“God Meets World – A Love Story”
Christmas Eve A –
Luke 2:1-20
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You’ve no doubt heard the phrase, boy meets girl. It’s the shorthand description of the world’s most popular plot. It’s been used as long as people have been telling tales and writing stories.
Sometimes it’s comedy, sometimes it’s tragedy the form doesn’t matter. Nor does the medium. It could be Zog the Caveman sitting around the fire telling a story about how he met the lovely Kaknis at the annual Mammoth hunt or it could be Hugh Grant in just about every movie he’s ever been in. No matter who or when boy meets girl – it’s a love story.
And you know how that love story goes. Boy meets girl. Misunderstanding or a fight happens. Boy loses girl. Or girl loses boy. Or both lose each other. Will they ever get back together? Will they ever reconcile so that love will triumph in the end? Or will it end in tragedy?
In contrast, a moment ago, you heard, in the words of Luke, the central act, the great event of the world’s original love story, the source for all love stories of all times and places. The story’s got joy and sorrow, drama and comedy, amazing visuals, and a cast, ultimately, of billions. But it is not boy meets girl. The plot of Luke’s story is “God Meets World.”
The story of God meets World is a love story that originates in the divine, but whose action is lived out in and for you. It happens in the midst of the world in all its dirt and squalor as well as its beauty and splendor.
It is also a love story within a love story. Divine love is embedded, enfleshed, in the greatest, most powerful of all human loves – that of a mother for her child. The bonds of love between mother and child and are as close to divine love as humans are capable. It makes perfect sense, then, that divine love should enter the story at the moment of his birth. That is how and where God meets World: far from home in a strange land; helpless, powerless, unable to speak or walk or to feed and care for himself. Totally dependent, cradled in his mother’s loving arms and fed at her breast.
The love story of God Meets World embodies a momentous truth. But it is a truth not only about God -- but about YOU. This story you have heard tonight proclaims that you are God’s beloved, the object of his love. You are in this story. Not as a bit player or an extra. You have a lead role. God meets World because of his love for you.
God became flesh as you became flesh – in you mother’s womb. It is God’s way of telling you, not only in words but in a miraculous yet concrete act, that he does not want to be God without you.
Tonight, in your hearing, and in your remembering, the story of God meets World reveals that in his Son Jesus, God and you share a common story, a common history. God is with you. And this “God with you” is nothing less than the heart and soul of Christian faith, Christian love, and Christian hope. Because God is with you, all this is offered to you, is made possible in you, as a pure gift.
Because God is with you, the prison walls of despair, depression, and hopelessness are shattered. Through this event that combines the miraculous and the ordinary, God meets World, and the world will never be the same. Every day now dawns filled with forgiveness, new life, and the promise of salvation. And so, when God meets World hope becomes a part of daily life.
That a lot of God talk, so to kind of tie it all together, let me share with you a true story that contains one of the simplest and best descriptions of why and how God meets world and -- what it means for you.
One day, out in
The indications were not good. The writer of the original story, a Christmas story, had tried to sell it for publication, but no one was interested.
In frustration, the writer, at his own expense, printed up 200 copies of the story as a 24-page pamphlet and gave them to his friends as a holiday greeting card. The director happened to received one of these cards. He thought the story might have possibilities as a movie. So before he went any further with the project, he decided to run it past the actor he had in mind for the leading role.
A few days later the actor sat listening as the director outlined the plot of the movie. The actor thought the director seemed a little embarrassed about what he was going to say. “Now listen,” the director began hesitatingly, “the story starts in heaven, see, and it’s sort of the Lord telling somebody to go down to earth because there’s a fellow who’s in trouble . . .”
The director swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and continued, fumbling for words, struggling to explain the details of the plot until he stopped again, sighed and said sorrowfully, ‘This story doesn’t tell it very well, does it?”
At which point, the actor jumped up and said, “Frank, if you want to do a picture about a guy who jumps off a bridge and an angel named Clarence who hasn’t won his wings yet who comes down to save him, w-w-w-wall, I’m your man!”
I hope the lousy Jimmy Stewart impression didn’t distract you from catching the plot summary of God Meets World in this 1946 conversation between Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart.
I have to disagree with Capra when he told Stewart “This doesn’t tell it very well does it?” On the contrary, Capra nails it! With one exception: substitute God for the angel. Sorry, Clarence.
Think back a moment to how Jimmy Stewart remembered Capra beginning to explain the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra said, “Now listen” and then think of the angels coming to the shepherds in the field speaking news of great joy for all the people. Listen indeed. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! Now listen!
And here is what we are to listen to: how and why God meets World: Let me quote Jimmy Stewart’s memory of Capra again: “The story starts in heaven, see, and it’s sort of the Lord telling somebody to go down to earth, because there’s a fellow who’s in trouble.” And what happens to the fellow in trouble? He is saved.
That’s it! That’s God meets World. The Incarnation. The Word made flesh, the true bread come down from heaven to earth. But not just somebody, not even an angel, but God himself becoming one of us.
And why did God do this? Because there’s a fellow who’s in trouble. I love that phrase, it’s almost biblical. It is simple yet infinitely deep with meaning. “There’s a fellow who’s in trouble.” The human condition in a nutshell! That’s you! That’s me! And “trouble” is putting it mildly. We are sinners in whom there is no health. Sinning against God and neighbor every day. We are in terrible trouble. Yet our predicament matters so much to God that meeting us is not enough. His love for us is so great he becomes one of us. And so we can sing with the angels, “God and sinners reconciled.
And that is why we are here tonight. To remember that great event when God met World. To recognize God with us and God for us in the baby in the manger helpless and weak. We gather to celebrate that God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, continues to meet us, to dwell within us, reconciling us to Himself so that every day of our life is transformed into a divine love story..
Tonight, a child is born in a manger. In him, with him, through him, God comes to meet you, to love you, to save you. This God is for us. How can we not, then, live in hope and love? Thanks be to God. And Merry Christmas,
Amen.
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