Nothing Impossible!

June 27, 2008 in Worth's Sermons by WNG

Nothing Impossible!

Now, if I may turn to my main subject, there is a frightening parallel between Christmas magic and Christmas miracles. The passage before us mentions at least three Christmas miracles that most of us really believe, and one Christmas miracle that many of us only pretend to believe.

Luke 1:26-45

Christmas is a time of magic. Children believe in magic; but even children practice a selective belief.

Some Christmas magic they really believe. I don’t think I ever met a child of average or above average intelligence who questioned Santa’s ability to visit, in a single night, every house of every good little boy and girl on the face of the earth!

If you have a problem understanding how Santa can do such a marvelous thing, then you need to read about the space time continuum, and the theory of relativity; and, most particularly, about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the magical abilities that belong to him, and to Comet, and Cupid, and Donner, and Blitzen, and to all the rest. One night each year, almost anything is possible for the man who wears the Red Suit and drives the sleigh.

Some Christmas magic children really believe; some Christmas magic they only pretend to believe. You see, and this is inside information, children frequently have to pretend things in order to protect their parents. I once found myself in that very situation.

When I was a very small boy, my mother and father took me to Sears Roebuck to see Santa Claus. We parked in the lot on 4 and 1/2 Street, and entered the store by the stairs that led past the counter where they sold candies and nuts. The smells that wafted up to greet us were harbingers of the season, drawing me deeper and deeper into the Christmas magic that was about to happen.

But the candy counter was not our destination. At the candy counter, we turned a hard left and followed the center aisle of the store by the Watch Counter, and Housewares, and Sporting Goods, until, at last, we entered Toyland. At the end of Toyland, against the back wall of the store, on a great White Throne trimmed with gold and silver, and flanked by candy canes, sat The Man Himself.

He looked real enough. His beard was white. His belly expansive, his costume exactly like the one in the adds for Coke-a-Cola.

He fooled my mother right off the bat. She breathed rather deeply and whispered, “It’s him! Its Santa!”

I was ready to believe. I wanted to believe. There was only problem. I recognized him! He was the same white-bearded man that I had learned to look for when my mother shopped at the A&P. It was just too much for me to believe that Santa lived at the North Pole and bought his groceries on South Main Street. This man looked like the real Santa, but he was a jackleg imposter.

What was I to do? Should I confront him? I longed to do just that. I wanted to read him his rights; I wanted to call the cops; I wanted to see him hauled off and tossed in a place where the sun don’t shine. I wanted to blow the whistle, but I could not, for I knew my mother was a tender-hearted soul and I did not want to spoil her Christmas.

Besides what if Santa just liked shopping at the A&P?

I did my best. I tried to believe. I sat on his lap. I treated him “as if” he were the real Santa Claus. I gave him the socially acceptable version of what I wanted for Christmas. Then I gave him the “secret” letter listing all the stuff for which Santa Claus was my last hope. You know the kind of stuff I am talking about. Stuff like a Daisy Model 25 “pump-action” BB gun; and a genuine US ARMY surplus machete with a razor-sharp, 27 inch, spring steel blade, and A LIFETIME WARRANTY!

Still, I had lingering doubts; I had seen him at the meat counter.

Sooner or later every child has doubts about one Santa or another. You see, it is one thing to believe that the real Santa Claus can visit, in a single night, every house of every child on the face of the globe. But it is quite another to believe that all the Santa’s we see in the stores and on the streets in the Christmas season can be the real Santa. There is only one real Santa, and anybody with any sense knows that, most of the time, the real Santa is at the North Pole until the last possible minute readying himself and his reindeer and his sleigh for his one great annual night of sharing.

Most of the Santa’s we see around town between Thanksgiving and Christmas aren’t the real Santa, they are “helpers” that Santa has hired to take orders for him. Of course, from time to time, the real Santa comes to take his place among them, so that he will not loose contact with his constituency.

Children believe in Christmas magic, but it is a selective belief. Some things they really believe, some things they only pretend to believe, for the sake of their parents.

The first of the Christmas miracles that most of us really believe is that the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that she would bring God’s son into the world.

Christmas without angels is unthinkable. What kind of story would we have to share this morning if God had telephoned to tell Mary that she was going to have a child by the Holy Spirit? I can hear that conversation now.

“Hello, Mary? This is God. I am phoning to tell you that of all the women in the world I have selected you to….”

(And about that time Mary interrupts and says:)

“I’m sorry, but we don’t take telephone solicitations.”

Clunk!

And what if St. Luke had written:

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, suddenly, a messenger from Western Union appeared to them saying, “Telegram! Telegram! I bring you good news of a great joy which will be to all the people.”

No! A technological announcement would never do. It would ruin our hymns. Can you imagine singing, “Faxes from the realms of Glory wing your flight o’re ala the earth?”

Angels are so much a part of the Christmas miracle that we can hardly do without them.

For instance: Even though Matthew records it was in a dream that Joseph learned his finance Mary was with Child by the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, it was an angel who appeared to him in the dream to deliver the message.

“Does that mean,” asks the hard-to-convince, “that Mary’s angel came to her in a dream, too.” Maybe. Maybe not. It would not bother me to think it happened that way, but neither would I insist upon it. It is perfectly possible that God can do one thing in many different ways. After all, when God designed the snowflake, God did not stop with designing just one; but made each one, delicate and lacy, different from the rest.

The second Christmas miracle that most of us accept without qualification is that Jesus was born of a Virgin.

Why not? Once we have swallowed the camel of the Resurrection, swallowing the gnat of the Virgin Birth is pretty easy. Besides, it seems perfectly fitting that “the only begotten Son of God” should have had a unique birth.

I can’t imagine entering the Christmas season without stopping to consider the little teenage bride-to-be that God chose to be the Mother of his Son. She was pure for all the rest of us who aren’t so pure. And it broke her heart to see her son die to make the rest of us just as pure in the eyes of God as she was.

Still, there are those who doubt that Mary was a Virgin. I shall never forget sharing Christ with a young man from Kentucky whose mother worked with my wife. I had met with him at his request. His life was a shambles. If ever a man needed a helping hand he did. After listening to him pour out his heart for over an hour, I told him he could get the help he needed if only he would put his life under new management, turning the direction of it over to Jesus Christ. He said to me, “How can you ask me to trust Jesus Christ with my life? Don’t you know that he was an imposter. You can’t tell me that, when he was conceived, old Joseph wasn’t around somewhere?”

“And what if he was?” I responded. “I believe in the Virgin Birth; but I am not asking you to. There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament; and only two, Matthew and Luke, mention the Virgin Birth. My favorite author, St. Paul, seems to ignore it altogether. He says that Jesus was born of a woman; but he does not say that the woman was a virgin. And St. John not only ignores it—-he tops it! He reminds us that not even a Virgin Birth could make Jesus the ‘Son of God.’ He says that Jesus was already the Son of God even before he was born. In fact, John says that Jesus was already the Son of God even before the world began. I am not asking you to believe in the Virgin Birth, but I am asking you to consider putting your life in the hands of One who is so unique and so wonderful that most of the people who come to know him personally, have no trouble believing that he was born of a Virgin.”

There is a third Miracle of Christmas that we accept without question. I am speaking of the miracle of the “Incarnation,” the Miracle of “Immanuel,” the miracle of “God with us?” Of course, this miracle is a little harder to swallow than the other two.

“Cur Deus Homo?” Anselm asks, “Why did God become man?”

That is a good question! That God would become one of us seems beyond all hope. Why would God do such a thing? Why would the Eternal Son, “…not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but empty himself, taking the form of a servant, and be born in the likeness of men….” (Philippians 2)

A great philosopher once tried to explain that mystery by telling a story even a child could grasp. My version goes something like this.

Once upon a time there was a man who did not believe in the miracle of “Immanuel,” “God with us.” So, every Christmas Eve, while he stayed home alone, sat by the fire, smoked his pipe, and congratulated himself that he was too sophisticated to be taken in by tales about God becoming a man, he packed up his family and sent them off to Church. He was content to let them live with their harmless little delusions.

On this particular Christmas Eve, he was about to doze off when he heard a tapping coming from the window in his kitchen. Thinking it was a neighbor, he went to investigate. It was no neighbor. A bird had somehow managed to light upon the sill, and was tapping with its beak upon the glass. As the man approached the window the bird flew away, but not far. He flew only as far as the circle of light that the window cast upon the snow. When the man looked at the ground, he saw not one bird, but dozens of birds, cold and wet, huddled in the light.

“Poor creatures!” he thought, ” They look miserable. They need some shelter from the cold and wet. I’ll see if I can coax them onto my porch.”

So, taking a light with him, he went to the porch, and made a dry place for them. Making a place for them was easy. Getting them to use it was another story. First he called them, but they did not understand his speech. Then he did tried to motion with his arms, but they only thought he was trying to frighten them away. Then he tried to lead them in with a trail of bread; but, in those regions, the poor eat such birds, and they did not understand his motive.

At last the man said to himself, “If only I were a bird just for a moment, then I could fly down to them and lead them in.” As he spoke, the bells of the Church began to toll midnight, announcing the birth of Jesus Christ. Suddenly, the story goes, the man knew why God, in the person of his Son, would become man. He did it so that he could lead us into the safety and warmth of the Father’s house. “No man has ever seen God,” writes the apostle we call John, “the Only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”

Most of us accept these three miracles of Christmas without question. Still there is at least one Christmas miracle that seems completely beyond belief. I will keep you in suspense no longer. It is the promise of the angel that, “with God nothing will be impossible.”

It is not that we have difficulty believing that God can do anything. After all, we have already accepted the miracles of the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation. The problem we have with this miracle is that “with (us)” God can do anything. Yet, if we are going to be all we can be in this world, for ourselves, and most particularly “for God,” this is the miracle we must believe.

This is the miracle that Mary had to believe—-before she could become “Mary the Mother of Jesus.” If you think that you have a hard time believing in the Virgin Birth, then try and put yourself in Mary’s place when she first heard it from Gabriel. The only thing she could do was accept it.

It was nine full months before she held the proof of the angel’s proclamation in her arms, and loved Him with a Mother’s love. Then she knew the truth of what the angel had said, “With God, nothing will be impossible.”

Consider, too, the case of Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a cousin of Mary’s, but their lives were quite different. Mary was not yet a wife. She had not even started thinking about motherhood, and boom, she was pregnant. Elizabeth on the other hand had been a wife to Zachariah for many, many years. She had though about motherhood, and desired it for a long time, long time. Many people had already given up on Elizabeth. “She is too old,” they said. “Why, if she should have a child now, when he got to second grade, the kids in his school will think his parents are his grandparents.”

But Elizabeth did not give up. Like Abraham before her, she hoped against hope for a child, and suddenly, she, too, was pregnant. And her pregnancy was marvelous in its own way. When she met Mary, Elizabeth was carrying a Child whom Jesus would later call “The Greatest of the Prophets.” And Elizabeth’s child “leapt” in her womb when he heard the greeting of the mother of His Lord.

Elizabeth, too, knew that, “With God nothing will be impossible.”

Now many of you are thinking, “But I’m no Mary or Elizabeth! I’m no character out of the Bible! What right have I got to believe that God can do these marvelous things through me?”

Every right, and if we don’t believe that, then we have missed the central message of Christmas. For Christmas is nothing if not the irrefutable proof that God believes in us as much as he wants us to believe in him. If he did not believe in us, he would never have allowed his only Son to become one of us!

You know that grief you don’t think you can get through? By yourself, you can’t. But “with God nothing will be impossible.”

You know that thing you don’t think you can do? Well, by yourself, you may not be able to do it. But “with God nothing will be impossible.”

I have a challenge for each of you this Christmas. I want you to believe in yourselves just a much as you believe in God. I want you to believe that God loves you, that God needs you, that God has a plan for you. I want you to believe that there is something in this world that is absolutely impossible for anyone but you, and God. And I want you to believe that, “with God, all things are possible.”

When we finally wrap our minds around this fact,then, truly, the Christmas Miracle will be complete.

Finis