[This homily was shared on the morning of Sunday, December 31, 2017 to a local congregation who was celebrating a Youth Sunday]
PRAYER – Father let your
book live for us. Let us see you in it, let us see our Savior, and let us see
ourselves as you do. Let the book live for us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Merry Christmastide. What a
morning of blessings; isn’t always a blessing to have our young adults and our
future young adults bring us the Word of God? Amen?
Friends, brothers and
sisters, we are indeed blessed with multiple blessings this morning and by
God’s grace, throughout this day. For in our readings and lessons for today,
God has given us a panoramic picture, a series of snapshots, a gallery of
pictures of His Good News, of the Gospel of Christ! We have only seen a few
today, but there so many more pictures in God’s Word. We can categorize
the pictures in this way – in the Old Testament we have prophetic pictures and
prefigurements of Christ; in the Gospels, He is presented and gives substance
to those prophetic pics; in Acts He is proclaimed and those pics shared, in the
letters or epistles the good news of Christ is explained, and in the last book
we receive the grand pic of revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. So many
pictures! John says in his Gospel that if all the pictures or accounts of Christ’s earthly life were recorded, no
book could contain them all!
This trove of pictures of
the Gospel about this Dynamic gift in Christ, is made special by the One
giving it – God, And by those who are able to receive it, to value it, to
know its worth, to treasure and ponder it. Not everyone is able to receive it
this way. The apostle Paul knew the value of this gift of the good news, as he
writes by the Holy Spirit in Romans 1:16, he says there For I am not ashamed of
the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. He treasured this good
news, he kept this picture close to his heart, and allowed it to work in him to
the glory of God and our benefit.
We who follow Christ and who
also treasure these pictures of the good news recognize that in Christmas we
are reminded of our Father’s faithfulness, His everlasting love for us. A
picture of that can be found in Genesis 22 – I encourage you to read when you get home.
Because Jesus speaks to that picture, noting that it was fulfilled in Him nearly
two thousand years after the picture was ‘taken’, and fulfilled in the same
place, when he says what is recorded at John 3:16. Most of us know this
scripture by heart, so I invite you to recite it now, to give words to that
picture, how you learned it. “God….”
While the world takes the
sense of Christmas as a one-off annual event, we who are followers of Christ are
blessed to anticipate that each and every time we gather for Holy Eucharist we
celebrate and remember Christmas in Christ's first advent, as we await his coming
in glory.
The power of God for
salvation contained in the multitude of snapshots in God’s Word, as noted
earlier, will not be the experience of all persons to whom the Dynamic Gift of
Christ is given, as today’s Gospel lesson in John reminds us. The world could not
receive Christ – even those of his own people, yet God graced those who would
receive him with power to become His children, children who repeatedly reflect
on the panorama of pictures in God’s Word. How are we using this gift of power?
As recipients of this power
of God, we are blessed to recognize that we have something much more superior
to what the world promotes as the ‘spirit of Christmas’, which despite the
weeks of promotions, proves to be elusive and then fades after all the tinsel,
shiny lights, are disposed of. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we know and
we treasure – if you are listening say Amen – we know and we treasure that we
who have accepted this dynamic gift of Christ as Lord & Saviour have been gifted
with the Eternal Spirit of Christ, Emmanuel – Christ in us and with us. Amen? He
empowers us to discern the many pictures of the good news, enables us to live
like children of God in His power, to love like Christ – we can’t do it without
Him!
To understand Jesus’ depictions of that Spirit in John 14, 15, 16,
and the pictures of who that Spirit is and what He does in us as explained in the letters to
the Ephesians, Colossians, to the Romans - especially in chapter 8, and to the
Galatians particularly at chapter 5 where we are given a picture of what it
looks like to submit to His Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, these Gospel
pictures and more have been given to us to treasure and ponder!
Speaking of pictures, how many of
you have a smart phone – raise hands. Just about everyone. With our smart
phones we are able to take a gazillion pictures. I have an android phone which
has an app called Gallery where the pictures are stored. What app does the
iPhone use? Ok. I don’t know about you but I run out of capacity to hold all
the pictures I take but they are so precious – they are my memories. Thinking
of precious pictures, can you imagine the scene there at the manger (Luke 2), of the shepherds
visiting Mary and Joseph and gifting them with the revelation that they received personally from the angels and the overwhelming joy they experienced. We are told that Mary took those 'pictures,' those awesome accounts of this heavenly revelation and treasured them in the
gallery of her heart. She didn’t just
store them, she pondered them and allowed them to work a faith in her – a faith
that would help her endure tough times to come.
We have been gifted by God
over the days, months, and years with so many pictures of His reconciliation
plan – His Gospel and its operative power. If we would but close our eyes and see them with our hearts. Believers who
have that Eternal Spirit of Christ, don’t worry – he has capacity enough to
store all of those pictures for us in the gallery of our hearts. When we open our hearts, and allow the Spirit to sketch upon them God's saving Gospel those images dwell richly in us. Those Spirit-shaped images can work a faith in us for our tough times
ahead. We are not just to store them like a museum collection that we keep
covered up – we are to use & share these gifts from God with others, show them
the pictures God has instilled in us. For them to see the power of that gift that
the eternal Spirit makes operative in minds hearts our lifestyles, in our lives
at work and in school, in our families. Not just at Christmas season but every
day. At every gathering of God’s people. So that all may know and by God’s
grace come to receive this Dynamic Gift in Christ that we treasure, to have
their own gallery of pictures.. Amen? And Father…
