CHRISTMAS 1A 

December 30, 2007                                                                           

SCRIPTURES  

-Our calendar was dated B.C. meaning before Christ and A.D. meaning “Anno Dominei” which means, the year of our Lord.  Why wasn't Christ born in the year zero.?  The mistake happened in 527 CE, when a man named Dionysius Exigiuus, a monk from Russia, who, in 527 AD, calculated that Jesus was born 753 years after the birth  of the city of Rome. Dionysius centered Jesus Christ in history at the year zero, but he made a mistake of four years, not accurately calculating the death of King Herod. Our calendar has been off four years ever since then. Sermons from Seattle

-There are no other records of such a massacre. No other writing in the NT mentions it. While Josephus tells us that Herod ordered the execution of three of his sons; and at his burial one member of every family was to be slain so that the nation might really mourn (Ant. XVII. 181), he says nothing about the Bethlehem massacre. His writings indicate that Herod was the type of person who could have ordered such a slaughter and the small number of children might have gone unrecorded.

-When have you had to change plans, to re-route your itinerary, to make a new life in a new place? When have you found yourself unable to put down roots, but instead having to move on, to a better, though unknown, place? When have you experienced this as God at work in your life?

-*What are the “Egypts” of our lives?

-*In what ways is God calling you to new places in your life of faith?

-How quickly we lose the Christmas spirit as we re-enter "ordinary time." Like some rare botanical specimen, Christmas ‘blooms’ just one calendar day a year, yet the incredible image it invokes lives year round hidden in faithful souls everywhere.

-*God is not with us in some abstract and perfect place. God is with us here and now.

-*We need to always remember that for Joseph and Mary there was no ‘returning to "normal" the day after Christmas

-"We do not know how life is going to turn out," writes Jung. "…In the end the only events in life…worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which I include my dreams and visions."

-This "low Sunday" can become a spiritual high point when we realize that God calls each of us to a great work and a great dream.

-The word obedience comes from a Latin word meaning, "to listen." Some of us have developed what is called "selective hearing." We select, or choose, what we want to hear. (What we want to obey) Not Joseph and Mary.

- Hearing the still small voice.

-Seems an atheist said to a Christian, “If your God is so all-powerful, ask him why he allows killings, starvation and homelessness in the world?” To which the Christian replied: “I would. But I’m afraid he might ask me the same question.”

-how it is that one of our stories of greatest joy, Christmas, includes the deepest of tragedies? For me, part of the answer lies in knowing that God works in the real world, where tragedy is a constant. There are always tyrants and murderers. God works in that kind of world, because it's the only one there is. Desperate Preachers

-You "go get" scientific knowledge. Religious knowledge come to you. BBTaylor   Might be a good Sunday to talk about revelation. Lindy

-Although it would not have been out of character for Herod to have ordered the slaughter of babies and toddlers, there's no record of such an event actually taking place in Bethlehem during his reign. Matthew has either written down an oral-tradition legend, or more likely, made up the story to "show" his thesis of parallels between Jesus and Moses (Herod=Pharoah, Holy-Innocents )

-I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."  Isaiah 40:4-5

American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr. - I Have a Dream     there are some nice parallels between King's dream and God's "dream".   Lindy

-

QUOTES 

- If any God is going to save us, God will have to come to where we are, because we can’t get to God.
- John calls it “The Word made flesh;” Matthew calls it “Bethlehem.” William Willimon

- When glad things happen to sad people. source unkown.

- Ends and beginnings…there’s no such thing…there’s only middles.  Robert Frost

- You don't leave past and go to present. You draw past into present.  Jake Adam York, The Architecture of Address

-"The other half of Christmas"...the shepherds are gone, wise men have departed, excitement of birth is over, Jesus

   was circumcised, dedicated, etc,  now the second half of Christmas begins!. 

-Light tomorrow with today. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

- a God that is not all-powerful, but certainly all-loving.  Kushner

-  *When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: Thurman

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.*"Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome," writes C.G. Jung. "Its true life…invisible, hidden… The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away…Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the external flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains." The Sunday after Christmas is a time to remember the quiet eternal presence of a spiritual inheritance guarded deep within.

2.  *Tale of Three Trees" each tree had its own dream of what it would become. The first dreamed of being a beautiful treasure chest filled with precious stones, and the second dreamed of becoming a strong sailing ship. The third dreamed of being the tallest tree in the world, pointing the way to God. When dreams come true, they’re not exactly what we expect. The tree that dreamed of being a treasure chest became instead a manger, the manger in which the baby Jesus was laid when he was born. The second tree didn’t become a magnificent sailing ship, but a small fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee—the boat that carried Jesus and his disciples across the lake in the midst of a terrible storm. And the third tree that wanted to be the tallest tree in the world and point the way to God, became instead the cross — the cross which points the way to the unconditional love of God for each of us. Each tree had its dream, and the dream was fulfilled, but not in the way that was expected  

3.*A statistical analysis done by some scholar suggest that given the population of the area at the time and the birth and infant mortality rates of the period, the slaughter was less than twenty children.  Still, it is a graphic illustration of an African proverb  that when elephants fight the grass gets trampled.

4. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported that 30 years ago, the greatest fears of grade school children were: 1) Animals, 2) Being in a dark
room, 3) High places, 4) Strangers, 5) Loud noises. Today, kids are afraid of the following: 1) Divorce, 2) Nuclear war, 3) Cancer, 4) Pollution, 5) Being mugged.
 

 home