The Original Love Story

THE ORIGINAL LOVE STORY A Sermon For Christmas Eve

by Terry: WordsofLifePastr:

This sermon was originally written by Bill Adams- with a few modifications by me. Brother Bill tells this story of: One of the greatest theologians that ever lived, Karl Barth, was asked to be a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

At the end of a captivating closing lecture, the president of the seminary announced that Dr. Barth was not well and was quite tired, and though he thought that Dr. Barth would like to be open for questions, he shouldn't be expected to handle the strain. Then he said, "Therefore, I will ask just one question on behalf of all of us." He turned to the renowned theologian and asked, "Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider to be the greatest of them all?

It was the perfect question for a man who had written literally tens of thousands of pages of some of the most sophisticated theology ever put into print. The students held pencils right up against their writing pads, ready to take down verbatim the premier insight of the greatest theologian of their time.

Karl Barth closed his tired eyes, and he thought for a minute, and then he half smiled, opened his eyes, and said to those young seminarians, "The greatest theological insight that I have ever had is this: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." This to me is how simple the Gospel of Christ is.. It's so easy to read, its not just a childish fantasy or fairy tale.

Folks, I must tell you that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest love story ever written!

I wish with all my heart that everybody could read it that way, but I'm afraid to say that I meet people every day for whom it reads more like a Cal Worthington Used Car contract.

Somehow in the midst of all those beautiful love verses, they hear only clauses and conditions and the spelling out of all the consequences should any or those clauses and conditions ever be infracted.

It is not meant to be this way. It is so as a child can understand it.

So I thank God that Christmas comes around once a year to remind us that God isn't in the business of keeping books and tallying ledgers, nor is God concerned about our status or position in life.

God cares only that we be His children and worship Him. If God were concerned about any of those things, then I submit to you that the Christ of God would never have been born into such disagreeable circumstances as we find in the second chapter of Luke this evening.

Lu 2:7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

No. Christmas is the beginning of a classic love story with all the right ingredients: infatuation, pursuit, risk and relationship... But in all relationships of love, there does have to be that first meeting doesn't there?

When I was a child, I remember asking "what if I had been born to another set of parents? I would never have known the love of the parents I know and love now." My wife Becky and I met 24 years ago. I went to the same college for a few years. She was just out of Nursing School as a LPN and I still occasionally find myself asking those curious "what if"questions. Do you ever find yourself asking those kinds of questions?

What if I had gone to another school in another part of the country? What if I had taken another job instead of going to school? Or what if my sister had never introduced us.

Our lives might have never crossed paths... we might never have known this love."

--- My dear friends in Christ, I submit to you, that Christmas is a crossing of paths... Christmas is where we find the Christ of God intersecting with humanity!

Christmas is our first best meeting with the God who has desired us from the very beginning. I submit to you that if it weren't for Christmas we might never have known the intensity of the love that God has for us.

Mary and Joseph, far from home because of imperial rule, a peasant mother giving birth in unsanitary substandard housing... There was no fanfare, no royal delegation...

They just laid him in that manger and they watched his little face, and they listened for his breathing, just like every new parent does. No... this couldn't be anything but true love! True love accepts the beloved for who they really are God chooses to love us precisely because we are subjects of the human condition... not because of a favourable bottom line on a social and moral profit and loss statement.

Mary and Joseph had nothing to commend them save their humanity. God had waited ever so patiently for One to be born into our world who was willing to finally embody this love that God has for us... not some of the time, not when it was convenient, but in every waking, breathing minute of every single day...

It is the birth of that love into our world that we celebrate this month! Who would have ever guessed that this crossing of paths, this intersection of the divine and the human, would take place so long ago in a remote, speck of dust village called Bethlehem of Judea?

Who would have guessed that in that time and place One would be born into our world who would one day fill his life so much with the experience of God, so much with the love of God, that in him thousands upon thousands would be moved to make the incredible claim that they had actually met their God in person.

This is the night when God sent out a love letter of cosmic proportions. This is the night in the little town of Bethlehem when God and humanity were joined as a bride and groom on their wedding day.

And as Jesus grew and went out into the world, so our understanding of just how much God loves us also grew.

We find in Jesus that God's love doesn't demand perfection, that forgiveness isn't given away sparingly but recklessly and indiscriminately, that unconditional really means unconditional, and that God's love is completely and thoroughly inclusive.

We find that even the likes of us gathered here tonight fall within the embrace of that love, and that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38

Since September 11th, we have been talking a lot about peace, and rightly so. But I submit to you, that peace does not begin on the battlefield, peace begins in our individual hearts...

Peace begins with the knowledge that God loves and accepts us just that much. It begins with Christmas!

--- Now having said all this, I know that Christmas is a time of sentiment that, as such, can cause a measure of sorrow to come into focus.

The Christmas season can give rise to some painful memories for a good number of people... People often think about the failures they have suffered and about loved ones they have lost...

I lost my mother around Christmas time just 4 years ago, so I can relate to some with those feelings... But I also know this... without Christmas my life would be positively unbearable!

I would like close by telling you a story about a nativity pageant that like life itself, didn't go quite as planned...

So in Conclusion:

The youth group at a certain church was performing a manger scene. Joseph and Mary and all the other characters were in place and ready. They did their parts with seriousness and commitment, looking as pious as they possibly could. And then it came time for the shepherds to enter.

--- Dressed in flannel bathrobes and toweled head gear, the shepherds proceeded to the altar steps where Mary and Joseph looked earnestly at the straw which contained a single naked light bulb that was playing the part of the glowing newborn Jesus.

With his back to the congregation, one of the shepherds said to the person playing Joseph, in a very loud whisper for all the cast to hear, "Well, Joe, when you gonna pass out cigars?" The solemn spell of that occasion was not simply broken by his remark, it was exploded.

Mary and Joseph's cover was completely destroyed as it became impossible to hold back the bursts of laughter. The chief angel, standing on a chair behind them was the worst of all. She shook so hard in laughter that she fell off her chair and took the curtained back drop and all the rest of the props down with her.

She just kept rolling around on the floor holding her stomach because she was laughing so hard. The whole set was in shambles. But do you know what? The only thing that didn't go to pieces was that light bulb in the manger. ... it never stopped shining.

--- My dear friends in Christ, that baby in the manger is the light of my world, even when my world is in shambles... For in that baby the Divine and the human cross paths.

The infant Jesus is our living, breathing sign of the immeasurable love that God has had for all of us from the very beginning.

Christmas is the living promise that we are never ever alone. No matter where we are in life, no matter in what condition we find ourselves, no matter how far we might stray away, or how unfaithful we are, God, the supreme lover, will pursue us in love for eternity! It's a love that never stops shining.

May God bless each of you and those you love this Christmas season! Who is the reason for the season? JESUS!

Let us pray: