[I haven't written many sermons lately, and rarely any more do my sermons speak outside of apologetics purposes anymore. So when I found myself jotting these sermon notes down this sunday, I surprised even myself. This is a little Christmas message about grace] "The Un- Sermon" There is perhaps no subject matter more fundamental to life and reality than the doctrine of God. And the link between God and man is grace alone. So that makes grace the single most important lifeline that man can hold onto. Or, if you think about it another way, God's grace is the ocean where we are all afloat. Were God's sustaining grace not present, then we would sink into non-existence. I'm not merely talking about whether we go to heaven, I'm talking about whether our electrons will still revolve around their nuclei within our every atom; whether or leptons and quarks will continue to exist at a subatomic level; whether our bodily organs will continue to function and cooperate, and whether our solar system will continue its stubborn survival. I'm talking about the very sustaining of our existence so that we don't dissolve into total nothingness. I literally mean the God "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). I never tire of gazing into the infinite ocean of God's grace. No subject fascinates me more. And since our present life and future hope rest squarely on His grace, we have good reason to wonder at the nature of His grace. Yet, strangely enough, grand-scale realities are sometimes so big that we can't help but miss them. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, "If you want to understand the wetness of water, don't ask a fish." A fish knows nothing of the wetness of water. Or, to illustrate further, it is like, looking very closely at some writing. An inch away from the page you may still be able to see what it reads. But a micrometer from the page, viewed under the microscope, you might be able to see parts of it, but you can no longer see what it reads. You are literally too close, too submerged in it, to be able to see what it reads. For the fish, this over-obvious reality is water, for us, this over-obvious reality might be the experience of time, or space, or our own existence, or grace. Divine grace is for us like water is to a fish, it is the sustaining environment whereby we "live and move," but the analogy breaks down because for fish and men alike, God's grace is how we all "have our being." It is God's sustaining and gracious activity in our cosmos that gives both fish and men both life and existence. The grace of God is everywhere visible, little seen, ever-present but unnoticed, so obvious it is beyond us. God operates in gracious ways that are just crazy enough to be true. God's grace appears in grand order when a few hundred Israelites in Gideon's army defeat scores of thousands of Midianites (Judges 7). God's grace operates in subtler ways, in gentle healing (Matt 14:14). And God's grace is downright confusing when he engineers pain and suffering in redeeming ways that only a divine Daddy can do. For example, God first gave man the "gift" of death so that we would not have to live forever in our fallen state (Gen 3:22-24). And God tells Paul amidst his "thorn in the flesh," that "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor 12:9). God's grace is clearly not the safe and easy doctrine that it often seems. God's grace is grand and glorious, odd and awkward, profound and mysterious. And whatever it is, it is not cheap. I hardly need note Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship" where the author contrasts "cheap grace" with "costly grace." Grace may be free but never for a moment should we think it cheap. And so we come to the point at issue: the Baby Jesus typifies God's grace. Our response to Him is our response to God's grace. Let us dwell first on how the Christ child means grace. The baby Jesus was an infinite treasure to purchase the souls of men from slavery, yet this treasure, we find, is wrapped in burial shrouds, carried by a poor unwed teenager, lain across hay and spittle, away from home, late at night, outside a stranger's hotel, in a barn, in a feeding troth for barn animals. This child is the most important person in existence, and yet His entry into this world is the practical equivalent of being born in the parking lot of a pawn shop and first wrapped in newspaper. The infinite eternal God has here pierced time and space, donned a human nature, and taken on mortality for the express purpose of dying another man's death. And this Christ child has hidden himself in poverty among commoners so that merely mortal men could meet God. This is God's grace at work. Confused yet? Amazed? I say yes on both accounts. Let us look deeper into the story of His birth and see then how God's grace comes to us. 1) Undeservedly--first we can see from Mary and Joseph that they were not especially deserving. Adequate for God's purposes, yes. But Scripture makes no hint that they were sinless nor that they deserved to play the role they did in the redemption of mankind. Circumstantially, they were barely fit for the task. They could not afford to give baby Jesus the best educational opportunities, nor the best food and shelter, nor the most elite social network to get His message out to the world. They had little to give to baby Jesus, but what they had they gave it all. Mary and Joseph both took some miraculous convincing before they would believe that Mary was supernaturally impregnated (Matt 2:19-24; Luke 1:26-38). Yet God endured their doubt and used them anyone. 2) Unnaturally--the Baby Jesus came in a strange way. Not only was this baby born by supernatural implantation, but the baby Jesus was born away from home, amidst hostile governance, to what may have been an unwed couple. The more natural means of child-birth within the Biblical Judeo-Christian tradition is to have one man and one wife birthing the child within the stability of a loving and fruitful marriage. And the more natural and healthy manner is to settle in, and have the child in a stable and settled home--not in transit, with the first few years of His life being lived on the run from hostile governing authorities (Matt 2:13-23). But since this birth was in fact miraculous, it is unusual and almost unbelievable. It is altogether unnatural. 3) Unwelcomed--now Mary and Joseph did, eventually, embrace the the role conferred to them through the angel Gabriel. But, let us remember, that they did not ask for this prestigious position, nor was it an entirely pleasant or comfortable position to be in. Meanwhile most of the world made no effort to welcome baby Jesus. Beyond the supernaturally informed insight of Mary and Jesus, a few shepherds, and perhaps some accidentally faithful Magi, the rest of the world did not recognize or welcome Jesus into the world. As Jesus grew from a child to a man, and as he began His earthly ministry, he would become a revolutionary of the most radical sort. He would so change society and threaten convention that He faced inhospitable and intolerant opposition throughout His earthly ministry. God's grace is largely unwelcomed. Summing up, we see a picture of God's grace. It's the same picture today. God's grace comes unnaturally, undeservedly, and without welcome. Yet we would not even exist to reject His gracious advances were we not already swimming in His grace. Like the ignorant fish we are immersed in God's grace so much that we take it for granted. Reader and listener, let yourself see the grandeur of God's grace and welcome it for all its supernatural and undeserved glory. You are no mother Mary or Joseph, but God wants to show you grace by using you in a bigger plan then you could ever fashion by your own hands. He first wants to save you from yourself and the death you deserve. He then wants to salvage your life and make a miracle worker out of you, a carrier of grace to other thankless wretches like you once were. He even wants to make out of you a masterpiece of praise, an artwork of worship whose very life is an act of adoration towards God. There is no such meaningfulness to be found by our own artifice. We could never manufacture such meaning in our lives. We are made for worship, and no other meaning in life matters so much. Only by God's grace are we allowed and able to worship Him and so discover again for the first time the very reason we were made. God is here extending a gracious hand to you today. Whereever you are in your journey with Him--off the trail, far along it, not even on it--please receive God's grace for the transforming and heart-warming gift that it is. God's grace is but another name for His love. Do not reject the only perfect and infinite love in life. Do not ignore the Christ child and so reject the man Jesus, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and your own only future hope. He has come in love, he has come by grace. Welcome into your life this miracle of love and grace.

What's the meaning of life?

 Lets see here. . . Hedonism? Agnosticism? Nihilism/Absurdism? Relativism? Religious absolutism? I think I'll take E.

 "Meaning" presupposes some reality to which this life points else it is just like words without a referent. If there is no greater reality, we walking words mean nothing. We are just hollow senseless shouts in space.

 If we are the ultimate reality than we can only hope to point back to ourselves. Our lives reverberate no larger than we are. It would be like the word "word." We indicate only ourselves, nothing else. Hardly a transcendent answer rising to the occasion of this transcendent question. We ask "what is the meaning of life" because we are filled with a wonder about life. We still dream and imagine and hope and even worship despite the fact that cold and heartless worldviews often freeze over us as we age. We lose the simple pleasures in life as we lose our imaginations. Our faith matures to doubt and rather than returning to rejuvenate faith it just spoils into cynicism. We are told that we are just hairless apes. We are told that God and supernature are little more than santa clause and fairy tales. Yet we die, perhaps old and gray, having far less joy than the child who still believes in fairy tales. Should we believe that all the grand epics of faith are empty and then proceed to invent some meaning to life? We can certianly distract ourselves from the question that way. But after the pleasure drive has slipped out of gear and our conscience has crashed we come tumbling back to the reality that we are finite creatures who will not ultimately be satisfied with anything less than infinite. We can press into the barren tundra of nihilism determined to be the Nietzschian superman: too great, too bold to need the companionship of meaning in life. We can invent purposes. We can survive on rations of pleasure and power. But again, this option seems to push people away from each other, killing the very thing that most strongly suggests an answer. In each other's arms there might be an answer. In family, in friends, in relationship we have hints of something transcendent. Our very humanity chafes at the thought of such cold impersonal isolation as the Nietzschian superman. Nietzsche was not happy. He died crazy and alone. I do not trust his council.

 Perhaps we are searching for what can only be a question? Perhaps we are not words referring to something, but life is a question mark whose ultimate orientation is "to seek." Perhaps the meaning of life is a circular question where the only hope of meaning is to continue asking "what is the meaning of life?" Perhaps the meaning of life is not an answer but a question, an admission that any supernature or sub-natural reality that might answer it all is really beyond reach and can be experienced only by admitting that there is no such thing as "arrival." Religion is to seek what cannot be known. And Meaning in life is to live for what we know not what. This kind of agnosticism, as elegantly eastern as it may be reduces to the same relativism we had elsewhere. If there is no answer, then we'll invent one. Life is too urgent to beat around the bush with this kind of "Its all about the journey" talk. Meaning is in the meandering, they say. But we soon tire of searching, and we honestly will quit searching if we ever truly believe there is no arrival point. If we find there is no answer, we quit questioning. If the answer is ultimately inaccessable, we have shown ourselves to still be obsessed with an answer. We will not give up searching. Some quit trying, of course. These are the insane, the dead, and the dying. To live requires meaning. Only in death do we accept meaninglessness. John Paul Sartre converted to Christianity in his dying years. Neitzshe self-destructed. Anthony Flew, now in his nineties has just recently become a theist. Something about the end of life fleshes out things for us and exposes how unbearable our cognitive dissonance is over the issue of meaning.

 The meaning of life might be inferred from the most meaningful points of life. Sex might certianly be one of the most memorable moments. But maybe it is in the context of family that our meaning most clearly begins to surface. For there we have the sublime joy of knowing someone, trully knowing someone, and to have them trully know us. We also have the experience of creation. To create another life, no matter how thoroughly science may be able to explain it away, it is still a miracle. And then to have a love that only grows as we invite more people into this world, into this home, into our hearts--that is meaningful. And then to have that love culminate in the supreme physical and spiritual consumation of sex--that is meaningful. Package all of that together and we are reminded that there is more to life than our individual selves.

 Yet even in family we find the picture is a bit flat. Its a lovely picture, but its only two-dimensional. It lacks depth when we peel back the top layer. We fight. We abuse and are abused. We prove unfaithful. We divorce. We fail and shout and regret. This "bliss" is ephemeral. Yet, we have in it a glimpse of some relationship, some family for which we were made, some manner in which we are caught up in the lives of others, and perhaps drawn into a divine love. That is a love that never fails, a love that only grows stronger with age, a love that is genuinely perfect. Surely that is the stuff of fairy tales right?

 The meaning of life is to worship God by enjoying him forever. For in returning to our basic ackowledgment of Him, and in humbling ourselves enough to worship once again, we discover that we cannot love greatly unless we are remade. We cannot even receive His perfect love properly until we let Him transform us. We are therein invited into a depth of love at which this world can only hint. We are ushered into a family that is wider than any other family we've ever known. In loving Him we find that our problems were not that we desired too much but that we did not desire enough. Our problem was not that we had such a great appetite, but that we'd spoiled our appetite with fast-food pleasures and self-centered gorging. Now, in relationship with the living loving God, our tastes have evolved from animal to human. In a sense, we are back to Adam, before the fall. Now we can see that the glory of the garden of eden was not the fruit but was God Himself. Sex finds its rightful context in purity once again. Family is restored with God as its designer. Pleasure is restored by noble intentions. Faith and hope are present realities in the abiding presence of God. The meaning of the Garden of Eden was not to eat and sleep, not to avoid the cursed tree, not to name the animals, but was to enjoy God--the essence of beauty and joy Himself.

 And the meaning of life, then proves no more sublime than to love God and be loved by Him. We are too smart to be able to settle for invented meaning. And we are too spiritual to settle for a Nil answer. We are too conscientious to accept mere pleasure. But all of these come together in the answer of God. Man cannot create his own "meaning" because God has already made it. Man cannot accept a Nil answer because our God-given instincts of living are smarter than our reasoned nihilism. Our philosophies of nothing are not loud enough to outshout our hearts. And our moral conscience, which speaks with the unusually clear voice of God, rightfully objects when we try to exalt pleasure itself as the highest meaning for man. We suspect that man was made for infinite joy, but that is only because we were made for God who is Himself infinite joy and the giver of transcendent peace and pleasure. Apart from this God there is little hope for meaning in life.

Father you are so gentle and quiet in your manner. So much so that I could easily forget you and run ahead of you. Like Martha I run around doing chores and activities as if you needed my labor. And I dream up so many ways for me to serve you. All the while I am really just sorta day dreaming about someone who is already mine. Father, I have the greatest love of all in you. I don’t have to work for you. I don’t have to earn you. I don’t have to run to keep up with you. This romance is mutual. You want to be discovered. You want to be enjoyed. You aren’t trying to get ahead of me. You aren’t trying to hurt me. Quite the opposite, I find myself running away and hurting you. I suppose all of human history has been the story of man’s struggle to be liberated from your love. We’ve cursed and spat in your face rejecting your warm embrace. We turned and ran away, now we wonder why we are so cold and gray. I’m learning to love. Trust can be so hard. And the type of trust you ask is the hardest. How can I trust someone with my future? How can I trust someone with my secrets? How can I trust someone with love? These must seem like silly questions to you considering all of these things have always been in your hands anyway. I don’t know what that thing is that is in man that wants to go two directions at once. For some reason I long to be independent, though I crave the security of dependence. I want to be my own person, but I want to lose myself in something much bigger than I. And depending on the day I may want to live in the past the future or the present. God, as a silly little person I can only imagine how you giggle at our ravings. Despite the confusion I may have at times, I have seen enough of your heart to know that I want to live there. And I know that even before I called to you, you saved a place for me. I have a place setting at the dinner table in your house. I have a room in your home. And I am branded on your heart. Its nice to know that I can talk to you no matter how I’m feeling or what has been happening. You are always listening, but more than that you are always leaving me love letters in a cat’s pur, in a good meal, in the sunshine, and a friends embrace. God, somehow the complicated theology and deeper learning all seems to boil down to or boil away leaving love, that love which springs into mercy and grace. That love is the reason for your epic pursuit of man. That love is the reason I can live and breath. I just pray that this hurting lonely world would come to realize that the second hand emotions we call love are but cheap knock-offs of you. I won’t find life long satisfaction in books, or TV, or music. Nor will I find a relationship in my entire life that will compare in importance to my relationship with you. Your love is difficult to overstate. And it is the most tragic oversight this world will ever regret. God let me be a testimony to your love. I want the world to know that they will never know as great a love as is found in you. I don’t want to run away any more. I want to run with you. Amen

The Bible is clear that we are not to operate on the same stubborn level as pack animals (Ps. 32:9) and that ministers are not to be ignorant and foolish as brute beasts (Jude 10). When looking over the harvest fields, disciples are not the oxen pulling the plow down the rows with its head down laboring dutifully. Disciples are the recruited workers who labor along side of the owner to see a bountiful harvest. And at the end of the work day they not only rest but they can share in that harvest. John 15:15 tells us that Jesus considers us friends, not slaves. 2 Cor. 6:1 goes further to show how ministers of God’s word can be understood as fellow laborers with God. As friends and coworkers with Christ, the minister is in a much higher position than the pack animal. We can look above the stalks and see the fields white for harvest. We have a stance from which to share in a glorious sight, the incoming harvest. We may labor hard and long, longer than pack animals. But we do not labor dutifully with our heads down working ever harder to earn our keep, like the brute beast. Rather, we work harder to see more fruit and to share in the bountiful harvest. The fellow laborer knows the necessity and the joy of service, but the beast does not know such joy, only obligation. The laborer has conformed his will to that of the master and thus can share in the joy of a bountiful crop just as the master does. The beast has no will, only trained response. Such joy is beyond him.

1 Cor. 9:10 tells us that the laborer has every right to desire to share in the harvest. And 1 Cor. 9:27 points out that the discipline of Paul specifically was not for the sake of competition or just to get work done but to receive the prize. Paul labored for a prize, not for duty. Undoubtedly, Paul felt a tremendous sense of indebtedness for the grace given him and in turn he felt a sense a duty. But, he bled joy from every wound. He cries out in celebration at every pain (1 Cor. 9:26-27; 12:9-10). And struggled dutifully yet happily serving the master (Ph. 4:4, 12-13). He was even optimistic amidst trials (Ph. 1:12). Compared to the joyless stereotype of duty, Paul’s sense of duty would better be understood as the obligatory privilege than a burdensome assignment. To be called by God is to enlist in active duty in the Lord’s army, but the true patriot considers such “duty” a privilege. Paul’s life and ministry demonstrate that Christ can be the master and coworker. Lest we think that being coworkers with Christ is because of our exalted position, let us remember that Jesus’ loving humility, not our ability, is what brought him down on our level working with and through us to usher in his kingdom (Ph. 2:5-11).

As you labor for Christ in the harvest fields, take care to remember that you are not to follow the pattern of the burdened pack animal digging down and driving harder with a disheartening view of the dirty ground to motivate you as you hope to only be through with your work. Instead, look up and see that you are laboring with Christ in these beautiful fields remembering that you will share in that harvest when your rest comes.

In the cross we have comfort in dying, but in the empty tomb we have the hope of living. In the crucifixion we may rest in peace, but in the resurrection we may wake again.

I never really knew my father. Oh, sure I had my dad to look up to during my youth. And he has seen me through college. He never abused me. His temper improved over time, but he was never a hateful man. He could laugh sometimes. And he would talk meaningfully on occasions. But if you asked me how well I knew my Dad, well I guess I could not know him any more than he knew himself, and I would have to say I never really knew my Father. I don’t resent him, I just wish for his sake that he wasn’t so scared and threatened by life. It’s like all pain means stop. The best things in life, the most meaningful things almost always include some level of pain. It hurts to admit the lessons you’ve missed. It hurts to sort through disappointments in search of wisdom. It hurts to say, “I’m sorry”. It hurts to express yourself when all your training has conditioned you to grin and bear it. It hurts to be insulted, and punished for other people’s mistakes and scorched by selfish powerful people. Life hurts. But if you see the game of football as nothing but injuries you’ll never appreciate the game. It doesn’t immediately hurt to complain about things. Nor does it hurt to avoid challenges. After a while the hurting settles down when you learn to suppress that desire for self-expression, those yearnings to make a difference, that belief in people. The awful part about pain is that it steals our attention. For the millions of people like my dad who don’t believe in themselves any more and in return don’t believe in other people, and barely believe in God—I ask you, please find some way to share who you really are. There is a family of people who could care less what you can do, and are desperate to know who you are. They’ve never known you to love you, because you would never let them. They could only love the two inches of depth you’ve allowed them to know of you. I’m not asking for you to unleash all your fury at your loved ones as your “self expression”. But please don’t let pain steal the show shutting you up and cutting you off. The root of your failures is not your injuries but your loss of hope. Hope can be restored if you would let your loved ones (namely God) back into the vulnerable parts of your heart, right where you’ve been hurt before, to plant that hope again. And don’t think all pain is supposed to be hurtful, some is medicinal. To push medicinal pain away is to punish your loved ones.

         Why do we people so love our captors? Whatever vice it is it binds the hands and feet yet it draws a strange and sick affection from its victims. The vice is a wise temptress. It offers enough pleasure to wet your taste but never ever will it satisfy your hunger. All the while that taste of pleasure fades into a bitter aftertaste. Even when the bitterness overwhelms the pleasure the poor victim won’t turn back for he’s fallen in love with his seductive enemy. He clings for dear life holding tight his own shackles. We so hunger for freedom and so desire to act out our rights, yet it is all too natural for man to be enslaved. We need clocks and schedules though we hate deadlines. We choose relationships and marriages that demand our discipline. We curse the speed limit yet celebrate the government for cracking down on deadbeat dads. We hate laws while they protect us. And we love the vice that kills us.

       "Slave" is an ugly word to the freeman. But who is free? Absolute servanthood seems an ugly labor unless the master is good. But even then it is unattractive for the humility it requires. We’re proud because we deny that we naturally subject ourselves to an evil master. We think we’re free even as we kiss our shackles celebrating drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, wasteful gambling and wealthy indulgence. If we could just see that we are servants anyway we would choose the good master. But the cruel master hides himself. He spoils his slaves with sweet addictions and delicious poisons. And he tells his possessions that they are free. And the slaves exercise their freedom by choosing the same cruel master who hates them. Some freedom?! As long as man builds his pride on his independence and supposed freedom we will never submit humbly to the good Lord, the loving master.

            A common flaw in presenting the Gospel is to portray it as shallow surfacy only answering the immediate needs and appearing good and pretty all the time. In essence, such a witness is presenting Christianity as a green field, pleasant and attractive without complicated elements to dot and color its landscape and without the depths of discovery that lend it authority and promise. The problem is that there are many “green fields.” Cults give effective answers to many glaring social problems. The hedonism of drugs and illicit sex can be pleasant for a moment. All the world religions offer a certain agreeable element in their moralities. Secular worldviews offer unsupported morality that agrees well with society. Anyone faithful to a reasonable worldview will find some level of stability and pleasure. But the Christian field was never meant to be left unplowed. The truth of our God is as deep as it is wide, and there are infinite depths of discovery for the curious Christian mind. Yes, there is a certain appeal on the surface of Christianity and likewise with many other faiths and worldviews. However, it is Christianity alone which can only get better the more you dig. Beneath that green soil is a layer of gold that doesn’t end.