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some of us, it is
as comfortable as an old bathrobe and slippers.
Here we are at home. There are people here who know
us and in spite of knowing us, they love us still. It
feels just like our family, it is our spiritual home
and family. As some people have said, "I feel as
if I'm being fed here."
Others
come because they're looking; they
are searching. I think our church would be almost
empty if I declared that only thoroughly committed,
absoutely certain Christians were welcome in this church.
How many of us would have to get up and leave? After
the Chrismas holiday, we linger a little longer at the
nativity scene, looking for answers.
Recall the visitors from the
East who journeyed to Bethlehem. They were people that
dealt with strange magic potions, incantations, and
astrology that were popular modes of wisdom seeking
back at the time. I think in this age that we
would understand them because we live in an age
where we are seeking, longing, yearning, inquiring,
and discovering. We often, metaphorically, describe
our life as a search or journey. People are looking
for all sorts of answers.
Life - it's a bit chaotic! It's
a bit messy in our search at times. Is it not? The
people who came to the stable to pay homage to the Christ
child were strange; they were foreign. These
people without a book, without THE BOOK - the Bible,
without religioius traditions - only a star to guide
them. They were magicians who had attempted to manage
the forces of nature, which by definition is paganism.
You can't be too strange, or too foreign, or be too
weird to be outside the aura of this baby. So all you
people out there thinking you are beyond the boundaries
- people who are even confused about the boundaries,
and where they are, who cannot figure out the difference
between "respectable religion" and "primitive
magic" - think again! Christ is for the whole world
- for us!
Many
of us here may not know the scriptures that well.
You readily admit it. "Pastor Jeff, I wish that
I could come to your Wednesday morning Bible Study,
but I gotta work. I wish I knew the Bible better."
You hope that you will find something in a sermon, or
in a prayer, or in the music to help you cope - just
for this week. Christ is for you!
The thing that gives me the
greatest hope in the story of the wise men? This baby
Jesus and his family did
not reject the gifts that the magi visitors brought.
They didn't say,
"You know, you aren't good enough. You're weird.
You're strange! You don't belong here." No, they
didn't say that at all. So you have come here today,
bringing whatever you have. And, if
you should encounter God here - in this church,
you are willing to lay down what you have at the manger,
and worship. As those who traveled to see the baby Jesus,
I also know that if you
dare to come to the manger, to kneel, to lay
down whatever you have before this baby, you will go
home by another way. And that way is the way of true
life. Come here
to worship!
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