Text: Galatians 4:4-7
Theme: “Grab A Cheeseburger at Wendy’s”
1st Sunday
After Christmas
Dec. 28, 2014
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
But when the set time had fully come,
God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we
might receive adoption to sonship.[a] 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the
Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba,[b]
Father.” 7 So
you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God
has made you also an heir.
Here we are on day four of the twelve days of Christmas! According to the song, this is the day when
the “true love” gave “four calling birds” to his/or her loved one. A quick Wikipedia review of “calling birds”
reveals that they are perching birds as well; they are also called “song
birds”. For twelve years, Dr. Jeff
Snider, our director of music, has been at his “perch”, so to speak, serving as
a “song bird” for us. We thank him for
his service. All of this ties together;
it’s a beautiful thing.
Day two of the twelve days of Christmas had many Christians
remembering St. Stephen, a martyr and deacon whose story is given early on in
the book of Acts. A deacon is one called
to serve the poor and needy. The
occasion gave way to a traditional carol, “Good King Wenceslas”:
Good
King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen
When
the snow lay round about – deep and crisp and even.
Brightly
shone the moon that night,
Though
the frost was cruel,
When
a poor man came in sight gathering winter fuel.
King Wenceslas and his page, as the lyrics go on, head out
into the raging winter night and bring food and warmth to the poor man – like
Deacon Stephen served the poor. It ends
like this – with something of a moral:
Therefore,
Christian men, be sure – wealth or rank possessing:
He
who now shalt bless the poor
Shall
yourselves find blessing!
As I said, it all ties together.
Yesterday, day three of the twelve days, gave us The Feast of
St. John the Evangelist. John was the
brother of James, one of the “Sons of Zebedee”.
Together, they were two of Jesus’ disciples during His earthly
ministry. It was the elderly John,
exiled to the island of Patmos, who gave us the Book of Revelation. Not only that, the prologue to the Gospel
that bears his name declares: “In the
beginning was the Word. And the Word was
with God. And the Word was God.” That’s John 1:1 and following.
Religious and philosophical thought, at when that was written,
had no real problems with any of that language.
The issue came a few verses down the line where, in verse 14, we read: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled
(“tented” or “tabernacle’d”) among us.”
With that, St. John, and the rest of Christianity with him, bid farewell
to a big chunk of philosophy. The
philosophers thought that every one had a spark of God within them. Only upon death would the spark be released
and then return to the celestial fire.
Thus, the problem with us is that we have a body that traps us. The problem is that we are flesh and
blood. The “finite (the body) is not
capable of the infinite (the divine).”
But if we think like St. John, flesh and blood present no
problem. Flesh and blood are good. God
said so at creation. After all, the Word – the divine logos – was
pleased to dwell within flesh and blood.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” So the problem with us is not that we are
trapped in a human body. It’s that we’re
trapped in human sin. The only thing
that truly sets us free from this is the unmerited grace and truth of God. And John said that the Word made flesh was
“full of grace and truth.” It all ties
together.
All of that brings us to today, the 4th day of
Christmas, The Feast of the Holy Innocents.
The magi had come from the east seeking the “One who was born King of
the Jews.” They went to King Herod to
find out where he would be born. Herod,
paranoid in the extreme, consults his court theologians and finds, through the
Scripture, that the King would be born in Bethlehem. His paranoia fuels a decree that infant
children, two years old and younger, would be slaughtered in Bethlehem. It was genocide on a small scale.
Even amid the joys of hearth and home and as we bask in the
kindliness of Christmas, we are reminded, at the Feasts of Stephen and the Holy
Innocents, what kind of world we live in still – a world where, for example,
one hundred forty one children are slaughtered by terrorists in Pakistan. It’s a world where parents still, in so many
words, sing with the “Coventry Carol”:
That woe is
me, poor child, for thee
And ever
mourn and may
For thy
parting neither say nor sing,
"Bye bye, lully, lullay.
The thing that can get the
attention of the confirmed, modern skeptic is not that Christianity is a list
of fundamentals, and it certainly isn’t because it is some kind of pageant you
sell tickets for at Christmastime.
Neither is Christianity yet another religious or philosophical system of
thought.
Christianity is REAL;
that’s what it is. It’s not “pie in the
sky” and “sweet bye and bye”. It deals
with real people and real events – good, bad, and ugly. It deals with real flesh and blood! And it has the audacity to say, despite tons
of evidence that appears contrary, that God is not dead. God is alive.
God is in charge. And, best of
all, God is gracious.
In today’s New Testament
reading from Galatians – a book which has been dubbed “the ‘magna carte’ of
Christian liberty, the Apostle Paul, who once had watched the stoning of St.
Stephen, described us as adopted children of God. That’s what Christmas grace and truth does: it adopts us into God’s family.
All out of the blue, it
popped into my head what to do to honor this good Word from God in the book of
Galatians. I’m going to go grab a
cheeseburger at Wendy’s – not McDonalds, not Burger King, not Fuddruckers, but
Wendy’s! Why Wendy’s? Because the late Dave Thomas, founder of
Wendy’s was an adopted child, and his foundation encouraged adoption. I, too, am an adopted child. I was only six weeks old. My parents did not bring me home from the
hospital on December 21, 1961. I came
from Lutheran Family Service of Nebraska.
That adoption, as wonderful
as it was and is (for me and my parents), is used here only to illustrate
something far grander: your adoption as
a child of God.
Want to know the “true
meaning” of Christmas? There are many
true meanings, and here’s one of them straight from out text: you are an adopted child of God. People can say what they will about you – and
they will. My encouragement, then, is to
not sweat that. What ultimately matters
is what God says about you: you are God’s adopted child.
But when the set time had fully come,
God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we
might receive adoption to sonship.[a] 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the
Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba,[b]
Father.” 7 So
you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God
has made you also an heir.
Sin will try to enslave you.
The media and advertisers will try to enslave you. Horrific news accounts will try to enslave
you. Debt will try to enslave you. Politics will enslave you. Traffic will enslave you. Depression will try to enslave you. Sickness and death will enslave you. All will try to enslave you, isolate you,
diminish you, write you out of the will, end you. And that’s real.
But stronger than reality as we know it are the facts from
the Word made flesh. We are not
slaves. We are heirs written IN to God’s
will. We are God’s adopted children. As the old year gives say to the new, we
don’t know what the future holds. But we
know who holds the future: the Word made
flesh -- full of grace and truth.
Happy 4th day of Christmas! You’ve got eight more to go, Lord willing,
before the tree comes down! But let’s
not get too far ahead of ourselves. A
child of God rejoices in each day as the gift that it is – a gift that may
include a trip to Wendy’s to grab a cheeseburger!
Amen.
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