COMING IN SIMPLICITY
A Sermon On:
PREPARED BY
KEN GEHRELS
PASTOR
CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH
NEPEAN, ONTARIO
Open with the following drama sketch:
Too Busy
by Douglas W Donigian, Christ Church United Church Of Christ, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
1. It's 1997.
2. A great year.
3. On a great planet.
4. In a great country, except for the roads.
1. How lucky we are.
2. How well fed.
3. Food from all over the world, no further away than Sainsbury's
4. Yum. Yum. Yum.
1. How warm we are.
2. Efficient central heating, double glazing
3. Umm. Umm. Umm.
4. How free we are.
1. Democracy, Holidays, Freedom of worship
2. Hooray. Hooray. Hooray.
3. How thankful we are.
4. Huh?
1. What?
2. Say again?
3. How busy we are.
4. There you have it. We're so busy.
1. Busy.
2. Busy.
3. Busy.
4. Busy. Busy. Busy.
1. Earning money.
2. Crinkle. Crinkle.
3. Buying things.
4. Clothes.
1. Pose. Pose.
2. Houses.
3. Paint. Paint.
4. Cars.
1. Mend. Mend.
2. Earn, crinkle, buy. Earn, crinkle, buy. Earn, crinkle, buy.
3. Busy watching.
4. Busy going.
1. Busy doing.
2. Busy mending.
3. Iron. Iron. Paint. Paint. Wash. Wash.
4. Too busy to wait.
1. Too busy to search.
2. Too busy to hope.
3. Too busy to care.
4. Jobs. Possessions. Clubs. Lessons. Activities. Events.
1. Music lessons.
2. Football matches
3. Pantomime
4. Office parties.
1. Off-
2. ice
3. Par-
4. ties?
1. And now it's Christmas.
2. Trees to decorate.
3. Holly to hang.
4. Candles to light.
1. Cards to mail.
2. Gift lists to negotiate.
3. Guests to entertain.
4. Meals to cook.
All: Shopping to do. Shop. Shop. Shop.
1. No time to be ready.
2. No time to be thankful.
3. But that's all right. He'll understand.
4. Yes. He knows we're busy.
All: Very busy.
1. He won't come now.
2. No. Not now.
3. We're too busy.
4. Busy.
1. Busy.
2. Busy.
3. Busy.
4. Busy.
All (exiting) Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy . . .
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This document copyright (c) 1996 by Douglas W Donigian/ Trevor Gill. Reproduction and/or distribution for non-commercial purposes is permissible providing that the drama is left fully intact. Permission is given to modify the drama for personal use, under
the condition that the changes are not redistributed. Please send additions or corrections to trevor@enterprise.net)
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Busy, busy, busy --
Can you identify with that?
How many of us start to hyperventilate and have an anxiety attack as we realize that we've only got two and a half weeks to go before Christmas?
Any of you sitting here all tired out because you were going so hard last week? You're really not looking forward -- not yet -- to diving back into the rat race tomorrow; to hearing the alarm go at 6am?
Busy lives -- and they don't seem to get any slower, do they? If anything, just more complicated the further we go. Find that?
Thank God for this regular break called "Sabbath"; this spiritual time out!
Makes me wonder sometimes how sane we are subjecting ourselves to all this. Because, really, a lot of it we dump on ourselves, don't we? I walked into the kindergarten classroom at OCS not that long ago. Man, what a different scene there. Carefree. Secure. Knowing that their teacher and assistant have things in good hand, and so merrily going off to their centres to play and explore.
Bea, got any room in your class for a few of us?
It looks awfully inviting to this busy, busy, busy sort of person.
I want to use these precious few quiet moments to take a breather with you. I want to slow down and go back to a time and place less frenetic: to a little rural village in the hill country of Palestine, back in the bush, up north. To a place that would be comparable to Ontario's Red Lake district, way up there, with not much happening.
And in that little village we'll travel to a typical 2 room house and look in on a simple Jewish teenager; to a gal looking forward to her wedding day, doing the sorts of things that typical young women of the day would be doing in the way of domestic chores. One day kind of slides into the next for her.... Until this one.
Let's read about it:
I don't know how many of us are able to even begin to imagine what an angel visit like that would be like. I know some of you have shared about special angelic encounters. But they are not overwhelmingly common:
Glory.
A special sense of holy in the room.
Power.
"Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you."
And simple Mary -- I don't know, maybe she's preparing something for mealtime -- drops the onion, and stares.
Confusion.
What's this?
Why her? Why not the rabbi or his wife?
Why not her mother?
What ever has she done to deserve this?
The questions swirl. I think you can understand that they would.But the angel comes back, "It's OK, Mary. No problem. This is a good thing. God's smiling at you."
After which comes the bombshell -- a baby.
"Say what?"
One thing about Mary - she loved God, and was determined to live according to His divine will. Meaning marriage first, and babies after. No wonder the angel's words leave her confused. So the angel clarifies matters. And Mary responds -- I love it -- "Ok."
Well, it's actually a little more than that, but not much. "Ok. If that's what God wants, then that's how it should be. That's best. Ok."
"Ok."
Man, that's trust.I mean, perhaps we don't realize it but we're talking potential big-time trouble for young Mary. Here she was, pledged to be married to Joseph. Please understand that this "pledge of marriage" thing was something far more significant than our "engagement" practice of today. For ancient Jews it was considered binding, and could only be broken through a legal divorce.
And now she would become pregnant. Talk about a monkey wrench thrown into the works! I mean, what would your fiancee say if you came to him with some story about an angel appearing to you, and miraculous conception.
"There was no man, dear. God did it." Uh huh.
Mary has to release the response of Joseph and the need to convince him of what was happening over to the Lord."Ok. If you say so. God knows best."
And then, no matter what Joseph would say. What about the folks in town? I mean, they weren't born yesterday. They know which side's up. And we all know how talk travels. And how it tends to develop. I mean - think about it: do stories tend to get better or not as they move from person to person?
Then there's the legal side of things. It wasn't carried out very often, but there was a law on the books demanding the penalty of capital punishment for sexual activity outside marriage. Stoned to death.
Would it happen to her?Or would the rabbi and judge commute her sentence as happened to Robert Latimer?
Can you see what a huge thing this was?
We think things get convoluted and complicated, busy and stressful in our lives! Wow - what a huge thing to suddenly have dumped on you in the middle of some weekday afternoon while you're peeling onions, or whatever she was doing. What a huge thing!
And there's her simple response -- "Ok."
Talk about trust.
Preachers often use the following example for trust:It's like, they say, like a parent standing in the deep end of a swimming pool and saying to their child, "go ahead, jump. I'll catch you."I tell you, this is bigger than that. More like aiming to toss your kid into the ocean, with 15 foot swells, wind and rain saying, "It'll be fine. I'll make sure of it."
And Mary consents.
Nothing complicated. No need to fully understand, or see the whole programme, or to get a handle on it. Just a simple, total trust on her part that if God's announcing it to be this way, He must know what's going on.
And if He knows, it'll work out just fine.
End of story.
To give you an idea of how incredible that response is, how trusting and full of faith, all you need to do is rewind the tape a little bit in your bible reading and pick up the first verses of Luke 1, the stuff we didn't read today.
There's God's servant, the priest Zechariah. Chosen to offer the sacrifice in the temple. To pray on the peoples' behalf. Their representative before the Lord.
He, too, receives an angelic visit. And a special message. He, too, would become a parent. Regular means this time. But he and his godly wife, Elizabeth had tried and tried again to no avail. Why should it be any different now? Hey, she'd probably just laugh it off as the craziest come-on he'd dreamed up in years.
In his case, that aside, there was no problem. No marital or social ramifications. Only question was whether or not he could believe God to be strong enough and Divine Power wide enough in scope to accomplish what the angel said.
And this religious leader protested. Kept protesting in fact. Even when he stopped talking his heart kept on saying, "Yeah, right, Mr. Angel. At least I know the facts of life. Don't string me a line."
Zechariah had life figured out. He knew what would work and what wouldn't. He had his beliefs and his ways of doing things. His systems. And this didn't fit. And so he was prepared to toss it aside, till he opened his mouth and found himself unable to speak -- sort of a spiritual detention put on him by the angel on God's behalf.A time when this servant was forced to live out the words of Psalm 46.10, "Be still and know that I am God."
Zechariah had to learn that if his package for life and God didn't fit, then it was the package that would have to change. Not God or God's sovereign ways.
A lesson somewhere in there for us too, wouldn't you say?
Zechariah.....
And then there's Mary -Unsure of what will come, but sure of who will bring it.
Her simplicity is juxtaposed to Zechariah's stubborn disbelief.
Fellow believers, brothers and sisters in this journey of faith, her simple response stands as a marker, a spiritual signpost for us who get so busy, busy, busy in Christmas and in just about everything else in our lives. It's an important touchstone for we who make things a whole lot more hectic and complicated than perhaps they need to be;we who are all caught up in our planning, working and worrying.
There's a simplicity about Mary's response, about her attitude of total trust and reliance on the Lord that jumps off the page today.
Let's make sure we catch hold of it, my friends.
Let's stop for a moment.... look.... and listen.
Let's see what Mary saw, what allowed her to make the response she did, to step out in faith and take the risk that she took.
Let's look beyond the packaging of the season, the wrapping and the parties to the Holy, Almighty and Loving God who cares incredibly deeply about each of us - cares enough to send us the gift of His own son as Saviour, the Giver of Peace, True Peace, Eternal Peace.
How about it?
Will we place Him as the simple centrepiece of our seasonal celebration? A Divine person who loves us, values us and wants our life to be fully open to Him. "I know you. I love you. I'll care for you. Come to me." He's looking for simple response.
For time, for a place in our hearts and lives.
Will He find it?
There's a simple theme to the song that Mary sings when she crashes her cousin Elizabeth's place - the song we read from Luke 1.46-56:
Those that are racing around in their frenetic pace, figuring everything out for themselves, sorting out, working out in all its complexities:remember the drama: earning, buying, mending, watching, going, busy, busy, busy..... cards, lists, guests, meals.....
If that's what makes up the core of our life we're going to be in for a rather sad discovery one day as it all comes crumbling down in a cloud of dust. That's not the stuff that lasts.
The Lord is not looking for people or communities that have everything all nicely put together, with all their ducks nicely in a shiny row; the self-confident; the independent.
Remember our reading about Bethlehem, that sleepy, simple pimple of a suburb on the outskirts of Jerusalem? Chosen as the birthplace of Messiah.
Consider Mary - the simple, inexperienced teenager chosen to be God's mom.
Those that stop, just stop and put first things first;
Those that are willing to put themselves beside Mary and humbly say, "May it be to me as you have said, Lord" will find their lives in good hands, their future secure, and eternal hope real.
Christmas time is here.
So is the Saviour whose birth we celebrate.Now is time to consider - how have we been responding? What does our life show?
Now is the time -- no busy, busy, busy.
Just stop.
'Cause He's here.
For us.