Reuben's Second Sermon.
24th. December 1997 Christmas Eve - Midnight Mass:
"A Virgin shall conceive and bear a son - and they shall
name him Emmanuel."
+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Sometimes we come across something so big, that we cannot comprehend the size of what we're dealing with. We surround such things with stories and invent names to make reference to such things easy.
Sometimes, however, we encounter something so big that we don't even try to understand the enormity of what we are dealing with.
The world of science and mathematics is a world where accuracy and a sense of proportion is essential, but even they have to simplify some things so that the human brain can cope.
Scientists have a very handy method of dealing with big things such as big numbers. They refer to 10 to the power of another number. 10 to the power of 6, for example, is one million - that is six tens multiplied together.
10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 = 1 million
You can have really big numbers.
Numbers that are so big you don't realise how big they are!
10 to the power of 75, for example, is more than the total amount of atoms in the known Universe!
So difficult to comprehend... ....and yet so easy to say,
"10 to the power of 75".
So you can see how easy it is to take something big, and turn it into something we can wrap our human brains around.
Yes! The Universe is a very big place, and here we are, like an invisible dot on an invisible dot.
If you think too hard about it, you might start get the idea that we are all quite insignificant on (as the "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" refers to it) this little blue/green planet in, the Western spiral arm of the galaxy.
Some years ago, an eminent NASA scientist, the late Carl Sagen, returned to the school he had attended when he was very young. He was giving a talk about space travel and space exploration. At the end of his presentation he asked if any of the children had any questions. There were many questions, which he answered carefully and he made certain every child had a turn. Eventually one small boy asked, "Is the Sun considered to be part of the Milky Way Galaxy?" The scientist smiled and, with a twinkle in his eye, said,
"The Universe contains billions of galaxies that we know of so far,
one of those galaxies is the Milky Way Galaxy with thousands of billions of stars in it,
around one of those stars there are planets,
on one of those planets there is life
and one of those life forms is you!
YOU are part of the Milky Way Galaxy!"
The look of wonder and awe on the young boy's face said it all.
Christmas marks the time, about two thousand years ago, when The Creator of the Universe, The Creator of everything that is, became a human being.
God born as a baby, like you and me.
God growing up through childhood, just like us.
God working and playing, happy and sad.
He lived life as we know it, and He died a most horrible death.
He did it for us, the life forms on this planet...
...and one of those life forms is YOU!
When we look at the Four Gospels we are given three different accounts of Christmas.
Yes THREE!
Mark does not record the birth of our Saviour in his Gospel because he is out to save the world before the day of Judgment, (which he thought was just around the corner). So he spends his time promoting and spreading the teachings of Jesus during his ministry on Earth.
Matthew, after laying the ground by setting out the family tree, is quick to start the Christmas story by verse 18 in the first chapter. No mention of any shepherds, but as the story unfolds, the Wise Men arrive, as predicted, at the beginning of the second chapter.
Now there's a strange thing. Mary and Joseph, minding their own business, are confronted with what seems to be very important, and learned people who bring gifts and worship their baby. As Mary and Joseph already realise, this is no ordinary baby and it is becoming more and more obvious that what is happening is something VERY BIG!
Luke tells us about the birth of John the Baptist first and then, in chapter two, the amazing story of the Nativity of our Lord unfolds. Tradition says that Luke was told about this by Jesus' own Mother.
Luke is very keen to place the event in history and makes references to well known events and notable characters to set the story firmly in history.
Luke tells us about the shepherds.
Ah yes, the shepherds.
Real people.
We know that story so well.
You don't have to use much imagination to see the children in the nativity play. Nervous little shepherds with towels on their heads. A beautiful Gabriel, often played by the girl with the cutest face and the blondest hair. The children do it so beautifully you would not, indeed you could not, change a thing.
But let us remember, when Gabriel appeared to the shepherds...
THEY WERE TERRIFIED!
They could not understand.
This was too big for them to cope with.
They bowed their heads and hid their faces.
Something really big was going on...
and they were being invited to become part of it!
Something so big that they had to leave everything that was important to them and "see this thing which had come to pass".
Right!
Life now starts to get complicated!
Why?
Because when we come to look at John's Gospel, we find that everything is different.
VERY DIFFERENT!
We no longer have the straight forward accounts of the story of Christmas.
John is a man with a very different purpose in mind.
He sets out to wake us all up to the full and awe-ful reality of what is really going on!
As you heard in the Gospel reading earlier tonight, translated from the original in Greek, he writes:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
Yes, John goes back to the beginning.
As far back as you can go.
To the start of everything...
...AND I REALLY MEAN EVERYTHING!
Referring to God as "The Word" - a truly spiritual thing.
The Word...
Thought...
Existence...
Being without physical substance...
GOD!
In the Ancient Greek, they separated things into two categories.
That which is without form such as thought and ideas
and
That which has form and substance such as us and the world we live in.
It was inconceivable for the Greeks for the two to be the same.
But John was out to shock everyone, because what he wanted to describe was the biggest thing ever!
That is why John chooses how he says things very carefully.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
So to refer to something intangible as something tangible would not only shock but totally horrify and disgust the reader of his day.
Some things are so wonderful...
so big...
that we stand in silence and are amazed.
Some things are so enormous...
that we cannot even begin to understand...
and we hide our faces and bow our heads.
But ONE THING...
is so AWFUL...
so AMAZING...
so DIFFICULT TO COMPREHEND...
that some Christians, EVEN TO THIS DAY, drop to one knee and bow their head when they hear it told by John.
+In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
©1997 Christians in Contact