andygoodliff

Ladder: A Christmas Sermon

How can I explain Christmas this year?

This is my tenth year in attempting to help you get this story again.

I enjoy the challenge of seeing if I can find something different to say.

The story of Christmas does not change,

but it's a story which we can never exhaust its meaning,

because the story is of the Incarnation,

of God becoming human;

of the invisible, almighty, transcendent, creator God

being born in the same way you and I were born.

How on earth does God become human and yet remain God?

Why on earth would God subject himself to the fragility and vulnerability of being

born?

What on earth does God think He is doing coming close to a humanity that is so

hostile, indifferent, and full of their own importance?

These are questions that are begged when we say

that in Jesus we see God in the flesh.

 

What have I got to say to you this year?

It’s this: think of the Christmas story like a ladder.

At the top of the ladder is heaven

and at the bottom of the ladder is earth.

Up the ladder to heaven,

down the ladder to earth.

In the book of Genesis we read that:

Jacob falls a sleep, a stone for a pillow,

and he dreams,

he dreams he sees a ladder between heaven and earth

and on this ladder are angels descending and ascending.

I never get dreams like that!

At the top of the ladder is God and God speaks,

God speaks blessing and promise

and the promise includes God saying

‘I am with you

I will watch over you wherever you go.

I will not leave you.’

Jacob wakes up and realises

that God was in this place,

that it was the house of God,

the gate of heaven

and calls it Bethel, meaning house of God.

 

Jacob in this dream gets an early glimpse of the Christmas story.

He sees a preview of the good news.

What is this good news?

The good news is that there is 'traffic between heaven and earth',

there’s a way between them.

In the story of the tower of Babel,

human beings attempt to build a tower to heaven,

God shows Jacob that there is already a ladder that exists

between heaven and earth.

God has always been engaged, concerned, involved.

We are not left to our resources

and heaven is not a remote realm.

'Heaven has to do with earth

and earth can count on heaven.' *

 

The joy of Christmas

is that God himself descends to earth,

he comes down the ladder,

born of Mary,

and placed in a manger.

Meekness and majesty met,

the Lord of eternity here dwells in humanity.

This stable in Bethlehem is a new Bethel,

a new house of God.

The word of promise to Jacob:

‘I am with you’

takes on a new fulfilment as we behold Jesus, Immanuel,

God is with us.

 

And God descends

in order that we might ascend,

that we might be raised up with Christ.

When Jesus at the end of his ministry,

after his death, following his resurrection,

ascends back to heaven

he ascends the fully human one.

The Lord of infinity, stoops down,

to lift our humanity to the heights of his throne.

God’s promise to Jacob to watch over and never leave,

finds new fulfilment as Jesus takes us for ever into the heart of God.

 

This good news that God has descended,

that God has come to earth Himself,

gives way to an even greater truth:

this ladder that Jacob sees,

is actually Jesus.

He is the bridge between heaven and earth.

In him all things in heaven and on earth hold together.

Jesus is Bethel.

Jesus is the Gate.

Jesus is the Way.

Jesus brings heaven to earth,

and Jesus takes humanity into heaven for ever.

Jesus is not merely a window into heaven,

a window into what God is like;

Jesus is God in the flesh.

Jesus is the God–man,

Jesus is fully God and fully human.

He is the Ladder that holds heaven and earth together.

He is the living Temple where God’s presence is found.

He is the Torah, the living Word of God, speaking Truth.

He is the sacrificial Lamb that wipes away Sin.

He is the Lampstand, the Light that conquerors darkness.

He is the Manna, the Bread of life that is given for the world.

He is the true Shepherd, who searches for the lost, binds up the injured,

and strengthens the weak.

He is the Vine, abundant in fruitfulness and holiness from root to stem.

He is the High Priest, who leads people to God.

He is the Rock from which living water flows.

He is the Trumpet that sounds defeat to God’s enemies.

He is the Rainbow, God’s everlasting covenant with all creation.

He is the Tree of Life, full of God’s knowledge.

He is the Eternal Love of God located in time and space.

 

Here lying in a manger,

heaven and earth meet in Jesus.

This is news of great joy,

for here we see that Jacob’s dream,

was not just a dream,

but is now made real.

The heart of God has always been to be with us.

This is news of great joy and hope.

For Christmas celebrates that the birth of Jesus

redefines everything,

because in Jesus, God has committed himself to us for ever;

God has willed to cast his lot with us,

for our blessing, for our protection, for our salvation.

This is news of great joy and hope and love.

For God sending his Son

is a gift of love.

God gives himself with love and for love,

and this gift awakens in us,

does a work of transformation in us,

compels and calls us, to love others with the love

with which we have been embraced in Jesus.

God comes to us because God loves us

and desires to see that same love grow in us.

God is love and in Jesus we see that imaged in human flesh,

and we are being born again into that image, into that likeness.

 

So sing today of the joy of Jesus,

of the hope of Jesus, of the love of Jesus,

for he is the ladder,

that binds heaven to earth,

the bridge on which God’s love and mercy,

justice and peace,

cross over to us in a never–ending flow.

Glory to God in the high heaven

and peace on earth on whom his favour rests.

Amen!

 

* The couple of quotes here are lifted from Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (1982), 243

A King's Speech for Christmas

You can’t escape politics at Christmas. In the background of Luke’s version is the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus and in the background of Matthew’s version is King Herod. For those feeling like thank goodness the election is over and we can leave politics alone for Christmas, the story we are given is of the birth of a new king, who will be given a throne from which he will reign for ever, and whose kingdom will never end. This king will arrive and will challenge those who currently reign. He will when he is grown up be crucified under the name ‘king of the Jews.’ For those who would rather not have a political Christmas, we’ll need to start crossing out quite a bit of the nativity story. For those who would rather not have a political gospel, we’ll need to start crossing out nearly all the verses of the gospels.

What is happening with the arrival of Jesus is the birth of a new king, and with it a new politics, a new kingdom. No wonder Mary and Zechariah sing. The announcement to Mary is an election.[i] Just as choices have been made in our United Kingdom, so God makes choices for the sake of his kingdom. God has sifted all the possible candidates and chooses Mary, Mary is chosen as God–bearer, as King-bearer. Mary, without ambition, full of humility, one of lowly state, is lifted up,

and named highly favoured. We might even say she is a prime minister, if we understand the word minister as meaning one who serves: ‘I am the Lord’s servant/minister, let it be to me according to your word.’

And if there is an election, there is also a kind of policy programme, a king’s speech if you will, given by the king’s mother:

the proud and the powerful will be brought low
and the humble and lowly will be lifted up.
The hungry will be filled with good things,
and the rich sent away empty.

It’s a king speech that makes some of us uncomfortable and others of us want to shout for joy. It’s a king speech which makes some of us think this is unfair, and others of us perhaps think finally some reverse inequality. It’s a king speech that names that not all is right with our world, and offers a dramatic solution. When others come to translate these words, we perhaps get a better sense of Mary’s vision:

He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold. (The Message)

This new king growing in Mary’s womb will start a revolution which will unseat those in power. The gospel of the King comes to shake earth and heaven with justice and peace. The One who will sit on David’s throne comes to deliver humanity from the powerful and rich, where they reign over the lowly and poor in ways that keep them in their place. The Mighty One born in Bethlehem comes to demonstrate mercy to those are live in systems and situations where mercy is not shown. The Son of God comes to be the great leveller, giving everyone a seat, a place at the table, calling the rich to give away double that which they have taken, and announcing forgiveness of debts for those at the bottom. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

This King’s speech is prophetic, in that it does not seek to be chaplain, but conscience. It speaks of another kingdom coming, from the ground up, a kingdom of servants, who have the resources of faith, to model something of what this kingdom which Mary announces looks like. It finds that not only is Mary elected, but every person, who takes up the invitation to follow Jesus the King. Every Christian is an image-bearer of this King and kingdom and every Christian is called not just to believe in this King, but to give our allegiance to him.

The question before us this Christmas is how do I, how do we, serve King Jesus? And the answer is to try and live out the King’s Speech, to make it our policy, to make it the rule by which we live. It starts with worship, giving glory and rejoicing in God our Saviour. It recognises each one of us needs salvation, rescuing, whether we are rich or poor, powerful or lowly. And at the heart of that salvation is to discover that each one of us is both poor and rich, powerful and lowly.[ii]

You might have money, but your life is poor in some area. You might have little money, but your life is rich in some area. You might have power relatively speaking, but there will be places and situations in which you will be powerless. You might have seemingly little power, but there will be places and situations in which you will have power.

The gift, the joy, the challenge of being church, of being citizens of the King, is to see together the riches we have, the power we have. Riches and power that look different to the world’s definition; riches and power that are more than the amount in our bank account, or our position in society. We are rich communities and a poor communities, we are a powerful communities and a lowly communities and God elects us to be a good communities, that lift up where we are poor, and shares where we are rich.

God’s gift at Christmas is to come and get political, to get his hands dirty, to place himself in a manger, in poverty, that we might become rich, rich in mercy, rich in joy, rich in generosity and goodness, rich in humility and gratitude, rich in truth and patience. This is the surprise of Christmas, God shows us what politics really looks like, shows us what a King really looks like, shows us what a kingdom really looks like, its called the life we receive that we call being kingdom communities.

 

[i] Thanks to Jim Gordon for this insight.

[ii] This is borrowed by Sam Wells, The Nazareth Manifesto (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), 298-303.