From the Depths to the Heights

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

December 30, 2012

From the Depths to the Heights

Luke 2:8-20

Is there any passage in the Bible

that captures our hearts and minds at Christmas

the way our lesson does?

Luke paints a word picture for us

that captures the very essence of Christmas:

shepherds abiding in fields watching over their flocks,

Joseph and Mary in the stable,

the baby Jesus asleep in the hay,

all watched over by the heavenly host.

It is a picture of light and life

from love born in a stable,

God’s gift to all the world!

As many times as we might have heard this lesson,

we are always eager to hear it again

for the way it touches us, warms us,

fills us with heavenly peace.

And for as many times as we have heard this lesson

read from pulpits,

for all the different voices we have heard read the text,

I am guessing that for many of us,

there is one voice that breaks through,

one voice more than any other we hear

telling us this story:

the voice of Linus - Linus Van Pelt,

the younger brother of Lucy,

from the animated Charlie Brown Christmas special!

I was all of 11 years old when the program first aired,

and I have watched it almost every year since.

For 47 years I’ve heard Charlie Brown’s frustration

at not being able to understand the true meaning of Christmas.

For 47 years I’ve heard Linus,

the blanket-carrying philosopher,

that young boy wise beyond his years,

say to Charlie Brown,

“I’ll tell you the true meaning of Christmas,”

and then does so by reciting our lesson from Luke’s gospel

in all its brief glory.

We hear the words, and we ourselves are transported,

transported as though we were there

that first Silent Night, Holy Night.

But our lesson reminds us

that while things might have been calm

and quiet at the stable,

the night, as holy as it was, was hardly silent.

There was a wonderful symphony

playing across the heavens,

God’s heavenly choir singing out

“Glory to God; Glory to God in highest heaven,”

the shepherds providing their counterpoint 

to the heavenly host

as they returned to their fields anything but silent,

loud, excited,

joyfully singing out for all the world to hear,

as they glorified and praised God.

We can almost hear them singing,

laughing,

shouting to one another in their giddiness,

their exhuberance,

their voices carrying through the alleys of Bethlehem,

and out across the fields,

even as the men disappeared back into the darkness

as they returned to their folds.

Praise God!

Glory to God!

Glory to God in highest heaven!

They must have talked and sung the night away

with their praises,

no doubt singing out words written

by another shepherd so long before,

words of praise we now call psalms,

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
   praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
   praise him, all his host!

We echoed the shepherd’s joy

when we said those words together

at the beginning of the service.

They are from Psalm 148,

and there is no better psalm of praise,

no better words for us to begin a service

that leads us from one year to the next.

Let me ask you a question:

How did you say the words?

Did you say them with energy, with enthusiasm?

Did you say them as though you yourself

had heard the angels sing their glorious song,

had seen the miracle born in the stable?

Did you say them with the same joy

the shepherds might have shouted them out

on that first Christmas night?

We Presbyterians are so hesitant with our praise,

our enthusiasm;

hesitant to sing out our glory to God.

But yet, there it is,

right there in Book of Confessions,

in the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Confession:

“Mankind’s chief and highest end is to glorify God,

and enjoy him forever.”

(7.111)

That’s what it says:

our chief and highest end is to glorify God!

It isn’t to win a Pulitzer or the Super Bowl;

It isn’t to own a mansion or a create the next Microsoft.

We who bear the image of God,

were made to glorify God.

But there’s even more to it than that,

as we learn from the rest of Psalm 148:

we were made to glorify God

by leading all creation in singing out Glory to God:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
   praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
   praise him, all his host!

Praise him, sun and moon;
   praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
   and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
   for he commanded and they were created.
…Praise the Lord from the earth,
   you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
   stormy wind fulfilling his command!

Mountains and all hills,
   fruit trees and all cedars!
Wild animals and all cattle,
   creeping things and flying birds!

Let everything on this earth sing their praises

to the Lord our God!

Let all creatures praise the Lord!

Let all creation praise the Lord!

Let all creation glorify our Creator:

planets, stars,

mountains, seas, trees

fish, birds: everything!

Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for his name alone is exalted;

his glory is above earth and heaven.

We are to live our lives with our own voices raised in praise.

But just as important,

we are to live our lives in such a way

that we help every other person,

every living creature,

the land, the sky,

the water, the mountains,

all sing out their praises to God.

Ah, but you understand what that means, don’t you:

that means we have to care for all creation,

look after all creation so that all creation is able to praise God.

Can the rain forest we clear-cut praise God?

Can the mountaintop we turn to rubble

for the minerals underneath praise God?

Can the sky filled with carbon and toxins praise God?

Can the rivers, lakes and oceans we use for sewers praise God?

Can the glaciers that groan as they melt praise God?

Remember: in giving us dominion over the earth,

we’ve been given responsibility:

that’s what the Hebrew word

that we translate as “dominion” means.

It doesn’t mean we have power;

it means we have responsibility for all creation

to care for all creation, all God’ creatures

so that they can all glorify God.

Ours is not the only voice God wants to hear;

God wants to hear all creation!

We glorify God as work to grow in faith,

work to grow in grace,

work to grow in wisdom and goodness.

We glorify God by living as the apostle Paul calls us to live:

clothing ourselves with compassion,

living kindly,

with humility and patience,

bearing with one another,

forgiving one another,

and clothing “ourselves with love,

which binds everything together

in perfect harmony.”

(Colossians 3:12ff)

We glorify God as we respond to the Psalmist’s song,

that deep calls to deeper:

that we are called to grow deeper in discipleship,

remembering that we are not just to follow Christ,

but strive each day to become more like him,

to live as Christ lived,

to become Christs to one another.

Last week we talked about the 19^th century preacher Phillips Brooks,

the man who wrote the words to the hymn,

“O Little Town of Bethlehem”.

In one of his many wonderful sermons

he reminded his listeners that as children of God

and disciples of Jesus Christ

we are not to live in this world as though

we were crows and the world was our cornfield,

a place for us just to take what we want.

We glorify God when we care for the field,

when we see beyond our own needs

and make sure everyone else gets enough to eat;

we glorify God when we see to it that

there will be plenty of corn in the field

for future generations.

In his paraphrasing of the last verse of our text,

Eugene Peterson writes that the

“The [shepherds] returned and let loose,

 in their glorifying and praising…”

That’s the life we are called to:

to let loose with our praising, our glorifying;

But that doesn’t mean we’re just to clap and shout

and sing out our alleluias for an hour on Sunday morning.

We are to let loose and glorify God in every part of our lives.

We are to let loose by letting go of all those things

that keep us from deepening our faith,

that get in the way of our becoming

more Christ-like each day.

So let us glorify and praise God today and every day!

Praise God for the beauty of the earth,

for the magnificence of all creation,

for family, for friends,

for food,

for warm homes on cold days,

for vocations,

for hearts that can feel so deeply when we unbind them,

for hope,

for second, third, and fourth chances,

for those who help us and for those we help,

for eyes to see and ears to hear where love and hope are needed,

and where love and hope are offered.

Let us praise God for light;

Let us praise God for love;

Let us praise God for the life we’ve been given

in,

and with,

and through our Lord,

that baby born for us,

the one the shepherds found asleep in the manger,

the only one who was silent

that first Christmas Day.

AMEN

Where We Are From

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

December 23, 2012

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

Where We Are From

Micah 5:2-4

After visiting Bethlehem a few years ago,

the author Annie Dillard described it as a “queer little place,”

an odd place that to her had more

the feeling of an amusement park

than a holy place where Christ our Lord was born,

the place where God came down in love to become human,

to walk with his children.

Dillard summed up her feelings writing,

“any patch of ground anywhere smacks more of

God’s presence on earth…”

Bethlehem is the birthplace of our Lord,

yet Dillard, a woman of great faith,

 didn’t hesitate to denigrate the town.

She’s not alone.

“The runt of the litter” is how Eugene Peterson

wrote of Bethlehem,

paraphrasing negatively the verse from our lesson

that described Bethlehem as

“one of the little clans of Judah”.

Bethlehem, the little town where our Lord was born,

where the heavenly host trumpeted the news of the birth

to the shepherds as they watched over their flocks.

Bethlehem, that place where the Inn was full;

where Mary and Joseph were offered shelter

in the stable out back because

it was the best the Innkeeper could do,

or, perhaps it was all he was willing to do.

In Luke’s birth narrative,

we are told that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth,

up north, near the Sea of Galilee.

They traveled to Bethlehem reluctantly,

traveled because they had to:

the Roman government wanted all citizens to register

and Joseph was required to go to Bethlehem,

also known as the city of David,

because he was “descended from

the house and family of David.”

It is easy to forget that the great King David

was himself born and brought up in the mud of Bethlehem,

a gangly boy, the youngest of Jesse’s sons,

destined, at least so it first seemed,

to life as a shepherd,

until God intervened through the prophet Samuel,

(1 Samuel 16:7)

In Matthew’s gospel we find a very different story.

There is no census, no registration,

no journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem

by Joseph and Mary great with child.

We can only draw inferences from Matthew’s text,

but he seems to suggest that

Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem.

Matthew tells us that when the Wise Men came

to pay the Christ child homage,

they came not to an Inn, or a stable, or a manger,

but to a house:

the star they followed

settled over a house in Bethlehem.

Why Bethlehem?

Why not Jerusalem, the big city, the real city of David?

Or why not just leave poor Mary alone in her pregnancy

and let her have the child in Nazareth,

if that was in fact where she and Joseph lived?

Jesus could have been born anywhere,

but our text reminds us that Jesus came to fulfill the Scriptures,

and some 700 years before the birth of our Lord,

God spoke through the prophet Micah

telling his children that just as he had called David from Bethlehem,

he would call the Messiah from the same town,

as utterly forgettable a place as it was:

“from you Bethlehem,

shall come forth one who is to rule all of Israel,”

From Bethlehem,

as little as it was,

as odd as it might have been.

None of that mattered to God, though.

How quickly we forget that,

“The Lord does not see as mortals see.”

(1 Samuel 16:7)

So God chose Bethlehem to be the birthplace of his own Son,

the one who “…would stand and

feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.”

God chose Bethlehem as the birthplace

of the one would rule with justice and righteousness,

whose name would be Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

and Prince of Peace;

whose “people would live secure;

[who] would be great to the ends of the earth;

and [who] would be the one of peace.”

This is how God works,

in ways we often don’t understand,

often turning our most firmly held assumptions upside down.

As the apostle Paul taught us, God often works by,

“choosing what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,

choosing what is weak in the world to shame the strong,

preferring what is low and despised”

to the high and mighty.

(1 Corinthians 1:27)

And, as a result,

Bethlehem, the runt of the litter,

holds a special place in our hearts and minds,

a place filled with the very presence of God,

the Spirit of God,

the glory of God.

As we will sing in a few minutes

“O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie;

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by:

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

 The everlasting Light;

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee to-night.”

It was the Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks who wrote those words,

back in 1868 after visiting the town.

His reaction was not at all that of Dillard’s.

In a letter to his father, he wrote,

“It was only about two hours [riding] when we came to the town,

situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills,

surrounded by its terraced gardens.

It is a good-looking town,

better built than any other we have seen in Palestine.

… Before dark, we rode out of town to the field

where they say the shepherds saw the star.

… Somewhere in those fields we rode through

the shepherds must have been.

…As we passed, we saw shepherds who were still

‘keeping watch over their flocks by night.’”

Brooks rode through the town

with his mind’s eye focused on what it must have been like

on that wondrous night 1865 years before,

when the cry of a newborn pierced the darkness

and shattered the cold, awakening the world;

when angels of the Lord God announced the glorious news

first to the shepherds in all their dirt,

all their pungency,

all their sheepish squalor.

Brooks was able to see in his mind the marvelous birth:

the exhausted Mary,

the proud and relieved Joseph,

the curious animals gathered round,

and that florid face glowing as though lit from within.

Brooks was able to hear the angel as he spoke to the shepherds:

“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people,

for to you is born this day in the city of David –

and yes, I do mean  Bethlehem –

a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord,”

(Luke 2:10)

Brooks was able to hear the multitude of the heavenly host singing

“Glory to God in the highest heaven

and on earth peace,

goodwill among all people.”

Brooks heard and saw

as though the clock had turned back 1,865 years.

He heard and saw in such a way

that he was inspired to write one of our most beloved hymns,

a tribute to a town that no one thought worthy of tribute.

We are, all of us, from different places,

yet we are all from Bethlehem

for we were all born to new life

in the birth that happened in that odd little town.

In the birth at Bethlehem, as Paul reminds us,

there is no longer slave or free,

Jew or Gentile,

male or female,

black of white,

left or right,

for we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All of us one, all of us singing

“O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray;

cast out our sin,

and enter in…”

Enter into our hearts,

our hearts we keep so boxed up,

wrapped up,

and closed up.

Enter in dear child with your peace

and fill our hearts with your love.

Enter in Lord Christ with your grace,

that we might open our hearts to all.

Oh child born in Bethlehem

come to us,

abide with us:

Come to us and abide with us here in Manassas;

abide with your grieving flock in Newtown;

abide with all your children in this country

in every country,

everywhere.

Abide with us so that we learn

that it isn’t where we are from that matters,

but where we are going,

for we are called to Bethlehem:

for unto us a child is born,

the Messiah,

the Savior,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

Glory to God in highest heaven!

AMEN