“HAVE YOURSELF A MESSY LITTLE CHRISTMAS”

Matthew 1:18-25

One of my favorite Christmas movies is Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life." It's the story of every person. It's about friendship, faith and the difference a single life can make.

In the opening scene, snow is falling, the camera shows a series of shots from various places in the town of Bedford Falls. It's Christmas Eve. Over those camera shots we hear the voices of people praying for George Bailey.

The scene shifts to an ethereal scene of the heavens filled with stars. We hear the voices of two angels, Franklin and Joseph discussing the events of the night. Franklin says: "Hello, Joseph, trouble?"

Joseph replies: "Looks like we'll have to send someone down - a lot of people are asking for help for a man named George Bailey."

And Franklin says: "George Bailey. Yes, tonight's his crucial night. You're right, we'll have to send someone down immediately."

And of course we all know "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey says. We know how Clarence comes and shows George what a difference his life has made in that community and what life would have been like without him.

The hopeful prayers of George's friends and loved ones were heard and God responded. God sent someone.

And the Good News that we celebrate this Advent, is that God loved humanity enough to send someone -- his son.  The Son of God stepped out of heaven and put on the defenseless rags of our flesh and blood.

The Son of God submitted himself and became human and vulnerable. It is quite a story.

It is interesting to note that two of the Gospel writers, Mark and John don’t record anything about this Christmas story. But fortunately Matthew and Luke do. You heard a portion of Matthew’s story just a couple of minutes ago.

But Luke tells the story in a slightly different way. In fact, he has the angel coming and saying to the shepherds, “Don’t be afraid; I bring you Good News of great joy which will be for all people everywhere.

“Today, in the town of David, a Savior is born. He’s the King. He’s the Lord. He is the one that this dark world has been waiting for.”

Then the angel says an intriguing thing: “This will be a sign for you. This is going to be the tip-off…the dead giveaway. This is how you are going to recognize him when you see him.”

Now, if I had been a shepherd and heard those words, I would most likely have expected that the sign he was about to announce was going to be something big and flashy and impressive.

I would have expected the angel to say: “You’re going to recognize him because you will find him wrapped in the finest of silks, lying in a golden crib, and living in a fabulous palace.”

But that isn’t what the angel says. What he says, in so many words, is: “You’re going to find this baby born in a barn, wrapped in rags, laid in a feeding trough.”

Now, that’s ironic…because every time I see a nativity scene, it always looks so very neat … right? For example, there’s one at the entrance to my Dad’s retirement community.

The people in that nativity scene all look so … well … nice.  Everyone dressed in his or her Sunday best – I mean, their robes look like they just came back from the cleaners …ironed and spotless. 

Every hair on their head is right in place and I’ll bet if they were wearing cologne or perfume it’d probably would smell something like cinnamon and evergreen.

But Matthew and Luke remind us that it wasn’t that way. Stables are messy and smelly places.

Nobody went to the stable ahead of time to clean it up and rub it down with Lysol. Folks, it looked and smelled just the way you expect barns and stables to look and smell.

And when the shepherds showed up, it didn’t help. Shepherds don’t buy their clothes at Macy’s or Nordstrom’s. And shepherds smelled pretty much like sheep.

So here we have this strange scene of Jesus, born among clutter and stench and poverty.

Why is this story here? I think the reason Matthew and Luke include the story is that they want us to understand something very important about Jesus that we would miss without it.

And what’s that? It is simply this: God comes to you and me…God comes to the world…in the messiest places you can imagine.

God doesn’t come with power or fanfare or applause! Not at all! The King of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, enters into human history born in a stable, wrapped up in rags, surrounded by smelly animals, and entrusted into the care of a poor young couple from an obscure corner of the world.

It means that there’s no place that God won’t go…no thing God won’t do…no depth that God will not descend in order to bring grace and peace and love and joy and hope to any who will receive him.

The angel says, “This will be the sign to you: you’ll see Jesus in the messiest places of life.”

And isn’t that Good News? Folks, we all are messy people; I’m a messy person – you should have seen my office this week! We live in a messy world.

Every day our world seems to get a little messier. And each of us contribute, in our own small and sometimes large ways, to the messes of life.

John Ortberg tells about the time his family was taking a cross-country flight. At the time they had two little girls, ages 1½ and 3.

They’d taken up the whole back row of the plane on this cross-country flight because nobody wanted to be near them. And for good reason, the whole back row was littered with dirty diapers, crackers, crumbs, and spilled milk.

This is how John tells it:

It didn’t look good and it didn’t smell good, either. You know you’re in trouble when the flight attendant comes up to you and says, “Would you mind if your children played outside for a little while?”

We began to wonder why we brought these kids with us on this trip, and why we had these kids in the first place. Then a guy sitting a couple of rows in front of us, turned around, surveyed the scene and said to me, “Are those your two kids?”

And I thought for a moment about denying it, but then I said, “Yeah, those are my two kids.”

And he said, “My wife and I would give anything in the world to have two kids.”

I said, “Oh, you don’t have any kids?”

“Oh no,” he replied. “We have five kids; but we’d give anything in the world to have just two kids.”

Now, we joke about life and how messy and complicated it gets, but the truth is, you and I take the things that we treasure most in life -- the people that we love, the families that we cherish, the faith that we say is the most important thing in all the world -- and we get careless and let them get more messed up than anything else.

We mess up our marriages, our jobs, our finances, our integrity, our values, our habits, and even our souls.

Now, what I’d like to do is take a moment and do a quick “mess” inventory. I want to ask you to reflect on the last eleven months of your life, and then we’re going to do a little mass confession of the mess-making in our own lives.

I assure you, it’ll be good for your soul -- kind of a gift that you will give to yourself spiritually.

If you’ve had at least one area in your life that got a little messy -- it could be relational, vocational, maybe financial, maybe academic (if you’re a student), or spiritual, moral, parental, or even romantic! …

… Or maybe you’ve lied or lusted or gossiped or got self-righteous or judgmental about somebody else.

How many of you would be bold enough to say there is at least one area in your life where things got a little messy over the last eleven months?

Just join me in raising your hand, real high so everybody can see. Will you do that? Look around! We’re messy people, aren’t we?

Well, to all of you, to all of us, the angel says, “Here’s the good news. Here’s the Good News of Christmas: God is not afraid of or put off by your mess or mine!”

In fact, God’s name when God comes among us is none other than Emmanuel, which means: God is with us…God is with us in the mess of life.

And what does all this mean for us? I want to lift up three brief spiritual principles that I believe are as applicable today, as 2000 years ago. (I’ve adapted these three points from Tom Tewell’s “The Pain of Christmas.”)

Mess Principle #1: We must learn to trust God in the midst of our messes. Oh, we don’t like to hear that! We’d rather hear that the Christian life puts a shield around us so that pain, loss, or difficulty will never come our way.

Or, as soon as we pray about whatever mess we’re in, it would magically go away. But the Bible never says nor promises that.

If the Christmas story does anything for you this holiday season, may it remind you that God is there in the midst of the mess and the pain and the suffering of your life, in the midst of alienation and fear and brokenness, seeking to be your strength and your peace. You are not alone in the world.

Someone once wrote about the ugliest car they’d ever seen. It was a “10” on the ugly scale. It had a gash on one side, and one of the doors had fallen off.

The fenders were held on with bailing wire; and the lower half of the body was almost completely rusted out.

The muffler was gone and the tail pipe was dragging ground. Smoke billowed from beneath it.

The car, if that’s what you would call it, once had a vinyl roof, but it was tattered, flapping in the wind. The color of the car was no longer apparent because the owner of the car had not washed it in a month of Sundays.

But the most interesting thing about the car was that the guy had hand-painted on the back of it these words: “THIS IS NOT AN ABANDONED CAR.”

We live in a world that's often as ugly as that car. Yet, Christmas is a reminder that God has hung out a sign next to everything ugly that reads:

No matter how ugly, this is not an abandoned world…and yours is not an abandoned life. So, learn to trust! Trust that he’s there!

Now, Mess Principle #2 is this: The mess of the world is an opportunity for us to be instruments of God’s hope and healing.

Dr. James Stewart, professor of New Testament from Scotland, was once making a hospital call. He’d been invited to the cancer unit to meet with the staff. They wanted him to offer pastoral wisdom.

As he walked in, he noticed that the nurses and doctors were all frazzled. There was pain; there was suffering; people had been dying. When they gathered, the questions came.

They asked, “Dr. Stewart, why did God allow a 57-year-old man to die of cancer? Why did God allow a 31-year-old woman, mother of three, to die? Why did God allow a teenage boy to die of leukemia?

“What’s the answer, Dr. Stewart? Why does God allow such things? Why, why, why? (They asked him over and over). Dr. Stewart, give us God’s answer. What can we tell these people? What’s the answer?”

And in four words, Dr. Stewart gave an answer that thundered not only down the corridors of that hospital, but thundered down the corridors of time when he whispered to those doctors and nurses, hanging on to his every word:

“You are God’s answer. You are God’s answer! God has put you in this hospital right now, today, for this moment, so you might care for one of these children or one of these moms or one of these dads or one of these people in the waiting room.

“God has given you arms and legs. God has given you ears and eyes and touch and a mind to think and creativity with which to care. You are God’s answer.”

And what is God’s answer to the aching needs in Santa Clara County among the poor and the homeless? What is the answer to the neglect, apathy, polarization, and dysfunction that exists across our community? We are God’s answer!

God has strategically placed us here, now, where we are…in this community, in this nation of plenty, in a community of affluence, in business, in positions of power and positions of service…in office buildings and hospitals and classrooms … in shops and service clubs.

God has placed us here so that we might be ambassadors of healing and justice and hope to those around us.

And never, never underestimate the difference your touch, your note, your vote, your call, your fax or email, your influence, your look, your listening ear, your giving, or your acts of service can make and mean in the life of someone who is experiencing life’s mess and pain.

Then, Mess Principle #3 is this: Only God can ultimately fill the void and mend the messes in our lives. Only God can fill the emptiness of our heart and soul.

Phillips Brooks’ life was a mess. He was a wonderful orator, evangelist, and preacher. Folks thronged to see him.  But in 1865, at just 32 years of age, Phillips Brooks was burning out, having a difficult time, and feeling empty. So, he took a sabbatical leave.

While on leave, on Dec. 24, 1865, Phillips Brooks went to Palestine and rode on horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. At the end of the day, he stopped as darkness was coming.

Where he stopped, he looked over the hillside, and there below him, he saw the outline and lights of Bethlehem and the stars in the night sky above. As he sat there on horseback, he thought about that night when the Christ Child was born.

And that Christmas Eve he knew God was speaking to him. A song started to stir in his mind, how in his own brokenness, in the mess of his life, God comes to us.

Over the next weeks, when he came back to the United States and began preaching once again, the thought of what had happened there in Bethlehem would not let him go.

Every time he would think about it, he wrote a few words. It was eventually three years later that all the words seemed to crystallize.

He spoke to Louis Radnor, organist and choirmaster of the church, and said, “I have these words, and I want you to set them to music.” Louis Radnor did.

And the hymn was, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It has a third stanza that’s just amazing:

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given,

When God imparts to human hearts, the blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear his coming but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

What we are preparing to celebrate this Christmas is not something that you will open under a tree…not something that you will get in an envelope or in a package.

What we’re getting ready for is a God who’s not afraid to enter into the mess of your life and mine.

So go ahead and have yourself a messy little Christmas and know that as our hearts are open, God will heal the broken places; and in the midst of it, use us to be instruments of healing for others.

The real miracle of Christmas is that God doesn’t stay far off, distant and detached from you and me.

The Miracle of Christmas is that God comes to us as the one known as Emmanuel, God with us.

Amen.