Christmas:  God Remembers to be Merciful
The storm at the center of God's will – Matthew 2:13-23 - 12.30.07
Dennis Mullen  - December 30 - p.m.    

            On our trip up to Ohio on Christmas Eve, I listened to an interview with Shane Claiborne and heard him speak of a side of his ministry I hadn't heard him mention before.  Now I hope I have mentioned Shane C. enough that you know who he is...the author of The Irresistible Revolution, he grew up in Maryville and went to Maryville High School..Went to college at Eastern College near Philadelphia.  Worked an internship at Willow Creek.  Worked another with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.  For the past decade or so, he and some friends have built an intentional Christian community in a very poor and dangerous part of Philadelphia where they reject materialism and power and try to live like Jesus Christ in a most difficult setting.

            In this interview, Shane C. talked a little about the dangerous side of his ministry.    He talked about a time when he was mugged and beaten up and had his jaw broken and he was unable to speak for several months.  He told about another time when he and a young friend were walking along and suddenly they were surrounded by a group of young men who wanted to beat them up.  Shane tried to talk to them about Jesus and they mocked him.  They tried to calmly walk away and one of them smacked Shane's friend in the head with a stick.  Shane spun around and said to them:  “You are made in the image of God.  You were made for better than this!”  That confused them enough that they finally left. 

            I admire Shane C. and I realize that in many ways he is living closer to the will of God than I am.  But part of me wants to say:  “Why does he have to go through this kind of trouble?  Why doesn't God look out for him more?”  And even if I can come up with good answers to that, the questions are enough to make me say:  “Hey, I think I prefer to live a peaceful and quiet life out of the center of God's will.”

            My title today is “The storm at the center of God's will”, and it's the last message in the Christmas series.  When I speak of “the center of God's will”, what I'm talking about is the place where the action is, the place where God is doing something meaningful and world-changing.  Part of me wants to be there.  Part of me holds back, because when I read my Bible, I see that at the center of God's will there is often a storm that threatens to capsize everyone there, including God's people.  There is no clergy exemption from suffering at the center of God's will.  Shane C. likes to say “Jesus wrecked my life!”  Shane could have had the comfortable religious life that so many people have.  But the more he has followed Jesus, the stronger the storm.  His experience certainly has parallels in Scripture...

            Most people, if they think about Elijah, picture him strong and powerful and outspoken, standing atop Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18) taunting the priests of Baal who are trying to call down fire from heaven to light their sacrifices.  “Where is your god?  Has he gone away on a trip?  Is he using the restroom?”  And then Elijah has his own altar to God drenched with water and with a simple prayer, he and all the witnesses see real fire fall from heaven and consume it and everything around it.  That's a great picture of Elijah, and I guess when I first went away from home to train for ministry, I hoped ministry would be something like that for me.  (Add to this the fact that Elijah ended the day running like a champion ultra-marathoner, for by the power of God he ran ahead of the king's chariot all the way back to Jezreel). 

            But I tend to think of him more as he appears in the next chapter, when Queen Jezebel finds out what he did to her prophets, and she puts out a contract on his life.  That's where you find Elijah running scared, hiding out, complaining to God that THIS is his reward for faithfulness!  Of course, God hasn't abandoned him, and he gets to see God passing by as a result of his complaining, but he is right.  Why would anyone sign up to be at the center of God's will, only to live on the run most of the time?  Even when people weren't actively seeking to kill him, Elijah's ministry pretty much made him an outsider, a prophet with very little honor in his own country, a man who lived on the fringes of civilization because that's where people wanted him!

            And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3).  People like to picture them with the boldness they displayed in standing up for God – literally standing up, refusing to bow down to an idol – and then being delivered from the fiery furnace.  It really is an amazing story, but if I had to choose a blessed lifestyle, I think I would rather be out of the center of God's action.  I wonder if these three guys ever wished that they had been born in a better time for Israel, when people got to live on their own farms and harvest their own crops and grow old in peace – instead of their own generation where all the good young people were made slaves to a pagan government and forced to live far from home where daily they encountered customs that were hateful to them and their faith.  Oh it really is amazing that they were delivered from the furnace, but given everything, who would sign up to be at the center of God's will like that?

            John the Baptist too...when we began talking about the Christmas story, we began with his miraculous birth.  His parents were too old to have children, and yet, here he was, a child of prophecy about whom the angel told his father:  Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luke 1:16-17).  That sounds great.  What believer wouldn't want their child to play a part in God's plan?  But for John that meant a life out in the wilderness, different than others, constantly confronting people in power.  Then when he spoke out against Herod Antipas (actually, against his wife) John got rewarded with prison, and then finally, beheading.  Who wants that sort of thing for their children or for themselves?  I want to do God's will, but hearing about these people in the Bible, it makes me wonder how much I want to live in the center of his will, the place where he is really doing something important in this world.  Better, perhaps, to cheer him on from a safe distance.

            I guess it isn't surprising then, that when God's own son entered this world, the storm clouds gathered quickly and the people closest to the center of God's will felt the impact the most.

            The setup to today's Scripture is the one we read last Sunday, just before Christmas, about the Magi and Herod:  Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."  (Matthew 2:7-8, NIV)

            Of course they did go and make that careful search for the child and indeed found him, in a house, notice, and not in a stable next to a manger, so this could have been a year or even two after his birth – and they worshiped him with gifts.  But of course, v. 12 - And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

            Now when you have a new baby and you think of yourself as blessed by God (and Joseph and Mary surely were) then you certainly could be excused for hoping for and planning for a few years of enjoying the happiness of being a new parent.  If they had such, they had it for less than two years...

            Matthew 2:13-18 (NIV) - When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

                When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.  (This is where we get the idea that maybe the Magi visited sometime in the vicinity of Jesus' second birthday, though probably not that late, for no doubt Herod would have allowed some leeway in his plans)  Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

            "A voice is heard in Ramah,
            weeping and great mourning,
            Rachel weeping for her children
            and refusing to be comforted,
            because they are no more."

            That last bit comes from Jeremiah 31:14 which tells of a time when God will put an end to such weeping.  For these parents around Bethlehem, that end would have been hard to see.  BTW, even though secular history tells us a lot about King Herod and his evil, it doesn't mention this incident, this slaughter of the innocents.  Why not?  Well, as the world measures value, this wasn't that big of a deal.  Herod had done bigger things.  And who really pays attention when a couple dozen peasant families are deprived of their sons?  There isn't anyone to notice or speak up.  It's the kind of thing that is excruciating if it happens to you but somewhat invisible to the rest of the world.

            Being at the center of God's will for Joseph and Mary was much the same as it was for Elijah or Shadrach or John the Baptist.  The center of God's will was a storm center, where things were flying around in the wind, and lives and property were being wrecked and innocent people were paying a huge price. 

            These days, a lot of people talk about finding God's will and living God's purpose.  But when you look at these characters from the Bible, you start to wonder:  Is that really such a good idea? 

            Actually, it is the only good idea.  You know I believe that, of course, and you do too.  But why?

            One thing I could say:  “Consider the alternative”; if the alternative is living at the center of no one's will but your own, understand that such a life can lead you on a path of horrendous destruction.  If your plan in life is to stay out of the dangerous center of God's will by following the desires of your body or the dictates of your mind (which may be one thing on Tuesday and another on Saturday); or if your plan is to follow money or pleasure as far as they will take you, I'd advise you to talk to as many folks as you can who have tried that path and found that it led to alienation from family, addiction, and emptiness. 

            But most of us in church on Sunday morning aren't really interested in that.  No, we're here looking for something from God, but perhaps our highest interest is in finding a comfortable Christian life, one that Jesus plays a part in but he doesn't actually wreck it, one with some commitment, but not too much.  That's what a lot of Christians are hoping to buy and I guess that it's what a lot of churches are selling too. I encourage you not to buy it.

            What's missing from my presentation so far about being in the center of God's will?  The absolute joy, the rightness of things that these same Biblical people found in being profoundly and deeply connected and devoted to God. 

            Paul, who paid a higher price than most for being at the storm-center of God's will, said in Philippians 3:  “I had it all, in my world.  But then...  But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. (3:7-8, NIV)  Whatever got blasted away in the storm – and Paul went through beatings, stonings, shunning, even a shipwreck in an ACTUAL storm – whatever he lost wasn't worth keeping compared to the greatness of what he found. 

            Jesus put it like this:  "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

            "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.  Matthew 13:44-46, NIV.

            How can we think of losing anything when what we gain by coming closer to Christ is so valuable? 

            One of our professors in college used to say that college was the only place where we pay our money and then try to get as little out of it as possible.  Students show up late for class, skip as many classes as they can get away with, read as few books as they can, and basically try to get that degree while putting forth the least effort possible and getting the least education they can.  So he said that college was the only place...

            Actually the church is such a place too (assuming we pay our money, that is).  I want to be a Christian and look forward to heaven, but what are the minimum requirements?  If I can help it, I'd prefer to AVOID the storm at the center... 

            When we say that, we're asking for the way to get the least possible joy out of following Jesus.  Is that what you're looking for?  Is that why you come to church?

            I used this illustration on Sunday night a few weeks ago, but I messed up the details.  These are the right ones.  Deena Kastor is a world-class distance runner.  She won the bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and she won the Chicago marathon in 2005.  She was successful in college, but it was when she moved to Colorado to train under world-class coach Joe Vigil that she started moving up to world-class herself.  Vigil gave her this simple but profound advice:  If you want to be a runner, you have to choose to live a runner's lifestyle.  You make choices during the day that affect your running, and daily choices pile up into long-term habits.  You can't be a runner and eat or drink whatever you want, or be careless in your sleep or lax with your energy or haphazard with your training.  If you want to be a runner, you must choose to live a runner's lifestyle. (Runner's World, 9/07, p. 74).

            Now if you go to any race, you'll see people who have not made that choice.  They come for a nice jog, or to support a good cause.  They put little into running and get little out of it.  That's fine.  But up front, there are always a few people who know what it means to run and maybe to win (and maybe to win MONEY).  These are the elites, and they have chosen to live the runner's lifestyle in all it's daily decisions.

            Go to any church, and you'll see a bunch of folks who haven't made the decision to live like a Christian...and it takes a decision to feed on the word or to chose a Christlike response to a situation when you'd rather lash out, or to give to someone who needs what you have more than you do.   You'll find people in church who haven't made that decision.  They're here for the Sunday experience itself.  They put little into faith and get less out of it.  This is fine at a race, but it is a great tragedy here.

            But it is possible to make the decision to live the Christian lifestyle – to be committed to living it and training in it just as you would if you set out to run a marathon.     It won't be easy, and it won't always be fun.  But if you believe the Bible, you can rest assured that it will be worth it. 

            I urge you to get close to the center of God's will by drawing as close to him as you can.  There may one day come a storm to the center of God's will.  But you know what?  Storms hit outside his will too.  But who is with you out there?

            If you have spent 2007 straddling the aisle, why not walk down it today and pledge to make 2008 the year you take God at his Word?  Why not make this the day you quit trying to see how little you can get out of faith and start seeing how devoted you can be?  Why not quit trying to give him as little control as possible and try listening to Him in every single way that you can? 

            Here's what Paul says:  Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14, NIV).

            What do YOU say?

 Morrison Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN  37763   (865) 376-5205