Thursday, December 24, 2015

Poirot's Christmas Message

Since this is Christmas, I have a treat for you. Each of you is going to get a Christmas bonus – a four-point sermon! Moreover, a mnemonic device so you can share these points when discussing religion during dinner. Four points, four P’s – profession, poet, prologue and power. The Profession of Faith, a poet’s story, the Prologue of John, and the power of the Word.
First, Profession of Faith. Every Sunday, we trudge in and out of church; sit and stand for readings, prayers and hymns; say the introit and sing Alleluia. We kneel for Christ’s Body and Blood, and, we recite the Nicene Creed sometimes without thinking about the version or the words we speak.[i]
I profess faith, “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the onlybegotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary.”[ii]
If I spent every day from now until the day I die meditating on those words, I would never fathom their depth. … The Book of Concord reminds us that by pledging ourselves to the Creeds, we reject all heresies and dogmas which [are] contrary to them …”[iii]
As a brief, devout and glorious confession of the faith, founded on God’s Word, the Nicene Creed refuted all heresies that arose in the Christian Church up until that time.[iv]
However, since a Christmas sermon is not a catechism class on a confessional statement on the incarnation of Christ, I move to my second point, a poet’s story.
John Donne, the 17th century poet, told the story of a man searching for God. The man heard that God lived on top a tall mountain at the end of the earth. After a long journey, the man arrived at the mountain and began his climb.
About the time the man began his climb, God said to himself, “How can I show my people how much I love them?” God got the idea to descend the mountain and live among his people as one of them. So, he began descending the mountain.
As the man was ascending one side of the mountain, God was descending the other side. They did not see each other because they were on opposite sides of the mountain.
When the man reached the mountaintop, he was crestfallen to find no one there. He thought, “God doesn’t live here after all.” He began to think that God does not exist, and said, “If God does not live here, where does he live?”
Donne intended his story for the people of his time. Many of them were searching for God on mountaintops, in deserts and at the ends of the earth. When they did not find God, they became discouraged. Like the man in Donne’s story, some concluded that God does not exist. To these people, Donne said, God does not dwell on mountaintops, or in the midst of the desert or at the ends of the earth. God dwells among his people. He lives in the towns and cities of the world.[v] This is the great message of the incarnation: God dwells among his people.
God dwells among his people. That is the basic message of our Christmas story – in the Second Person of the Trinity, God dwells among his people. … From a poet’s story to the Prologue of John, my third point.
Prologue is not a word we use daily. Its roots are Greek. Prologos comes from two words: pro meaning before and legein meaning to speak. Together they formed a word that described that part of a Greek play preceding the entry of the chorus.[vi]
Chaucer and Shakespeare used prologues in their tales, and most of us can complete the opening line of Star Wars’ prologue: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
The Christmas Eve and Christmas morning Gospels from Luke and Matthew tell us how God came to dwell among us by tracing Jesus’ origins to biblical ancestors. John opens with a prologue that makes the story of Jesus begin not in a remote Middle Eastern village, but in the very bosom of God. And because Jesus represents – in the world – the absolute beginning, meeting Jesus in the flesh meant meeting God.[vii]
Yet, we find in John a contrast between those in the world who refused to know Jesus as he was and those who believed and accepted him as he was: the only begotten Son of God. The latter, who met God in the flesh, professed their faith in Him. 
Finally, power. The power of God’s Word is great indeed. How great? Listen to this.
In 1994, I made my first trip to the Holy Land. Like most people, I bought a tiny nativity set carved from olive wood. James Martin, who also bought one, tells the story that when he arrived at the Tel Aviv airport for his return trip to the United States, security was tight. The customs officials x-rayed each figure in his tiny nativity set, even the baby Jesus. The security guards told Martin, “We can’t take chances. We’ve got to make sure there’s nothing explosive in that set.”
Afterward Martin thought to himself, “If those guards only knew! That set contains the most explosive power in the world!”
What is so explosive about the nativity set? The message it contains. The message says that the Son of God chose to enter our world, not as a prince in a mighty palace, but as a pauper in a lowly stable. It says that the Son of God chose to be greeted, not by celebrities, but by smelly shepherds whose status was so low they were not even permitted to testify in a court of law.
The explosive message of the nativity is that God looks at things in a way that is very different from the way the world looks at them. Nowhere is this more evident than in the life Jesus chose to live.[viii]
Jesus chose poverty: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”[ix] He chose humility: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.”[x] And dishonor: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”[xi]
Now, in summary, the four points. If, like the poet’s seeker, I profess my faith in the only Son from the Father, who chose to dwell among us in the flesh, am I willing to put my faith in Him and choose poverty, humility and dishonor? … Am I willing to put my faith in Him and choose poverty, humility and dishonor?
To close, a fifth P – Poirot, the famous Agatha Christie detective, Hercule Poirot. Poirot, in real life David Suchet, met Christ at age 40. Although he was brought up without religion, he was “searching for something” all his life.
“I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation.” He then “forgot about it” until he was making the movie Harry And The Hendersons in 1986. In the unlikely setting of a bathtub in a hotel room in Seattle, David’s search for religion began anew.
“I was in the bath, thinking about my late grandfather, with whom I had an extraordinarily close relationship. … I always felt that he was with me as my spiritual guide. I felt him sitting on my shoulder. Then I thought to myself, ‘Why do I believe that and not believe in life after death?’ That got me thinking about the most famous person who they say had a life after death, Jesus.” It led David to the New Testament.
David read Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which says that salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ, and had a “road to Damascus” moment when Paul’s words chimed with him.
“By the end of the book, I was reading about a way of being and a way of life that I had been looking for all those years,” he explained. Saint Paul made it clear that faith is no easy state to obtain. “When I read his letters, I saw that we both struggle with faith – it’s not an easy road.”[xii] 
My friends, you need not be as insightful as Poirot to know that we all struggle with faith at one time or another. However, you may know someone who is searching. That person may be in your family or circle of friends, a co-worker or customer. If this is a season about sharing and caring, I ask you to care enough to share your Damascus moment with someone searching. You may be the person God has put into their lives to bring them to Christ, the eternal Word enfleshed who dwells among us. If so, may the experience of the God who seeks searchers be the most powerful moment of your life, and may the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.[xiii]


[i] There are more than a dozen versions currently being used. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Lutheran Church–Canada use that of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with slight changes, substituting the word "catholic" with "Christian" and modernizing the spelling of the word "apostolic", with changes in capitalization of this and other words, and with "Holy Spirit" in place of "Holy Ghost". See footnotes 14 and 15 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_versions_of_the_Nicene_Creed#cite_ref-15.
[ii] Lutheran Service Book
[iii] Formula of Concord, pdf 331
[iv] Formula, 364
[v] Decision, 31f.
[vi] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prologue
[vii] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (2010), 474.
[viii] Decision, 41f.
[ix] Luke 9:58
[x] Matthew 11:29
[xi] Luke 17:24-25
[xii] http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/363810/David-Suchet-reveals-how-he-found-faith
[xiii] Philippians 4:7

No comments:

Post a Comment