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Jeremiah 31:31-34 December 5, 1971 ia
Luke 1:26-28 John M, Buchanan

The birth of Jesus Christ was a surprise. It caught everybody unprepared: |
Bethlehem, the inn-keeper, Herod, the shepherds: even Mary, the mother, whose
first response to her condition was perplexity, that is to say - complete sur-
prise. Were her story written today, in the vernacular, her response to the
rather unusual announcement of the angel Gabriel wel! might be, "Who, me?"

The birth of Jesus Christ was a surprise, and if that birth is still
worth celebrating It is because it is still a surprise. If the birth is worthy
of a whole month of preparation, called Advent, it is because it means That
the God who pulled the first surprise, is still very much in the business of
surprises.

And yet, we chose to celebrate the birth in a manner that is more tradi-
tional, more predictable, than anything else that 1s celebrated throughout the
ear. We, and ! count myself among this number, observe the birth of Christ by
way of customs that our parents taught to us, and their parents taught them.
The Advent wreath has a thousand year history, Christmas trees have. been around
for centuries, as have turkeys, carols and gifts. It is a time for nostalgia,
and rituals that have deep and personal meaning to our families, rituals that
are repeated religiously every year, and without which our celebration would
fee! incomplete. My feelings run deeply at this point - as yours do - | am
sure. 1'm open to the new and the different in most aréas of life, but | don't
want anybody tampering with the way | chcose to celebrate Christmas. |

| saw an advertisement last week that seemed ‘to summarize the style of our
Christmas observance. I+ had to do with recepturing the past in a Southern.
plantation, complete with yule log, tree with dandles, 1870 costumes and all
the rest.

Now, | have no argument with the nostalgia and customs of a traditional “4 f
Christmas, and if | did I'd have a stiffer acionenrt from my family. But | do

have a concern that the significance of what we're celebrating doesn't get lost pane

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that the significance of the birth does not become traditional and predictable.
God is not very predictable. He did a wildly improbable thing twenty centuries
ago. And - celebrate that holy sutur tee in the faith - the expectation, really,
that God continues to come Into our midst in surprising, unpredictable and im-
probable ways. |

There is Biblical precedent for that kind of statement: locanieh: 31,
for instance. Let's think for a moment about Jeremiah and his world and what
he said about God to his people.

Jeremiah's world was coming apart at the seams: al! the old certainties
were gone: and cakes were happening so rapidly that we who live in the
changing social climate of the twentieth century can understand Jeremiah's
time perhaps better than anyone since. Jerusalem had been leveled and sacked:
the best of Jeremiah'ts people had been carried off to Babylon to live as exties,
and Jeremiah himself was soon to follow. The promised land, the Holy people of
the Covenant, Jerusalem, the Temple itself, all symbols of God's faithfulness
aiid his promise to his people were in the hands of the enemy~pagan hands to
make matters worse. If ever there was a time to celebrate the certainties of
the past, to resurrect old realities, to seek the comfort of an "Old Time
Religion" it was the time of Jeremiah. He was an old man, not given to radical
change; not susceptible to every new wind of dectrins and practice. Jeremiah
was no revolutionary, in our definition of the term. But there he stood, with
everything that was holy and certain and traditional lying in ruins about his
feet, daring me suggest that God was about to pull off a surprise. Out of the
rubble a new reality would emerge. Out of the ruin God would act in a new way.
Listen to his words: "Behold the days are coming . . . when | will make a new
covenant with Israel. . . not like the covenant which | made with their fathers
when | took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt."

Jeremiah's vision of God was one of unpredictability: God could and would
do a new thing: God would surprise his people by acting redemptively to

establish a new relationship. History bore him out. The Babylonians were

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defeated by the Persians, and Israel returned across the highway in +e desert 5

back to the promised land: back to a new covenant with God. jerantahiy was bold Pa,

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enough to proclaim a God who was surprising.

_ Think, how, about Mary. Centuries later she saw the same vision as
Jeremiah: -a God who was about to surprise his people. The message of the angel
was so imporbable that it troubled and perplexed her. God had chosen her,
young, engaged Judean maid, to bear in her womb the savior of mankind. It's
no wonder Mary was afraid: no wonder the ange! promptly said, "don't be afraid,
Mary"; a line that comes up again when a band of rag tag shepherds hear of the
birth.

Or think about Mary's son, Jesus of Nazareth. The people around hie Were
in for the surprise of thelr lives. Accustomed to a pre-packaged, neat religion
rules, regulations, rituals and customs; accustomed to dealing with life out of
the saftey of religious tradition, they had to deal with @ young man - in years
and of heart - who startled them with simple little stories ae lilies in the
field and birds in the ae and a widow and her mite. Accustomed to recta they .
had to deal with the surprising brashness of a thirty three year old who turned
tables over in their temple court, and called their wisest, most pious einaete ~
hypocrites, Accustomed to a way of life based on neat definitions of right and.
wrong they had to deal with the surprising possibilities ota love that poe
some very unlovely people, and that forgave even the perpetrators of thorns and
nails and spears. That was a surprise! And the fact that they found it necessary
to kill him, is perhaps an indicator of how deeply we distrust the idea of a
surprising, unpredictable God, and how much we need an old-man God wie never
does anything differently, if he does anything at sti. |

There's: nothing wrong with Christmas traditions, unless they. somehow stamp
out the real message of Christmas - namely that to believe and to live in
communion with the God and Father of Jesus Christ Is to live a life of surprises:
a life open to all kinds of new, unpredictable events. 3

Somehow, we've managed to be Christians without that. Somehow, we've we.

managed to exercise all the freshness and promise and newness and hope from
Christianity until it becomes the very prototype of the traditional - the status
quo - the never changing, always the same realities of our own past.

In a changing and frightening world we're in the market for something that
is unchanging and non-frightening. In a social environment that watches the
parade to oblivion of all the realities of the past, we're looking for something
with staying power. And all too often our anxiety drives us to a quest of
something called “Old Time Religion". What we usually mean by that is a religi-
osity that surrounds itself with nostalgia and sentimental ity, with forms and
rituals that are familiar and therefore comfortable, Life, after all, is dis-
trubing and threatening enough six days a week; and on the seventh day we ought
to be able to take hold of something that wil! not ever change. GniGrtunstels
our quest leads us to the forms - and not the unchanging reality Which is The
love of God. Unfortunately, our anxiety all too often, drives us into the arms
of an "old - time - religiosity" - that has very little to do with the exciting
surprises of a God who came among us in Jesus Christ. ,

Compare, for instance, old man Jeremiah, seriously advocating that God was
about to radically alter the whole doctrinal foundation of his people (and
that's exactly what he was saying): compare that with people leaving the church
because guitars are used instead of an organ on occasion. Compare old man
Jeremiah's young vision of an unpredictable God with the internal squabbles in
the church today updating the rituals that have collected over the years. |

Compare the freshness of the young man Jesus of Nazareth with what happens
to him in the context of “Old Time Religion"., Edmund Steimle said it well:

(The Protestant Hour, Lutheran Series, Nov. 29, 1970) "We don't crucify him
today, of course; we are far too well-mannered for that. We simply take his
face - youthful, angry, aching with love for the 'lost' of the.world, on fire
with a passion for his father . . . we simply take that face and mold it with
our bare hands into the predictably safe and insipid head of a Christ by

Saliman and hang him on the wal!. We dillute his passion into the sweetness of

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nineteenth century hymns: 'O Jesus thou art pleading in accents meek and low .
| (can you imagine Jesus Christ pleading in an accent meek and low?) We take the
unpredictable results of his unbelievable demands for love and smooth it al! out
into a safe and predictable request that we do the best we can under the circum- C
stances, No. We don't crucify; we shooiy carve the guts out of this unpredic- ae
table Lord of ours."

That's strong medicine - but compare, if you dare to, the predictable
savior of the church with the man who strides across the pages of the New
Testament.

Somehow, we've made Christianity into a flat, predictable routine, and God
into a harmless old man; while the Old Testament portrays a surprising God who
does some unlikely things: and the New Testament, in recording the clearest
picture of God men have ever seen, brings us face to face with an unpredictable
and surprising young man.

The message of Advent, and the meaning of Christmas is that life is full
of surprises, because life - human history - your life and mine - is exactly
where God carries on his work of healing and loving and reconciling. We
celebrate his once coming ~ and his always coming.

Sam Keen, one of the young radical theologians of our day has written what
he callS a "demythologized version of the earliest Christian Gospel." Let me
share it with you. “Look! Attend! Listen! A child ia bark . ». &@ new possi-

bility has emerged. Novel ty has entered history, and therefore you may be free
of the binding illusion that your fate is written in the stars, that you are
victims of an order that is determined with no regard for your freedom or care
for your being .'. . The ground out of which history springs is alive and graci-
ous; therefore anything is possible. Live in openness, wonder and gratitude,
accepting the mysterious gift of the ability to create, act and forgive!"
(Apology for Wonder, p. 39) Ee =

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And Robert Hudnut, in the preface to his book "Surprised by God," puts it “eve

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this way: "1 did not become a minister because | had found God. | became a
minister in order to find him. And, on various occasions over the last few
years, | have been surprised, by what | have found - or if you want to be
‘orthodox', by what has found me. Grace is serendipity." (Surprised by God, p.9)
That's the message of the Advent and surprising birth. Life is full of
God's grace. And no matter what is happening to us - no matter what suffering
we are enduring, no matter what personal pain we are experiencing, no matter
that our world may be tying in ruins about our feet, our God is one who comes to
pick up the pieces and bind up our wounds, and open doors to new possibilities
we have never imagined. And whsn he does - we shall be as surprised as Jeremiah,
and Mary and the shepherds.
So we observe Advent. And it will be traditional and predictable. We'll
do the same things we've done before: sing the same carols, light the same
candles, read the same stories. And it can end there - an exercise in nostalgia.
Or; this time through we can listen carefully for the newness of it all. We can
be open to the stories of God's surprising coming in the assurance that he is not
nearly as predictable as we think he is. We can be open to new possibilities
in our own lives, because he keeps coming into our lives.
We can listen to the familiar tale of a birth that was a surprise -

where it happened: and is always surprise when it is understood.

Amen.

Father, as we repeat the familiar customs this year, help us to be
startied by the goodness and love and hope you have given: through Jesus
Christ our Lord.

Amen.