Christmas: Part 1 - When Eternity Touches Time

Well, here we are again, stories to make sense of it all. And it's Christmas. Nothing like church bells to make Christmas feel right. Those aren't church bells from Paduki Kintucky or from Detroit or Seattle. Those are from Venice, Italy. Those are like real church bells, right? So it's Christmas and years end. And when we come to this time of the year singing, music comes into play in a big way. Seasonal music. The historic, the classics like Away in a manger, a holy night sung by Nat King Cole or a come all you faithful by the Mormon tabernacle choir or some of the fun songs that are aftermarket songs, if you will. Like Santa Claus is coming to town, Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer or Bing Crosby singing white Christmas. The singing of songs, the giving of gifts, sort of central, not sort of central, it is central to the Christmas season. Two years ago when we did this podcast, I sat down with a classroom, I think about 12, 14 preschoolers, three and four year olds, just to get their sense of Christmas. And I asked them about giving. And this was their response. Oh, that's a hard question, isn't it? I don't like these. I don't like doing presents. Oh, you do go get. You like getting them. Yeah. You do go get them. Okay. And then they had a song they wanted to sing for me, which is the great truth about when Jesus being born happens. You need to tell somebody. And so the songwriter said, go tell it on the mountain. Oh, it is in everywhere, go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born. You may have a favorite sentimental Christmas song I do. And I like all the classics that are biblically centered. But this one isn't that. And I just want to set the scene for you. Let me set the scene. It's World War II, South Pacific, it's December, 1943. Your east of Australia in the New Hebrides Islands, what is now called Vanuatu. You can look it up on a map, it's out there. If you're a kid from Des Moines, Iowa or Prescott, Arizona, you're a long, long way from home. On a battleship, the USS North Carolina, a massive warship, man by 2,339 sailors. Your countries at war, it's in conflicts that stretch across the world, but you're 19 years old or you're a young dad, 26 years old. You're a patriot, a sailor in the United States Navy, or maybe a Marine. And orders are orders, and the USS North Carolina has orders. See, even thousands of miles out on the South Pacific aboard that ship on Christmas even, you're thinking about Christmas, but you won't be able to have the traditional church service or a peaceful Christmas day because orders have come in. The USS North Carolina would set sail Christmas morning to provide support for a carrier attack. Some weeks earlier, in October of that year, Bing Crosby had recorded a song that would become a gold record in 43. The most requested song by servicemen overseas, it's, I'll be home for Christmas. That's the song I like. It goes like this. I'll be home for Christmas. You can plan on me. Please have snow and mistletoe and presence on the tree. Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams. I'll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams. And like the last line says, if you're on the battleship North Carolina, you know it will be only in your dream. But unknown to you, the ship's chaplain, EP Weapons, has made some plans months earlier in August, he'd collected $5 from the fathers in the crew. For a grand total of $2,404.25 and had written to Macy's department store, enclosing the funds and requesting that Christmas presents, Weapons suggested a $3 limit for each gift. Be purchased and mailed to the 729 son's daughters, brothers and sisters of those men on the ship. For their football or raggedy and a stuffed panda or baseball bat, the attached gift card was to say simply that the gift was from a loved one in his shipmates on the USS North Carolina. Weapons went on to type. We realize that we are asking a great deal, but you will be adding greatly to the happiness of our children and to our own Christmas joy out here in one of the war zones. Incidentally, we hope that a bit of that joy will reflect on you and your staff of workers. Well, the store's staff of workers had gone much farther than selecting, wrapping and shipping. With the addresses of the recipients in hand, Macy's invited all of the children and mothers who were able to come and film them opening their gifts and telling in some cases singing their missing husbands and fathers, hello and Merry Christmas. Before they sail back into battle the next morning, the chaplain will gather the sailors and play that movie from home. The effect of that flickering black and white newsreel, the high excited voice of sweet laughter of youngsters, the loving smiles, longing eyes of a spouse, in a darkened hold of a ship, the length of two-and-a-half football fields on a Christmas Eve, is hard to picture, a longing too deep to describe, a homesickness too great to express, a surprise, too joyous to ever forget. What a great story. I love that story. What a great Christmas. Somebody in 1943, several somebody's took the time to put flesh to a dream. Well, that's what the Christmas story is, isn't it? Flesh being put to a dream. That's the whole other song. That's the whole other story. Almost 2,000 years before that 1943 Christmas, God himself, I believe, put flesh to his dream. Here's what it sounds like. This is the Gospel of John, chapter 1, 1 through 14. By the way, off Broadway right now, there's a fellow named Ken Jennings, who has a one-man show on the Gospel of John that he's memorized, and apparently it's a great hit. So here we go, John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made, in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness of the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John, this is John the Baptist. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all might believe he himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Let me just move down to verse 14. This is how it describes God's putting flesh to the dream. The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. We've seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth, and of course the word made flesh has a name. His name is Jesus, the one who saves, or a manual, God with us. Let's believe by many scholars that those first 14 to 18 verses of the gospel of John are a hymn, not any kind of hymn, but a song put to Hebrew phrasing because Hebrew songs have repetition in them. So when you hear in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was good. That's a hebraic thing. But what does it mean? The Word become flesh. This is not just God coming to man, but becoming a man. I've known a bunch of men who tried to be God, right? That doesn't work out too well, but this is the Almighty God becoming a man. Word become flesh is the greatest miracle. It's staggering. The Word that is used for that is incarnation in the flesh. Jim Keller, pastor emeritus at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, wrote a little book for years back called Hidden Christmas, and he quotes a theologian, scholar by the name of J.I. Packer, about this incarnation thing, and I want to read it to you. J.I. Packer puts it starkly. God became man, the divine son became a Jew. The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, enabled to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation. So there you have it, infinite spirit puts on flesh. What theologians called the God man. Arthur Pink was a commentator back in the last century, and he wrote about another piece of this where it says in that prologue to John, and he came and tabernacled, he camped out among us. He just had some thoughts on what back in the Old Testament, in the Israeli community, the tabernacle represented, and I just like to read you the high points of that just very quickly. These are just a few of the things he says. The tabernacle was a temporary appointment. This is a tent that moved as the children of Israel wandered in the desert. The tabernacle was for use in the wilderness. Outwardly, the tabernacle was mean, humble, unattractive, and parents. Number four, the tabernacle was God's dwelling place. The tabernacle number five was therefore the place where God met with men. The tabernacle number six was the center of Israel's camp. Number seven, it was the place where the law was preserved. Eight, it was the place where sacrifice was made. Nine, it was the place where the priestly family was fed. Ten, it was the place of worship. All of those ideas would be in the reader's mind when it says that this word made flesh, this Jesus person, camped out with us. When I read texts like this, I say, okay, so that's how a theologian sees it, or that's how just the casual reader might see it. But how would some professional see it like a medical professional? How might a medical doctor approach that moment? Let's say the virgin birth, which is the expression of that. I have a friend, Dr. Mark Baustred, who's a retired surgeon. He hails from South Africa. But just on the spur of the moment the other day, I asked him, what do you think about this? What comes to your mind when you think about the word become full? The mental mind starts to think about the two little cells that would be the sperm and the egg, normally combining their genetic material, their chromosomes. And I pondered, were Jesus's chromosomes half from Mary and half from special ones God created for the event. He doesn't have chromosomes. Remained in his image. Exactly. It's a little deep from me right there. It is. And then you think, well, did God just create that whole blastosis that's the little clump of cells that comes as the two cells join and start to grow in the body? Yes, and was that all God's, was that all God's genetic material that he created for himself, for Jesus, for the event. And then I think of the mystery of, as a doctor, seeing a patient who had been alive and is not just a corpse, and that mystery of life, you know, you think of God made Adam from the dust and breath and he became a living soul. And that very essence of life that somehow is the magic spark, you know, you look to light bulb and it's dead and useless, but animated with electricity and it's brilliant. And you think of Mary's body somehow being infused, suffused with divine, a divine presence growing within her. And anyway, you can hear I'm rambling and I think my medical mind can't quite, in one sense, the analyst wants to know what was that genetic material in those two little cells? Or was it all just purely God's, let there be and it was? You can't get your medical mind around it and I certainly can't get my puny storyteller mind around it, but thanks for your input, I love that. So our little exchange was complete and we were off-mic, at least I thought we were off-mic, but it happened to pick up just this little piece at the end that Dr. Bostern shared, I loved it. It's a ponder, isn't it? I'm going to ask him how to keep it. So I just thought that for this particular subject that is so central to life and way beyond this season, that I just like to get other inputs. So I talked to Mark Baustrid and then I thought, well, I'll call my old friend who's been in government forever. He's been in government and politics. But beyond that, he's one of the best thinkers I know and I've known him for 70 years. And his name is John Ashcroff, former Attorney General of the United States. So I just called him, spur the moment out of the blue and said this to him. What comes to mind when I say, and the word became flesh, well, the first thing that comes to mind is that the values, character and nature of God is capable of being resident in a bodily way and in a personable way if that's the right word. So what degree do you see the birth of Jesus as a watershed in human history? Well, I believe that God the Father sends Jesus to clarify his nature and to be a more accurate representation and understanding than had previously been understood by mankind. And then, of course, the word becomes flesh and dwelt among us is transitioned from a dwelt among us to dwelt in us. Yeah. Jesus makes this clear so that I and my father, my father and me and I and you, this is a different way in which the word becomes flesh. I wrote a song about a hundred years ago and Trinity and it starts out, oh, God, my father in my dust breed soul. Sort of it, it talks about the role of the Almighty and sharing the quote inspiration or the breath of God, the soul of God, perhaps in the dust of man. The second verse, it's a living word, be flesh again in me and I think the invitation that we become the word made flesh is one that I don't, you know, it's probably a heresy that only I engage in, but I sort of think that the word made flesh is a privileged opportunity and the intent of the Almighty for mankind, that the character and nature and values of God be resident of resident in and apparent in our flesh. I think this grand story about word became flesh is so significant. We need to give it more time. How's that for the understatement of the century? And when we come back the next time I have another doctor friend, I'd like you to meet. We want to talk about what it means to be fully human, fully alive, what that looks like. But as we slide out today, I'd like to have a little music in the background. We have a music room at our house. It's, well, it's a music room. It's a quilting sewing room. It's a playroom for grandkids when they come over. But we have an old upright Baldwin in there and sometimes early in the morning, Ruth, my wife will get up and she'll go in and play old hymns and gospel songs in the other day. She was playing just some Christmas carols and she's very much in tune. But this old Baldwin is a wee bit out of tune for you music major so you'll probably hear that. But I just love hearing her play and the feeling she puts into it. So here we go. We're going to go away with a way in a major and we'll catch you in a couple of days. God bless.