Christmas
The liberator
Christmas Eve
Luke 2:1-14
“The angel said
to them: I bring you
good news of great joy which is for all people, for onto you is born
this day in the city of David, a Liberator, who is Christ the
Lord.”
One of the most
exciting and most dramatic rescue missions of modern times happened
in Entebbe, Uganda, located in Central Africa.
It occurred on July 4th, 1976, on the 200th
anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.
That rescue mission captivated the whole world.
An Israeli airplane has been hijacked after it left Paris,
France. It was hijacked
by a group of Palestinian guerillas.
These Palestinian guerillas had made arrangements with Big
Daddy Amin of Uganda to land their plane at Entebbe, a remote city
in Uganda. The hijacked
plane landed at Entebbe, and Big Daddy Amin, one of the cruelest
dictators of all time, who had brutalized his own country into
submission, who had murdered his own people by the tens of
thousands, came out to meet the hijacked airplane.
He fumed and railed at the 150 prisoners on the plane.
They expected death at the hands of this violent, cruel man.
The hostages were kept isolated, captive for several days and
then…it happened. So
suddenly. So secretly.
No one had an inkling that it was going to happen.
Suddenly and silently in the middle of the night, at 1:00 AM
on July 4, 1976, on the 200th anniversary of our national
liberation, a plane quietly glided into Entebbe and out jumped a
squadron of forty commandos. There
was a blast of gunfire. Two
Israeli soldiers were killed, but the Ugandans immediately
surrendered. Quickly
there were two airplanes in the dark sky, the first plane which had
been hijacked and the second, a rescue plane. Both planes flew to
freedom. The next day,
Big Daddy Amin again fumed and railed that his airspace had been
violated.
Liberation is a
good word. Liberation
is good news. Liberation
implies positive change, being set free from an awful situation.
Liberation happens to you.
You don’t liberate yourself.
Liberation is exciting, life giving, and thrilling to see
when it happens.
A second story.
A man was deeply disturbed when he entered the public grade
school that day. Crazy. Yes,
I think he must have been crazy.
He shot one teacher and then another, and soon he had a whole
classroom of younger children hostage.
This was American violence, 1993.
The word spread like wildfire through the media.
The parents were panicked.
The teachers were panicked.
Even the news reporters were panicked by this one.
How long was this stand off going to last?
How many children would he shoot with his machine gun?
An undercover agent slipped into the school.
It seemed that hours slowly crept by.
Then…a shot rang out and hearts froze.
The crazed man slumped to the floor, and the children
instinctively ran, screaming as they fled to freedom.
Parents came running to embrace them in their arms.
The children were
liberated; they were set free.
Liberation is a good word.
Liberation is good news.
Liberation implies positive change, being set free from an
awful situation. Liberation
happens to you. You
don’t liberate yourself. Liberation
is exciting, life giving, and thrilling when you see it happen.
Third story.
I spoke to him this past Wednesday night after church, and I
tell you this story with his permission.
He came to me to show me his grades.
He pulled his grades out of his black, leather jacket and
laid them on the altar for me to see.
He was thirty- three years old, going to Renton VoTech, and
he was studying to become a licensed practical nurse.
He had an A in pharmacology; you know, the hard stuff like
math and chemistry. He
had an A in practicum; you know, the on-the-floor practical nursing
which is so important. He
was proud of his achievement. He
reminded me of his story that twenty years ago he had dropped out of
school and life at the age of thirteen.
It was twenty years since he had been in school.
He used drugs, marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and everything
else the world had to offer in those years.
For more than a decade, he had been a prisoner, a captive.
And slowly, ever so slowly, he found himself.
Slowly he was healed, and slowly he was liberated, and now he
is getting “A”s in school.
He was so proud as he laid his report on the altar this past
Wednesday night, saying to me, “Geese, it’s holy up here by the
altar.”
It was and it holy.
It was holy because his life had been liberated, and
liberation is a good word. Liberation
is good news. Liberation
implies positive change, being set free from an awful situation. Liberation happens to you; you don’t simply do it yourself.
Liberation is exciting, life giving, and thrilling to see
when it happens, and his parents and pastor were thrilled to see
that report card and what it symbolized.
The angels said to
them: “I bring you
good news of great joy which is for ALL people, for onto you is born
this day in the city of David, A LIBERATOR, who is Christ the
Lord.” The
word, liberator, is a good word, a strong word, a real word for a
real world in need of liberation.
Usually, when we
hear the song of the angels on Christmas Eve, we hear the words like
this: “For unto you
is born this day in the City of David, a savior, who is Christ the
Lord.” We hear the
word, savior, rather than the word, liberator.
The word,
liberator, and savior, come from the same Greek word, but the words
have different meanings and connotations in English.
The word, savior, implies the forgiveness of sins.
God cancels our sin. God
covers up our sin. Got
lets go of our sins. God
erases our sins. We
need God’s forgiveness for all of our lives.
We cannot escape this sinful disposition that we all have, so
we need to experience forgiveness throughout our whole lives.
But the word,
liberation, has a different feel to it than the word, savior.
The word, liberation, implies more than forgiveness.
Liberation implies positive, actual change in us and to us.
That is, a person who drinks too much is forgiven for his or
her mistakes, but it is equally important to be liberated from
one’s alcoholism, to be liberated from the destructive habits that
ruin our lives.
Tonight, I would
like to briefly focus on Jesus, the Liberator, and how the power of
God’s love makes positive changes in us, freeing us from unhealthy
patterns, habits, and values.
Jesus came to
liberate us from religious sentimentality and what some have called,
Christmas Eve Religion. How
we love our “Christmas Eve Religion,” and how the world loves
it. How I love it.
As a pastor who
plans worship services, I am responsible for trying to make
Christmas Eve Religion happen, to create the scene from that first
Bethlehem night, to try to recreate the magic of the moment, with
candles to remind us of the starlight sky, with choirs to recall the
glorious sounds of the heavenly angel choir, with a harp to recreate
the mood and feelings of a silent peacefulness.
Christmas Eve Religion is made up of candles and choirs
against a backdrop of darkness and stillness.
Shhhh, you can hear the baby whimpering in his sleep.
Christmas Eve Religion makes you feel good inside.
We come to church on Christmas Eve and we want to feel calm
and contented, the religious equivalent of a hot toddy, the
religious equivalent of a hot buttered rum.
It feels so good going down, both Christmas Eve Religion and
a hot toddy. So in my
Christmas Eve sermons, I like to tell warm and loving Christmas
stories that make people feel good inside, perhaps even cry a bit.
It always feels good to shed a tear or two on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve
Religion is epitomized by an issue of the local newspaper a year or
two ago. The Federal Ways Newspaper had a Christmas section.
In this Christmas section of the newspaper, they were all
happy pictures of happy children, and underneath each picture of a
smiling child’s face was printed the phrase, “a vision of
peace.” There were
ten touching photographs, ten visions of peace, and then you came to
the last page, and it said melodramatically in large print:
CHRISTMAS IS A FEELING.
My God, what junk. What
garbage. What
sentimentality. Christmas
is a feeling, carefully orchestrated feelings, in order to meet the
needs of a warm glow. Christmas
is a feeling, an orchestrated moment in time, lasting at most about
45 to 60 minutes.
Christmas Eve
Religion is symbolic of so much of American religiosity.
This “warm glow” religion makes you feel good inside, and
so with the aid of pictures and poetry and music and harps and
candles and good friends and good family and good money and good
drinks and good health, this all makes Christmas Eve Religion
possible
Mother Teresa of
Calcutta recently spoke about this American style of religiosity,
this Christmas Eve Religion, this warm glow spirituality. She said
that Americans are poorer than the starving people of India because
there is a spiritual poverty in America that is worse than the
physical poverty of India. Another
person has said: American
religiosity is a mile wide and an inch deep.
On Christmas Eve,
we occasionally hear the solo, Sweet Little Jesus Boy, sung.
It is one of my favorites.
It is gorgeous, a lullaby, so sweet.
When it is sung, I am moved to tears and deep emotion.
But this sweet little Jesus boy grew up and became man.
The sweet little Jesus boy was born into a rustic manger but
he died on a rugged cross. This
sweet little Jesus boy did not remain a boy but grew up into
maturity and taught his disciples the beatitudes:
love your enemies, pray for those who harm you, care for
those who hurt you. This sweet little Jesus boy did not remain a boy but grew up
to become a liberator, the greatest liberator the world has ever
known, and his Spirit produced positive, revolutionary changes in
people’s lives. This
sweet little Jesus boy did not remain a boy but became a liberator
who freed people from their awful situations, who freed people from
their destructive habits. It
was thrilling and life giving to see what the Liberator did with
people’s lives. Tonight, Jesus does not remain a baby or a little
boy, but comes to us as the greatest liberator of all time, and he
comes to set us free.
On this night,
Jesus comes to liberate us from our selfishness, from those habits
of childhood, where I need to be the center of all that happens and
where I want others to wait on me and care for me, the most
important person in my world. Jesus
comes to liberate us from that selfishness that enslaves us to our
own whims and appetites and egos.
On this night,
Jesus comes to liberate us from our painful pasts, to set us free
from all the mistakes we have made years and years ago and as recent
as this morning. Mistakes
with the kids. Mistakes
with the spouse. Mistakes
with the job. Mistakes
with the neighbors. Jesus comes
to actually set us free from our uncountable mistakes.
On this night,
Jesus comes to actually liberate us from our fears, the fear of
disease, the fear of death, the fear of failure, the fear of growing
old, the fear that there is no God, the fear that your kids won’t
turn out. Jesus comes
to liberate us, to make positive changes within us and around us.
On this night,
Jesus comes to actually liberate us from our addictions to drugs and
alcohol and marijuana and sexual fantasies and overeating of food,
and all the other addictions that dominate our lives and pull us
down. Christ comes not
only to forgive but to liberate us, to evoke positive changes within
us.
On this night,
Jesus comes to actually liberate us from our love of money and
wealth, from silently believing that money and material things will
bring us happiness, from believing that people with money are
somehow more successful. Christ
comes not only to forgive but liberate us, to evoke positive changes
within us.
On this night,
Jesus comes to liberate us from our rage, our anger, our sharp
tongues and sharp comments, our sarcasm, our putting others down,
our need for revenge and the dreams of inflicting revenge on someone
who has hurt us and needs to hurt by us.
Christ the liberator comes to free us from all that.
He comes to forgive us, but more than forgive us, he comes to
liberate us. He comes
to evoke positive change in us.
This is a night of
joy and happiness and good news, because liberation always vibrates
with joy and happiness and good news.
Whenever God in Christ comes into our lives and frees us from
all this stuff that stifles us, cripples us, corrupts us, it is good
news and great joy. So
we are happy, not because of Christmas Eve Religion which goes down
like a warm toddy, but we feel exhilarated, thrilled, overwhelmed by
joy because we have experienced freedom in our lives, freedom from
all the junk which has been weighing us down.
For the sweet
little Jesus boy of Christmas eve does not remain a boy but he grows
up to become a man, a liberator, who has the audacity to believe
that you and I are in need of liberation, positive change, and
growth.
It’s is
Christmas, Christmas Eve of 1993, and two thousand years later, we
still hear the angel’s choir singing their song:
I bring you good news of great joy which is for all people,
for onto you is born this night, a liberator, who is Christ the
Lord. Amen.
 Back
to Top
|
