The Lord’s Message:  The Miracle of Christmas, the Miracle of the Oneness in Christ

The Lord’s Message:  The Miracle of Christmas, the Miracle of the Oneness in Christ
Date:  December 22, 2024
Where:  Tilghman Methodist Church
Scripture Reference:  Ephesians 2:11-13

            We have been exploring the miracles of Christmas.  We started with the Miracle of the Moment.  God chose the right moment in human history for Jesus to come to earth as a baby in a manger.  The timing was exactly right, not too early, or too late, but right on time.  The next Sunday, we explored the Miracle of Message.  Jesus is the Message of Christmas.  His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return is the Message of Christmas.  That God would send His only Son to pay for your sins and mine to save us, is an incredible miracle.  Last Sunday, the Miracle of Christmas was the Miracle of the Method that God used.  To be born as one of us a vulnerable human baby, to a poor unknown, but faithful mother and father, in an unknown place called Bethlehem, in a manger of all places.  This is the miracle of God.  This Sunday, we are going to explore the miracles of the oneness that we have with God and with each other through Jesus.

            Let us pray.

            When I think of the oneness of Christ, I think of the name the angel Gabriel gave to Jesus in Mattthew 1:22-23, Emmanuel.  Emmanuel means God with us.  It is so hard for me to fathom that God would want to be with me.  God of the universe, God that created the heavens and the earth, God who is omniscient and omnipresent would want to be with us, His lowly creation.  This totally blows my mind.  I cannot express it in words.  The best way that I can explain it is to use a story that was told by Paul Harvey.  You can Google this.  Paul Harvey does a better job than I could in telling this story.  I will try. 

“The man to whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.  “I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he’d much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so, he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.  Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.

Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound…Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud…At first, he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.  Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it.  Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So, he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide-open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them…He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms…Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.  And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. “If only I could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm…to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, hear, and understand.”  At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.  And he sank to his knees in the snow.

The miracle of the oneness of Christ is that God would love us so much that He would want to be one of us to save us from our sins.  God becoming one of us, Emmanuel. 

When we began our Advent messages, I told you that the coming of the Messiah was predicted long ago by the prophets.  When the prophets predicted the coming of the Messiah, they thought the Messiah would come to bring salvation to the Jewish people.  If you look at all the prophecies, it is about a Jewish Messiah, not a Messiah that would be for all creation, for all people.  Paul’s writing in Ephesians 2:14-16 was considered blasphemous.  Christ Jesus, (Christ means Messiah) would come to break down the wall between the Jews and the Gentiles.  This wall was a physical wall in the temple and a spiritual wall in society.  In the temple, there was a wall that divided the Jewish men from the Gentiles.  The Gentiles were not allowed past this wall.  In society, Jews did not go into the home of a Gentile. 

Just think that enormous change that has come over Peter when in Acts 10:25, Peter enters the home of Cornelius.  It is all because of the oneness of Christ. Look at verses 44-48.  The oneness of Christ connects Jews and Gentiles together.  That is the miracle of Christmas, Emmanuel, God with us. 

This oneness of Christ, this miracle of Christmas, unites all people together under Jesus to bring us peace.  Paul says this in Ephesians 2:17-18.  That is why Christianity has spread all over the world.  Jesus proclaimed this in Matthew 28:18-20.  The love of God is not just for the Jews, but for all people.

Just think about this for a minute.  People all over the world.  People from different races, different ages, different cultures, male or female all connected to God and to each other through Jesus.

 The love of God is not just for the believers, but the unbelievers as well.  That is why I believe that God considers all people worth saving.  No one is out of the realm of God’s love.  We, as believers, should recognize this fact.  People are amazed when I ask if I can pray for them.  People are amazed when I tell them that God loves them.  They cannot believe it.  I can understand where they are coming from.  That God would love me.  That God would choose to be like us.  Emmanuel, God with us. 

The miracle of Christmas is the oneness that, through Jesus, we have with God and with each other.  We when accept this fact, then we grow in faith together.  Amen.