Engaging Scripture

How to defeat temptation and discontentment – Luke 4:1-14

Is there a certain area of your life where you regularly feel discontent?

Consider doing what Jesus did. Create a game plan to attack the temptation of discontent when it arises:

Step 1 – Choose a small portion that addresses the temptation.
Step 2 – Memorize it.
Step 3 – Review it over and over. Have it at the ready.
Step 4 – When you feel tempted or discontent, recite the verse.

This is exactly what Jesus did when he was tempted!

Let me give you a couple examples about how this might work in life:

Have a struggle with speaking out of attacking anger? Hurt others with your words? What are some scripture verses you could memorize that specifically address anger? When you are feeling that desire, that temptation within you to be angry, you can go back to that Scripture, quote it, and fight temptation! How about 1 Peter 3:8?: “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”

Maybe your struggle is lust? Pornography? You could memorize Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Do you gossip? Slander? Talking about other people makes us feel better about ourselves…temporarily maybe, but it is so damaging to relationships. Proverbs has a bunch of verses that might strengthen you. Take a look at Proverbs 11:13: “A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.”

How about jealousy? Or discontentment that manifests itself with overspending? Hebrews 13:5 is a great one: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’.”

But know this, quoting Scripture like Jesus did is not a Harry Potter magic spell that wipes out the temptation and makes life easy.

It can take practice. You might fail. The temptation could feel strong. The temptation might be within you, (as John reminds us: the flesh, pride of life, lust of eyes). You may be fighting yourself. It could be a tough battle that may go on and on multiple times over multiple days, months and years.

But keep fighting.

At the end of How Much Land Does a Man Need, Pahom, like I said, has made it back to his start post by sundown. But he had gone so far out, though, that after a long day of walking many miles, he needed to run the last few miles to make it back in time. He had to overexert himself.

As he made it back to the starting stake, with the sun going down, he reached his hand out, touched the stake, and fell on ground. Not just from exhaustion. He fell on the ground not in joy, not in relief, not in excitement. He fell dead of a heart attack.

In the end the only land he received was that space needed to bury him.

But Pahom’s fate does not have to be our fate. Jesus shows us his way. We can fight temptation with the Word of God, and we can fight it by depending on the Spirit to fill that emptiness. Unlike Pahom, we can learn to be content in the Spirit.

Though he is the son of God, Jesus is content to depend on the Spirit. Jesus is knowing and employing the Word of God. He could have used his own power, but instead he is an example for us. If we defeat temptation, it will not be on our own power. Depend on Spirit, employ the Bible.

How much land does a man need? and other temptations and discontentment

Is there a certain area of your life where you are constantly tempted?

I am listening to an audio book this week. It is called How Much Land Does a Man Need? by famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy is famous for his mammoth works like Anna Karenina or War and Peace, as well as for his desire to live out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But How Much Land Does a Man Need is a very short story. James Joyce called it the greatest short story of all time.

In it Tolstoy tells the tale of a peasant, Pahom, who progressively desires and gets more and more land. Each time he is excited about the new land thinking it will give him the kind of life he yearns for. But as time goes by, even as he does well for himself, each time he gets more land he soon grows discontent with it. He wants more. He finds out about some well-landed people who are willing to sell land cheap. One ruble per acre! So he travels to them, bearing gifts to impress them. They love the gifts, and he says he is interested in purchasing land. They like him and are willing to sell at the very cheap price he heard about, but they offer to sell the land in a most unusual deal.

They give him the opportunity to purchase a parcel of land for a very low price, but the parcel size is based on how far he can walk in one day. It is very simple. He has from sunup to walk as far as he wants, stake out the land, but he has to return to his starting point by sundown. Sounds great, right?

There’s a catch. If he does not return to the spot of departure within a day’s time, he loses his money and the land. Pahom is delighted! So off he goes excited thinking he is going to get a steal. It should be very easy to get more land than he ever dreamed of.

I think about when I have run marathons around the city of Baltimore. I took me about four hours. You can cover a lot of ground in four hours. You’re totally exhausted, but you’ve covered a lot of ground. How broad an area do you think you could cover from sunup to sundown? Ten square miles? More? Less?

How do you think Pahom did? Think he went out too far didn’t make it back? Good guess, close, but you’re wrong. He actually made it back. In time. But that is not the end of the story.

But greed and discontent got in the way. Discontent fueled his heart, his desire. Greed was his temptation. You will be surprised to hear the end of the story.

We are all tempted by many things. What is it about our inner desire that gives temptation its power?

Is temptation so powerful in and of itself? No. Temptation is powerful because of something inside us. Some psychologists call this the empty self. We have an emptiness within us, and we long to fill it. We are discontent. When we are discontent, it is very, very hard to defeat temptation.

Jesus was once at the place in his life where he had every reason to be discontent. Satan knew it. As he knows when we are discontent. In that moment he can strike with a temptation that is nearly impossible to defeat.

In Luke 4:1-15 we see this work out in Jesus’ life. And we’ll hear what happens because of the discontent in Pahom’s life. Join us at Faith Church on Sunday!

How repentance is actually beautiful – Luke 3:1-20

The word “repent” conjurs up horrible images. Awful, judgmental images. Hellfire and brimstone preachers. They scare me. How could “repent” be anything but an ugly word?

This past Sunday we studied John the Baptist. You can check out the sermon here. It was looking at Luke 1:80 briefly and then Luke 3:1-20.

Luke records John sermonizing with some pretty harsh comments. He seems to have been like those street corner doom and gloom preachers. Check this out:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Imagine being in the crowd that day. How would those words make you feel? What would you say? Walk away?

In verse 10 the people respond. They question, “What should we do?” As John looks at specific people in the crowd, they ask him the same question over and over. It is a very good question.

It is a life-changing question.

It shows they are at a point to make a change.

What is John’s answer? He said it already: “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Fruit is a beautiful thing. Repentance seems ugly. People across the centuries have painted and photographed fruit because it is so beautiful. What about repentance could line up with the beauty of fruit?

When you repent you change. It is not just a change of mind either. The specific word used is to change your mind so thoroughly that you also change your actions. Change is hard, but it can lead to exquisite beauty.

Your life should show that change. Things that do not change stagnate, wither and die. That’s why the question “What should we do?” is so good. It not the questions of “What should we think?” or “What should we feel?” While our thoughts and feelings are involved, they should flow into action. A change of heart and mind, properly placed, must lead to visible action, must lead to something that we actually do. Or perhaps something we stop doing. Or maybe something we do differently. Good change, right change, leads to beauty.

To the person with two cloaks, John gave them something beautiful to do: “Give your extra cloak to a person who needs one.”

To another who had lots of food, more beauty: “Give your food to him who has none.”

To the tax collector, “stop cheating people.”

To the soldier, “stop extorting.”

All very doable and very beautiful things. When you repent, you actually have something wonderful to do.

The aftermath of my freshman year in college left me with a need to do specific things. I, a Bible college student, cheated on a Bible test. Nice, huh? I strongly disliked a gen. ed. class, and falsified my attendance record. Eight skips were allowed. I think I missed 15-20 times. When a guy in the dorm rigged the hall phone to make free long distance calls (cell phones still rare in those days), I partook frequently. That year I also allowed myself to be very selfish in a dating relationship. All of these I needed to deal with. I met with professors, the school finance office, and wrote a letter to the parents of the girl I dated. It was confession time. That’s how repentance started for me. It wasn’t easy, but it was so good.

This business of producing fruit in keeping with repentance is practical. It’s not just in the head. It’s not just belief. It matters to our real lives. Repentance means that we stop doing the wrong things, and start doing the right and beautiful things. It means saying “I was wrong.” And it means saying “I need to change.”

Specific change.

Our lives should be a lifestyle of repentance. We should see the fruit in keeping with repentance. It means repentance might need to happen over and over again.

See repentance as a spiritual discipline. Check yourself over and over.

A symbol like baptism, such as what John was doing there in the Jordan River, can lead us to a false belief of “yeah, I’ve been baptized…I have the golden ticket.”

But that’s not a lifestyle.

Instead when we repent we do not ignore social change. Because of our hope in Christ we enact that kind of change.

It is so fascinating that John didn’t tell the people in the crowd that day that they should do what he did. He went out and lived in the desert. Instead he told them to live out their faith in their real worlds.

Bearing beautiful fruit in keeping with repentance needs to happen in our jobs, in our homes, in our schools, in our communities.

By the choices you make, the people in your life, such as your neighbors, your classmates, the other kids on your sports team, your co-workers should be able to say “That is a person who is living a repented lifestyle.” They might not use the words “repented lifestyle”! But they will think of you something like this that you are beautiful, lovely, and they will know that you love Jesus and are actually trying to do what he wants you to do.

So do you need to repent today?

Are there things that are a part of your life that do not honor God?

What could it look like for you to live a repented lifestyle?

Do you see the fruit of repentance in your life? Do others see it?

When a lost child can you teach about being on a mission – Luke 2:21-42

Last week I told you the story of how I lost my son at the water park. Jared was missing for about five minutes in a huge crowd. I was very scared. Michelle and I had gone opposite directions to try to find him. I had looked at a couple pools, and he was nowhere to be found, so I doubled back to find Michelle. Maybe it was time to contact the authorities.

As I headed back, I saw Michelle’s cousin’s wife, Ang, and amazingly there was Jared standing with her!

I had a huge feeling of relief! But how did they find him???

Ang explained, “I told the girls to keep an eye for Jared. And instantly Kelia, (their youngest who was about 2 years old at the time), said ‘mom, he’s right there.’”!!! And sure enough, there he was.

He was walking from one pool to another, and Kelia spotted him.

Like Mary and Joseph’s amazed reaction upon finding 12 year old Jesus in the temple, I turned to Jared, so glad he was found, but also freaked out wondering what he was thinking and doing. You know what Jared said, “Dad, I found an awesome pool! You gotta come check it out!!!”

Like nothing had happened….

He had a mission. To find another great swimming pool. He was focused on that mission. And in his mind, he had totally succeeded! We, on the other hand, were staring at him in amazement.

We disciples of Jesus need to be so engrossed with the mission of God in our lives, that the people around us, the people who know us best, stare at us in amazement. Jesus’ response to Mary and Joseph was “I must be about my Father’s business.” Our lives should be so wrapped up in the mission of God, in obedience and honor and worship and love for him, that people say of us “This is not like you! What is going on with you?”

When you follow the mission of God, it just might surprise some people in your life! People who actually stick with New Year’s Resolutions is surprising enough.

The gym I work out at is mostly empty at 5:30am or 6am in the morning. But now after New Years it is a lot more crowded! How long, though, will it stay that way? The crowd always thins out. Resolutions sound good, but inwardly we’re all thinking…yeah, I wonder how long that will last? But when it does, when a person drops 50 pounds, WOW! It’s astonishing. The same goes with the mission of God. When you make a change, take a mission trip, change a spending habit, drop a bad habit, speak more about God, live more simply, people take notice. They think, hmmm…let’s see how long this will last. But if you are engrossed with the mission, focused on the mission, making the mission your life’s purpose, as it was for Jesus, people will look at you with amazement! And some of them might not like it.

Maybe we all need to be like 12 year old Jesus this year. How can God’s mission become your mission more than ever this year?

That time my son got lost in the water park…

Kings Island in Cincinnati, Ohio, is an amusement park that also has an awesome water park. Tons of water slides, a huge wave pool, a bunch of specialty pools, and other cool water rides. I know because I was there about five years ago, with our family and what seemed like one hundred thousand other people.

We were visiting Michelle’s cousin, Don, and his family who, at the time, lived near Cincinnati, and we all went to Kings Island. I was with our two families’ older kids in the wave pool. The bigger boys went way out to where the waves were strongest. I was in the shallow end with Jared, our youngest son, and Faith, my niece, who is Jared’s age. Michelle and her cousin’s wife, Ang, had taken the youngest two girls to find a baby pool or to the bathroom. No problem, me and five kids in the wave pool.

Soon enough, Jared came up to me asking for help with his life jacket. He wanted it off. We were in the shallow end, so I thought, Okay, he’ll be alright without it. I got him unbuckled, and he ran off to put the jacket back in the bin where the lifeguards keep all the others. Faith and I went back to splashing in the water.

After a minute or so, I thought, Hmmm, Jared didn’t come back. And there’s no sign of him by the life jacket station. Did he go out further into the deep water with the big boys who were loving the waves?

I scanned the pool and spotted the three big boys.

Nope…he was nowhere in wave pool.

He was gone!

Being a hot summer day, the place was a madhouse. I felt it was like Where’s Waldo trying to find Jared. Could I have missed him?

If you’ve ever had a moment like this, you know that your ask yourself, is this a time to panic? I thought, No, Jared must have gone to find Michelle.

So I told to the older kids to hang out in the wave pool, stay put, and that I was looking for Jared. I then took Faith with me to look. (No more losing any other kids!)

At this point, though I told myself not to panic, my heart was pounding. I double-checked the wave pool. He was nowhere in or around the wave pool. He was nowhere around the next pool closest to us. But as I scanned, I heaved a sigh of relief. Just 100 yards away, I saw Michelle and Ang walking with the younger girls. They must have seen him.

Nope…they didn’t! Now I’m feeling more embarrassed and scared than before. I gave Faith to Ang, Michelle gave Meagan to Ang, and we went in different directions, searching for a little boy in a place that was a sea teeming with a thousand little kids.

I walked to yet another pool…no sign of him. So I doubled-back to find Michelle again.

As I walked back toward where we left Ang, I realized that Jared has now been missing for at least five minutes. This is not good. He could be snagged and off the property by now. My anxiety level is huge.

On Sunday we’re going to read about parents that likewise got freaked out about a missing child. This time it was Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph. To prepare, check out Luke 2:41-52.

We’ll find out what happens in that story, and why it can and should matter to us! I’ll also tell you how things turned out that day at King’s Island! So join us at Faith Church for worship!

Simeon (the Bucket List guy) and why Evangelicals need to focus a whole lot more on Mary – Luke 1:46-55; 2:21-40

So what do you think about Mary, the mother of Jesus?

With this past Sunday’s sermon we concluded the story of the birth of Jesus. Luke shows us clearly through the words of his mother, Mary, and through Anna and Simeon, the amazing significance of Jesus.

Mary, Simeon and Anna had a passionate focus on the Lord.

They all understood, at least in part, the significance of Jesus and it caused great joy!

As we begin a new year, we’re going to be spending a lot of time doing what Mary and Simeon and Anna did, focusing on Jesus.

As we think about bucket lists, they are simply questions of what do I want to do with the rest of my life. Unlike many places around the world, we Americans have the distinct privilege to ask a question like that. We can dream.

For Mary, she is a teenager whom God broke into her world in a major way. If you’re a teenager, what are your dreams? Mary is an example to follow because she saw herself as a servant of God. No matter what this “mother of the Messiah” business meant, she was all in. She heard some glorious things, and from Simeon she heard some downright scary things, about what being the mother of the Messiah could mean. But at a young age, she accepted her role, come what may. Her beautiful song is a description of her amazing commitment to the Lord.

Joseph is a man expecting to lead a normal carpenter’s life and God showed up quite unexpectedly. If you’re in your working years, you know that life sometimes throws your curveballs like it did for Joseph. Just about all of us have had things work out very differently than we planned on. Oftentimes plans go wrong and life can be harder than we want. What could it mean for us to follow the Lord in the midst of disappointment?

Anna was an elderly lady, widowed for a long time, passionate about the Lord. Some of you know a thing or two about being in your elderly years, being widowed, for a long time. You have experienced a lot in life. Joy and sadness. Let Anna be an example for you, of a person who is passionate about the Lord as the years go by. One of our homebound members, every single time I visit with her and just about every time I talk with her on the phone says “I wonder why the Lord doesn’t just take me home?” Next time I visit her I’m going to talk about Anna.

In closing there is the Bucket List guy, Simeon. A man, middle age, maybe older, whose one bucket list item had the God guarantee, that he would see Jesus. What is on your bucket list? What should be on your bucket list?

Simeon wanted to lay eyes on the Messiah. As we think about Advent, the entire idea of Advent is that Jesus has come. And when we celebrate Advent we also remember that he said he is coming again. Simeon had the Bucket List guarantee about the first coming of the Messiah. I don’t know if God is giving out any more Bucket List guarantees, but I think it would be pretty cool to have Simeon’s, to see the second coming of the King.

While we might not get that guarantee, what the characters in the story all point to is the answer to the question: what should we have on our Bucket Lists.

These four characters are in very different stages of life, but their heart’s desire is identical. They are passionate about Jesus.

What could it look like to be passionate about Jesus at your stage in life? In each of these characters we have examples of people to follow.

Their focus, all of them, were on Jesus, the Savior of the World. If we are imitate them, our focus should be on Jesus too. Do you need to spend more time with him? Do you need to get to know him better? Do you feel distant?

What will it look like in 2015 for you to focus more on Jesus?

Blog Year in Review – Best of 2014?

I think I’m going to have to “grade on the curve”. You know how a teacher removes the highest and lowest student grades, and then regrades a test best on the remaining results? One post was the most popular for the second year in a row. In fact, this post received more than twice as many views as the second place post. Here are the top three from 2014.

Reflections on a month of free coffee from Starbucks – 520 views

Why I dislike church worship surveys very, very much – 218 views

How and why we surprised our congregation – 184 views

This is a blog about Faith Church sermons, but the first two posts were not originally written about any sermons, nor were they written in 2014! That’s why I might have to grade on the curve…

But once we get to third place, we start to see what was a major focus for us in 2014 at Faith Church, our sermon series teaching through 1st Corinthians. Third through eleventh place were all posts about the 1st Corinthians series.

The third place post up there was a fun morning for us at Faith Church. Aren’t surprises always fun??? Check it out and see what you think!

The fourth place post had 167 views and was also the top single day post with 105 views on April 16th. Does it surprise you that it was this post: Is 1st Corinthians 6:9-11 really about homosexuality?

The sermon on 1st Corinthians 11:2-16 referring to the role of women in the church was also quite popular, with the intro post (7th place) and follow-up post (5th place) combining for 242 views.

Here’s looking forward to 2015! We’ve started studying the Gospel of Luke, as we really want to spend time getting to know Jesus better.

Angel wings, Candle lighter, Blocks of Wood – Monday Messy Office Report – 12/29/2014

My office is tidy Friday, mysteriously messy on Monday. Here’s what I found today.

1. Angel wings. For real. The kind of angel wings that a child might wear in a Nativity play. Except that this set of angel wings wasn’t worn by a child! At our Christmas Eve service, one of our young men put them on as he gave a mini-talk about the angel Gabriel! I found them in the sanctuary after the service was over and brought them to my office. (Just in case I needed some material for this blog!) For years Faith Church has invited a variety of people from our congregation to give mini-talks during Good Friday Worship. Since we started participating, a few years ago, in the local ministerium’s community Good Friday service, we weren’t able to do that. So this year we brought it back on Christmas Eve, and it was great. We also had a bunch of people using their musical gifts to celebrate Christ’s birth. They each gave their take on one of the famous characters of the Nativity story. It was a wonderful night!

2. Candle Lighter. There has to be a more official name for this. But I looked on Google, and I think they’re just called candle lighters. We use it primarily during the Advent season to light and extinguish candles on the Advent wreath. As you can see in the picture, it has a small mechanism that enables you to move waxed wicks up and down as you’re lighting the candles. Ours has been sticking, perhaps due to wax build-up, and just before Christmas Eve worship began, the mechanism broke! We have a lot of candles to light before the service starts! Thankfully, a bunch of people stepped up and used those little plastic candle-holders/candles that we finish our service with (everyone in the congregation lights one as we sing Silent Night), and we got the job done! I brought the the candle-lighter to my office to remind myself we need to purchase a new one!

3. Wood Blocks. I also brought these to my office. They have been sitting on out mailslot ledge in our Fellowship Hall for a long, long time. I have no idea why. Maybe our martial arts ministry uses them for wood-breaking tests? But today as I was walking through the Fellowship Hall, I decided to grab them and write about them here. If they don’t get claimed soon, they will serve as wonderful kindling for my wood stove!

Now it’s time to clean up this mess!

If God guaranteed one thing on your bucket list would happen before you die, what would you choose?

Did you cross anything off your bucket list in 2014?

Get married? Travel somewhere? Perform physical feat?

This year my family drove from Lancaster, PA, to Austin, TX, to visit my wife’s cousin and his family. Though it was not coast-to-coast, it was the longest we had ever driven, and the first time for most of us through Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas.

Last week I got to experience my first NFL regular season game, as my son and I went with friends to see the Redskins host the Eagles. The tailgating atmosphere, the raucous cheering fans, and the three people we saw escorted off the premises by police, I will never forget, but I don’t know that I’ll go again.

My oldest son got his driver’s license, and his first car.

My second son got his first job, as well as played on the varsity soccer team.

My wife and I turned 40, and good friends surprised the heck out of us with an amazing party. I ran my second half-marathon with some of those same friends on my birthday, a brutally hot and humid day. Times were slow, but we made it.

As I look back on 2014, these are all things I would have definitely wanted to do before I die. That is what a bucket list is all about: things you would like to do before you die. Though I don’t have a physical paper Bucket List, I’ve had one on my mind for a long time. And the first item on the list is writing a book. I would also love to travel more, though I’ve been abundantly blessed to travel frequently in my 40 years. Before I die, I hope to visit Wales, where my grandmother was born. I would love to visit the Holy Land, to see the Bible come alive. I would love to travel with my wife to Cambodia to see firsthand what Imagine Goods is up to!

Next year, if things come together, a group from Faith Church will travel to Kenya, to visit our Faith Church family members, the Stoltzfuses, that serve at Rift Valley Academy. I’m super excited about that trip!

Looking further to the future, I hope to see my kids graduate high school, maybe college, start families and have kids. My grandkids. I look forward to meeting them!

I’ve thought about going back to school to get a doctorate. I think I would still like to do that some day.

In recent years, and especially as my third son and I have read the Hatchet series, I’d like to do some kind of extended stay in the wilderness. Or maybe do an long hike on the Appalachian Trail.

What’s on your bucket list? Do you have any goals you’d like to accomplish before you do? No one has to have a bucket list, but planning for the future is a wise idea.

What should be on a bucket list? I found a site that boasts 10,000 ideas. But what if you put items on your list that aren’t worth your time, and you only find that out after you complete them? How do we know what we should put on a bucket list?

On Sunday we meet a guy in the Bible who had a bucket list. I don’t know how long the list was, but it had one item God guaranteed would happen. It was a very important item. And God promised that before this guy died, he would be able to cross it off the list. Imagine that! As you think about your bucket lists, what if you could choose one thing on it that God guarantees will happen. Which item would you choose for the God “lock”? If God guaranteed this guy’s bucket list item, that’s a pretty strong indicator that it should be worth our consideration too.

Join us Sunday at Faith Church as we look at Luke 2:21-40, where one person has a Bucket List “God Lock” item, and it happens!

On shouting a Christmas message that can get you killed – Luke 2:1-20

It’s Christmas Eve! My younger kids (age 9 and 11) are charged with excitement, begging to open just one gift, or at least put them under the tree. They cannot contain themselves. At Faith Church we’re looking forward to a wonderful time of worship tonight. We’ve had artists from our congregation creating art to illustrate the four weeks of Advent, and tonight we celebrate as more people from the congregation will add artistry through voice and the spoken word. Like my kids, ours will be a church like so many others today, filled with joy and light and excitement!

On that first Christmas there was another group that couldn’t contain themselves.

The Shepherds.

After hearing glorious news of the birth of the king, they rush into town to verify the message. Finding it true, they cannot keep their mouths shut, as they start telling everyone what just happened. The shepherds are positively beaming. It might be the middle of the night when they finally return to their sheep, still shaking their heads at the once in a life-time experience they’ve just had. And they are praising God!

Joy to the World the Lord has come.

I imagine their joy eventually wore off. That was a big night. But things get back to normal pretty quick. Sheep to watch, sheep to feed, sheep to shear, sheep to sell. Real life. What pays the bills. And that baby isn’t heard from again. I wonder if any of them were still alive 30 years later, when his time had come? Did they remember? Hearing stories of an up-and-coming teacher and miracle-worker and how some people were speculating that he was the Messiah, might one of them added up the years and realized this was the baby, now a young man?

I wonder how long they told the story of that one glorious night?

I wonder if life got in the way. I wonder if they started to doubt. I wonder if people started to make fun of them, say they were hallucinating, dreaming, and that babies are a dime a dozen. “Where is this king now?” people might say. “The Romans are quite solidly in power. Shut-up, shepherds. We don’t want to hear about the angels anymore.”

And maybe they did shut-up.

Have you?

We make a big deal out of Christmas every year because it is a big deal.

When that baby was born, and those angels blazed in the night sky, and the shepherds’ hearts were bursting, it was because it IS a big, big deal. There is hope, there is a savior! God wants to have peace with humanity! That’s incredible news for those of us walking in darkness.

But have we become quiet about this?

Have the years gone by, the job that requires too many hours, the busy family, the house, the lawn…in my case these last few weeks, the wood stove, the fridge, signing up for new health care…

Life.

Has life gotten in the way? Has life shut us up?

If we feel the burden of life, then we need these boisterous Christmas celebrations. We need Advent. We need to cry our eyes out because our great God has shown us grace and mercy and peace in Jesus. And we need our hearts to be filled.

And we need our tongues loosed to tell the good news. Those humble shepherds’ tongues were loosed.

60 years after these events, Luke wasn’t afraid to directly challenge Rome by telling the story. He wrote it in a book. It was the kind of story that could get you killed! A new king’s birth that trumped the current king? Sitting kings don’t always take kindly the news that a contender to the throne has been born. They like to kill off the competition. Right after Jesus’ birth, word got to the local king, Herod, and he responded in an infant genocide that caused Joseph and Mary to flee with Jesus to Egypt. Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth presents a bold message to the world leader in Rome, the Caesar. Take a look at this thought-provoking article that shows how Luke’s courageous message could have gotten him killed! Because his heart was filled to overflowing and his tongue (or pen) was loosed, and he told the story of God’s peace for all, there is a Savior for all, and he welcomes everyone to his Kingdom!

When was the last time you were so jacked up about something you just couldn’t keep quiet about it?

When was the last time you experienced something so amazing, so incredible you just wanted to tell everyone about it?

When was the last time you got good news and you started lighting up Facebook about it, thumbing out text messages to your family and friends?

That’s what Christmas is all about. Let’s not just keep the carols in our churches tonight. What could it look like for you to spread Christmas joy, hope, love, grace and mercy to the people in your life?