12-20-09 Christmas Thoughts

This is our last time together before Christmas,

and to help us celebrate the season

I want to begin by telling you a Christmas story.

But I need to warn you before I begin

that this is not a Christmas story like any you’ve ever heard before.

In fact, if I hadn’t just labeled it as a Christmas story

you would never have known it was.

There are no angels in it,

no manger,

no Joseph, or Mary, or baby Jesus.

There are no wise men,

or Christmas trees,

or any of the things we so often associate with this season of the year.

But I’m still going to share it with you

because it is the best way I could find

to introduce you to what I think is the most powerful Christmas verse in all of Scripture,

the one verse

that captures the heart of everything God was seeking to accomplish

on that remarkable night 2000 years ago

when God took on Himself human form

and entered this world.

But before we get to that verse,

let me first share my story.

And, to be honest, it’s not really a story

so much as it is simply the account of an event that took place in my life almost exactly 40 years ago.

In the fall of 1969

I was accepted by The Evangelical Alliance Mission

as a short-term missionary to the Carribean Island of Trinidad.

Things have changed a great deal in the church world in the past 40 years,

and especially in this whole short-term mission thing.

In our church world today

literally thousands of church people take “short-term” mission trips

to nearly every country in the world.

Our own church fellowship has frequently sponsored short term mission trips

to Mexico, and Russia, and a number of other locations as well.

But today a short-term mission trip

nearly always means a trip for a week,

or possibly two or three at the most.

The trips are designed to fit neatly into people’s busy schedules,

allowing them to take their trip during their school break, or yearly vacation time,

without disrupting things too much.

It wasn’t that way 40 years ago.

Forty years ago

my short term mission trip was for a full year.

It involved my raising a full support base from churches and individuals here in the states,

and then moving to Trinidad just like a career missionary and settling in.

I left the states in the fall of 1969,

arrived on the Island,

and moved in with one of the missionary families who were living in the Cascade Valley,

just outside of the capital city of Port-of-Spain.

The family had rented a large house in the valley,

turned the living room into a sort of make-shift chapel,

and was trying to lay the foundation for a church in the area.

They held church services each Sunday,

and had succeeded in getting ten or twelve folks in the neighborhood to attend,

all of them middle aged or older.

For the first few weeks after my arrival

I attended the services,

got to know the Island a little,

hung around the house,

and wondered what in the world a “missionary” was suppose to do.

And I also began to learn some things about the Island culture.

The Island was populated primarily by people of both East Indian and African descent

who, in the distant past, had been brought to the island as slaves

to work in the sugar cane fields.

Trinidad is located just a few degrees above the equator

which means it had two seasons - hot and dry and hot and wet.

And it also meant that the people lived their lives outside most of the time.

This was especially true of the younger population,

and if you were to drive down the streets in the evening

on nearly every street corner you would find a group of 5, or 10, or 15 Trinidadians

just hanging out, laughing, talking, playing cards, just being together.

In fact, these groups were so much a part of the culture

they’d even given it a name - liming.

The kids on the corner were limers,

and the group they hung out with was their lime.

We had a lime just two blocks down from the big house being used by the missionaries.

Every night there was a group of limers there.

None of them ever came to our church services,

even though the missionaries had invited them again and again.

For some reason sitting inside a stuffy livingroom listening to a half-hour lecture from the Bible

just didn’t appeal to them very much.

For several weeks after my arrival

I went to meetings with the other missionaries on the Island,

and met with the other missionaries to pray for the Trinidadians,

and faithfully attended our Sunday services,

and read my Bible,

and wrote letters to my supporters back in the states

until I thought I was going to go crazy.

Then, one evening I told the missionaries I was living with that I was going to go for a walk

and headed down the road.

In the distance I could see and hear a large, loud group of mostly young men,

ranging in age from about 12 on up into their 20's.

Just before leaving the U.S.

I’d read a book called The Cross And The Switchblade

about David Wilkerson’s work with the gangs in the inner city,

and I wasn’t at all sure how this group would respond to my little white face,

but I knew I couldn’t spend another night just sitting in that house.

I walked up, introduced myself, and then sat down on the curb.

Their response was everything I could have hoped for.

They all started introducing themselves

with lots of laughing and jokes...most of which I didn’t understand,

but clearly they were more than willing to welcome me into the lime.

I learned right away

that nearly everyone had a nick-name.

There was Manto (because he loved to listen to the music of Mantovani),

and Three Cents, (because he was always asking his friends for money),

and Big Barry and Little Barry and just plain Michael, and Pudding,

and then there was Scatters.

Scatters real name was Tony Taylor,

but everyone called him Scatters

because even though he was only 12 years old,

all of his front teeth were rotted out.

Tony and I hit it off from the very start

and for the next year

he stuck close to me in the lime

and though I didn’t realize it at the time,

even though I was only in my early 20's,

I think he viewed me as the closest thing to a father figure he ever had.

Following that first trip to the street corner that night

my life on the island

and my relationship with the kids in that valley

changed more dramatically than I could ever have anticipated.

The following night I was back there again,

and then again, and again

until it wasn’t long before I was as much a part of the group as anyone there.

Of course, being a “MISSIONARY”,

I kept having these nagging thoughts

that I really should be doing something

to get my new friends to come to our stuffy Sunday services,

but the truth was that it wasn’t long before I felt far more at home on that street corner

than I did in that house up the street.

And the more I got to know them,

the more my growing love for them

became the driving force in my life.

And it was all turning out so different than I had expected.

I found I really didn’t care whether or not they came to our meetings,

but I cared very much about them discovering how much their Lord Jesus Christ loved them.

There was an incident that took place several months after I joined the lime

that illustrates well why I’ve shared all of this with you this morning.

Though I didn’t fully realize it until that particular evening,

even though my new friends welcomed me into the group,

my arrival caused them to live a sort of double life.

There was the life they lived when I wasn’t there,

and then the one they lived during the hours we were together.

But all of that ended that evening when I arrived on the street corner

and discovered Tony wasn’t with the group.

Everyone seemed a lot louder that night,

a lot more joking and laughing,

and even to me it was obvious that something was going on that I knew nothing about.

I sat on the low cement retaining wall on the corner

and just listened to the conversation for a while,

then I noticed Tony wasn’t there and asked where he was.

Suddenly everyone got quiet for a few seconds,

and then Manto burst out laughing, followed by the others,

and someone told me Tony was hiding back behind the house.

I looked over at the corner of the house

and saw my 12 year old little buddy peak our around the corner,

and then begin staggering toward me,

so drunk he could hardly stand up.

He grinned at me,

made it over to the retaining wall,

sat down next to me,

laid his head on my shoulder,

then looked up at me and said, “Are you mad at me, Larry? Are you mad?”

I told him I wasn’t mad, I just hurt for him.

I had no idea until that evening

how much cheap Trinidadian rum was a part of my friends’ lives,

and I certainly hadn’t known that my precious Tony was already a full-blown alcoholic.

It was a painful night for me,

but it was also a turning point in my relationship with the lime.

I think some of them may have wondered whether or not I’d be back,

but I found a longing to be there more than ever after that night,

and from then on there were no more facades.

Before I left the Island a year later

at least half of those in the lime had found their Lord, Tony included,

and it had almost nothing to do with what happened in those Sunday meetings.

It had everything to do with what happened on that street corner.

And some of you are still waiting for me to explain

what in the world any of this has to do with my favorite Christmas verse.

Well, let me share the verse with you

and then maybe this will make more sense.

It’s found in the writings of the Apostle John,

in the first chapter of his Gospel,

at a point where he was trying to explain to us

both why Christ entered that little baby body

and what He was hoping to accomplish because of it.

Of course we know that He was coming to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins,

but there was far more to it than just that.

Our God wanted to offer us some way of knowing Him,

but not just knowing Him,

but knowing how He felt about us.

The apostle John attempted to describe for those of us who would come after him

what it was to know Christ according to the flesh,

that is,

to know Him during the few years Christ spent in that human body,

and in chapter 1and verse 14 of his Gospel

he makes this statement:

JOH 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John is attempting to put into words the impossible in that verse.

Do you know what I hear him saying?

I hear him saying,

“Listen, somehow I want you to understand what those days were like.

I don't know how,

but somehow the Creator God of all things

put Himself inside this human body

and then lived with us for just a short while.

And what we saw in Him

was so different from anything we would ever have expected.

Oh, certainly we saw His glory,

we saw the works that only God Himself could work,

but we saw, and felt, and knew something else as well.

You see, He wasn't just filled with power,

in fact He wasn’t even mostly filled with power.

He was filled with grace,

with this endless, glorious gentleness and kindness and,

...well, and His one focus in everything he did

seemed to be His desire to be good to me and to my brother and to my friends

for no reason in the world except that He really seemed to like us.

Can you believe that?

God Himself liked to hang out with us,

He liked to be with us,

and talk with us,

and laugh with us,

and hurt and cry with us.

God became flesh and dwelt among us.

He spent four years doing everything He could

to try to communicate to us

that there was no place else in His entire universe

that He would rather have been than right there with us.”

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Do you know what happened to John

and to Peter

and to the other Apostles during the time they spent with Christ?

They came away from those few years

knowing two things with absolute certainty.

First, they learned that their God cared about them

and loved being with them

more than anything else .

And second, they learned that nothing they ever did

or ever would do could ever change that.

Those days I spent with my friends in Trinidad so many years ago

were God’s special gift to me early in my walk with Him,

a gift that allowed me to gain a tiny glimpse

into what this whole God-becoming-man thing was all about.

Certainly I love the Christmas story.

I love looking closely at the lives of Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds, and the wise men.

I love the thought of my God choosing an animal feeding trough for His first bed.

I love what it tells me

about His determination

to make certain that I can always reach out to Him

without fear that He will intimidate me, or make fun of me, or belittle me in any way.

But there is one thing I deeply regret

about the way in which we have handled our cultural presentation of His birth.

We’ve done fine with what we’re saying

about how Jesus entered our world,

but I think we have failed to make it clear

who He was and why He came.

Neither the who nor the why are all that complicated,

but they are very difficult for us to believe and receive.

I think we could communicate the who most effectively

if we could find some way

of combining that image of that baby body that briefly housed Jesus

with the image of Who He really is.

I know it can't be done,

but somehow I would like a way of

taking all of these little baby Jesus'

in all of our little manger scenes

and somehow allowing the world to see

Who was really inside that body.

John gives us a vivid description of Him

in the first chapter of Revelation.

After meeting Him face-to face John wrote,

REV 1:12-18 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength.

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.

Somehow I would like that image

superimposed over every little baby Jesus

so that we could not see one without seeing the other,

and so that every time we thought of His birth

we also were confronted with the reality

of the awesome

and all-powerful God

who chose to allow Himself

to be temporarily housed within that human flesh.

That would help - being able to see who He really was,

but even that in itself would not do for us

what really needs to be done.

Because the final missing piece

that takes us beyond the how, and the who

is the WHY.

Why did He come?

What was it He came to do?

A big part of the WHY was answered

when He was nailed to that cross,

and then when He stepped out of the tomb three days later.

But that isn’t the whole picture.

If that was all He came to do

He didn’t need to invest 34 years into doing it.

For, you see, there was another whole aspect to the why,

and one that gives incredible power to all the rest of it.

And maybe I can say this best

by putting it into the context of my Trinidad illustration I shared earlier.

You see, He didn’t come to rent a large house in the valley,

and convert the livingroom into a chapel,

and then drive by the kids on the street

and toss out flyers inviting them to His meetings every Sunday.

He came so that He could walk on down the street to the corner,

and then sit on the curb,

and then talk, and laugh, and joke, and play cards.

And He came

so that when we stagger out from behind the house,

filled with all our pain and confusion and shame,

clinging to whatever God-substitute we’ve found to help us with the pain,

and when we sit down next to Him

and rest our head on His shoulder

and look up through blurred vision and ask Him, “Are your mad at me, Jesus? Are you mad?”,

He could say, “No, I’m not mad. I just hurt for you so very much.”

A then, when we finally come to realize who He really is,

who it is sitting next to us,

and we try to put that together with the fact that He so obviously loves us,

it will change us...

it will change everything forever.