Last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent. The sanctuary was decorated with lights along the balcony. The traditional crèche-set hasn’t yet been set up in the Cloister. Last week, I suggested that perhaps the scene should be set up in stages---the stable the first Sunday with the shepherds and sheep nearby. Mary and Joseph are still a long way from
Perhaps we should think about something else in the stable---a small wooden cross beside the manger where the Baby will go on Christmas Eve. About thirty five years ago, Elizabeth Sherrill co-authored a children’s book with Mrs. Billy Graham entitled Our Christmas Story. Meant to read aloud in Advent, the book begins not in
The publisher, Guideposts, seemed happy with the concept---until the time came to design the cover. All agreed on the manger scene. Then Mrs. Graham said, “With a cross, of course, behind the crib.” The editor was horrified, the artist aghast. A cross? At Christmas? And on a children’s book! Children would never understand. Anyhow, Christmas should be a happy time!
Then Mrs. Graham asked quietly, “Yes, but what are we happy about? Not just His birth. That alone changed nothing for you and me.” It was the cross, she explained, that made the difference. “It was to die that He was born.”
And of course when the cross appeared on the cover, children understood perfectly. Pain and comfort, laughter and tears, wandering from home and being found again…it is the adults who make opposites of these things. The cross in our crib set would serve to remind us of a mystery. Not only was He born to die. But also He died so that we might be born to everlasting life.
As most of you know, I read a lot of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s writings and they have provided me with a lot of the material that I have shared with you on Wednesday mornings. One of the sermons is entitled, “The Greatest Man Ever Born,” referring to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You may have heard this before but I think you’ll enjoy hearing it again this Advent season.
In his sermon, Dr. Peale asks rhetorically, “Have you ever wondered what God said to Jesus before He sent Him down to earth? When a son leaves home, it is customary for his parents to say something of importance. I wonder what God said to Jesus!” The beauty of Dr. Peale’s sermons is that he keeps the gospel message as simple as possible. He chose to answer the question with the simple picture given by Sam Shoemaker, a great Episcopal preacher of a bygone era. Father Shoemaker said he imagined God’s last words to Jesus before sending Him to earth were, “My Son, give them my love!”
“He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John
One of Dr. Peale’s favorite poems which he used in almost every Christmas sermon is one by Edwin Markham entitled, “How the Great Guest Came.” It is a story about a cobbler named Conrad, who was a godly, devoted man. He loved Jesus. One night he had a dream that Jesus was coming to visit him the next day in the shop. It was so real that he went out and bought the best food that he could get for the visit. He swept the floor and dusted the walls of his shop. He decorated the place so it would be beautiful for the occasion when the great guest arrived.
The poem reads:
“He lived all the moments o’er and o’er,
When the Lord should enter the lowly door-
The knock, the call, the latch pulled up,
The lighted face, the offered cup.
He would wash the feet where the spikes had been,
He would kiss the hands where the nails went in,
And then at last would sit with Him
And break the bread as the day grew dim.”
But as the day wore on there came an old man, a beggar. His shoes were worn through from tramping the streets. His feet were cold and bloody. Conrad, out of his great heart of love, gave him a pair of the sturdiest shoes he had. And as the hours passed, an old woman came by, carrying a heavy load of fire wood. She was tired and hungry. The good cobbler gave her some of the food he had prepared for Jesus. Then along toward evening came a little child, lost and frightened and weeping on the city streets. Conrad took the child in his arms and dried his tears, asking where he lived. Then he took him home across the city and delivered him to his mother. Then he hurried back to his shop.
Twilight gave way to darkness. He became sad and cried out.
“Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did you forget that this was the day?
Then soft in the silence a Voice he heard:
‘Lift up your heart, for I kept my word…
I was the beggar with bruised feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street.’”
In this city, called the City of Angels, where so many live in houses that human beings ought not to live in, where tens of thousands call the sidewalks “home,” where children call streets and alleys playgrounds, where unemployment haunts families like the fear of hell, where those who do have employment work for wages that fail to pay the rent, if we could lift some burdens and lighten some dark spots and help to solve the problems of our community, we will help bring the true meaning of Christmas.
So let us see Jesus in the face of the homeless people, the women who ride the bus across town to clean hotel rooms, the children whose playground is the alley behind the parish house.
“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men” (Matthew 2:1). And, still there come the wise men who know that the answer to their lives and to the life of all society is His truth and His love. God wants to be in our hearts. Until we know He is, we will miss the true message of Christmas. When we do, life will be good always.
May we rediscover in this season of expectancy, penitence, and joy the wonder and excitement we felt as little children as we await the birth of the Bethlehem Babe in the manger so long ago.
