In the Flesh

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

“In the Flesh”

John 1:14

December 25, 2016

    

In a remote corner of a forgotten part of the world, a woman gasps for breath and cries out in pain.  A man stands alone near her and tries to offer what help and comfort he can provide—but it is not much.  Indeed, at the moment he feels altogether helpless and more than a little awkward.  The couple is huddled in crude surroundings.  Nothing elegant, nothing particularly sanitary, but at least they are warm and dry and protected from the elements.  A cry of pain again fills the cramped, dimly-lit space, and then all is still.  Finally, the silence is broken by another cry—a new cry, the unmistakable and insistent cry of an infant.  New life has entered the world.  The child fills his lungs with the thick warm air and lets out another startled wail.  A smile touches the corners of the woman’s lips, and the man laughs out loud.  Their new baby, their first, is alive and healthy.  The child is swiftly bundled up and then hugged close by his mother.  An overwhelming sense of joy, gratitude, and pride fills the couple.  This child is just like them: the same skin, the same eyes, the same fingers, the same face, the same name, the same heritage, the same…sin.  Yes, this newborn baby is just like his parents in every way, right down to his broken sinful nature.  The child’s name does not matter.  This child is each one of us.  This child is me.  This child is you.

Every single one of us came into this world in the same way—essentially the same way that this baby did.  You were born of two human parents.  Through a physical union, a new physical child comes into existence.  And, the offspring of this union inherits all the physical properties of his parents.  The baby eats and cries and wets and spits up.  The baby is real—a material, physical creature.  And the baby inherits problems, like his parents: susceptibility to disease, sharp pangs of hunger and pain, disappointment and sorrow, and finally, certainly, the common destiny of all physical creatures: death.  Here at the birth, it seems far away.  But it is inevitable.  A baby is born in the flesh and it inherits all the properties of the flesh—including, most certainly, death.

A flesh-born baby inherits his parents’ spiritual heritage as well.  He comes into the world with a scream, and he spends the rest of his life kicking and screaming: screaming at parents, screaming at siblings, at teachers, at bosses, at the world…at God—yes, especially at God.  From the time of his conception, a baby lives in the flesh and he fights the struggles of the flesh.  By nature, ever since man’s rebellion against the Creator, the biggest struggle a human will have is his fight against God.  Life in the flesh is tough.  It’s dangerous.  It’s terrifying.  And it always ends the same way: with decaying flesh.  This is the way of life for those born in the flesh: a struggle from start to finish—a struggle against disease, a struggle to avoid pain, a struggle to find happiness, a struggle to restrain immorality, a struggle to contain and alleviate guilt, a struggle somehow, someway to elude the inevitable, and escape death itself.  That’s what life is like, in the flesh.  And the author and director of the whole mess is God—no wonder people have issues with God.  No wonder he is the target of their desperate screams and their angry accusations.

Because life in the flesh is the pain-filled struggle that it is, people have tried continually to find some way to get out.  It seems that if man could just slip free of the flesh, he’d be all right.  If only we could shake off this clumsy mass of flesh with all of its inherent problems, then we could do some real living.  And, so through the ages, and still today, people look for escape routes, a way out of the despair, darkness, and death.  Some men spend their time thinking and looking and find what seems to be a light—a guide to lead the way out of darkness, out of the flesh.  Some of these religious lights seem to offer a real solution, full of hope and promise.  And so, thousands and even millions line up behind the light and follow it out into the darkness, confident that release from the pain of life in the flesh is just ahead.  But, these lights always fade and eventually fail completely.  Then, lost in absolute darkness, the religious follower can only crash back into the despair and horror of life in the flesh—life that ends in death.

Others attempt to build ladders, up and out of the mess of life in the flesh.  They make ladders called philosophical speculation, political salvation, scientific inquiry, social progress, or moral uprightness.  These ladders are planted firmly on the ground of life-in-the-flesh and aimed up, and men begin to climb.  They build as they go, adding new rungs, as they are able.  Some of these ladders seem strong and safe and many clamor onto them hopeful that the ladder will lead them up out of the misery of life in the flesh.  But, every ladder always comes up short.  The top rung is reached, the darkness and death are still profound, and the next rung just isn’t there.  Always the poor soul once confidently climbing, finally finds himself plummeting through the darkness back to life in the flesh, life that ends in death, along with everyone else.  No one can climb out of life in the flesh.

But, everyone wishes that they could.  Everyone wants there to be something more, something better than this brief, disappointing, painful, unfair life.  So, people search and climb and hope.  Like the conquistadors of old scrounging around Florida looking for the fountain of youth, people continue to scour and look for the secret, the system, the formula that will free them from the flesh.  They may not realize it, but everyone in the flesh is looking for the same thing.  They all want life in the light, life with peace, life that doesn’t end.  It goes by many names: bliss, utopia, nirvana, paradise, heaven—the place where the flesh does not drag you down, the spiritual place—the place that belongs to God.  Whatever it is called, it is the goal of every creature who lives in the flesh.

Far above the mundane, tragic, existence of this world; far above life in the flesh, transcendent, mysterious, utterly singular, and marvelously self-contained, God lives.  And here, in God’s presence, is the life force or spirit that animates and guides everything.  This is the controlling, motivating element of God that directs all creation.  The ancient Greeks called this power, the logos.  The logos is the perfect will of God in action.  The logos makes things happen.  The Bible uses just this word, telling us that God created all things through the logos, which was with God from the beginning.  In fact, the Bible declares that this logos is God.  In English, the logos is simply the Word.  The Word is the omnipotent, active power of God; and so it is this power, this life of God that all men desire and seek, but never find and never reach.  It can’t be done.  No man can get out of the flesh and find his way to the heights where God is.  No man can reach up and grasp the truth of God’s logos.  You can’t avoid despair.  You can’t elude death.  You can’t escape the flesh.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The eternal, omnipotent, Creator of all, God himself, joined us in the flesh.  The pre-existent Lord of all, the logos, became a real flesh and blood child, a fetus inside the flesh of a woman.  The Word got skin and blood and bones and muscles and membranes and organs and guts.  He got it all.  He got flesh, real human flesh.  God filled the gap.  God filled the impossible gulf that exists between men who live in the flesh—and the joy, peace, and life of God.  He filled the space that could not be bridged by ladders or navigated by fading lights.  He filled the gap with himself.  God became flesh.  He was born—a painful, noisy, sloppy, bloody reality.  He was born just like every baby is born.  God became flesh.  Sometimes we forget just how incredible it all is, this message of Christmas.  Distracted by the beauty and the busy-ness and the joys and delights of the season, we forget the astounding, reality of Christmas.  Think about it: God became human, one of us, a flesh and blood, muscles and sweat man.  And he did it to fill the dark chasm, to fill it with himself.

It is the key to the entire message of the Christian gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory.”  Man doesn’t find God.  God finds him.  God comes to him—and he comes on man’s level.  Actually, John packs even more into this verse than our English translations allow.  The word we translate live is literally to pitch one’s tent, to tabernacle.  In the Old Testament, it was at the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, that God was present with his people.  At the tabernacle, the people of Israel would stand in awe as they watched the presence of God, the Shekinah, or dwelling-glory of God enter the tent of meeting.  The tabernacle was the place where God was present for his people.  Still, all of those times that God’s Shekinah was present in the tabernacle were only hints.  They were all fulfilled and surpassed when God became flesh.  At Christmas, the Shekinah, the glory of God’s presence, joined the flesh of a human body.  No more tents, now it was flesh—living, breathing, and walking.  In Jesus, God was man: the Word made flesh, God dwelling with us.

Whenever the Shekinah of God’s presence appeared in the Old Testament, it was a vision of glory.  It left prophets and people speechless.  John tells us that that glory of God was visible in Jesus.  In the flesh of Jesus, there was glory to be seen.  But, the glory of God in Jesus was not what people expected.  Armies of heavenly angels didn’t follow Jesus.  He did not demand the adoration of all who met him.  He did not radiate effulgent streams of brilliance.  His voice did not rumble with a resonant bass that shook the ground.  He was just a man; so most people did not realize that in seeing Jesus they were seeing the reality of God.  They didn’t see God in Jesus because they were looking for a more sensational way out of their flesh.  They wanted a better, brighter light.  They wanted a stronger, longer ladder.  They wanted another, nobler, way that they could take to get out of the flesh.  People still do this today; they don’t want a crucified savior, so they dismiss him.  They can’t believe that a man who is utterly normal and who dies so horribly can actually be the Shekinah, the glory of God.  He didn’t look like God.  He can’t possibly be the logos or the Word.  He can’t really be God.  God doesn’t walk on earth.  God doesn’t get hungry.  God doesn’t suffer.  God doesn’t die.  And because Jesus does not fit their expectations about God, they reject him.  They don’t see God’s glory.  But the glory is there.

Whether people then or now recognize it or not, Jesus is the true Shekinah.  He is God’s glory.  In Jesus, God made himself known; he showed glory…he showed love.  That’s the glory.  God’s glory is not flashy splendor and majesty.  God’s glory is love, love that took on flesh, love that lived in humility, love that carried the pain and sorrow of the world; love that even carried the sin of the world.  Jesus suffered.  He died.  Indeed…he loved.  That’s the glory.  In the flesh, Jesus died for all of us in the flesh.  He entered the darkness, he endured the pain, he experienced the hell.  It all happened in the Word made flesh.  It all happened on the cross.  It was the work of divine love, and so it was the greatest glory of God.  God’s glory was the flesh on the cross.  The bloody, beaten, twisted, and mutilated flesh of Jesus hanging on bare wood is the ultimate expression of God’s glory.  It is glory because it is love.

For broken man living in a broken world, life in the flesh is miserable from start to finish.  It begins in pain and ends in death.  No wonder anyone who is paying attention and thinking, wants out.  But in his marvelous plan, God took those three words, and gave them new meaning.  He made in the flesh a declaration of comfort and joy, because he claimed those words for himself.  He took flesh on himself and changed everything.  Yes, you are still in the flesh.  You know it.  You still suffer in the flesh.  You still grieve in the flesh.  You will still die in the flesh.  But everything’s changed now that God has become flesh.  Now, you have the light of God in your darkness; you aren’t lost or overwhelmed.  Now, you have the peace of God in your affliction; you aren’t forsaken or hopeless.  Now, you have the life of God in your death; you aren’t doomed to eternal death.  Because God came in the flesh, your flesh is no longer the trap and terminal sentence that it once was.  Now your flesh has been saved.  God doesn’t take you out of the flesh…no, he redeems your flesh.

You don’t need ladders.  You don’t need lights.  You don’t need insights or guides.  You only need Jesus—the Word incarnate, the Word made flesh.  He bridged the gap between God and man with himself.  Eternal peace in God’s presence, is yours…now.  It’s yours because the Word became flesh and saved your flesh, forever.  Amen.

The Man in Red

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Luke 2:11

Dec. 24, 2016

I have nothing against Santa Claus.  No, really, I’m not anti-St. Nick, and I’m not one of those alarmed that Santa is highjacking the real reason for Christmas.  He’s certainly become part of the way that people in the western world celebrate Christmas, and I’m fine with that.  Santa does not pose a threat to me and I am not interested in any sort of pious campaign to shoulder him out of the season.  A few token Santa’s are even among the decorations that Jeannalee uses to make our home so festive this time of year.  And a very long time ago—when I was a senior in high school—my physics teacher recruited me to don his Santa suit and I actually came ho-ho-hoeing into his home on Christmas Eve to pass out the gifts to his wide-eyed and obviously overly credulous children.  In retrospect, I’m not sure that was such a good idea—if nothing else, I probably need to confess the deception involved.  Fortunately, there were no photos taken.  So, as I was saying—I’ve got nothing against Santa Claus…just as long as he keeps in his place, of course.  Or more accurately, just so long as we keep him in his place, and remember the distinction between Santa and the actual founder and focus of the celebration.  But, of course that’s not always the case.  We know that there are times when the distinction between Jesus and Santa is not as sharp or precise as it should be.

That was the particular problem of one father who was carefully raising his children to know the story of Jesus and to celebrate God’s gift of his Son as the center of Christmas.  Despite his efforts, however, this man’s two-year-old son somehow had become convinced that Santa was Jesus.  Whenever the toddler saw a picture or figure of Santa Claus, he would point and say, “Jesus”.  It was a little embarrassing when it happened in public.  And then came the day when the boy finally came face-to-face with a living, breathing, talking version of Santa complete with children on his lap and elf-photographers recording the moment for posterity.  The family was merely passing through the mall’s center court, but the boy was thrilled when he spotted the man on the throne.  “Jesus!” he shouted from his stroller, “That’s Jesus!”  The father could neither deny nor hide the truth any longer: he had heard his son’s ardent declaration—so had several dozen-holiday shoppers.  It was time for direct intervention.  The misunderstanding needed to be cleared up.  Still, the father was sympathetic and could well understand the confusion.  His son had been taught that Christmas was all about Jesus.  So, when the boy saw the kind man with the beard at the center of all the Christmas attention, what else was he supposed to think?  Nevertheless, the embarrassment factor had pushed the father to the brink.  The father knelt down next to the stroller, and with infinite patience and just a touch of fatherly correction told his son, “No, that’s not Jesus.  That’s one of his helpers named Santa Claus.”  At this, the boy looked his father straight in the eye and with precise emphasis declared, “No!  Jesus,” and to make sure that he was not misunderstood, he used the flat of his palm to bop his dad on the nose just as he said, “Jesus.”  His faith would not be shaken.  You’ll be happy to know that all turned out well, and my son Jess, now twenty-one years after that Christmas, is quite clear on the identity of both Santa and Jesus.

Of course, there are worse things than thinking that Santa Claus is Jesus.  Actually, thinking that Santa is Jesus, is not that big a deal.  Getting it the other way around, though, is a very serious problem.  And that problem is, I believe, all too common, and not just at Christmas time.  Obviously, the confusion is not so crass as people pointing at a picture of Jesus and saying, “Santa Claus!” or beginning a prayer with, “Dear Santa.”  Most people leave that sort of confusion in the nursery.  The confusion at work today is evident when people begin to believe and even propagate errant ideas about Jesus that essentially turn Jesus into Santa Claus.  These ideas abound and take on many forms.

The most obvious way to turn Jesus into Santa Claus is to see Jesus as the great gift-giver.  But, of course, what is sought is not stuff, but blessings, which sounds so very pious.  Just ask for what you need, or more accurately what you desire, ask for it with real faith and sincerity, and Jesus, the gift-giver will deliver it.  This is the Santa-Jesus of many popular preachers and authors who offer tricks, shortcuts, and prayers designed to give you the inside track on God’s favor and blessings.  Do this, pray that, meditate on x or y, and God will certainly shower you with material wealth and goods.  Jesus is the ticket to the good stuff.  This rather crude misunderstanding of Jesus and his identity reduces Jesus to little more than a super-Santa who fulfills the wishes of good girls and boys.  People who believe in this kind of Jesus may as well believe in Santa Claus.  There’s no difference.

A second way of turning Jesus into a kind of Santa Claus is a bit more sophisticated than the “give me stuff” mentality of the first group.  There are those who see Jesus as the source of love and good feelings; and the one who spreads warmth and sunshine wherever he goes—much the way that Santa leaves feelings of encouragement and hope in the wake of his sleigh.  These are the people who will gush about how much they love “this time of the year”, and how much they appreciate the “spirit of kindness and generosity” that seem to become more palpable during the days of December.  The people with this Santa Jesus believe ardently in his miracles and promises.  But they believe these things only because believing gives them comfort and encouragement.  Jesus makes them feel good.  They like the way that Jesus affects their mood, and the way that he helps them deal with life.  The problem is that Jesus ends up being just a tool for coping.  He’s no different than the Santa who saved the day in the “Miracle on 34th Street”.  This Jesus fixes relationships by inspiring noble action, and elevating the spiritual morale of people.  He’s good therapy.  He makes life better—the way that St. Nick makes life better.  Jesus is simply Santa Claus.

Yet another way that people reduce the reality of Jesus to something like Santa Claus, is the way that Jesus becomes a rallying point and a catalyst for human brotherhood and global peace.  People with this version of Jesus love that he was a “man of peace”; they try to follow his example of non-violence, tolerance, and acceptance.  For them, Jesus exemplifies the command to love selflessly, and to love everyone equally and unconditionally.  What Jesus actually said and did is ignored; what matters is a message of universal love.  And that’s the problem.  These people, and this includes some in the church, assume that Jesus stands for “love, love, love.”  It is a short step to a Jesus who endorses a “live and let live” attitude that affirms any and all attitudes, lifestyles, and behavior.  This Jesus teaches us that the most important thing is that we all learn to get along.  This Jesus knows how to love and accept everyone just the way that they are—the same way that Santa knows how to love everyone without a bunch of rules and without judgment.  This is a popular way to think of Jesus; but this Jesus is nothing more than another Santa Jesus.

Of course, it’s true that Jesus gives gifts to his people, and it’s true that Jesus brings encouragement and strength for living, and it’s true that Jesus heals relationships and teaches the way of peace.  But, Jesus is so much more than any of these things. And when these ways of thinking of Jesus are where you stop, then you don’t have the real Jesus.  You’ve been duped into believing in a Santa Jesus.  Be careful that the Jesus you love and worship is the real Jesus—the one who lived in this world, and who is revealed in the biblical record.  Don’t believe in a trivial Santa Jesus.  If your Jesus is nothing more than a glorified Santa figure, then what have you got?  Your faith is deficient, your Christmas is trivial, and your celebration is superficial.  You’re only believing in the feel-good, shallow spirituality so popular, today.

Christmas is more than a promise of blessings to be received, a therapeutic pick-me-up for dark days, or inspiration for a utopian brotherhood of man and world peace.  These things are not enough!   Christmas is more.  Christmas is God doing the incomprehensible.  It’s God doing what no man could expect.  It’s God doing what no man could do.  Christmas is God working to restore people to a right relationship not only with one another, but much more importantly, with himself.  Jesus does not come to dole out blessings, or to make life meaningful and happy, or to pave the way for greater understanding, tolerance, and acceptance among people.  He comes to do much more.  He comes to make people whole again.  He comes to put people back into a right relationship with God.  He comes to save you from the curse of your own sin. God can make you whole again.  God can make you new again.  God can even heal consequences and put everything back together.  God can undo sin.  On the first Christmas that is exactly what God was doing.

The wonder, the marvel, the miracle, of Christmas is God working to make his creation perfect.  It is God stepping into a shattered world and making it right.  It is God intervening to save you from the mess you have made by your own brokenness and sin.  Christmas is all about God doing all of this in the baby of Bethlehem.  It is all about Jesus—not Santa Jesus, but Savior Jesus.  Jesus, the baby, the man, the center of the Bible’s story is God working to save.  And this baby, this man, this Jesus, is not only the Savior, he’s God himself—he’s Immanuel, God with us.  God right there in the baby, God kicking in the straw—God in his mother’s arms—God looking back at the shepherds.  That’s the point of Christmas.  God in human flesh and blood, came to save.  It was not easy.  For thirty years, he lived a human life, facing real struggles, real pain, real heartbreak, real challenges.  For thirty years, he lived the way that God always intended his people to live: in perfect obedience to his will.  Jesus did that.  And then he gave himself as the one perfect sacrifice for the sins of all failed human beings for all time.  Jesus willingly took their failure…your failure, your shortcomings, your mistakes, your rebellion, your lusts, your violence, your wickedness—your sin, and he made it his own.  He claimed it, and carried it.  He carried your load of shame and sin to the cross, and there, God’s wrath against that sin thundered down and crashed full on Jesus.  Jesus paid the price.  Jesus endured the wrath and damnation.  That’s what Christmas is all about.  It’s about the Savior’s birth.  It’s about the incredible thing the Savior did to make you whole and right.  He did it.  For you, he did it.  The real Jesus is so much more than any superficial Santa Jesus.

Jesus is the savior.  He’s not what people project on to him.  He’s not a Santa Jesus who will answer every wish and whim and make life a little happier.  He’s a savior sent to save you from eternal damnation, sent to put you into right relationships with your Creator and with the rest of creation.  That’s why he was born.  In Bethlehem, in the manger, in the straw, was the Savior.  Snug in swaddling cloths, wrapped tightly in those strips of cloth, the Savior slept.  We don’t know what color those strips of cloth might have been.  We’re not told.  And we’re never told what color he wore when he worked in the carpenter’s shop for almost thirty years, or what color he wore when he preached and healed during the years of his ministry.  But, when he carried our sin to the cross, we do know the color he wore.  We’re told.  Matthew thought it important enough to write it down.  As he stood before Pilate, Jesus wore the color of a soldier’s robe.  And when he was stripped of his own clothing and stretched and nailed to the wood of the cross, we know the color that stained his skin.  The color of the robe, the color of the blood, was the same: bright, vivid, life-giving red.  The one who wore the red robe, the one whose blood ran down in bright red streams, is the Savior Jesus.  You see, Christmas is all about the man in red.  But, the man in red is not Santa; it’s Jesus.  Twenty-one years ago, my two-and-a-half-year-old son was right.  It is Jesus.  He is Immanuel, God with us.  Jesus is God doing the impossible: saving you—separating you from your own sin, removing it, taking it away, destroying it forever.  Look in the manger.  Look closely.  The baby lying there is Jesus.  He’s the man in red.  He’s not Jesus the gift-giver, Jesus the encourager, or Jesus the peacemaker.  He’s Jesus—your Savior…your salvation.  Amen.

Extended Introductions for a Service of Christmas Scripture

Extended Introductions for a Service of Scripture Readings at Christmas-tide

By Joel D. Biermann

December 18, 2016

These introductions are intended as reflections to enhance one’s hearing of the Nativity story of salvation.  The introductions followed by the corresponding reading from Scripture could serve quite well in lieu of a sermon at one of the many worship opportunities during a congregation’s celebration of Christmas (midnight worship, Christmas morning, Sunday after Christmas).They provide a clear proclamation of God’s unfolding plan of salvation.  Obviously, a variety of hymns, carols or special music can be interspersed as appropriate and as time allows.

Genesis 3:1-19

In the beginning, God created a beautiful, perfect world.  All the creatures in that world lived in harmony—each doing exactly what God had designed it to do—and each serving the rest of creation and so honoring the Creator.  It was a good world; indeed, it was a very good world.  It was God’s good plan that was being accomplished.  And even when the man and the woman foolishly and wickedly defied God’s will, rejected God’s plan, and intentionally rebelled against his lordship; God’s plan continued to unfold: God promised that rebellion, curse, and death were not the destiny of God’s good creation.  It would not end in disaster and despair.  Here in the tragic story of the fall into sin, we have the proto-evangel—the first gospel, the first promise: Eve’s own offspring would crush Satan, conquer evil, and restore the creation to God’s plan.  Sorrow and shame, then, were only for a while, suffering would be overcome, sin would be defeated.  With eager anticipation, the man and the woman and with them, all of their descendents down through time began watching and waiting, confident of God’s promise, longing for the curses of their own sin to be swallowed finally in God’s great blessing.

Genesis 17:1-8, 15-19

Adam and Eve were driven from the garden clinging to the promise and longing to see it fulfilled.  But generations came and went…and came and went…and time passed into long centuries…and still the creation was waiting for the brokenness to be healed, for the curses to be overcome.  And, then, God acted again.  The plan was still in motion.  Abram was singled-out—called out of an idol-infested world of lies and confusion and called into a special relationship with God.  God’s promise would be fulfilled, and it would happen through Abram and Sarai, his wife.  The promise would be kept alive and continue through a child—a miracle baby, an infant born to a couple better qualified for the role of great-great-grandparents.  But, this child was not the Savior who would restore the Creation…not yet.  The child was Isaac—named for Abraham’s joyful (maybe even giddy) laughter.  Through Isaac, the plan would continue to unfold—a nation would be born, a nation that would in turn give birth, in the fullness of time, to the longed-for redemption.  For now, though, Abram—Abraham, the faithful one, could only wait and hope and trust that the promise would be kept…in a child, in Isaac, and in Isaac’s greater heir!

Isaiah 9:1-7

From the most inconspicuous beginning, from the miracle baby, Isaac, God had grown his nation.  But, the nation—God’s chosen people—had a hard time remembering the promise.  They too easily became distracted by the business of life and the pursuit of their own goals and plans.  So, from time to time, God would step in and remind his people of the promise, and the plan, and call them back again to their purpose—to be God’s witnesses of the Truth.  God was still unfolding his plan through his mouthpieces, the prophets.  The prophets spoke with God’s authority.  The prophets spoke God’s words.  Sometimes with fiery words of condemnation and stern rebuke, God would unleash his words to an unfaithful and idolatrous nation.  Sometimes, with tender consolation and inspiring words of encouragement, God would lift his broken people out of their fear and despair and restore them to their right place.  God used his prophet, Isaiah, to do this work in an exceptional way.  Isaiah delivered remarkable promises—promises of the Messiah who would come, and restore all things.  By Isaiah, God’s people were taught that the long-promised Messiah would be and do far more than even their most daring believers had ever hoped to dream was possible.

Isaiah 11:1-10

Isaiah saw what God was going to do.  Though it was still hundreds of years away, God gave the prophet a glimpse of what was going to come.  Just as it had been promised, a child was to be born…a son from David’s line…a shoot springing up from Jesse’s stem.  The Messiah would come, anointed—saturated!—with the power of the Holy Spirit, filled with righteousness, executing justice.  He was a Messiah that would fix what was broken and deliver grace.  But then, Isaiah sees even further ahead…all the way to the end…all the way to the fulfillment of time; and what he sees there makes his readers gasp in surprise and wonder: infants (again)…this time playing with deadly snakes; and little children, toddlers, leading lions on a leash; and wolves and leopards and bears living peacefully with livestock.  Isaiah sees ahead to the fulfillment of the original promise—the complete restoration of the whole creation—all things put back to their right places, and all people, all nations, gathered under his reign.  This is the work of the Messiah.  This is the promise that claims and guides the people of God.

Luke 1:26-38

God’s people had been waiting for thousands of years.  The promise had been given and then renewed and refined and reaffirmed again and again, but when the time for the fulfillment finally came, only one of God’s waiting people was told.  Only Mary was given the news.  What news it was.  At last, it was time.  It was time for the yearning and hoping and watching to be answered.  It was time for God’s Savior to come.  It was time to turn back sin and sorrow and suffering.  It was time for the eternal reign of David’s Son and David’s Lord to begin.  And so it did.  The eternal kingdom came.  The king’s rule began.  It began with yet another miracle, and yet another child.  Using natural and ordinary processes, God’s plan unfolded in the most extraordinary way.  And according to God’s plan…exactly as it had always been planned…the reign of the Messiah began.  The Son of God, the Lord of the nations was enthroned by the power of God…he was enthroned in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  A promise kept—the Savior had come; a promise renewed—all of creation would be restored.

Luke 2:1-7

It required a time of waiting—a few anxious months for expectant Mary and her faithful betrothed Joseph, but a few millennia for the creation longing for restoration and the fulfillment of God’s plan; but at last the time came.  The promise was kept.  The Messiah, the Redeemer came.  But, as so often with God’s great plan, the fulfillment wasn’t quite what was expected; and forced together things both utterly ordinary, and altogether remarkable.  A Roman census compelled the young couple to travel a week south to their ancestral city of David.  And there, at last, the baby was born.  But there was no fanfare.  By appearances, it was just another child born into poverty—relegated even to an outbuilding for animals, and given a manger for a bed.  Nothing grand or glorious, here.  Yet, in this place, in this child, the most breathtaking reality had come to pass: God had become flesh.

Luke 2:8-16

All is quiet in the stable, but the fanfare does finally come…to shepherds on the outskirts.  Heaven cannot keep quiet, and the birth is heralded by ranks of angels and praises that spill out from heaven and over the Judean countryside.  Something remarkable is unfolding—something to make all of creation stop and notice.  To fulfill his promise, to restore his wonderful creation, the Creator had joined his creation.  God was now a man.  This was no philosophical concept or religious dream or fancy.  It was concrete reality: God joined became an actual baby, in an actual place, at a specified time in history.  God himself had invaded his fallen, broken, creation so that he might recapture it from the enemy and rescue it from futility.  The story is common—you could likely tell it yourself verbatim, yet it is no less wondrous for its familiarity.  It is the story of God’s coming to his people.  It is the story of God transforming the world.  It is the story of God keeping his promise, God fulfilling his plan for you.

Zion's Highway

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann

Isaiah 35:8-10

December 11, 2016

A decade or so ago, it became fashionable among relevant Christians to use the word journey when talking about the Christian life.  No longer simply living in the world alert for the return of Christ, believers were now journeying on the way—and probably journaling each evening about the highlights of that day’s journey.  It’s a fine metaphor or image as far as it goes.  But, there are decidedly different sorts of journeys.  Though the lore and legend of our own Route 66 offer a romantic and nostalgic portrait of the great American road trip, for most of us, a road trip is simply a necessity fueled by family or business responsibilities and limited finances.  Most of you are very familiar with road trips.  The goal of a road trip is to arrive at your destination as cheaply as possible; a road trip is merely a means to a greater end.  If a road trip represents one sort of journey, a walk or hike on a mountain trail may represent its opposite.  When you hike, the hike itself is the point.  It’s not a means, but is the end itself.  And, usually, it’s done by choice, not obligation.  On a hike, one communes with nature, snacks on granola bars and trail mix, and drinks freshly filtered ice cold water from pristine streams.  On a road trip, you commune with dudes at the truck stop, drink excessively caffeinated beverages and eat pork rinds and Donettes coated in viscous, degraded, powdered sugar.

Small wonder, then, that in the church it is the winding path that illustrates the journey of the Christian life.  Christians walk with their Lord along dirt trails under the spreading canopy of giant shade trees…you know, the kind of beautiful trees you find along the way to Emmaus just like in that familiar painting that hung in so many homes a generation or two ago.  Christians follow their shepherd along trails bordered by babbling brooks.  Paths are for Christians.  Highways, on the other hand, are for heathens.  With reckless abandon, the lost careen down the broad thoroughfares on their highway to hell.  They get their kicks on Route 666.  The contrast is sharp.  Christians read from devotionals titled Light on the Path, not Headlights on the Highway.  They walk on paths of righteousness, not on roadways of rectitude.  And, Jesus himself, we know, warned us about broad ways and wide gates that lead to destruction; he told us to stay on the narrow ways with the small gates.  No highways, for Christians: just paths.  But, in today’s reading, Isaiah gives us a highway—and it’s not even a highway through the mountains or under dense shade.  No, it’s a highway through the Arabah, which was the arid land south of the Dead Sea.  It was a barren, desolate land occupying a valley mostly below sea level.  Isaiah gives us a highway that doesn’t fit the usual picture, but a highway it is.  And so, we’re forced to pause and reevaluate.  A highway…really?  Well, why not?  Why should the devil have all the good highways?

Isaiah doesn’t give us too much detail about his highway.  But, it’s likely that his highway doesn’t exactly fit the images we get when we think of highways.  Ancient highways weren’t measured by the number of lanes they provided in each direction.  And, they weren’t built of concrete or even merely asphalt.  Isaiah doesn’t tell us anything about the materials used for the highway, or the maximum speed that was in mind when it was designed.  But, we do know that the maximum speed wasn’t much—after all, this highway is made for walking.  This highway is not built for speed or even for volume.  It’s built for safety.  What Isaiah stresses about this highway is that it is secure.  When you travel on it, you don’t have to worry.  The safety of the highway centers on the fact that it is a limited access highway.  Those allowed on the highway are strictly regulated.  No deadly beasts are permitted.  One can walk on God’s highway without fear.  Whatever jackals may be lurking in the ditches, lions hiding behind boulders, or snakes slithering across the sand, the highway is guaranteed to be beast-free.

So, what’s all this highway talk mean?  Well, just this: the highway is a metaphor or a picture of the way of faith followed by God’s people as they travel through this world in the trek called life.  The highway is the way of life that makes God’s people unique.  You might say that the highway of God is the church.  With its teaching, its exhortation, its security, and its provision for its people, the church creates a safe place for God’s people to make their journey of life.  So, when Isaiah says that there are no beasts on the highway, what he means is that while there are many dangers—both human and demonic—in the world that threaten to confuse, distract, mislead, and even destroy the child of God, staying in the church, staying on the highway, will afford a secure passage.  When you’re on the highway, you won’t be misled or ambushed.  You can be sure that God will take care of you.

There are great advantages, then, to the fact that our highway is a limited access highway, free from dangerous beasts.  But, it’s also limited access in the fact that it is free of all fools as well as off limits to anyone who is unclean.  This doesn’t mean that there is an IQ requirement or a test of personal hygiene to get on the highway.  In the world of the Old Testament, to be unclean simply meant that one was not living according to God’s standards for what was good and upright.  And to be a fool meant that a person was morally inferior—a person with a faulty and crooked character.  Part of what makes God’s highway safe is that the wicked and immoral aren’t allowed on it.  Limited access means only God’s people, the clean and the wise, those who know and follow God’s will, get to travel here.  Which, of course, raises an immediate problem.  We know the score.  You know that none of us qualifies as morally pure or fully wise.  You know that unclean acts, and foolish, ungodly, thinking and behavior have a way of intruding even into your own life all too often.  It’s the case for all of us.  So, the limited access part of the highway starts to look like trouble.

But don’t despair.  You’re not excluded—though, by rights, you should be.  By rights, of course, no one should be allowed on God’s highway.  But, God takes fools and the unclean and the immoral and the disobedient and he puts them on his highway.  Those who don’t deserve to walk there, are redeemed and ransomed and turned loose to travel the highway—good news, indeed.  This is the message you learn, here in the church, here on the highway.  You hear the very good news that God himself was at work in Jesus Christ making it possible for people who were out of step with God, who were rejecting God’s plan and God’s purposes for their lives, who were rebelling against all that God established and loved to be made right with God.  Jesus made it possible for people who were utterly sinful to be forgiven and given grace to join God’s people on the highway.  Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God built his highway.  He established the safe place where people can receive forgiveness and grace and be made right with him again.  Through Jesus, and your God-given faith in the work and grace of Jesus for you, you are invited onto God’s limited access highway.  You are made one of his people.  You join the wise and the clean who travel the highway that he built for you.  This is the core message of the Christian church.  You know it and you celebrate it.  

Still, gaining access to God’s highway is not actually our problem, today.  We all know that being able to travel on God’s highway is only and always a gift that God alone gives.  We know that we don’t deserve to be on God’s highway but that by grace, we are.  No, our problem is not getting on the highway—our problem is growing content with merely being on the highway.  Our problem is becoming enamored with the roadway itself: too consumed with the scenery around us, too caught up in the details of the journey, too fascinated with the wonders of the walk.  What must not be forgotten, is that the point of God’s highway is not the highway.  The point of this highway is not the splendor of the sights to be seen.  The point of this highway is not the journey.  The point of the highway is where the highway ends.  The point is the destination.  God’s highway is a one-way thoroughfare.  Everyone on God’s highway is moving in the same direction toward the same destination.  And what exactly is the destination?  It’s Zion.  It’s God’s holy city.  Zion is the picture, the image for God’s perfect, eternal kingdom.  Zion is the goal of all creation.  Zion is the place and the time when everything is working exactly as God always intended it to work.  Zion is the fulfillment of all God’s plans for this world.  Zion is the point.  The highway exists for the sake of Zion.  The highway was built to bring God’s creation to Zion.

The destination, the highway’s end, is the point.  But, you forget this.  It happens, though you hardly notice: you lose sight of the destination—you become engrossed in the highway itself.  You get wrapped up more and more in the day-to-day realities of life on the highway through this world, and become so fascinated with all the interesting things of this world on either side of the highway, that you begin to live and reason and choose as if this world, and your Christian walk through this world, were the only things.  You even begin to believe the idea that life is all about the journey.  But, it isn’t!  Still, it is understandable that you get focused so strongly on the highway.  After all, you live in this world; its demands are immediate and consuming.  Of course, you get caught up in the here and now world of the highway and the journey, and even begin to live as if these things were the only things that mattered.  Which is not to say that they don’t matter.  They do.  And, I’ve certainly done my share to urge God’s people to be invested in this world and to work to fulfill the tasks and responsibilities of this life lived on God’s highway.  Those things are important.  But, the highway is still not the thing.  The journey is not the thing.  The thing is where the highway ends.  The thing is Zion.  The thing is the end-times, last day, restoration when the re-created and fully glorified creation at last realizes and celebrates all that God always intended it to be.  The point is the day of resurrection when God makes all things new.  The point is God’s eternal kingdom.  Yes, it’s true that God’s gift of new and eternal life begins even now, today—but we must not forget that this present reality is only the highway.  The journey is fleeting and preliminary; it is not the important thing.  

Don’t lose track of the goal of it all.  Don’t become so caught up in talk about the journey that you forget the destination at the end.  Whether you are walking, today, on God’s highway through regions that are wonderfully delightful or utterly dreadful, your present reality is only the highway.  It’s just the journey.  Still, it is God’s highway, which makes it a splendid thing—and you do journey with him on this highway, which brings its own remarkable joys; these splendors and joys are gifts from God to encourage you today.  They are foretastes of what is to come.  But, they are foretastes.  What is better and best, by far, still lies ahead.  Zion lies ahead.  Don’t forget the truth about this broken, fallen, world: even if you are traveling on God’s highway, this life is finally, for all of us, a valley of sorrow.  The highway passes through pain and loss and shame and tears.  But, the highway brings you through safely.  You walk with confidence and with comfort on God’s highway, because you know where it ends.  You’re heading for Zion.  And considering that even this present journey through the valley is so often punctuated with seasons and realities that are amazingly rich in beauty and wonder, how unspeakably, how incomprehensibly extraordinary, must be the end at Zion.  Amen.