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Has Anyone Seen Jesus

Has Anyone Seen the Baby?

Once upon a time ... by the way, that’s how to start a story that really isn’t true but is designed to tell a truth.  So, once upon a time there was a family that decided to have their baby dedicated in their home, with family and friends rather than at church.   When the day of the dedication arrived it turned out be a cold winter evening.  As the guests walked thru the door, a maid took the coats and deposited them in the bedroom closet upstairs.   There were so many guests and so many coats that the closet wasn’t large enough.  She began to pile them on the chairs and eventually the bed. 

When it was time for the main event, dad called everyone into a large family room while mom went upstairs to get the baby.  The only problem was that the baby was nowhere to be found.  He wasn’t in his crib; he wasn’t in his sister’s room; he wasn’t anywhere.  Soon everyone in the house was searching frantically for the baby.  You know where they found him, don’t you?  Of course you do.  They found him in the room where the coats had been piled up; sound asleep in the middle of the bed, almost hidden under a heap of garments. 

Now that is a really silly story, don’t you think?  I sure do.  Who would ever pile coats on top of a sleeping child?  Maybe if he was old enough he might have crawled under the pile and then fallen asleep.  But come on, don’t you think that mom and dad would have had their eye on the little guy while people were arriving?  You just don’t lose your baby on the day of his dedication in the midst of a pile of coats.  Or do you?

Perhaps you have noticed the pile of presents here on the platform beside me.  Well, guess what?  There’s something underneath that pile, or should I say someone, at least the image of someone.  There’s a babe lying in a manger.  The truth is it’s all too easy to lose that baby this time of year.  As strange as it sounds, as odd as it is, it’s all too easy to lose sight of Jesus at the very time of year we have dedicated to him.

Today is December 5th.  It’s the second Sunday in Advent -- 19 days until Christmas Eve.  Has anyone seen Jesus? 

  • Have you yourself spent much time, so far this season, meditating on Him, reading those passages of Scripture that tell of his birth, maybe reading them together as a family, with your children? 
  • How about taking time to talk to Him or sing to Him or about Him? 
My purpose is not to make anyone feel guilty.  It is, after all, early in the Christmas season.  There’s plenty of time left.  But my purpose is to clearly identify a danger we face:  The danger of losing Jesus in the midst of Christmas.
 

Looking for Jesus

What is it that keeps us from seeing Jesus at this time of year?  Well, the obvious answer is busyness.  Tis’ the season to be busy:

  • busy cleaning
  • busy decorating
  • busy baking
  • busy shopping
  • busy going to Christmas parties
  • busy hosting Christmas parties
  • busy doing church 
Let’s leave you out of it for a minute (that’ll be less threatening) and let’s talk about me.  Since returning from my sabbatical, I have been working hard at not working too hard.  That’s probably not the best way to put it.  But I have been working hard at putting first things first in my life.

For example, as I said I would, such as carving out time for prayer and meditation and not just for the purpose of teaching but for feeding my own soul.  I have been working hard at guarding my Sabbath and putting love at the center of my life, love for God and for the people God has brought into my life.

But then this week happened.  Just about every night and all day during the week I have had some kind of church responsibility.  Good stuff:
  • First Wednesday Prayer
  • Man2Man
  • wedding and rehearsal
  • staff Christmas party. 
But still extra stuff, on top of my every day responsibilities.  I don’t know about you, but when I get really busy and start feeling behind -- you know, waking up behind, going to bed behind -- it’s hard for me to turn to God and really focus on Him.  I even find myself reading passages of Scripture with only half my mind because the other half is being pulled in the direction of all the things I have to do.

The busyness of life makes it hard to see Jesus, to meditate on Him, to listen to Him, to commune with Him.

No time of the year is busier than Christmas time.  Then there’s the loneliness that comes around this time of year. 

I know that’s not everyone’s problem.  For many this is the least lonely time of year.  It’s a time filled with family and friends, parties and presents.  But not for everyone. 
  • Some people don’t have family, or they’re estranged from the family they do have. 
  • Some people have lost loved ones or maybe just one particular loved one, and this time of year is especially hard because everything about Christmas reminds them of the one who is gone: the empty chair at the dinner table, the missing laugh in the living room, the empty bed. 
  • Some people find it really hard to enter into a season that is supposed to be filled with joy when they feel so sad.  That person may be sitting very near you today.
Busyness, loneliness ... then there are the presents, lots of presents.  Now, I want to be careful here because I love Christmas presents.  I love giving gifts at Christmas time.  It’s one of the best parts of the season for me. 

Our family tradition, quite frankly is to buy too many presents.   We sit in our family room for hours -- literally three or four -- unwrapping presents one by one.  I love to see the expression on the faces of the people I love when they open a gift I give them or when I open a gift they have given to me. 

I am actually struggling this year because our family has decided to do things differently.  We decided that we have too many things, all of us.  So we drew names and I only get to buy a gift for one person.  If it weren’t for the fact that I get to buy for the grandkids, I think I’d be depressed. 

But you know what?  Perhaps all of us may need to stop and think about the present, because sometimes Christmas can be more about the gifts than the Giver of all good things.  It becomes more about the presents under the tree than the babe lying in the manger, more about the coming of Santa Claus than the advent of Jesus Christ. 

The world around us, especially the economic world, is working overtime and spending billions of dollars to make us focus more on the presents than the presence of Jesus in our lives.  The danger of losing Jesus under a pile of presents is real, especially for our children.  

I remember one Christmas, when I was five years old, my Grandma and Gramps gave me a set of toy pistols in a plastic holster, and I didn’t like them.  They looked fake to me.  So what did I do?  I cried.  I pouted.  I was an ungrateful little brat!  There is a danger in putting a Christmas tree full of presents at the center of Christmas when we are by nature selfish creatures.

So if we’re going to give gifts -- and I certainly plan to give gifts -- then we need to figure out ways to turn our eyes and the eyes of our children on Jesus.  We need to learn the lesson taught by every nativity scene we see.  The lesson that every eye is turned to “Baby Yesus” as my granddaughter Naomi calls him.  Actually, that’s what she said last year.  This year she can pronounce her ‘J’s, which isn’t quite as cute.  But she still wants to look at Baby Jesus when she comes to our house.

Looking at Jesus
Could we do that?  Could we turn our eyes upon Jesus today?  Could we do that today so that we can continue to do that every day until Christmas Day?  

I know this plaster figurine is not Jesus.  But in your mind’s eye, can you see Jesus?  Can you see the still small point around which the entire universe turns?  Jesus is not just the reason for the season.  He is the reason for everything.  

That was the message of Colossians, chapter 1, which we studied just a few weeks ago.  Jesus, Paul said, is the image of the invisible God.  He is God in human flesh.  By him — at the very beginning of time — all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.  All things were created by him and for him. 

That’s what Paul says: Everything in heaven and on earth was created with Jesus in mind, looking forward to the day when he would come as God’s Messiah, looking forward to the day when he would come again to rule and to reign as God’s Messiah over this created world.

God was pleased -- and I am quoting Paul again -- to have all his fullness (the fullness of God) to dwell in Jesus in bodily form and through him to reconcile to himself all things.  God’s purpose and God’s plan from before the foundation of the world was for Jesus to become the Lord and the Savior of all creation.  Do you see in the smallness, the weakness, the infant humanity of this little child, God’s plan for the ages? 

I think our busyness is sometimes so barren because we have lost our center.  We don’t realize -- or we don’t remember -- that Jesus is the source and center of everything.  We don’t realize that He is the one toward whom all of history is moving.  So we don’t center our lives on him.  We don’t start with him and end with him and judge every thing we do by him.  We spin off center. 

Jesus is the center, the still small point around which our lives should turn and Jesus is Immanuel, God with Us.  The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel, which means, “God with Us.” (Mt. 1:23)

Do you remember the story of Ray Whetstine?  I told it to you years ago, after reading it in Newsweek magazine.  Ray Whetstine was a gemologist, a man who made his living identifying and sometimes cutting precious stones.  He also had a hobby.  He liked to go to old flea markets. 

One day he was walking through the aisles of a flea market, and something caught his eye.  It was a rock, rough, dark, dirty rock.  It looked like a run of the mill geode.  Holding it in his hand, Ray asked the old man in the booth, “So, how much you want for this?” “Ah, five bucks,” he said.  Quickly Ray pulled a five dollar bill out his pocket and handed it to the old man.  Immediately he drove to a gem cutter and asked him to cut the top off this rock.  About half way into the operation, the gem cutter realized what he had in front of him, and he stopped.  Ray Whetstine took over and finished slicing a thin layer of rock off the top.  There it was.  A huge, almost perfect star sapphire worth millions of dollars.  What an odd place to find a priceless gem.

What an odd place to find the Son of God and Savior of the World: in a cow stall, lying in a feeding trough filled with hay.  Born to unknown peasant parents, a poor carpenter and his child bride.  How odd of God to choose such a place and such parents for His Son, the King of the world, to be born.  Unless…

Unless that was the point, unless the point and purpose of the incarnation was complete and total identification.  Think about it. If the purpose of the Son’s entrance into human flesh was to take upon himself and into himself our humanity and to bring that humanity into an eternal relationship with His Father, what could be more appropriate than to enter that humanity at its weakest and most vulnerable point, to enter ...


  • the weakness of a babe
  • the poverty of a peasant home
  • the womb of a child bride?  
Jesus emptied himself, Paul says, and became a man.  He took the form of a servant and died, like a criminal, on the cross.  Everything that is wrong with our world is wrong because of sin:
  • our poverty
  •  our pain
  • our injustice and oppression
  • our diseases and our death. 
But Jesus has entered our world.  He has taken upon himself our humble humanity.  He has born our iniquities and he healed our diseases, as the prophet Isaiah promised. 

If you are lonely, if you are sad at this joyful time of year, if you are poor and oppressed, you are perhaps in the best of all possible positions to see the glory of Jesus.  This child, born in humility, reared in poverty & crucified on a cross is the hope of the world.  He is the hope that every sin can be forgiven, every wrong be made right, every wound healed and every tear someday wiped from our eyes.

For God the Father has sent His son into the World to save us, to save us from the power and presence of sin and death and everything that smells of death in human life.  What a gift!  What a gift God has given!  It is good and right for Christians to give gifts this time of year. 

Santa Clause is nothing more than a secularized version of a 4th century Christian saint.  Saint Nicholas was known for the deeds of charity for those who were poor and oppressed, those in need of the mercy and compassion of God.  Of course, Saint Nicholas was simply being the hands and feet of the giver of all good gifts, our Father in heaven who so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son. 

So let’s not begin with the presents this year. Let’s not allow ourselves to be overcome by the busyness or swallowed up by our loneliness.  No.  Let’s turn our eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and see if, perhaps, the things of earth will grow strangely dim, or perhaps take on a whole new color and splendor, in light of his glory and grace.

Ray Whetstine was a gemologist.  That means he knew what he was looking at.  He found what a lifetime of study had prepared him to see and what he was looking for. 
  • What will you be looking for this Christmas? 
  • What will you teach your children and your grandchildren to be looking for?
  • What will you help your friends to look for? 
  • Will you see Jesus, the still small point around which the universe turns: the reason, not just for the season, but everything? 
  • Will you see Immanuel, the Son who enters into pain and poverty to bring us to the Father, and not just us, but everyone in need? 
  • Will you become like him, giving in the spirit and likeness of Jesus?
     
Now that is a goal for Christmas.

The Aurora Project
In a moment, Tony Hunt, our youth pastor, will come and present to us a giving opportunity.
I asked him to do this, after consulting with the rest of the pastoral staff because I think most of us need a clearer vision of what Christmas is all about.  I want my giving this Christmas to be more like the giving of Jesus.  I want it to flow out of a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and what he came to do.  To do that maybe we need focus our giving beyond ourselves.  Now I know most of us are already doing that, in many ways through Operation Christmas Child, Angel Tree, the Night of Blessing and the scores of ministries and people in need that you are helping.  These are all wonderful, Christ-like expressions of the meaning of Christmas.  As we do them it helps us keep the eyes of our heart focused on Jesus.  It helps us become like Him.

But what Tony will present today is way beyond us.  The poverty he will present is beyond our experience.  The financial need is beyond our normal ability to meet.  It has a price tag of $100,000.  But I think we need to try to do this.  I think we need to ask God to meet this need through us because as we give beyond our normal tithes and offerings and perhaps, as we give less to ourselves in order to give more to those in great need, it may help us recenter & refocus on Jesus and become like Him.