s needs. When people show up to do good work here, they find purpose and they make friends. Notice something with me in our second Scripture lesson. The wine had run out, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, said to the stewards, “Do whatever he tells you.” Emphasis on “He.” What does Jesus tell us to do? That’s what we ought to do, because Jesus calls us to give of ourselves, which brings us joy and fulfillment. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, which saves us from isolation. When the church does what Jesus commands and when we follow His instruction, suddenly this institution, this Church, becomes the balm for so many of our wounds. This place can be the antidote for isolation, providing purpose and community, faith, hope, and love, but I was watching Young Sheldon this week, and if you’ve seen this series, then you know that the church that Sheldon and his family attend isn’t always like that. Interestingly, (this is an aside) last time I mentioned Young Sheldon, our superintendent of schools was here, and he told me that his brother-in-law is the preacher on that show. More than that, did you know that the youth pastor on that show is the son of two of our church members, Jeff and Rachel Byrd? The whole pastoral staff on that TV show has roots here in Marietta. Amazing, but that’s beside the point. Let me get back to my point. My point is that when Sheldon’s brother gets a girl pregnant, that whole congregation turns their backs on Sheldon and his family. His mother gets fired from the church staff, and no one in the family feels comfortable attending that church again, but where in the Gospels did Jesus tell us to turn our backs on anyone? “Do whatever He tells you,” Mary said, for in obedience to His word lies freedom and abundant life. I told you before that the entirety of the Christian life is right here in these 11 verses, and I wasn’t kidding about that. Step 1: Let Him know that the wine has run out, then, step 2: Do whatever He tells you. Step 3: Notice with me that this first miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ occurred on the third day. The third day of what? The Gospel of John isn’t clear on whether it was the third day of the wedding or the third day of the week. That’s because we don’t really understand the significance until we get to the end of the Gospel and discover that He was crucified, dead and buried, but on the third day, He rose again from the grave. My friends, did you know that we can worry about the wine running out, yet we are promised an inheritance of such abundance that the memory of our present suffering is not worth comparing to the glory that is going to be revealed to us? We get so focused on what people may say that we’re afraid to reveal our brokenness. We get so deep into despair that we’re afraid the light will never come. Jesus told the servants to fill six stone water jars, each built to hold twenty or thirty gallons. “Fill them with water,” He said, and they filled them to the brim. Then He said, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward,” so they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from, the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this. Halleluia! But someone had to ask Him. Let Jesus know that the wine has run out, then do what He tells you. Come here to this place where there is not condemnation for broken people but abundant grace. When we do what He tells us, this is not a place of judgement but of forgiveness. When we do what He tells us, this is not a place of fear, but of love, as together we walk the great Christian life of discipleship that leads to joy. Should you dare to open up about your struggle, you may just find the community that you’ve been looking for. If you are looking for purpose, then take advantage of one of the many ways that you can serve right here, and above all else, remember that the Miracle Worker, the One who turned the water to wine, promises us a life of abundance so great that the sufferings of today will be washed away by the glory of tomorrow. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Wrapped in Bands of Cloth, a sermon based on Luke 2: 1-14, preached on Christmas Eve 2024

Friends, this is it. Christmas Eve. Some of us have been getting ready for this moment since Halloween. Do you remember what happened in Walgreens on the day of Halloween? There had been Halloween candy. When I walked into Walgreens, it was there on the shelves, but by the time I checked out, it was all gone. All that candy was pushed out of the way by a green and red wave of lights and gifts. The pumpkin Reese’s cups had to be replaced by Christmas tree Reese’s cups. The Halloween costumes were replaced by tinsel and lights. We all skipped right over Thanksgiving, and we can’t go back now. This is Christmas, but yesterday I was at Kroger, and they were putting out the Easter egg Reese’s cups, so if we’re not careful, this moment is going to speed right by, too. I don’t want that to happen. In so many ways, this is my favorite day of the entire year, only it’s not easy to savor something that you’ve been rushing towards since October 31st. You can’t just stop on a dime to savor something you’ve been sprinting towards, so some of us aren’t in this moment, at least not fully. There’s just too much to do, right? My wife, Sara, sent me a meme the other day. Do you know what a meme is? Or a gif? It doesn’t matter. She sent me something that said: “Here’s your annual reminder that 95% of that ‘holiday magic’ is actually just the invisible and physical work of women.” That’s true. I can remember my grandmother coming home from her Christmas Eve shift in the maternity ward of Roper Hospital to make us Christmas dinner. She’d been up all night delivering babies, then she’d come home to cook us macaroni and cheese, ham, and a turkey. I can see her in the kitchen, still in her pink scrubs. At some point, she’d ask me to pour her a Tab with a little vodka in it. That’s all she needed to keep going so that we could enjoy that “holiday magic” the meme was talking about, but this is Christmas, so I want to address those of us to whom Christmas means working hard, and I’m guilty of it, so I can talk about it because I’m talking to myself. Some of us are so used to preparing for the next thing that, while the rest of the family is opening presents, we’ll have the garbage bag ready to pick up all the wrapping paper. Only what is the next thing after this? What are we cleaning up for? This is it. Christmas Eve. It’s a day that we work for because we want it to be perfect, which is the absolute pinnacle of irony if you think about it. It’s like we’re all working for perfect, forgetting that He came because we can’t ever achieve perfection no matter how hard we try. Remember that Martha Stewart spent five months behind bars. That’s where chasing perfection will get you. There is no “perfect” for mortals like us. If we could save ourselves, we wouldn’t need a savior. If we were without sin, there would be no need for Him to take upon Himself the sins of the world. What’s worse is that all this work we’re doing to reach towards perfection always keeps us from noticing the baby wrapped in bands of cloth. That’s what happens in all the best Christmas movies, right? The turkey is so dry that it’s nothing but skin and bones, and the dog destroys the kitchen. The tree goes up in flames, and a squirrel gets in the house, which is what it takes for the Clark Griswolds of the world to take notice of the real reason for all of this, the gift from God wrapped in bands of cloth. That first Christmas broke into our world, and yet the innkeeper didn’t notice. What was that innkeeper doing? He was worried over the guests who had already checked in. He had put little mints on their pillows and was getting ready for breakfast. The inn was full. There was no more room. Toilet paper was in short supply, and he was moving quickly from one task to another. When Mary and Joseph showed up at the door, I imagine that their knock interrupted that peaceful moment when he finally had the chance to sit down to take a breath. His glass of wine had been poured, he had knife in hand to carve a lamb shank or break the loaf of bread, freshly baked from the oven, when that knock on the door interrupted the moment that seemed so perfect. He snatched the napkin from his collar or laid down his carving knife not too gently, and with thinly-veiled frustration opened the door to see Joseph and Mary standing there. What did he do? “There is no room,” he said. Might as well have been, “Bah humbug.” “Go to the barn, and don’t bother me again. Don’t you know it’s Christmas?” Of course, he wouldn’t have known anything about Christmas. The baby hadn’t been born, and yet, how ironic that the Christ Child was born in the innkeeper’s stable, and there is no record that he ever went out to see that baby wrapped in band of cloth. Who did? The shepherds. Do you know anything about shepherds? Shepherds smell like sheep. Shepherds never took the time to brush their teeth or wash their hands, but the innkeeper and his family were too busy, so the angel invited the shepherds, and the shepherds saw the miracle of Christmas because the ones who know they need a miracle are the first to find it. Those who of us who are busy picking up discarded wrapping paper in the living room don’t always see that it’s here. This is it. Our temptation this Christmas Eve is the same as our temptation all the rest of the year. We are in a rush moving in the wrong direction, missing all the miracles that God provides. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I was giving the children’s sermon two weeks ago, and I’m a Presbyterian minister. If you don’t know much about Presbyterians, then know this: There are two things that Presbyterians want from their minister: 1. That he pick hymns that they know the words to. 2. That he doesn’t preach for too long. Therefore, our worship services last one hour and not a minute more, and I must achieve that goal because I’m prone to picking hymns that no one knows the words to. I’ve got to move from the children’s sermon to the next step in the worship liturgy because if the service goes past 12:00, First Presbyterian Church will go up in flames and no one will make it to Piccadilly before the Baptists get there, so when little Charlie still had his hand raised as I was making my point in the children’s sermon, I was so tempted to ignore him. I was tempted to just keep going on to the hymn that would follow the children’s sermon, for I had already asked them what they wanted for Christmas and had already heard plenty of cute and interesting comments, and yet there was Charlie’s hand raised as it had been since the children’s sermon began. Something told me to call on him. When I said, “OK, Charlie. It looks like you really have something you want to say,” he boldly declared: “Peace will come to our land.” That’s what Charlie said, and I nearly missed it because I was worried about what I had to do next, not what God has already done. Notice that Charlie didn’t say, “Peace will come to our land once everyone gets in line.” He didn’t say, “Peace might come to our land if we’re all good little boys and girls.” He said, “Peace will come to our land,” for God brings us a gift wrapped in bands of cloth. Have you stopped to notice? If there is darkness in your life, consider this with me: Maybe you’re moving in the wrong direction. So much of the time we’re in such a hurry that we don’t take the time to ask, “Why is my life so full of shadow?” Where is satisfaction? Where is hope, peace, joy, and love? This is our pattern. To keep going. To strive. To work. To spend so much time looking into the future and what’s to come that we fail to be satisfied. The gift, though, is here already. Glory to God in the Highest, they sing. Lay down your burdens. Rest in the promise that peace will come to our land, or you’ll never be at peace. Rest in the promise that you are forgiven, or you’ll never find it in you to forgive. Rest in the promise of salvation or go on trying to save yourself. My friends, I’m a preacher. It’s my job to preach sermons on Christmas Eve, and sometimes I wonder if my Christmas Eve message, while under 14 minutes so that we can get out of here on time, just sounds like me giving you one more thing to do on an already overwhelming to-do list. That’s not what this is about. This is about a gift that comes from God to people who walk in darkness. Take this moment to notice His light. Amen.