Genesis 12:1-9
Luke 2:1-7
12/21/14

Thought for Meditation:

When spirituality is viewed as a journey, however, the way to spiritual wholeness is seen to lie in an increasingly faithful response to the One whose purpose shapes our path, whose grace redeems our detours, whose power liberates us from crippling bondages of the prior journey and whose transforming presence meets us at each turn in the road.   

Robert Mulholland Invitation to a Journey p12

     I know that some people have already left for the Christmas holiday, but I’m curious –  how many of you will be traveling during the next week or so, flying somewhere or driving more than 60 miles, to celebrate Christmas with family or friends?  I certainly wish all of you a wonderful journey, and pray that you will come back safely.  Whether or not you are traveling over the holidays, let me suggest that all of us are on a journey.  And the good news of Christmas is that Jesus comes to those who are on a journey of faith.

     It had been a long day and Abraham was tired.  He’d been out in the fields all day, came home long enough to grab a bite to eat, kiss Sarah good-by, and get to the town council meeting.  The meeting was uneventful, but long.  When Abraham got home he got a bowl of ice-cream, sat down in his Lazy-Boy, and turned on the TV to watch Monday Night football.  There was some static on the TV.  After a few minutes the picture went out, though Abraham could still hear a voice speaking.  He flipped through the channels, wiggled the cable, but nothing seemed to work.  Then he realized that the voice from the TV was speaking to him.
     “Abraham, this is God.”  “Yeah, well I want Comcast, not God.”  “Abraham, I want you to pack up everything you’ve got, leave your family and your home and the land where you live.  I want you to go to a new land which I will show you.  I will bless you there and make you a great nation.”  
     Abraham didn’t get much sleep that night.  The next morning he and Sarah packed as much of their stuff as they could fit into their SUV, and took off.  They left, just like that.  They started a journey that would take them all over the Middle East and even down to Egypt.  As verse 9 says, “Abraham journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.”

 Joseph and his family had lived in Nazareth for several generations. They were pillars of the community and had a well-established business.  Joseph was engaged to Mary, who was pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.   The emperor Augustus had ordered that a census be taken.  Since Joseph’s ancestors were originally from Bethlehem he had to go back there to be registered.  Joseph and Mary were forced to leave their home, their business, their friends, everything they knew, and journey back to Bethlehem. 
 Bethlehem is about 70 miles south of Nazareth.  Remember, there were no cars or trains.  They either had to walk or ride a donkey.  Those of you who have been pregnant, which excludes at least half of us, imagine what it would be like being 7 or 8 months pregnant, and walking from here to Uniontown, or to Somerset.  I don’t imagine that it was an easy trip.  But it began a journey for Joseph and Mary.  
  
     The Bible is filled with stories of people who are on journeys.  The Exodus is the story of Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt and through the wilderness.  The Israelites are sent into exile in Babylon and then they journey back to the Promised Land again.  The Wise Men journey from the east to see the Messiah.  We’ll look at their story in a couple of weeks.  When Jesus calls people what does he say?  “Follow me.”  He leads them on the journey of faith.  After the death and resurrection of Jesus the apostles journey throughout the world, spreading the good news of Jesus. 
     Journey is one of the best metaphors of what it means to be a Christian.  God’s people are constantly on a journey.  What I’d like to do this morning is show you three ways that the Christian life is like a journey.  Then I want to share with you the wonderful promise that God gives us for our journey. 
 
     First of all, every journey takes preparation.   If you want to go visit friends who live at 41 Cherry Lane in Memphis, TN, a map or a GPS would be very helpful.  You might want to make sure your car is working well. There is nothing like having car trouble when you are on a trip.  You’ll need to pack your suitcase; clothes, toothbrush and whatever else you need.  You might need to go to the bank to get some money for the trip.  There are details that go into preparing for a journey.
     The Christian journey also needs preparation.  What is the ultimate destiny of the Christian journey?  What do you need to help you reach that goal?  Is there any baggage that weighs you down, things you need to get rid of for the journey?  Who will you travel with on the journey?  What will it cost you?  Do you remember the parable that Jesus told about the builders who didn’t have enough money to finish the tower they were working on.  The were ridiculed because they hadn’t prepared well enough and counted the cost.  Jesus tells us to count the cost of discipleship, to prepare, before we begin the journey of faith.
     Now, the fact that you are here this morning suggests that you are probably already on the journey.  Here is what I would like to suggest;  at some point in time you might want to to pause, and evaluate your journey.  How is your journey going?  Are there changes you need to make?  What do you need to do to prepare for the next part of your journey?

     Second, on any journey there are likely to be detours and unexpected problems.  Most of you know that I live in Plum, on the other side of the county.  I know how to drive around the eastern suburbs fairly well.  Since I started at Sharon I’ve been learning whole new areas.  One time I was trying to head home and avoid the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.  I crossed over the river and tried to make my way up to I279 and then to 28 heading north up to Oakmont.  It was cloudy day and getting dark.  I turned on one road started driving.  After 5-10 minutes I hadn’t seen the next road I was supposed to turn on.  I looked at the compass in my car and realized that I was going in the wrong direction!  Western PA isn’t very helpful with street signs and even if you have the correct directions and are on the right street, there is always a good chance that you hit a detour around road construction.  That is simply part of the experience of driving in this area.  
     The journey of the Christian life is very similar.  We don’t always end up on the easiest or most direct route to our destination.  Sometimes that is because we have made a mistake and taken a wrong turn.  We follow directions we thought were God’s, but were actually our own desires.  We sin and miss the road God wants us to follow.  Other times God plans detours for us, and uses those detours and struggles to help us grow in our faith.  God puts us on a lonely, two-lane highway rather than a busy Interstate, or tells us to take a gravel road filled with pot-holes.  Sometimes the Christian journey is a beautiful paved road that takes us directly to our next stop.  Other times the Christian journey is filled with detours, struggles and wrong turns. 

     There is a third way that the Christian life is like a journey – we have not yet arrived at our destination.  Tomorrow Alli and I are planning to go see the last Hobbit movie.  I really like Tolkien’s stories. They are wonderful adventure stories, filled with all sorts of struggles and mishaps.  Part of what makes them so good is that they portray life as a journey that never ends.  Even when the Hobbit finishes, there is unfinished business that needs to be resolved in The Lord of the Rings.  Even when the Lord of the Rings ends there is still unfinished business.  Tolkien never wrote more, but the journey continues.  Life is a journey that never ends.  
     To be a Christian means that we have not yet arrived.  We haven’t yet reached the ultimate goal which comes only after we die.  Since we are still on a journey we need to keep growing in our faith.  There is more to learn, about ourselves and about God, more to learn about our relationships to other people and how we should live.  
     One of the great problems in the church of our time, at least in the United States, is that too many Christians have gotten off the journey and stopped growing.  People went to Sunday school as children, up through 6th grade or maybe up to 10th or 11th grade.  Then they stop going to Sunday school.  I’m not sure where we got the idea that Sunday school is for children and not for adults, but that is one of the great tragedies in the church.  One of the phrases I hear often in this part of the country, and I think it comes out of a Roman Catholic background, is that students “make confirmation.”  That terminology implies that when you finish confirmation, in 8th or 9th grade, you have made it.  You are done.  Whether you joined the church through confirmation or through a conversion that is just one step on a journey that continues as long as you are alive.  We never get to the point where we can say “I’ve learned enough I don’t need anything more.”  The Christian life involves constantly learning and growing.
      The Christian journey is more than just what you know, the knowledge you gain from reading the Bible or other books and participating in Sunday school or small groups.  It includes developing and using your gifts for ministry, maybe even learning new gifts.  It includes growing in our love for other people and our ability to forgive those who hurt us.  It involves trusting God more and more as we face the different struggles that come into our lives.  It involves learning how to listen for God’s word in your life and developing your relationship with Jesus. We are all on a journey of moving toward the goal of a perfect relationship with God.  We are on a journey that in this world never ends.

     Finally, here is the promise we need as we journey through life – we are not alone.  The promise is that Jesus comes to those who are on a journey.  In Genesis, God appears to Abraham several times, not only to call him to follow but also to protect him and to guide him.  When Mary and Joseph journey to Bethlehem God came to them, in the form of Jesus who is Emmanuel, God with us.  It is an astounding, incomprehensible idea – this helpless little baby is the Lord of the universe, God with us.  
      Earl Palmer is a Presbyterian pastor.  He tells the story of the time he went on a journey to the Philippines.  He flew into a small town where someone was supposed to meet him and drive him to a village out in the middle of the jungle.  The person who was supposed to meet him couldn’t be there but had left a 4-wheel-drive jeep and detailed instructions with another man.  The instructions involved driving through the jungle on a dirt road, crossing a river at a point where it was low enough to cross and through all sorts of other hazards.  It was a 6-8 hour trip.  As Earl heard these directions he began to panic.  Finally, the man who was giving him the instructions said, “What the heck.  I know where it is.  I’ll drive you there!”  He dropped what he was doing and drove Earl all the way to the village where he was going.  
     Which would you rather have, detailed instructions how to get someplace or someone to go with you on your journey, to show you the way?  God’s promise to us is that as we journey through life we are not alone.  God is always with us.  Jesus comes to those who are on a journey. 

Let us pray:  Jesus, you left behind your home in heaven, left your eternal glory, and came down to this earth.  You lived among us, died for us, and returned to heaven.  Thank you that as we journey through this life you are with us.  Help us, as we journey, to follow you and trust in your abiding presence.  Amen.

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Isaiah 35:1-10
Matthew 1:18-25
by Doug Marshall

Thought for Meditation:
Sacrifice is at the center of the work of salvation.  Sacrifice is God’s way of dealing with what is wrong in history, which is to say, what is wrong with us, individually and collectively.  it is God’s way of dealing with sin. 
Eugene Peterson,  Christ Plays 10000 Places

     Arnold Palmer was invited to Saudi Arabia.  He played golf with the royal family, gave a few golf lessons and spoke at a banquet.  The Royal family was captivated with Arnie’s charm.  Before he left he visited with the king, who wanted to give Arnie a gift.  Arnie said, “You don’t need to do that.  You paid for my way over here.  You’ve been such wonderful hosts.  You don’t need to give me anything.”  But the king insisted.  “At least let me give you a golf club.”  Arnie thought that was fine.  Golf club companies sent him clubs all the time, asking him to try them out.  He figured that he could frame the club and put it on a wall someplace.  A few weeks after her returned home Arnie got a package from the king.  It was not a golf club that you could hit a ball with or hang on a wall.  It was the title to a country club that included a golf course.  The gift that Arnold Palmer received was far greater than he ever expected.
     I believe that is a parable for Christmas.  This is the time we remember that Jesus is the gift that God has given to us, a gift far greater than our wildest imagination.  The angel tells Joseph to name his son Jesus because the name Jesus means God saves.  In Jesus God gives to us the gift of salvation.
 We know that Jesus is our savior and that salvation is at the center of the Christian message.  We all probably have an idea of what salvation is, but if we asked ten people to define salvation we would probably end up with twenty answers.  What I’d like to do this morning is not to try to give you a definition of salvation, but to share with you three reflections about salvation, three different ways to understand what salvation is.

     First, salvation means that our sins are forgiven.  As the angel said to Joseph, “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife.  She is going to have a son by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sin.”  
     It doesn’t take too much to convince us of the reality of sin.  There is enough evil in our world that it would be hard to deny sin.  Wars, terrorism, corruption, injustice.  The real danger in thinking about sin is assuming that it is “out there,” someplace else.  The real problem of sin is not out there, but in our own lives.  
     In 1960 Adolf Eichmann was captured, taken to Israel and put on trial for his part  in the Holocaust of World War II.  The prosecutors brought former concentration camp survivors as witnesses against him.  One witness was called Yehiel Dinur.  He had survived the horrors of Auschwitz.  As he entered the courtroom he looked at Eichmann through the bullet-proof glass.  Here was the man who had murdered his friends and many other Jews.  Here was the man who had overseen the torture and massacre of millions of people.  The courtroom grew silent as the two men started at each other.  Then something unexpected happened.  Dinur began to cry.  In fact, he sobbed. 
     Later, Yehiel Dinur was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Mike Wallace.  “What happened in there.  Were you overcome by hatred?  Did the horrifying memories of Auschwitz devastate you?  Were you overwhelmed by the evil on Eichmann’s face?”  Dinur said no.  He had expected Eichmann to be the personification of evil, yet when he looked at Eichmann he realized that he was an ordinary man.  At that moment Dinur realized that sin and evil were a human condition.  He knew that he was capable of doing the same thing.  As he said, “Eichmann is in all of us.”
     We have all sinned and turned our backs on God and on God’s people.  Whether we have committed terrible crimes like Eichmann or just held a grudge and refused to forgive someone, we have all sinned.  Whether we have committed acts of terrorism or ignored the needs of people who were hungry or homeless, we all need forgiveness.  The good news is that Jesus came into our world to save us from our sins.  Salvation means that we are forgiven!  

     Second, salvation means that God overcomes the brokenness of our lives.  I love the way Isaiah describes the salvation that God brings us; those who are blind will see, the deaf will hear, those who are crippled will leap like a deer, those who can’t talk will shout and sing for joy. 
 Think about what Jesus did throughout his ministry.  He taught and he preached, but he also healed people.  A man had been crippled his whole life.  He had to beg for a living.  Jesus said, “Get up and walk.”  A woman spent all of her money on doctors but she was still bleeding after twelve years.  She touched Jesus’ robe and was healed.  A widow was grieving the death of her only son, realizing that now she was alone in the world with no one to help her.  Jesus brought her son back to life.  Again and again Jesus heals the brokenness of our lives.
      Craig Barnes talks about standing at the baggage carousel in an airport.  People stand there watching these worn-out, beat-up bags go round and around and around.  In some ways our lives are a lot like that.  The  worn-out, beat-up baggage from past hurts keeps showing up again and again and again.  Maybe it’s the baggage that came from parents who weren’t perfect, or baggage from self-esteem issues, or baggage from people who have hurt us or times we have hurt ourselves, or baggage from other struggles that have overwhelmed us.  The brokenness of our lives cycles in and out of our consciousness.  It impacts who we are, what we do, and how we relate to each other.  I love what Craig says about this baggage.  “The hardest thing to leave behind in following Christ is not our many possessions, but the hurt and guilt we’ve collected as souvenirs from the places we’ve been.  Periodically it’s necessary to get rid of the junk” (Leadership Journal, Fall 2003 p67). 
      The problem is that we can’t get rid of that baggage on our own.  Every time we try to get rid of our baggage we throw it away and it lands on the carousel.  At some point it cycles right back into our lives.  Instead of trying to get rid of it ourselves we need to give it to Jesus.  Jesus is the one who can and does save us from our brokenness.  As Isaiah says, “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those with fearful hearts ‘Be strong, do not fear.’  Here is your God… He will come and save you” (Isaiah 35:3-4).      

 There is a third idea about salvation I want to share with you.  It is one of the central ideas of Christmas.  Salvation means that we are not alone because God is always  with us.  “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.”  God doesn’t wait until we have our lives together or until we are good enough.  God comes to us just as we are, with all of our sin and with all of our brokenness.  We are not alone because God is with us.
      Abraham Maslow was a psychologist from the 20th century.  He developed a theory about the hierarchy of needs.  At the bottom, our basic need is physical.  We need food, water, shelter, things like that.  The next level of needs are about safety.  Are we safe or do we have to worry about our jobs, or families, or our health.  Most of us are fairly comfortable in these first two levels.  I doubt that many of us worry about having enough food or water and we live in a relatively safe place.  The next level is the one where many people in our society begin to struggle.  It is the social level.  It has to do with our need for love and friendship, for intimacy and belonging.  
      My guess is that most of us have issues at this level.  One way this is lived out for many people is loneliness.  Remember Jodie Foster, the actress.  In 2013 she won a Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award.  In her acceptance speech she made this statement:  “Jodie Foster was here, I still am, and I want to be seen, to be understood deeply, and to be not so very lonely.”  Jodie Foster has all the outward signs of success, yet she struggles with loneliness.  Henri Nouwen described the problem this way.  He said that the cause of loneliness is the belief, that there is no one who cares and offers love without conditions, and no place where we can be vulnerable without being used.  The many small rejections of everyday – a sarcastic smile, a flippant remark, a brisk denial or a bitter silence – may all be quite innocent and hardly worth our attention if they did not constantly arouse our basic human fear of being left totally alone.  Henri Nouwen , Reaching Out  p26

      My friends, Christmas is the message of Emmanuel – God with us.  We are not alone.  Salvation is the idea that our God values us so much, desires a relationship with us so much, that God left behind his eternal glory, and in the person of Jesus Christ came to live with us and for us.  We are not alone because Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.  “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,    And ransom captive Israel,   That mourns in lonely exile here  Until the Son of God appear.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel   Shall come to thee O Israel!”

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