Bill's Easter Benediction

On Easter Sunday, 1972, my father spoke these words to his congregation at the close of his sermon:

"My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no better day than this – the day of the Resurrection – for us to drop our vain striving and defenses and let the Living Christ work a resurrection in us. Pray that He will close your eyes and ears to the world when it dangles false freedom before you and calls you away from commitment to the Lord. Fall in love with one another; be concerned for your fellow man; walk uprightly; work long and hard. Plunge without any reservation at all into this life-long commitment to the Risen Savior, and see what a new person He makes you."

He is risen! May we be raised with Him and made new, not just at the end of our days, but now.  Amen.

From: "The Resurrection of Commitment"

Scripture: Colossians 3:1-17

Preached at: Grace U.M. Church, Millersville, PA

Rejoicing on the Brink

Thirty-six years ago today, on March 28, 1979, central Pennsylvania experienced the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in America – the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island. Over the next few days, utility company officials, government regulators, news reporters, and even the President of the United States descended on the scene to assess the damage done and weigh the risk of further harm. 140,000 people voluntarily evacuated, but many more stayed put. In the resulting media frenzy, corporate and government spokespersons offered contradictory claims and uncertain advice. For those who lived in the vicinity, including my aunt and uncle, this all was terribly and personally frightening. But even for Pennsylvanians who lived further away, there was a palpable sense of dread.

Three Mile Island

Eleven days after the meltdown, on Palm Sunday, my father stepped into the pulpit before his congregation in Easton, Pennsylvania and preached a sermon entitled “Rejoicing on the Brink.” Here’s the heart of his message that morning:

"No one really knows for sure how close hundreds of thousands of people came to disaster over the last week and a half around Three Mile Island. The prospects of catastrophe were variously described by the electric company, the government, the media, and many independent experts. But all agreed there was a risk, and there were a lot of grim faces on the people involved in that situation. Not much rejoicing in the Middletown area.

The nuclear accident, while certainly important in itself, also stands as a symbol of a more widespread condition developing in our world today. We are getting used to living on the brink of disaster. There are a whole host of problems – certain foods and food additives, industrial wastes, crime, governmental scandal, economic collapse, the energy crisis, nuclear accident or war, earthquake, just to name a few – problems which have become so commonplace in the headlines that we are almost used to them. In the beginning when a new life-threatening problem is discovered, we get disturbed about it for a while, but soon it just takes its place alongside the others. There is a kind of grim resignation to living with the tension created by all these threats to life. You probably noticed this on the faces and in the comments of the residents around Three Mile Island as they were interviewed on TV. No tears, but no laughter either – because more and more all of us are being conditioned to living on the brink. There is growing, I think, a deadly serious, even morose attitude toward life. I even detect this is the children I know; there is not that totally carefree feeling among them that I enjoyed as a child.

In contrast to our modern predicament, we catch a glimpse on Palm Sunday of a man out of the distant past who is also standing on the brink of disaster – his own personal disaster. I speak, of course, of Jesus, mounting a donkey to ride into Jerusalem where he will spend the last week of his life. And he knows very well what is coming; he is not ignorant of the fact that he is flirting with death. His whole life has been geared toward the Cross. One might say that he lived on the brink from the day he was born.

Here Jesus is, with every reason to be terrified, or maybe bitter, or at least grim. But what does he do? He lets himself become the center of a triumphal celebration. The scriptures even tell us he took part in planning it. In one of the Gospel accounts he even insists that the celebration go on, over the objections of some. I think it is a faithful reading of the text to see Jesus enjoying this moment immensely, rejoicing on the brink. He is letting himself be part of this celebration.

If we could see and accept this interpretation of the Palm Sunday, it would be very refreshing and helpful to those of us who nervously teeter on the brink, either in our personal lives or along with mankind as a whole. To see Jesus relax and enjoy, with the Cross less than a week away, gives hope that this kind of peace and joy might just be possible for us as well. But how can we do this? From where does Jesus summon the strength to approach the brink with rejoicing?

Jesus knew what his mission, his job in life was. In the Temple at 12 years of age he said to his nervous parents who had been searching everywhere for him, 'Didn't you know that I must be about my Father’s business?' From childhood on, his whole life was consumed with the mission of doing his Father’s business, of manifesting the love of God to sick, broken, guilty and hard-hearted people.

Some people look at their lives as something like an empty box. To such people, teetering on the brink is horrifying because the box might spill and they will lose everything that they have. But other people look at life as a mission, a calling.  They feel their life is not just theirs to live as they please. God has a plan for them, has work for them to do. And so their whole life is spent discovering and following that mission, seeking to do God’s will for them. Such people are not shaken when they approach the brink because they know that they can never lose the experiences they've had, and that even this impending disaster will become yet another opportunity in their mission, another building block in the Kingdom that God is building through them.

Jesus rejoiced on the brink of his death because he trusted God, because he knew who he was, and because he knew where he was going. If we decide to lay aside everything else and follow him in faith, he will give us the grace to rejoice with him on the brink. Life with him, even if it is on the brink, will be so exciting and full of meaning, that we will never stop praising him. We will know then what Jesus meant on that first Palm Sunday when he said, 'I tell you, if these [people] were silent, the stones would shout out.' Luke 19:40 (NRSV).

He is Lord of all! He is Lord over the brink. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God! Praise the Lord!"

From: "Rejoicing on the Brink"

Scripture: Mark 11:1-10; Zechariah 9:9-13

Preached on April 8, 1979

Calvary U.M. Church, Easton, PA

A Trip to Jerusalem

Friends of mine, Bob and Michelle, recently returned from a trip to Israel. At the same time they were there, two pastors I know – Max and Scott – also were touring the Holy Land. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip these four pilgrims made because they posted many pictures of the sights they encountered. Every time I perused my Facebook news-feed, I saw photos of places I long had only imagined – the Mount of the Beatitudes, Jacob’s Well, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the Garden Tomb and more. I had fun following the travels of these four friends across Israel to Jerusalem. But following their journey on a laptop from my La-Z-Boy recliner is no substitute for the powerful experience of visiting Jerusalem in person.

A View of Jerusalem - by Bob Irving

We soon will reach Holy Week, when we remember the most famous, and most world-changing trip to Jerusalem ever made. The Gospel of Luke says that “[w]hen the days drew near for him to be taken up, [Jesus] set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  Luke 9:51 (NRSV).  As my father once wrote:

Jesus knew what the end would be if he went, and yet he decided to go. He decided to take the trip to Jerusalem, to the upper room, to Gethsemane, to the trials, to the Via Dolorosa, to the cross. For ten chapters in Luke’s Gospel (from Chapter 9 to Chapter 19), Jesus is en route to Jerusalem, aware that his passion awaits him. It is not only a physical trip from one place to another, but also a spiritual trip – a movement toward final, irreversible commitment to his Father’s will, an acceptance of the cup of suffering and death for the sins of the world.

“This is a stupid trip,” said his disciples repeatedly. They knew what would happen if Jesus went to Jerusalem. Again and again they begged him to stay home in Galilee where he was safe and at peace among friends and relatives who would pat him on the back and tell him what a fine preacher he was. And again and again Jesus told them that his end was suffering and death, and that he must go, but they did not understand. They followed him to Jerusalem because they loved him, and perhaps too because they still hoped against hope that he might exert some earthly authority. They followed, but not because they understood the meaning of his trip.

In countless ways, I dare to suggest, we too say that this is a stupid trip. We say it by the way we live our own lives. We seek comfort; we avoid conflict; we disdain sacrifice. We claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, and yet this is one trip on which we do not want to follow him.

Actually, the decision of whether or not to take this trip with Jesus centers around these questions: What is the real world like, and what does God want me to do about it? Jesus discovered that the real world was not just happy times in Galilee with friends and neighbors and dying of old age. He discovered that there was a Roman Empire and a whole world ripe to receive the message of the cross – a whole world that needed his service and suffering. He discovered that he was God’s man to do the job. To fulfill his own truth, to accomplish the purpose for which God gave him life, he must make the trip. Jesus wasn't stupid or foolhardy. He recognized the dangers and the cost involved. But he also recognized that he would be less than he was meant to be if he stayed in Galilee.

The real world is bigger than my back yard. The real world has more needs than those that arise from my family and friends. We all have our own ways of drawing our world as small as possible. To one person I must say that the real world is more than a comfortable chair, a can of beer and a football game. To another I must say that reality extends far beyond your children. To still another I must appeal for him to recognize that one cause, no matter how worthy, is not enough. And to another that life is more than your job or your daily routine. You alone know what parts of the real world your self-imposed blinders shut out. But allow yourself to see it or not, the reality – and often the ugliness – of the real world is there, and you are called to go there, to make the trip from Galilee to Jerusalem, from your artificially contrived comfort within narrow boundaries to the whole, real world where God calls you to live and serve.

In your Jerusalem there are so many lonely and neglected people. There is gross injustice. There is hunger of body and spirit. There is illness and suffering. There is hatred and violence. There is crime and war. There is pollution and rape of the environment. There is a whole creation broken in bits by man’s sin, waiting like Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again. This is your real world. This is the destination of your trip – your Jerusalem. And if you think about it, you will know what it all means specifically for you.

Real life, human life in the highest sense of that term, cannot be lived in your closet. Real life cannot be lived where you have drawn your shades to hide the world’s ugliness from your eyes. Real life is in the shape of a cross – a willing acceptance that we will suffer if need be to put things right in this world in His name.

As Jesus travels to Jerusalem, am I traveling with him, or am I just watching on my laptop from my recliner? Will I follow Jesus to Jerusalem, or just follow him on Facebook?

From: "The Trip to Jerusalem"

Scripture: Luke 9:51; Luke 19

Rethinking Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is a time for confession, so here’s one for you: I confess that Ash Wednesday has never been one of my favorite Christian holidays. After all, who wants to be reminded of his sin and mortality? The words that are usually spoken when the ashes are placed on a worshiper’s forehead sound so grim: “From dust (or ashes) you have been made, and to dust (or ashes) you shall return.” 

When I recently read my father’s last two Ash Wednesday meditations, though, I learned that he had a surprisingly upbeat take on the meaning of the day. Here’s what he had to say that is causing me re-think my dour view of Ash Wednesday:

“Over and over again we read in the scriptures about Godly men and women who ‘repent in sackcloth and ashes.’ This is a sign of humility, not humiliation. That is, we need to realize that a realistic assessment of our worth in human terms depends on the grace of God and not our own doing. It is not that we are not worth something. The modern adage is true: ‘God doesn't make junk.’ To put it in scriptural terms, ‘God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.’ However, it is necessary to point out the underlying fact that God made it. The goodness is all derived goodness. We live in the glow of God’s reflected glory. God is love, and all love comes from God.

It is sin that has spoiled God’s creation. Sin twists and mars and makes ugly.  That is why we symbolize it with ashes on Ash Wednesday. The message of Ash Wednesday is negative in a positive sort of way. It says that only by taking a realistic and not inflated assessment of ourselves can we really make, by God’s grace, something worthwhile out of our lives.

*          *          *

The answer that, hopefully, we will learn along this Lenten journey which is before us is that God saves us not by condemning us but by loving us. We listen to Jesus as he stands by the woman caught in the act of adultery. He says to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’ [See John 8:1-11] The effect of his words is not to push her further down into the dirt, but to lift her up and help her believe in herself and what the power of God working in her can make of her. This is God’s way with us.

Yes, we are dust, but it is Almighty God who made us out of dust and breathed his own breath, his own Spirit, into us. To negate a human being is to blaspheme God the Creator. The way to raise a creature of dust to a new and higher level is to affirm what God has done and is doing in that person. This opens the door even wider for more of God’s transforming activity in that life. Being negative and judgmental never works. It only begets negativity, hostility, and finally hopelessness. On the other hand, the positive approach, the affirming word, begets openness to you, openness to God, and a new attitude of hope.

What grabs me most, what changes me down to my core, is the realization that God loved me and valued me so highly that he sent his son to die for me. He did that all for me! What affirmation I feel when I realize how far God was willing to go to save me. Can I do any less than so love and affirm you?”

So as I go to worship this Ash Wednesday, it will be with a new focus: God is calling me, through these ashes, to acknowledge that my worth comes from him as my Creator, not from my own efforts -- which are only possible because of God, after all. And what am I worth as God's creation? I'm worth the greatest sacrifice ever made, and so are you.

From: "Ash Wednesday Meditation" (1988 & 1989)

My Elijah Moment

It’s been a while since I've posted on Bill’s Barrel, and there’s a reason why: I have been consumed by my work over the past month or so. I can’t think of another time in my practice of law when I've had more challenges, more frustrations, more difficult cases, facing me at once. One crisis is averted, and two more rise up to replace it. The strain of it all has left me feeling anxious, agitated and inadequate. It has robbed me of restful sleep. It has sapped me of my patience. It has made me question my abilities. This wave of stress crested one particularly tough morning when I left a desk covered with problems to dash to my appointment to give blood at the office blood drive. The Red Cross nurse who took my racing pulse frowned and asked, “Are you nervous about something?” Unable to donate, I walked away feeling utterly dejected.

Being swamped by your circumstances can leave you feeling isolated, alone, broken. That is certainly how the exhausted and defeated prophet Elijah felt when he was forced to flee into the wilderness because Queen Jezebel, who worshiped the false god Baal, had threatened his life. As my dad put it, “Here is a broken human being who God alone can bring back to fullness of life.”

In his sermon “Resources for Times of Stress,” Dad explained what God did to restore the despondent Elijah:

“The Lord sends an angel who ministers to his body with food and water, an indication that in this period of stress, as with most of us, Elijah had not been taking care of his body. … [O]ur bodies are closely entwined with our minds and spirits and affect our attitudes and thoughts.

After eating, Elijah lays down to sleep – to rest his body rather than to escape his despair. All of us need the peaceful rest that the angel allowed Elijah. God created us for a rhythm of work and rest, work and rest. We cannot be healthy without this rhythm.

Then the angel awakens Elijah [and] sends the physically stronger, but still spiritually broken prophet to Mount Horeb, the Mount of God. You know the story. The Lord wants to know why Elijah has come. Elijah tells his tale of woe – his former loyalty to God, the ineffectiveness of his work among the people, his frustration and loneliness. God knows that Elijah needs a new vision of Him. Elijah needs to know God’s presence and power again. A great and strong wind rends the mountain and breaks its rocks, but the Lord is not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire. Then after the fire comes a still, small voice. It is as if the Lord is saying to Elijah, “Stop. Be quiet. Cease all your anxious striving. You cannot tune in to me in all the confusion and vain busyness of your life. Take time. Be still. Give me an opening."

Again, Elijah tells his tale of woe to the Lord, ending with the familiar words, "I, even I only am left." Oh how that feeling haunts us. But God’s final words to Elijah point out several resources that are precious for every one of us who has become overwhelmed by feelings of frustration, failure and loneliness.

First, God gives the prophet some work to do. He is to be on his way to anoint a new king. God still has important work for him to do. Past failure does not mean future uselessness. It means we can bring a new sensitivity and a new positive humility to our next task because of our failures. Now we have a better handle on who we are and what we can rightfully expect of ourselves.

Next, the Lord tells Elijah to anoint Elisha to be the next prophet of Israel in his place. This is an encouragement to any man who feels like his life-long cause has gone up in smoke and that his years of labor are a total loss. Provided he cares about his cause and is not simply trying to build a monument to himself, it is heartening to know that God raises up others to continue and complement what we have done. I am a part of God’s plan, not the whole of it. This is an important truth to remember.

Finally, the Lord reminds Elijah that, contrary to his feeling that he was all alone in his fight against paganism, there are still 7,000 people in Israel who have remained faithful to the Lord and have not bowed down to the pagan god, Baal. Do you feel alone in your struggles and trials? Don’t believe it for a minute. This is one of the Tempter’s most successful means of deceiving and destroying us. "Isolate and conquer." This is why the Devil hates the church and tries so mightily to fracture and divide it. He knows that such a fellowship – where we discover that we are not alone and where we share our mutual woes and bear our mutual burdens – is his undoing. There is untold strength in having true Christian friends nearby – people you don’t have to pretend to and people who will at the same time offer you support. The Lord always provides at least a remnant with whom we can stand strong. The community God calls together (we call it the church) is his most powerful means of sustaining us when life threatens to engulf us.

And so the Lord brought Elijah through this period of frantic fear and stress. God offered him food and water and rest for his body. God offered him God’s own presence in the stillness. God gave him new tasks and therefore renewed purpose. God gave him other people to support and care for him. God’s resources for our times of stress have not changed. They are there for you now in your stress. They are God’s way of giving you back your own life.”

Thank you, Dad, for reminding me of the resources God has provided to help me through this rough patch.

From: "Resources for Times of Stress"

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-21

Bill on Martin: A Call to Action

On April 14, 1968, my father stepped into the pulpit at Adams Shore Community Church in Quincy, Massachusetts – near Boston – to deliver his very first Easter sermon after being ordained. As the young pastor scanned the white faces in the pews before him, I imagine there was some anxiousness in the congregation, maybe even apprehension, about what he might say. Some may have thought, “This is Easter – a time to celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death. It’s no time to bring up divisive issues like race.” But others may have been lost in a fog of despair that morning. Just ten days before, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been gunned down – and with him their hopes for non-violent change in a nation torn by racial injustice and strife.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dad began to speak: “You saw it as I did on television. You saw 150,000 Negroes marching beside the casket of their patron saint, who had been murdered by a white man. But somehow it didn't seem like a funeral at all. Oh, some were crying, but most of them were singing: ‘We shall overcome, we shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome some day.’ They surely couldn't be serious about the meaning of that song. How could they be optimistic about their deplorable situation? Truly their cause was in its darkest hour. Small strides have been made, yes. Some schools have token integration; Negroes now may ride in the front of the buses in Atlanta; there are many civil rights laws on the books. But many Negroes are in no better position economically and socially now than they were 20 years ago before this all began.

And today, the hour is even darker because one of their leaders was struck down by the vicious racism that he tried to combat. When others were forsaking non-violence and turning to black power and its own kind of racism, saying that non-violence had been tried and had failed, this one man stuck with it. He preached love and black and white living together in peace and mutual respect, when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now, this voice is snuffed out. It is a dark hour for his cause; it is a dark hour for his black people, it is a dark hour for our nation.

So how is it that his followers are singing beside his casket? They are so few in comparison to the untold numbers who hate. They are so few, and the whites and blacks who oppose them are so many. They sing, 'We shall overcome.' They sing it like they believe it. They have no grounds for this hope. The evil they are fighting is too great. They are too few. Their leader is gone.  They are cockeyed optimists. Their optimism is absurd.

Almost two thousand years ago, there was another small group who, under their leader, had brought at least a dim light to the horizon, but now he was dead, and surely now, even that dim light had every reason to go out. There were other leaders – self-styled zealots and messiahs who sprang up almost every day – telling the people that the only way to freedom was through armed revolt. Their answer was to rise up and throw out the blood-sucking Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel. Only Jesus had advocated another way – a way of non-violence, peace, love, service. He preached love and brotherhood and peaceful community when all others had despaired of it ever coming to pass. And now this voice was snuffed out. It was a dark hour for his cause; it seemed a dark hour for our world.

But he did have these few followers – sometimes weak, sometimes vacillating, but basically faithful and committed. They were so few that no one could reasonably expect them to change the world; yet they continued to gather together in upper rooms and on street corners, praying, preaching, singing, witnessing. They were acting as if they actually expected to change the world. They were cockeyed optimists.

What is the basis for this we-shall-overcome attitude of both groups? The basis of their hope is the right reason for our being here this morning, my friends. We should be here to whoop it up, to celebrate the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is alive! The basis for their cockeyed optimism is that they serve an all-powerful, living God. The resurrection proves something. It proves that the most gigantic, hideous, evil crime man can perpetrate – the cruel torture and murder of the Son of God himself – cannot avail against the power of the living God. In the end, after evil and death has swung its last punch, God still stands there untouched. Both of these groups know by virtue of the resurrection that, even when the odds are so great against them, good is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, and they are on the side of good and love.

But now, my friends, a final warning – lest we mistakenly conclude that the Easter message is that God is in charge, so we can sit back and let him clean up the mess. There is reason to expect a happy ending. There is reason to believe in a nation where blacks and whites live together in happiness at every conceivable level. There is reason to see ahead a world community of peace. But the reason is only there if we let the resurrected Christ be alive in the way that he chooses to live … in us!

I truly believe that the living spirit of Christ incarnates himself in flesh – yours and mine – and works to change the world through us. This is how the resurrected Lord works. You prove the resurrection is true when you yield to the living spirit of Christ and allow him to use your body, your mind, your soul, your whole person to fight the battle against evil that is so real to us today. We prove Christ is alive by letting him live in us.

Since God has chosen us as his means of living and working in the world, it behooves us to get on the stick and become the transforming resurrection community we have so long failed to be. This means ACTION, not sitting on your hands bewailing the terrible state we are in, or even preaching pious words, but allowing the living Lord to empower us to actually tackle our predicament head-on, with the sure knowledge that with Christ in us we will win. Now I say this in all candor, and I’m sure you would too, given recent events: Either we become the resurrection community in action or the world blows up in our faces.”

From: "Easter's Cockeyed Optimism"

Scripture: Isaiah 25:1, 7-9; Mark 16:1-7; Acts 13:26-33

Preached on April 14, 1968 at Adams Shore Community Church

The Nativity In The Living Room

Do you have a crèche or nativity scene somewhere in your home this Advent? In the Newcomer house, we have manger scenes in several rooms to celebrate Jesus’ birth.

On Christmas Eve of 1984, my father preached a sermon at Paoli United Methodist Church that challenged the traditional picture of Christ’s lowly birth in a stable. It turns out that if you place a manger scene in your living room, you may be closer to the truth than you might think:

“The story of the first Christmas is fraught with so much tradition that sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate what we actually know from the Scriptures about the event, from what has been added over the years by the collective imagination of believers in order to fill in the missing pieces. Christmas pageants over the years have conditioned us to imagine Mary and Joseph arriving late in Bethlehem, perhaps her labor pains already beginning. We've seen countless pictures of Joseph knocking on the door of the crowded inn, and we've heard all kinds of condemnations heaped on the innkeeper for not finding them a room. But all of this is supposition; none of it is in the Scripture itself. The text from the Second Chapter of Luke actually reads this way: “And while they were there the days were accomplished when she was to be delivered.” It really sounds as though Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem days ahead of Jesus’ birth.

The tradition about Jesus being born in a stable also may not fit the facts. In Luke, we read these precious words: “Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” We have always supposed that a stable was his birthplace because they were turned away from the inn, and when he was born they laid him in a manger, a feeding trough for domestic animals. Where else would a manger be than in a stable?

Actually, there is another explanation. The Greek word kataluma – which is translated as “inn” – really means “guest room,” not “inn.” In the parable of the Good Samaritan, when the Samaritan takes the wounded traveler to an inn to recuperate, Luke uses an entirely different Greek word for inn. In Luke’s account of the preparations for the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples to find a “guest room” for the Passover meal. Here, the word is kataluma – the same word used in Luke 2’s story of Jesus’ birth. In short, a better translation of Luke’s account might go something like this: “She gave birth to her firstborn son and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the guest room.” Since Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral town, one might suppose that he had relatives there with whom they were supposed to stay, but by the time they arrived, the guest room was already full of kin-folk because of the census, so Mary and Joseph had to stay in the main part of the house – the living room, so to speak. But what about the manger? This doesn't explain the manger.

It is important to understand how a First Century Jewish house was arranged. It was usually one large room, and if the family could afford it, a kataluma, or guest room, was attached because of the Jewish emphasis on hospitality to strangers. The main room of the house was itself divided into two parts. The back part was a platform raised about one or two feet above ground level. Here, the family lived, cooked, ate and slept. The lower, front part of the main room was at ground level, and into this area the livestock was often brought to spend cold nights with the family. Naturally, a manger was there with fresh straw for the animals, and often it doubled as a cradle for the babies.

Is Luke telling us that when Mary and Joseph arrived at the house where they planned to stay, the guest room was already full, and so they had to stay in the main room of the house with all the family and the animals, and there the newborn child was laid in a manger?

Of course, there is much supposition in this theory, but if it is true it makes an important point. Luke seems to want us to know that Jesus – the Son of God – was born, not off in the guest room, but right in the midst of smelly hay, snorting animals, anxious onlookers, and the tenderness and love of the family circle. Jesus, our Savior, was born like all of the other children of that day. He was tenderly placed precisely where all other babies of that day were cradled.

If we experience the birth of Christ this Christmas, it will not be in the guest rooms of our lives – not off to the side in those special compartments of our lives that we've reserved for him – but right in the middle of it all, right in the middle of everyday living. … Jesus was born where we work and live and love and where we hurt. He is Emmanuel, God with us. … He goes to any lengths to meet us in the real stuff of life. … He is always where we are, concerned about what’s going on now in our lives. His salvation is not an other-worldly experience; it is for the here and now. God’s favorite place is the commonplace.”

Merry Christmas, my friends!

From: "The Nativity in the Living Room"

Scripture: Luke 2:1-7

Preached at Paoli UM Church

December 24, 1984