WordPress.com



WHERE EARTH AND HEAVEN MEET

Dr. John E. Harnish

First United Methodist Church

Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture: John 1: 14

It’s a kid’s book, really, but it’s fascinating. The title is “501 Incredible But True Facts to Amaze You”. For example, did you hear about the guy in Virginia who was struck by lightening seven times…and lived! I can’t figure out if that is good luck or bad luck. Or the fact that a python can swallow a pig whole, and then not eat again for

a year. Did you know that Beethoven used to dump ice water on his head to stimulate

his brain?

But even more fascinating, here are some facts about our world:

• The oldest elements found on earth are zircon crystals from Australia

that are 4,276-million years old.

• There are rocks found on the top of Mt. Everest that were formed in the bottom of the sea 6 million years ago.

• That the earth’s crust, which is 20 miles deep, if you compare it to the full size of the earth, would be the equivalent of the thickness of an eggshell….so we really are “walking on eggs” after all!

Here are a couple more about outer space:

• Did you know it takes 8.5 minutes for light to travel the 93 million miles from the sun to the earth?

• Another…if it were possible for all the adults on the planet to stand on each other’s shoulders in a human chain, it would reach all the way to the moon.

(“501 Incredible but True Facts to Amaze You”, selected pages)

(Similarly, someone estimated that if all the folks who sleep during sermons were laid end-to-end… they would be more comfortable!)

And then just this week, NPR shared the first reports of the NASA Stardust mission. Stardust has been collecting dust from comets, some of which are 4 ½ billion years old and still traveling through space. (stardust.jpl.)

I suppose it has always been a part of the human imagination, deep in the human soul, the desire to try to connect with the stars, to reach for the sun, to build a ladder to the heavens, looking for the point where earth and heaven meet.

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the launching of the Voyager 2 spacecraft on August 20, 1977. It was only supposed to last for five years, but like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going. Traveling at 40,000 miles per hour, it passed Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. As of August 2006, it has traveled a total of 10 billion 578 million miles, but even at a rate of one million miles a day, it will take it another 6,500 years to reach Barnard’s star, and it won’t pass the brightest star, Sirius, until the year 296,036. (I don’t think I will be around to see it!) In reflecting on Voyager’s long and lonely journey, columnist Joan Beck wrote:

“So humans seem to be alone, marooned perhaps forever on this small planet in an obscure solar system in the backwaters of the Milky Way, with only the most limited instruments to study our surroundings and only finite brains to ponder the infinity around us.”

(Joan Beck, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 17, 1989)

But across the vastness of the cosmos, and beyond the grasp of our finite brains, the star of Christmas sends another message,

A different word to this small, backwater planet;

A cosmic word for our world.

The Christmas star says, “We are not alone, we are not forgotten.” The same God who fashioned the universe and flung the planets into their unerring orbits; the same God who fills the vastness of the endless and ageless universe with his presence; the very God who is the source and author of life itself, this God has spoken. This God has sent us a word:

And in this Word, earth and heaven meet.

John’s intent in the opening paragraphs of his Gospel is not to give historic details of the Nativity. He doesn’t try to assemble, like Luke, an “orderly account.” He is not, like Matthew, arguing for Jesus’ genealogy and his rightful claim to Messiahship. Rather, John begins with the far-flung vastness of all creation, all wisdom, all knowledge, all life, then out of the wonder of the universe and across the millions of years of created life, an eternal Word is heard, the endless logos:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.

Not quite as poetic, the Eugene Peterson translation of the verse does give it a “down-to-earth” flair:

The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory; like Father, like Son; generous inside and out; true, from start to finish.

Here and now, we are bold to believe and proclaim that in this baby, on this night of nights, this night of stars, from the mystery and majesty of the heavens, across the ages of human history, the Word breaks forth—the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us—here and now, earth and heaven meet.

1. Christmas Eve is first of all a theological statement, a statement of belief.

My predecessor at Ann Arbor, Don Strobe, is one of the great preachers of Michigan Methodism, still going strong in his retirement. Years ago he preached a Christmas sermon called “The Autobiography of God.” He tells the story of a woman who called her minister a few weeks before Christmas. She was in charge of the community Christmas tree lighting in the town square, and was struggling with the selection of carols to be sung. She was looking for something appropriate for the occasion, and I suppose was somewhat sanitized of the too-overtly Christian messages and images. She complained, “Well, most of the songs are just too theological.” Don then quotes Halford Luccock who said:

“Christmas is not something out of Charles Dickens, nor the aroma of steaming plum pudding, nor the twinkle of bells, nor even Tiny Tim. It is not just a festoon to be jammed into a child’s stocking. It is something about the universe. It is the answer to the question “What is God like?”

Don concludes:

“Christianity has the audacity to claim that this Ultimate Reality which we call God has manifested his nature at a specific time and in a specific place and in a specific Person: Jesus of Nazareth.”

(Don Strobe, “Autobiography of God”, Dec. 4, 1983)

Christianity has the audacity to proclaim that God is like an innocent child born of refugee parents under an oppressive regime, like common shepherds hearing choirs of angels, like mysterious Magi contemplating the skies.

This God who comes to us to bridge the great divide between God and man, and in this child, on this night, earth and heaven meet.

Track the human genome as far as it will go, study the bones of dinosaurs dating back millions of years, follow the path of evolution to the very origins of life, and through it all, if you look closely with the eyes of faith, you will discover the amazing presence of a creative God, the source of all creation; then listen for the Word which this God has sent:

He was in the beginning with God and was God; all things are made

through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was

made…

And now, this Word becomes flesh, living among us. Is that too theological for a Christmas Eve? Well, in fact, Christmas Eve stands at the very center of our theology. This is a night about the autobiography of God, how God comes to us. It is the point where earth and heaven meet.

2. Christmas Eve is a theological event, but it is also a very personal event.

Quite frankly, all this talk of the Eternal Word and incarnation—it makes very little difference if Christ was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago if he has not been born in me today. Christmas Eve is not just about expanding universes, expansive heavens, or unimaginable messages coming from the vastness of outer space. It is about the coming of God’s love in the depth of my own inner space, the personal Word coming to you and me. This is the place where earth and heaven meet.

And all the while I thought it was Lubbock Texas!

I preached there once for an Annual Conference Ordination Service at First United Methodist Church of Lubbock. I have never been anyplace that was so flat. Late on a Sunday afternoon, before the service began, I walked outside the church, right into a downtown intersection in the heart of Lubbuck’s business district. Traffic had pretty well thinned out, and as I started to cross the street, I stopped right in the middle of the intersection and realized I could see all the way to the horizon. And as I turned and looked in all four directions, I thought I could see where earth and heaven actually met.

Of course, the great news of tonight is that Jesus comes, not just to Bethlehem, but to Lubbock as well. He comes, not only to Mary and Joseph, but to every young couple holding their first-born son on his first Christmas—and maybe to first-time grandparents as well. He comes, not only to wandering shepherds in the fields watching their flocks by night, but to tired engineers watching their computer screens by day. He comes, not only to Wise Men of the east who can read the signs and the stars, but to common folks like you and me who hardly have a clue. He comes, not just to Bethlehem, but to Birmingham, to you and me. Right here…right now. This can be the place where earth and heaven meet.

Atlanta Pastor Rev. Margaret Gatter Payne tells a pastoral story which has happened to many of us. She says she was rushing through Advent, trying to make it to Christmas, busy with shopping, worship planning and all the rest. Then a request came from a church member to visit a friend of a friend in the hospital. Frankly, not a welcome request. She had plenty to do, and it was just one more interruption in a busy week. Of course, she went anyway. But she says…

“…as I stepped into that gloomy hospital room, I stepped into Advent as well, unwanted, unexpected, but more precious than any gift I received that Christmas.”

The man was dying. She came to discover he had served as a pastor many years before, and in their sharing she discovered she was the one who was receiving comfort and joy. Then she writes:

“When I left the hospital, I stepped out into a night that vibrated with the promise that God is more powerful than darkness, than even death itself. When I looked up, the stars were demonstrating the truth: just enough light and glory to prick the human experience to let us know that God is there behind the darkness—more love, more glory that we can bear to look at now, but ready to receive us.”

(Margaret Gatter Payne, Christian Century, Nov. 20, 1991, page 1085)

She says that night she experienced the new birth of Christ once again.

Across the millennia of creation and from the far reaches of the cosmos, throughout time and space, the eternal Word comes to speak to each of us tonight.

O, holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord, Immanuel!

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download