Advent. It is a season in the annual life of the Church . Literally, it means “coming” or “arrival.” It is a time in the life of the Church when we focus on both past and future. It is a season when we affirm that our Savior has come, that he is present in the world today and speaks through the Holy Spirit, and that he will come again in glory. This is the time of expectation, the time when the still, small voice of our Lord seems somehow louder, more discernible in the ebb and flow of our lives. Sometimes faint, sometimes distant, the voice of God seems somehow stronger at Christmas time. This is the time when that newborn baby enters the world stage, the time before we have hurt him with our sin. It is a time when we can rejoice and live expectantly, for the Christ child is coming to make things right. There will be time aplenty later to remember the burden of sin with which we saddled him. Today marks the second Sunday of Advent and is usually identified with the theme of Love. It is a big theme, perhaps the biggest of all those associated with Advent.
So Big. Do you remember the Little Golden Book called So Big? It was written in 1968 by Eloise Wilkin. I read it to all of my children about a hundred times each. It started out:
How big is baby?
Is baby as big
As a ladybug
Walking on a marigold leaf?
My Baby’s bigger
Than a ladybug
Walking on a marigold leaf.
The analogies get bigger and bigger as the child explores the meaning of the word “big.” The final question in the book is “Then how big is baby?” And the answer is that “Baby is SOooooooo Big!” Christians have a similar problem with trying to see Christmas and Advent in the right manner. The spirit of giving sometimes becomes the duty of buying. Christmas is the biggest American holiday season, but its reason for being has nothing to do with many of the traditions we have come to observe. When we quit buying all the groceries and stop wrapping the gifts to go under the tree and put down the decorations, we try to grasp the concept of Christmas, and it is big. It is a simple concept. The apostle John delivers the message in just one short verse. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” God loves; God sends; God saves. Couldn’t really get much simpler that that, could it? Simple it is, but small, it isn’t. It could not get any bigger, There is not a discovery or an invention or a voyage or a crusade or movement in the history of time itself that can begin to compete with the sheer size of the message contained in this one simple verse.
For God so loved the world. God loves. To get an idea of what this says, let’s look at what it could have said. It could have said for God so loved the Jews. It could have said for God so loved the United States
…that He gave his only begotten Son. God sends. How big is God? He is big enough to send himself, to make himself man with God the Son incarnated in that man. Now that is BIG. It is so big; it really is hard for us to comprehend it. I like what the David Crowder Band says in its song: “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.” Heaven came down. Think about it. That’s exactly what happened. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son… we couldn’t get to heaven so God just made heaven come down to us. Out of a bigger love than you and I can really fathom, God acts. He acts not for his own sake, but for his children and for his creation. Instead of the punishment we deserve, he reaches out to us on our level to bridge that chasm of sin between where we are and where he wants us to be. God sends.
…that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God saves. “My sins were washed away and my night was turned to day,” says the song. Christianity is not God’s pacifier. He does not need us. He is self contained. He is the Trinity. He is, always is. Christianity is God’s gift. It is the way to salvation. It is the bridge to God. This is love. This is the “so big” of the Gospel. The good news is that God found another way. He never condemned. Rather, he offers us himself in the form of his Son as an avenue to knowledge, discipleship and the forgiveness that accompanies them. All we have to do is believe. That task can be daunting. To believe is ultimately to surrender the power and safety of our own creation to the power of the Holy Spirit as it moves within our hearts. Surrender is hard. It involves trust. It involves faith. But we have our example, don’t we. To believe in Jesus is no more or less than what God required of Jesus as he took his place on the cross. Such trust is the root system for the wellspring of love revealed in the Christmas story. God loves; God sends; God saves.
Last week, we came into a sanctuary filled with greens and a tree filled with chrismons. Today we see a new building on our church property. It isn’t much of a building. More like a lean-to or temporary shelter. It is simple and rather primitive. That is only as it should be, for the last thing the Christ child needs is adornment. It is enough that he has been sent. His arrival on the human scene is nothing less then a piece of heaven on earth. The shelter contains the symbols of the nativity: shepherds and Joseph and Mary and the baby. We worship none of these. They are simply the props that trigger our imaginations of the incarnation. The baby. Jesus Lord at thy birth. New and weak and helpless, and containing the seed of all that the world will come to know as Savior and Lord. This is the love of God for his creation. It is SO BIG!
There’s an old spiritual that says:
My God is so high, you can’t get over him,
he’s so low, you can’t get under him,
he’s so wide, you can’t get ‘round him,
you must come in through the Lamb.
Can you hear it? Halfway through Advent now, I am beginning to. It’s the sound of the little drummer boy getting a little louder now. It’s the gathering of angels for the big event. It’s the star from the east settling in over a lowly stable in tiny Bethlehem
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