Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Christmass 2009
I received a wonderful gift. It wasn’t a Christmas gift. It wasn’t mine to keep. It was a loan a few months ago from a young man by the name of Michael just before he left for college. He loaned me three books and told me that these were the three most significant books in influencing his life up to this point. It was a wonderful gift to me because this young man cared enough about me to share this important part of his life with me.
The first book is titled Ninety Minutes in Heaven, by Don Piper. Don Piper is a clergyman who had had a terrible car accident, after which he had been declared dead. He was in that state for an hour and a half before a friend, who felt strongly that even though his friend was dead he somehow must pray for this man to live. He went to him , praying fervently, and he was brought back to life. Piper’s book is about those 90 minutes in which he experienced Paradise and about his post-heaven experience of his lengthy recovery and witnessing about his life-after-death experience.
The second book was a history of 20th century Tibet, written by His Holiness, the Dalai Llama, for the purpose of convincing all who will pay attention that Tibet should be a free and independent country—not a part of communist China.
The third book’s title is There Is No God, with the word No crossed out and the word A replacing it. There is a God. It was written by Antony Flew, a philosopher and one-time atheist “who set the agenda for modern atheism with his 1950 essay, “Theology and Falsification,” which became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half-century.” Flew “discloses how his commitment to ‘follow the argument wherever it leads’ led him to a belief in God as Creator.” In the book, Flew tells how science led him to change his belief from atheism to theism, explaining that when science postulated the Big Bang theory of creation, that changed everything from a philosophical perspective. If the universe had no beginning, which was the prevailing thought before the Big Bang theory, then there is no need for a God, according to Flew. If, on the other hand, things began with the Big Bang, philosophically Flew states that there must be an omnipotent intelligent Being who brought it about. Hence, the scientific evidence led him to theism. Flew hastens to add that his understanding is different from the great monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—in that it is not based on a revelation from beyond science.
This book is the reason I was led to tell you about my wonderful gift of three books from Michael, for it speaks so clearly to our situation today. While very few people are philosophers, I am convinced that philosophy influences the belief systems of all of us. I cannot begin to count the number of people who are related to the Church, either intimately as active members or tangentially through family members, who have told me that they are scientific people who find the claims of Christianity to be antithetical to a scientific view of the world. I bring this up to you now, at this celebration of Christmas, because the law of averages would suggest that there are many who attend services at Christmas especially who consider themselves to be scientifically-minded people and who therefore consider everything the Church professes at Christmas to be at best metaphorical and at worst a total fabrication, with no grounding in reality. The nativity is just a pious story for unsophisticated, maybe even ignorant folks.
But if Flew is right, and the scientific evidence leads us to belief in an omnipotent God, isn’t it a small jump, and a reasonable one at that, that this God should want to make himself known by the beings in the universe who have the capacity to know him, if only in an imperfect way? How would that happen except through his intentionally revealing himself? The Bible is a record of that revelation, beginning with our first parents, moving on to the establishing of a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; on through the prophets of ancient Israel, who prophesied that someday One would be born to a virgin and his name would be Immanuel, which means, God With Us.
The New Testament is a record of that very revelation of God, through whom all things were made, taking the flesh of the Virgin Mary and being born as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived among us, gathered a group of disciples around him; who taught, healed, and even raised the dead; and who suffered and died for our sins. God then raised him from the dead, and he appeared to many before he ascended into heaven. He then sent the Holy Spirit to be with his followers from then on, until he comes again to judge the living and the dead. Furthermore, he has revealed himself as one God in three persons, thus having within his own being the essence of love, for love needs the other in order to be expressed. It is indeed one thing to say there is a God and quite another to say what the nature of the God is, and that is the stuff of revelation. If you happen to consider yourself a scientifically-minded person, and have therefore considered belief in God to be for the more simple-minded, you should reconsider, and in reconsidering, think about what Christians have believed and lived for 2000 years.
This revelation that we have been given in Jesus Christ is not just for the enlightenment of our minds. Perhaps the most amazing claim of our faith is that the immortal, invisible, omnipotent God, who made all things, knows you and me. This God loves each one of us and he wants each one of us to love him and to live with him for ever. And he wants our lives to reflect his own nature of divine love.
As we give and receive our gifts this Christmas, let us all remember that the reason Jesus was born was because of God’s love for us, that he wants that same love to be born in us anew this Christmas and always.
A little-known Christmas hymn by Christina Rosetti, Hymn 84, puts it beautifully: Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine; love was born at Christmas, star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead, love incarnate, love divine, worship we our Jesus, but wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine, love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign.
I give thanks for that love, and at this moment, I especially give thanks for those three books Michael loaned me.