Are You Ready for Christmas?

Luke 2:7b

“…there was no place for them in the Inn.”

Are you ready for Christmas?  I am sure you have had one or two people ask you that question over the past month.   Normally that is a simple way of asking, “Is your tree up?  Have you decorated?  Are your Christmas cookies made?   Have you finished shopping?  Are you ready for company to arrive?  Have you bought your groceries for Christmas dinner?”  When people ask me they usually are also asking, “Are the services ready?  Is your Christmas sermon written?” 

Usually Linda has us more than ready for Christmas. This Christmas however we were kind of limited on how ready we could be.  We have more guests than we have beds and bedrooms.  Steven is sleeping on our coach in the living room.  A friend of Dora’s and her little toddler son are sleeping in our home office, on a thin mattress on the floor.  Nobody’s complaining.  We are having a great time.  I just wish we had comfortable places for everyone to sleep.  You might say that this Christmas our home is a modern day Bethlehem.  There’s no room at the Inn. 

That got me to thinking. It changed the way I understood this question – “Are You ready for Christmas?”  Think about it – having cookies baked, decorations up, presents bought and wrapped – none of that makes you ready.  Christmas isn’t about those things.  Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, about the coming of God into this world and into our lives.  That should be what this question refers to. – “Are you ready for Christmas?  Are you ready for God to come to you?  Are you ready for Jesus?”  Or is your life, like our apartment – so full of the stuff and activities of this world, that you just don’t have much room for Him? 

Linda and I have been so excited about having Jon, Dora, Kellan and Steven, as well as Dora’s friend and her son, with us for Christmas.  They have all been here since last Sunday.  Yet so far all I have been able to do is fit them in at times when I am not busy with something else.  Too often that is how we fit Jesus in – give Him a place on the floor in the office, let him fill in the cracks of our lives, give him those fleeting moments when we aren’t already busy with something else.  We offer him our version of a manger.  Are you ready for Christmas?  Is there room at your Inn?  Our answer to that question is probably not what we wish it would be. 

Thank God that His answer is exactly what you and I need it to be.  Our God’s answer is a resounding yes.  When Jesus was born 2000 years ago, God had prepared everything.  In fact the Bible tells us that “in the fullness of time,” that is when everything was ready, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the full rights of son.”  In spite of the fact that we too often have no room for Him, Jesus left heaven to make room for us in His family.  That’s why He took up residence in that manger, and lived for a while in this world.  That’s He died on the cross – to pay for your room and mine in His Father’s mansions.  That’s why He came to you in baptism – to adopt you into His family.  That’s why He comes to you in Holy Communion.  He gives you a foretaste of the feast He has waiting for You at His Father’s table. 

Are you ready for Christmas?  Thank God He was ready… ready to be laid in that manger… ready to be nailed to that cross. There may have been no room for Jesus in that Inn, yet because of Him God has a room ready for you and for me, forever in His home.  Merry Christmas!

Are You Ready to be Uncomfortable?

Matthew 1:18b–20a (ESV)

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit….

Do you understand what a “comfort zone” is?  That’s when you are in situations that are normal for you… where nothing happens that you don’t expect or can’t handle easily.  I’m in my comfort zone when I am preaching a sermon.  Johanna our music director is in her comfort zone when she is playing the organ. Most of us like being in our “comfort zone.” That’\s where life is predictable.  That’s where life is easiest.   

Joseph was in his comfort zone.  He was living in Nazareth.  He had grown up there.   He had a job that he was good at.  His marriage to young Mary was all arranged.  Everything was great.  That all changed.  His “bride to be” came to him with the news that she was pregnant.  “But don’t worry Joseph, I haven’t been unfaithful.  I am still a virgin.  The child is God’s.”  How’s that for uncomfortable?  Not only was his fiancée pregnant, she was crazy.  Joseph, however, wasn’t going to be pushed out of his comfort zone so easily.  He had this figured out. He could handle this.  Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly…”    That way her reputation and his could be protected.  He could stay in his comfort zone!  Boy was he wrong.  His discomfort was only beginning.  As he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit….  Mary was telling the truth.  The Lord wanted him to marry her.  That was going to be very uncomfortable.   People weren’t going to believe the story about her pregnancy any more than he had.  The rest of his life he would have to live with what people said about him, Mary and their “illegitimate child.”   He would soon have to take Mary with him to Bethlehem, in the last days of her pregnancy.  There he would be powerless to take care of her.  He wouldn’t be able to find her a decent place for giving birth.  When Herod came to kill the baby, he wouldn’t be able to protect her.  Joseph and his young family would be forced to run away to Egypt.  He was suddenly thrust into all sorts of uncomfortable situations he couldn’t possibly handle on his own. 

That’s what happens whenever God begins to work in your life.  Following Jesus is going to force you out of your comfort zone. He puts us in situations where that we can’t handle… situations where we have to trust in Him, not ourselves. Taking your faith seriously will often make your life uncomfortable.  I can guarantee that your Lord will begin confronting you with thoughts, beliefs, activities in your life that are just flat out wrong… that have to change.  Joseph had to give up his plan to divorce Mary.  There are other examples.  Friends will think you have become a fanatic.  People will think you are crazy – crazy to believe in a virgin birth, in creation, in man rising from the dead and so forth.   You are going to feel uncomfortable saying no when your friends invite you to do something you believe is wrong.   People you love, will say things… they will post things on Facebook that you vehemently disagree with.  It’s going to be hard to hold your tongue and not argue.  It’s going to be downright uncomfortable to go on loving people who make you angry.  That’s what Jesus wants you to do.  He wants you to care more about them then whether or not you win an argument.  There will hard days, tragic days… days of illness or death.  On those days you are going to wonder, “God where are you?” On such days, worry and fear are going to seem a lot more comfortable to you than faith and trust.  Are you ready to be uncomfortable?

Why would God do this?  Because in our comfort zones we are living a lie, a false comfort that we can handle things on our own.  But, in fact, we can’t.  So God calls us out our comfort zone into His… into the place where the only thing we have to rely on is Him and His promises.  That’s what He offered Joseph.   “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”   That’s what He offers us as well – His promises.  And they are more than enough.  They offer real comfort because they are true.  He keeps His promises.  He does what He says.  The proof is Mary’s little child.  Here is Immanuel – God with us in flesh and blood.  Here is Jesus to save us from ours sin.  This is how far God is willing to go to keep His promises – He gave up His own son!  Jesus gave up His own life on the cross.  He became more than uncomfortable so that you and I might have the real comfort that He alone can give.  There is a modern parable about faith that I love.  A man asked his friends if they believed he could push a wheel barrow on a single tight wire across Niagara Falls.  When most believed he couldn’t, he proved them wrong and did it.  Then he asked again.  This time they all said, they believed he could.  Then he asked them, “If you really believe, which of you will get inside the cart and let me push you across?”  That’s discomfort of faith.  You are crawling in God’s wheelbarrow, putting yourself completely in His hands and trusting Him.  The odd thing is – faith may feel very uncomfortable to you and me but it is the only place where true comfort is found – in Him 

Are You Ready for God to Change Your Plans?

Luke 1:28–29 (ESV)

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”  But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

You know this wasn’t what Mary had planned for her life.  She had no plans to be a mother before she got married, let alone to be the mother of God’s Son.   She had no plans to move to Bethlehem, then to Egypt, then back to Nazareth.    Mary had no plans for her son to be the Savior of the world.  I doubt that Mary would have chosen to watch her Son be nailed to a cross and die.  Never in a million years did she think that by the end of her life she would be living in Ephesus with the Apostle John. No, Mary’s plans must have looked much different. At some future date she was going to marry Joseph, the man picked out for her by her father.  Then they would have children.  He would support them with his carpentry.  They would live out their lives together and die in Nazareth.    All that changed when God sent her that angel.  “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”    We can all understand why Mary was greatly troubled by this.  After all, in that one moment, God changed all of her plans. I doubt very much that she was ready.

Are you ready for God to change your plans?  I ask that because when He calls that’s what he does. At one time, I planned on being a musician not a Pastor.  God had other plans.  He kept sending people to point out to me that liking music wasn’t the same as being good at it.  But talking, teaching – that He has given me a talent for.  I never planned on living in Texas.  God called us there twice.  I planned on retiring at Concordia Wisconsin but then God called me back to Texas.  I planned on retiring at Lamb of God in Flower Mound but then God called us to Germany.  I have given up figuring out what comes next.  Our DCE here at Trinity in Frankfurt, Kendra McNatt will tell you that she wasn’t supposed to be here.  This wasn’t her plan. She was never going to be a church worker. She was going to train dolphins. She was pretty good at it.  So when God called, she didn’t want to follow. She would tell you she wasn’t ready.  But He kept calling. She kept resisting (and in the process making herself miserable) until one day “kicking and screaming” she said yes. 

Are you ready for God to change your plans?  His calling will not likely come to you from an angel, although He could send one if He wished.  His calling will most likely not be into fulltime church work, but for some of you it might.  It may be a calling to be a leader or a teacher in the church.  He may call you to change jobs or to move to a new town.  If there are destructive behaviors going on in your life, I can guarantee that He will call you to leave that behavior behind.  His may use an illness or the loss of a job or some other crisis in your life to help you hear his voice.  However it comes, whenever it comes, whatever His calling is, 0my guess is that you will not really be ready for the change.  I don’t think any of us ever are.  My prayer is that even so, when God calls that you will say yes to whatever it is… even if it scares you… even if you don’t understand it. 

That’s what Mary did.  There was no way she was ready for what God was about to do in her life… Even after the angel’s explanation of her pregnancy, she wasn’t ready. Oh she accepted His words, but I doubt she understood them… I doubt very much that she was prepared for all the things that were about to change.  Yet Mary said yes. “Behold I am the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to Your Word.”  How could she say yes even though she wasn’t ready?  Because what the Angel made plain to Mary was that God was ready.  He had been preparing from before the beginning of time to give His Son. He had brought all history to this point.   Now in the fullness of time He sent forth His Son.   No matter how many unknown things were about to happen, they would not be unknown to Him.  He was ready.  She could trust Him.   We are no different.  Though we are never really ready for God to work changes in our lives, we can trust Him.   We can say yes because we know He is ready.  He made this world.  He knows our names, counts the hairs on our head and gave His Son for us.  We can follow His calling without fear.  He is always ready.   

Are You Ready for a New Way of Life?

Matthew 3:1–2 (ESV)

“In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

This call to Germany was a call to a different kind of life. That simply goes with moving from one country and culture to another.  Let me share some examples – living far from most of our kids yet closer to Jon than in years; shopping for groceries every other day not every other week; taking public transportation or walking rather than driving; taking the train rather than the plane or car; pastoring a small congregation rather than a large one; pastoring people from many nations rather than one or two; learning a new language and having to use it; in the US “how are you” is a greeting, here it’s an invitation to a serious conversation; the pace of life is slower here but always with a purpose; Linda and I have more time with each other; the Germans don’t have what I call “Italian sausage” on their Pizza; going out to eat is a three hour experience, not 45 minutes; the road signs and the rules of the road are different… I could go on. Now I want you to know, I love the life we had in America and I love the life God is giving us here.  We needed many of these changes.  However if someone had asked me 15 months ago, “Are you ready for a new way of life?” I would have said yes, indeed I did but I didn’t know what that meant.

Advent asks you the same question. Are you ready for a new way of life?  That is what God is offering you.  That is what John the Baptist invites us to.  “Repent,” He says, “For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”   How is this new life different?  Let me give you some examples from God’s own words –

·         That you “might not perish but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16)

·         that you might “have life and have it abundantly…”  (John 10:10)

·         you are given “treasure in heaven that moth and rust cannot destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal.”  (Matthew 6:20)

·         You are “born anew into a living hope…” (1 Peter 1:3)  …”a hope that does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5)

·         Where we “no longer live for ourselves but for Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:15)

·         Where “if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

·         Where it “is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God…”  (Galatians 2:20)

I could keep going but you get the point.  That’s the new life God offers you.  That’s the new life Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again to win for you and me.  Are you ready for a new way of life?

That new life is yours through repentance and faith.  That new life is given to you freely as you are buried with Christ by baptism into death and are raised with to new life.  That new life is yours for free as by daily confessing your sins you again and again drown the old greedy, selfish you so that every day God might bring forth a new man to live before Him.  But, you object, repentance is not so easy.  Sometimes when you or I say we’re sorry, we’re just going through the motions.  We’re saying but we don’t really mean it.  Sometime we’re only saying I am sorry because we got caught.  There are also times when you and I really do mean it.  Most often we really do want to change the way we live.  We even promise to change, try to change.  But then again and again, we fall back into the same old trap… commit the same sin over again.  Like Paul, “I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, that I keep on doing… O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?”  Can I ever be ready for this new way of life?

Yes.  But you need to remember that in this life the new life is not yet complete.  We have that new life but we are not yet in heaven. We have victory over sin and yet we still daily struggle with sin.  We are forgiven, but not yet in perfect.  Our whole life this side of heaven is lived between the already and the not yet.  Our whole life is thus about learning to live the new life God has given and is giving us in Christ.  Repentance is not simply a one-time event.  Turning from sin and back to God is the daily moment by moment life of a Christian… adjusting, changing, dying and rising again are all about learning to live the new life of faith.  That’s the way it’s been here in Germany.  When we came we were told that adjusting to life in a new culture would take at least 18 months. It takes up to five or more years to really feel at home.  Learning to live the new life in Christ takes a lifetime – a lifetime of repentance, of forgiveness, of discovering that you really can trust God’s promises, that God really does love you, that the hope you have is real, that you do have a treasure in heaven that cannot be taken away.  Are you ready for a new way of life?    More and more each day… learning that new life each day…  With God’s help, by His grace, He is in the process of moving you from the culture of this world to the culture of His kingdom… getting you ready for the day when He says to you, “Come inherit the kingdom prepared for you...”  So you are ready but also not yet… for that life is now yours but at the same time not yet….

Are You Ready for God to Answer Your Prayer?

“But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid Zechariah, your prayer has been heard.’”

Luke 1:13a

Are you ready?  This is the season of getting ready.  As you can see Linda has been busy getting ready for Christmas, putting up decorations, baking cookies, buying presents and so forth.  At Church I am getting services ready as well - writing sermons and so forth.  The choirs are getting music ready.  Many of you are getting ready for parties, for guests and more.  Advent is about getting ready - ready for Jesus to come again in glory… to come to us today in Word and Sacrament.  The whole message of John the Baptist was about getting ready – “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of God is near.”  The whole Christmas story is about different people who were not quite ready for God’s work in their lives,

Zechariah is the perfect example.  He and Elizabeth have been praying and praying and praying for God to give them a child!  They wanted a baby more than anything.  Finally one day an angel comes to him.  “Do not be afraid Zechariah, your prayer has been heard.”   Zechariah is not ready.  He wonders, “How can I be sure of this?”  He even gives a reason why this could not possibly be.  “I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”  It’s almost as if he’s been praying but never really expected God to answer.  He’s not ready for what that angel told him.  

How could it be that any of us who prays would not be ready for God to answer that prayer?  One reason could be that we go into prayer, like Zechariah, expecting nothing.  I have been guilty sometimes of just going through the motions of prayer… as part of my daily ritual… but with no real expectations.   Are you ever guilty of that – just rattling of the words of prayer?  Just going through the motions? 

This story reminds us that God is serious in inviting us to pray.  That’s His promise.  “Ask and it shall be given.  Seek and you shall find.  Knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks the door will be opened.  Which of you if he son asks him for bread will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”    I remember how my confirmation Pastor urged us to pray, expecting God to be listening.  He said, “Be careful what you ask for. You might be surprised when you get it.”

Of course there is another reason why there are times when we aren’t ready for God’s answer to our prayers.  Sometimes God doesn’t give us the answer we want.  I remember one lady who was really down.  She had cancer.  She prayed and prayed and prayed but it didn’t get better.  God was giving her an answer she wasn’t ready for.  Then she started praying differently.  She added to her prayer, “Lord if it is not your will I get better, give me faith to trust in Your will even when it is hard.  Indeed, either way Lord, grant that whether I get better or sicker, You might use me to help others and to glorify your name.”   When we see prayer as a laundry list of things we want God to do for us, then we aren’t going to be ready when He doesn’t give us the answer we want.  What a difference it makes when we see prayer as an act of faith- sharing our petitions with our inviting God and asking Him to submit our will to His.  After all you can trust Him even when His answer is No.  He is the God who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for you. That’s a God who can work all things together for good.  Approach Him in prayer with that faith and you will be ready for whatever answer He gives.  e HeH