Transcription
So, I have titled this message "The UK Charismatic Christmas." The Eucharist is born out of the Greek word "eucharistia." If anybody speaks ancient Greek, you may recognize me mispronouncing this, but it means thankfulness. "Caris" means gift, and the blend of that is we're going to be thankful this morning for the gift of God through His Spirit.
A little over two months ago, my grandfather passed away. Throughout his life, he was a practicing and devout Catholic man. He loved my grandma, he loved his family, he loved jazz music—he played trumpet in a band until I think he was 88 or something like that—and he loved the poor and the needy. He dedicated his life to putting into practice the true religion of caring for orphans and widows. He was a wonderful man who left a heritage of love for Jesus, for music, and for people.
As I sat in the pews at the funeral, I tried to engage my heart with the traditional liturgies and ceremony. My mind was wandering as we were going through the rigor of traditional Catholic recitations and songs, and I wondered how people would have experienced this Sunday after Sunday. I got distracted by the one guy in the choir who held the notes longer than everybody else, and as his breath ran out, he would get flatter and flatter. I was just trying to keep track of all the standing, kneeling, and reciting, and I found it hard to follow how any of this had to do with my grandpa and why my heart wasn't being moved by all the true things that we were singing and reciting.
But then the priest shared the story that made it pass my distractedness to my heart. He said that every Sunday, as they were taking communion, my grandfather would come up to receive the bread and the wine with tears streaming down his face, moved deeply by his gratitude for the life and death of Jesus. As I was struggling to engage and distracted by all the historical tradition and ceremony, this struck me. My grandpa showed that tradition and ceremony, when enlivened by the Spirit of God, can impact our hearts deeply.
Tradition and ceremony can be a wonderful way to keep anchored in those ancient truths and avoid the temptation to wander into something that's exciting and new but false. But it can also be a rote practice without heart and life. So, how do we keep these historic foundations of what's true from becoming stale and heartless religiosity? God's Spirit, through all of history, has brought things to life. He set things on fire; He's brought some things from nothing, and He reveals the glory of the Son.
Christmas at church can sometimes feel like history and liturgy, tradition and ceremony. We say some of the same things, we sing some of the same things, and it's one of the few things in modern non-denominational church that feels more historic in its template and tradition. We use words like "Noel"—what even is a Noel?—and Latin words like "Elius" and "Adeste." We sing about oxen and asses feeding the manger. The mature Christians among us can keep it together, but I see the rest of you trying to make eye contact.
I want to paint a picture for you that I'm unashamedly stealing from one of my favorite theologians and teachers, Andrew Wilson. It's from his book "Spirit and Sacrament," and I've taken actually large parts of my sermon from this concept. But I want to read this passage for you and paint this picture that's really inspired me.
So, you can read along with the quote:
"I invite you to imagine such a church encountering the delights of embodied worship for the first time. Imagine them rediscovering the powers of symbols: water, bread, wine, and oil. Picture them reinventing their liturgy to include biblical elements they've missed and finding depths to the gospel they'd almost forgotten. Imagine the snowball gaining momentum as they use monks to help them pray and martyrs to help them sing. They start to read books by dead people and find that they're more alive than many of the books by living people. They catechize their families; they rejoice in the sacraments; they do things that do things. Then imagine them drenched in the Holy Spirit, prone to spontaneous outbursts of praise and the kind of joy that makes people spin. They begin to heal the sick; they read Psalm 150 and actually do it; they cast out demons when needed; they use spiritual gifts in meetings—not just the leaders, but everyone. They shout sometimes and dance sometimes; they laugh like children; they pray as if the Lion of Judah is on the edge of His seat, hackles raised, ready to pounce. They expect God to speak to them at home or in the office. Their meetings look more like African weddings than English funerals.
Now, put all this together. Imagine a service that includes healing testimonies, prayers of confession, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptisms in water and baptism in the Spirit, creeds that move the soul and rhythms that move the body. Imagine young men seeing visions and old men dreaming dreams, sons and daughters prophesying, and all of them coming to the same table and then going on their way rejoicing. Can you see it? The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is here to bring life. He's here to set things on fire. He's here to light up the sky and to create new life in us. The Holy Spirit of God is with us and wants to do new things in our hearts.
In the Christmas and Christian history and tradition, the Christmas story in the Bible also starts with tradition and history. It starts with a genealogy. It reads a little bit like a liturgical chant, with rhythm and cadence that could easily blur into a Dr. Seuss sounding poem if we don't slow it down and invite the Holy Spirit to awaken our hearts to the beautiful glory and grace of God over history.
So, read along with me. It's a lot of names, so I want to encourage you to try to recount and recall to mind what these names represent and who these names are.
All right, Matthew 1:1: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah the father of Perez and Zarah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abid, and Abid the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ."
So, all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ 14 generations.
This list of names includes some familiar ones, some non-descript ones, but there's an unmistakable theme in this list. With a little deeper look into the generations leading to the birth of Jesus, this theme is unparalleled, indescribable, unimaginable grace of God. Another word for grace is gift. The Greek word for gift is "caris." In this list, tradition, history, and liturgy meet unparalleled "caris." I'm going to come back to this word throughout.
There's a beauty to this word in the Christmas season because it resonates with so much of the seasonal sentiment. "Caris" means giving, even to an undeserving people—giving good things, giving favor, giving grace. The genealogy is two millennia of "caris," patiently, gently leading to the climactic gift of God's own Son and then giving the indescribably powerful gift of His own Spirit.
So, we're going to slow down and look at a few people on this list with some intentional liturgies today in history. While we're going to be open to the gifts of God's Spirit that He wants to give us this Christmas, there's going to be more participation today than usual. There are going to be a few times I'm going to ask you to stand, a few times I'm going to ask you to read along with me, so I want you to please be prepared when I call you to do it.
Today, we are going to dig deep into the foundational history of our faith and let our joy and praise build high.
Okay, so my first point is that Abraham is the recipient of the gift of relationship, of family, and of land. Through Jewish history, Jews have gripped onto the historical relationship with Abraham as it represents God's particular favor to His people. It recalls a time after the flood that Spurgeon describes as a time when, scattered over all the earth after the confusion of the tongues at Babel, the earth's ancient fathers carried with them a measure of the knowledge of God which they had received from their ancestors. But after a while, the light grew dim. Men began to worship the sun and the moon, and they adored fire as the mystic symbol of the mysterious and spiritual Lord.
In this idol-ridden land, God selected one pagan man to be the object of divine blessing. He brought him out from this people to a new nation. God selected him that he would receive generational blessing for all his descendants. God was going to rescue him from a life of aimlessness, a life of barrenness, a life of lies and idol worship and paganism—into relationship, into family, into blessing, and into land.
And God's promise to Abraham was unilateral; it was a one-way street. God chose to pour out grace, "caris," on this man out of the goodness of His heart for the blessing of this man by just showing His gracious favor. Listen to this promise from Genesis 17:4-8:
"Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings will come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God."
This first name in the genealogy recalls that moment in history. God is not just willing, but He seeks out those to whom He will give this gift of His favor, this gift of His grace. Abraham's story tells us that we may feel far from God; we may be living even in our paganist lies and, in practice, living a barren life, and God still can run you down to show grace to you, Abraham.
So, then let's look at David. David received the gift of a kingdom. Jesus is also the son of David. What does the history of David tell us, and why is he highlighted in the genealogy of Jesus? David was a young man when he was plucked from obscurity—not worthy to be counted by man's standards, not even his father's standards. His father presented seven of his sons before saying, "Do you not mean David?" Seven of his sons! He didn't even bother to call David from the fields where he was working the sheep. That's how unlikely David was to be chosen, except God had chosen him.
Then something incredible happens. As Samuel is told that David is the chosen king, when he comes in, he's anointed. He's anointed by Samuel. Listen to what it says in 1 Samuel 16:13:
"Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him from that day forward."
What is this new experience? What is this power? How does this fit into the Jewish tradition at that time? God's presence in this way was only experienced by royalty. There were two people in the Old Testament that are described as having this experience, and they were kings. There were comparative experiences, like Adam and Eve walking with God in the garden, the prophets receiving words from God, a few people hearing from God directly, Moses experiencing and seeing God in the burning bush. God's people had observed external displays of God's power in the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud leading them through the wilderness and the parting of the Red Sea. But this is different—a rushing upon in a personal way, a presence so close it was inside and enlivening, resulting in dancing and poetry, resulting in shouting and songs, power, wisdom, love.
When David was poised to lose everything for his adultery and his murder, he only asked to not lose the Spirit. Psalm 51:11 says, "Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me." Except for King David, God's presence was primarily expressed in the temple. It was expressed in concentrated ways through the sacrificial system, mediated by priests, radiating from the Ark of God out of the Holy of Holies. The exception of these kings shows that God's Spirit can indwell people, but seemingly, if that pattern was to remain from the Old Testament, it was really only for kings.
Then later in David's life, God makes new promises to him, representing an exponential explosion of blessing from the earlier promises to Abraham. Listen to what it says in 2 Samuel 8:
"This is what the Lord Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. Now I will make your name great, and I will provide a place for my people Israel. I will also give you rest from your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord Himself will establish a house for you. I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build the house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever."
So, through David, there's this gracious selection of the least, the smallest, and the most unimpressive—"caris," favor, unmerited grace and gift. God doubles down on His blessing with some incredibly expansive new promises—not just a relationship or a friendship, but a welcome into God's family; not just a land, but a kingdom; not just a blessing to Abraham's direct descendants, but now to the whole world; not just His presence to bless, but an astonishing foreshadow of God's Spirit rushing upon His anointed ones.
But this genealogy, I've highlighted two impressive stories of seeming heroes. It doesn't just include impressive stories; this genealogy includes a list of people that have both needed and received mercy. I shared a little bit about my grandfather, a man and a life that I'm proud to be related to. I have many, many relatives I'm proud to be related to. I do also have a few more dicey stories in the family tree. A distant relative a few generations ago was killed in a barroom brawl in New Orleans. He had been over-served such that a passerby had to point out, as he stumbled home, that he had a knife in his back.
Now, being murdered isn't any particular indicator of character, but being so drunk that you don't know you've been murdered isn't great. I think Jesus's family line wins by a wide margin. Jesus's line includes notorious liars, seductresses, murderous kings, prostitutes, adulterers, thieves, and child sacrificers. It's an all-world team of scum and villainy. This list would be like opening up a 23andMe ancestry result and finding your line includes Vlad the Impaler and Attila the Hun in your family tree.
So, why does the Bible include this unvarnished list of Jesus's lineage as a prelude to His birth? Look at this list of names. Okay, so I was expecting a higher definition projector, so what I'm going to go with is the left column here are the good people, the middle column are the bad people, and the ones on the right are the question marks. I took some time to look at this spotty list of Jesus's ancestors, and if you look at the middle list, I'm going to get a little closer so I can even read it.
Jacob was a liar and a thief. Judah sold his brother into slavery. Tamar seduced her father-in-law so that she could continue the family line. Rahab was a practicing prostitute. David killed the commander of his army and covered it up to cover up his affair. Solomon had 300 concubines. Rehoboam did evil before the Lord. Let's see, there's a couple that burned their children. Ahaz burned his son as an offering. Manasseh burned his son as an offering, I guess in response to his dad burning his brothers as an offering.
You can't look at this list of names and think, "What a perfect family tree that Jesus has that produced this perfect child." It's a very meandering path from the promises of Abraham and David until the birth of Jesus. Some were shown mercy; some were judged. But at the end of the line, there's not much of the family tree. In fact, the last seven names, nobody knows anything about. This would be like a rotting stump of a family tree that's left. But Isaiah says in Isaiah 11:1, he prophesies, "A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch will bear fruit from his roots."
God's promise of grace to David of a forever throne was not able to be derailed by sin, by evil people, even by David's own descendants. It's almost as if the promise of God's goodness was entirely disconnected from how deserving its recipients are. "Caris," undeserved, unmerited favor and grace. God gave out of His abundance so many times to people that did not deserve it, but also so many people in this line did not get what they did deserve. That's mercy to a just and holy God.
This line should have been snuffed out, and the whole experiment thrown out and started over. How many deviations from His goodness and rejections of His kindness should have been tolerated? Look at this list—human frailty, weakness, and almost every form of evil that one can imagine. This list deserves something different from God than His particular "caris" or His mercy.
This isn't just ancient history, though. We don't deserve His favor, His grace, or His gifts either. Like many of the people on the list of Jesus's descendants, we deserve His just punishment. Who among us can throw the first stone?
So, I do want to ask you to stand. This is the first moment that we're going to do a bit of a response. As I mentioned at the outset of the message, I'm going to include some intentional liturgies. This liturgy is a moment of repentance. All are welcome to participate as we repent of our own sin. We can all look at the list of Jesus's descendants, and we may feel good or we may feel bad about ourselves in comparison, but we're all in need of repentance. That Jesus's line didn't culminate in a world-ending catastrophe is an indication of God's grace and His willingness to come to us.
So, we're going to read the first part together, and then I'm going to read the response. Is this large enough? Yes? Okay, so please join along with your words and with your hearts.
"Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbor in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name. Amen."
"May God Almighty, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon us, pardon and deliver us from all our sins, confirm and strengthen in us all goodness, and keep us in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
You may take your seat. All who pray this from a sincere heart, all who repent, all who seek forgiveness in the Son of David, Jesus Christ, have received mercy from Him.
Amazing grace, amazing mercy! Listen to the beautiful words of this hymn written nearly 250 years ago by John Stocker:
"Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song, the joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue. Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last, has won my affections and bound my soul fast. Thy mercy in Jesus exempts me from hell; its glories I'll sing and its wonders I'll tell. It was Jesus, my friend, when He hung on the tree, who opened the channels of mercy for me. Without thy sweet mercy, I could not live; here sin would soon reduce me to utter despair. But through thy free goodness, my spirits revive, and He that is He that first made me still keeps me alive. Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart, which wonders to feel its own hardness depart. Dissolved by thy goodness, I fall to the ground and weep to the praise of the mercy I've found. The door of thy mercy stands open all day to the poor and the needy who knock by the way. No sinner shall ever be empty sent back who comes seeking mercy for Jesus' sake. Great Father of mercies, thy goodness I own, and the covenant love of thy crucified Son. All praise to the Spirit whose whisper divine seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine."
This is as true to them as it was 250 years ago, as it was 2,000 years ago at the birth of Jesus. The gift of Christ, and the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." The first sentence out of the angel's mouth declares "caris" from God—favor and grace, undeserved blessing, a gift from God.
The gift of blessing in the first breath announcing Jesus's arrival did not stop from there. Jesus's life was so marked with gifts; you cannot miss the joyful and generous grace of Jesus while marked by the depths of suffering in human experience. He spent His life in the joyful sharing of gifts.
This is a quote from the book I shared with you from Andrew Wilson: "There's a certain extravagance verging on wastefulness to His miracles. How many weddings have you been to where they need 150 gallons of fine wine? Why can't a person who miraculously multiplies bread and fish also count so as to not end up over-catering by 12 baskets?"
I love the story of Peter's redemption, where he first encountered the resurrected Jesus. Jesus provides a miraculous catch of fish to the disciples—153 fish specifically listed in John—for a lunch for seven disciples. 153 fish, and there was already lunch on the open fire! Yet these miracles, generous and gracious as they are, are so eclipsed by the gift of Christ Himself that many of us fail to notice them at all. They recede into insignificance before the Lord Jesus Christ, the gift Himself, like stars fading before the risen sun.
The "caris" of Jesus, the mercy of Jesus. The Westminster Shorter Catechism was written by the Westminster Assembly 378 years ago. The catechism was presented to Parliament in 1647 and approved in 1648. I love how this catechism captures the gift of Jesus.
So, would you stand with me again, keeping the blood flowing? We're going to declare some beautiful truths of the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ. I'm going to ask the question—this isn't the whole catechism; you should read it yourself; it is stunning.
"What is the misery of that estate wherein man fell?"
"All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever."
"Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?"
"God, having out of His mere good pleasure from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer."
"Who is the Redeemer of God's elect?"
"The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God, became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever."
"How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?"
"Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin."
"What offices does Christ execute as our Redeemer?"
"Christ, as our Redeemer, executes the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in His estate of humiliation and exaltation."
These truths may fill the mouths of hymns, angels, evangelists, monks, and redeemed as they have for thousands of years and will into eternity in heaven. We've been shown mercy by loving God and received undeserved gifts that far exceed our imagination, yet He has more to give.
Finally, the gift of the Spirit. I've used the word "caris" throughout my message. The greatest of God's gifts made available through the redeeming work of Jesus is the gift of His Spirit. In modern Christian tradition, this is often associated with charismatic church, with the root in the Greek word "caris." Jesus was not shy about pointing us to the gift that He meant for us all to share. What once was relegated to kings now is shared with everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
Once more from Andrew Wilson: "Jesus spoke about this gift more than any other, bursting with anticipation: 'Just a little while, and I will come to you. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper to be with you forever. It is to your advantage that I go away, because if I don't, the helper won't come. I give you my peace; He will lead you into truth; you will receive power; you will witness to me all over the world.'"
Promise, presence, power, proclamation, peace, prophecy, Pentecost. From the moment this Spirit is poured out, accompanied by stormy winds and fiery tongues, He is described as a gift and one on whom Christ's experience centers—a gift for all who repent and get baptized, a gift money cannot purchase, a gift now poured out on the Gentiles, given to guarantee our eternal inheritance, given to shed abroad the love of God into our hearts, given to make us know, make us feel that we are children of God.
The gifts of the Spirit may be controversial, but the gift of the Spirit is as unifying a doctrine as there is. In pursuit of the gifts of the Spirit, there are expressions of this in church that can be tempted to leave historical foundations behind as obsolete relics in favor of new experiences. Alternatively, more traditional and liturgical settings can make consistent practice of religion the emphasis without eagerly desiring the spiritual gifts, as we're instructed to do in 1 Corinthians.
I think my grandfather modeled something that I believe God wants us to aspire to. We must be both deeply grounded in our faith, learning from the thousands of years and generations of Christians that have carried the word of truth as evangelists, as saints, as teachers and prophets in their time, and we must be filled with the Spirit, built on the sure foundation of Christ and His word for future generations.
It occurs to me that if we thought of the ages of Christians past as having nothing to offer us, we will easily minimize our own impact—the impact we must carry to the generations that follow. This looks like faithfully carrying out the Spirit-filled practices of baptism and the Lord's Supper, writing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, writing sermons and books, sharing and remembering prophetic words, remembering and recording stories and testimonies, and creating our own prayers to fill the mouths of generations of those to come.
Even in our name, our aim is to point people to the historic truths of Jesus and be a living monument to His glory in this world. Would you pray with me?