THE NATIVITY of OUR LORD

Christmas Eve 2011

Text: Matthew 2:11

Pastor Dale G. Bauer

I apologize if this shocks you on Christmas Eve. Please understand that I am not grandstanding for my favorite football team, the Denver Broncos, and please understand that I am not grandstanding for the most-talked-about quarterback in the NFL this year, Tim Tebow.

He has certainly captured the imagination of millions. He’s either hated or loved. He’s not considered much of a quarterback because his passing game is questionable and when he can’t pass, he tucks the ball and literally runs over defensive players as he heads to the goal line. When he’s not on the field, he avoids booze and broads; instead he does acts of love and kindness, from visiting prisons to working for the poor. The Wall Street Journal writes that he was introduced to a twenty-year-old woman by the name of Kelly, a brain-tumor victim, who suffered hearing loss and evidenced visible, constant tremors. After meeting her and talking to her parents, he asked her to be his date at an awards ceremony the next evening. You can imagine the scene when he walked the trembling young woman down the red carpet.

People react to his piety mostly. He prays in public before millions, on stadium turf, by putting one knee on the turf and a hand on his head, what is now called “Tebowing.” There is even a Tebowing website.

If you think Tim Tebow and this sermon is outrageous, consider for just a moment how outrageous this thing called Christmas is. God comes to earth as a child, a helpless human being. That’s a scandal; the creator of heaven and earth doesn’t do that kind of thing. This child, as the Gospel of John reminds us, comes not to this world to condemn us, but to redeem us. Not to point out all
the stuff we have done wrong, but to offer us the precious commodity called grace. Grace, as Brennan Manning puts it, is the “active expression of God’s love.” God comes to earth not to help those who have it all together, but those of us who spend a lot of time trying to keep it together, on a road filled with blind spots, wrong turns, and wrecks.

Have you ever noticed how the characters of the Nativity react to God’s act of grace in little Jesus? The angels and the hosts of heaven thunder praise God. The shepherds run to Bethlehem to look at him. Herod the king goes berserk and tries to kill him. When Mary and Joseph go to the temple for his circumcision, Simeon sings that his eyes have seen salvation. When the magi get to Bethlehem and find Jesus, they fall down, kneeling before him. Ever notice the manger scenes on mantles, under Christmas trees, on front lawns so popular this time of year? It is magi, from far away, who kneel before the Christ child.

I hope that this season of Christmas, which this evening begins—not ends—so fills you witha sense of God’s grace that you can be honest with yourself, accept that you are accepted, and kneel before the source of all love. As the magi did. And as Tim Tebow does.

Amen.