Matthew 1:18-25

Jesus was a baby with a mission:

to save the world.

A sermon preached by

Rev. William O. (Bud) = Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

December 23, 2007=

Children are always co= ming up with “alternative versions” of our great Christian traditions. This seems to hap= pen frequently around Christmas time. I remember one child who was drawing the nativity scene in Sunday School just before Christmas. Her teacher= noticed that there was an extra figure in the scene. Along with Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds and Wise Men, and a few assorted barnyard animals, there was a fat man on the side. She thought the child might have mistakenly included Santa Claus in the picture, so she asked, “Honey, who is that?”<= /o:p>

The little girl said, “That’s the guy from ‘Silent Night.’”

The teacher said, “What do you mean?”

The girl replied, R= 20;You know, Round John Virgin.”

I got word from several parents in our church that I created some opportunities for conversation on= the facts of life after we talked about the Virgin Mary last week. When the kids get old enough to pay attention to the sermon and the Scripture, sometimes questions arise. I read about a lady named Betsey, = who was riding home with her young son after church. Suddenly he asked, “Mom, what’s a virgin?” She thought, Oh no, the time has come. So Betsey sat down with him when t= hey got home and she calmly explained the facts of life in great detail. When she finished, her son said, “No, Mom, not that kind of virgin!&n= bsp; I was talking about the one our pastor reads—the King James Virgin!”[1]

Today we look at a “different virgin” of the Christmas story in the Bible. We are more familiar with the stor= y Luke tells. Matthew tells about the birth of Jesus, too, although he never mentions a stable, the shepherds, or= the angel chorus. In fact, chapte= r two of Matthew indicates that Joseph and Mary had a home in Bethlehem and only ended up in Nazareth after a time= of exile in Egypt. Both versions tell the truth.=

Besides Jesus, Mary, a= nd Joseph, the one thing included in the accounts of both Matthew and Luke is = the announcement of the angel. In= Luke, the angel Gabriel talks to Mary. In Matthew, the angel of the Lord speaks to Joseph after he has found out that Mary was going to have a baby. He was not going to publicly disgrace Mary, but he was not going to marry her either. Without Joseph, the p= rospects for Mary and her child were death or at best lifelong hardship and poverty—not an inviting future! So the angel assures Joseph that the child is a miracle of God and t= hat he should marry his beloved and name the child Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins.”[2] “Jesus” is the Greek fo= rm of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “Jehovah is salvation” or “God saves.”

The announcement of salvation the angel brings prior to the birth of Jesus is an announcement o= f FORGIVENESS. Jesus comes to save people “= from their sins,” to wipe ou= t the blot of evil that separates imperfect people from a holy God. Jesus comes to reconcile and resto= re our relationship with God and others. This happens through forgiveness.&n= bsp; But how does forgiveness happen?

Forgiveness happens, f= irst of all, because God is with us. That’s the other name of Jes= us—“Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”[3] God is on our side. He is for us; who can be against us= ? The Good News is, our God is a pro= active God. He doesn’t just si= t back and let the world proceed down a path of destruction. God enters history time and time a= gain with a plan of salvation for all his people. He started with covenants; then he= tried laws. Neither one worked. He established kings and sent prophets. Nobody listened. Finally, when the time was right, = God sent his own Son to define once and for all the love he had for the world a= nd the relationship he wanted to restore.&nbs= p; The Letter to the Galatians says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”[4] Jesus was the right move at the ri= ght time to save the world.

We see how God feels a= bout us in a story Rev. Wayne Cordiero tells about going to see his preschool daughter Amy in a Christmas program. Parents and grandparents packed the little room for the Christmas concert the preschoolers were giving. About thirty kids filed onto a set of risers. The first order of unofficial busi= ness was for every kid to find his or her parents. Some shouted, “Hi, Mommy! Hi, Daddy!” Amy grinned and waved. The teacher was trying to lead the= m in a version of “Joy to the World” when a little boy did a back flip= off the risers and took about four other kids with him. They hit the floor with a bang, an= d the teacher kept right on with “Joy to the World,” while some of the backstage mothers tried to help the fallen children. It was absolute chaos, caught on t= hirty video cameras.

When they finished, the entire audience rose to their feet and cheered and clapped. Later, Wayne thought to himself, We just gave a standing ovation to the= worst concert we’ve ever heard. I just took pictures of the worst concert I ever saw. Then he thought, But wasn’t Amy good? She is= too cool.

Reflecting on that con= cert, Wayne wrote, R= 20;Why in the world did I applaud? It wasn't because of their performance. It was because that was my little girl up there. I applauded them based not on performance but on relationship. When I was thinking about that, it was as = if the Lord again reminded me: Wa= yne, that's why I applaud you. It has nothing to do with your performance. It has everything to do with the fact that you have a relationship with me, and yo= u're my kid.”[5]

God is with us because= he wants a relationship. He made= us; he loves us; he wants to save us from self-destruction. In his book A Gentle Thunder, Dr. Max Lucado gives a classic expression of = this feeling: “There are many reasons God saves you: to bring glory to himself, to appease his justice, to demonstrate his sovereignty. But one of the sweetest reasons God= saved you is because he is fond of you. He likes having you around. He t= hinks you are the best thing to come down the pike in quite a while…. If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo woul= d be in it. He sends you flowers e= very spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, he'll listen= . He can live anywhere in the univers= e, and he chose your heart. And the Christmas gift he sent you in = Bethlehem? Face it, friend. He's crazy about you!”= 4

Because God is crazy a= bout us, he became flesh to save us. Jesus is born a human being, a baby with a mission: to redeem the world, to = save God’s people from their sins. At the chosen moment, he became like us, so we could become like him= .

In Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, there is a gigantic city dump that spans acres. You would expect that in a city of millions of people. What is surprising is that tens of thousands of those people live in the dump. They have constructed shacks out of scraps of wood and plastic and paper, and they send their children out every day to scavenge for food among the garbage of the city. Generations of some families have l= ived on the dump. They have childr= en, live in shacks, eat garbage, finish their lives and die without ever having left the dump.

But there are others w= ho live there, too. They are the missionaries who have left comfortable homes and lives to dwell among a peo= ple the society rejects and to share the love of Christ with them in a way that= no one else could from the outside. I know one of them. She left a promising career as a medical technician and a home on a nice farm in north= east Louisiana to go live and minister in the dump. She had so much fun that she left there and has spent the last twenty years in one of the poorest nations in Africa teaching people how to keep their babies from dying and how to love Jesus.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> That is amazing to me.<= /span>

But that missionary= 217;s journey doesn’t even compare to the journey that Jesus made. Think of it: from the glory of hea= ven at the right hand of the Father to a manger filled with hay in a stable filled with animals and their smells. Yet he comes, and he lives, and he dies for us. On the cross, something happened.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> For two thousand years scholars ha= ve tried to explain it, but they can’t adequately do it. Paul put it this way in Romans: “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.&nb= sp; Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in = that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.”[6] When Jesus died on the cr= oss, it opened up an avenue of forgiveness for us. It’s what he came to do. It’s why he was born. This is how forgiveness happens.

The question for us th= is Sunday before Christmas is, how are we going to respond? You know, the first Christmas never would have happened without the response of Joseph. The Savior of the world couldnR= 17;t have come into the world without the positive response of Joseph to the angel’s announcement. J= oseph had to agree to take Mary, expecting a child who was not his own, into his = home as his wife. That set the pla= n in motion.

If we are to find forgiveness, we have to respond in a positive way to the announcement of salvation. We have to take Je= sus into the home of our hearts. = We have to accept by faith the promise of Jesus. Paul Tillich, one of the theologic= al giants of the 20^th century, said that the fundamental religious = act is acceptance. We must accept the fact that we are accepted. Can you simply beli= eve that all of this is true: that God loves you, that Jesus was born for you a= nd died for you, that God wants to wipe away every sin you have ever committed, every mistake you have ever made? This is amazing grace! This is Good News of great joy to all the people! Accept it!

When Helen Keller, the inspirational speaker and author, was growing up blind and deaf and mute, s= he did not know anything about being a Christian. When she learned to communicate, h= er teacher, Anne Sullivan, decided it was time for Helen to learn about Jesus Christ. She summoned the most= renowned clergyman of the time, Dr. Philips Brooks, the “prince of the pulpit,” the author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Brooks came, and with Sullivan interpreting, he talked to Helen Keller about Christ. Soon a smile lit up Helen’s = face, and she beckoned for a chance to respond.&= nbsp; Through her teacher, she said, “Dr. Brooks, I have always known about God, but until now, I did not know his name.” We know God’s name. Emmanuel—God is with us. Jesus—he will save us from o= ur sins. Accept this!=

Accepting our forgiven= ess, then we can forgive others. Jesus makes this point over an= d over in his teaching. Right after = giving the disciples what we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” He says, “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”= = [7] When Peter asked him how = many times he should forgive someone who had wronged him—even as many as s= even times—Jesus said to forgive not once or twice or seven times, but seventy-seven times.[8] That is not to say you count up—“OK, that’s 75 times, buster; two more times and you’re toast!” Je= sus is simply saying forgive as many times as you have to, so that God can continu= e to forgive you as well.

Carl Windsor, in a lit= tle devotional book called On This Day,= has a neat story about a grandmother who was celebrating her 50^th wedding anniversary. She told= some friends the secret of her long and happy marriage. She said, “On my wedding day= , I decided to make a list of ten of my husband’s faults, which for the s= ake of our marriage, I would overlook.”

A guest asked her what= some of the faults were that she had chosen to overlook. The grandmother replied, “To= tell you the truth, my dear, I never did get around to listing them. But whenever my husband did someth= ing that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for him that’s one of the ten!’”[9]

Paul gives a word of a= dvice that I share with most couples either at their wedding rehearsal or on their wedding day. It’s from = his letter to the Colossians, and in part it says this: “Bear with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”[10] Forgiveness is the one of the= keys to any relationship, between people or between God and his people. How we need to hear that word toda= y, in this holiday season, when stress and tension seem to make every molehill a mountain, and every relationship is strained.

The Good News is, God = still loves us, and he still wants to forgive us. He has a plan of salvation for us.= At the right time, Jesus was born = to show us the radical extent of God’s love. At the right time, Jesus died to o= pen up the way of salvation for us. = Could it be that now is the right time for us to respond to God’s plan? Could right now be the moment for = you to accept God’s acceptance of you and begin a new relationship with him?= Could right now be the moment you = have been waiting for to let your faults, your mistakes, your sins be forgiven a= nd your heart be cleansed by the Spirit of Christ? Could right now be the moment you forgive someone who has hurt you and open the doorway to God’s forgiveness and reconciliation?

This is the announceme= nt of salvation today. God is with us. Jesus saves us. You are forgiven. You can forgive others. This makes Christmas real. This brings joy to our world! Amen!