"The Greatest Gift of  All"

1 John 3:16

Dear Friends in Christ,         

   I think we would all agree that life is full of change.  But when I look back over my childhood years, I would have to say that I saw very few major changes in my life.  I lived in the same town and the same house for the first 18 years of my life.  I had the same neighbors, Ed and Bill Felchner, whom my brother and I got together with on pretty well a daily basis.  The friends I had in kindergarten were the same friends I had when I graduated from high school.  But then came 1973.  That was the year I graduated from high school.  It was the year I went off to a college where I didn’t have a single friend or know a single person.  It was the year my dad took a call to a small town in southern Illinois called Campbell Hill where I also didn’t know a single person.  So all of a sudden I went from a relatively stable and changeless life to a life that was full of change.  And it was tough.

   Some of you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  You’re sitting there thinking, “If you’re going to be talking about change today, I can tell you about change.  Up until this year I was healthy as a horse, but now cancer has invaded my body and my whole schedule and my whole life revolves around how the doctors have decided to treat it.”  Others of you may be thinking, “Change?  Let me tell you about change.  My husband and I just found out – SURPRISE! – that we’re expecting a child.  Looks like I’ll be going to my other child’s high school graduation this year wearing maternity clothes.”  “Change?” another is thinking, “Have you seen what’s happened to the economy the past couple of years?  If things don’t improve, looks like I’ll be spending my upcoming retirement years welcoming shoppers at Wal-Mart.”  “Change?” still another is thinking, “I lost my job this year and let me tell you, you don’t make any money mailing out resumes.” 

   We’ve all had our share of change, haven’t we?  And while some changes are necessary and some are even good and positive, most of them are seldom welcome because we are creatures of habit. 

   Well, if anyone knew what change was all about, it was Mary and Joseph.  Mary is visited by an angel who announces to her that she will become pregnant with the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God.  That’s quite a change, isn’t it, especially for a teenage Jewish peasant girl from a map-dot town in Galilee.  Then when Joseph hears the news that his betrothed is with child, he assumes the worst until an angel appears and explains the whole thing to him.  Then before they can say “It’s a boy!” this lowly couple from Nazareth is heading south about 70 or 80 miles to Bethlehem in order to register for Caesar’s silly census.  When they arrive they find no place to stay, but soon Joseph is begging for a place to stay because Mary has gone into labor.  Finally, they have to settle for a dirty, smelly stable where the animals were normally kept and it is there that Mary delivers heaven’s child to a world that, except for a few shepherds, is completely unaware of what has just happened.

   The story of Christmas is really all about change, isn’t it?  Well, in one sense it is, but in another sense it isn’t.  For it’s also about the unchanging nature of our unchanging God.  And that’s what we want to spend our time focusing upon this morning as we find ourselves just one week away from the celebration of our Savior’s birth and as we consider the theme “The Greatest Gift of All.”

   Now the Bible makes some pupil-popping claims about the unchanging nature of God.  For example, consider the fact that his strength never wanes.  That’s different than you and I, isn’t it?  Our strength is constantly waning.  If you’re like me, you like to take a Sunday afternoon nap.  In fact, I’ll take a nap any day of the week if I have the time or the opportunity.  Why?  Because my strength wanes over the course of a day.  I get tired.  And so do you.

   You may have noticed that you’re not as strong or active or energetic at the age of 50 or 60 as you were at the age of 20.  You’re not as alert after 12 hours of being awake as you were after 1 hour of being awake.  We learn to cope, however, with our waning strength.  Maybe you’ve heard the story of the elderly couple that was well into their 80’s who got engaged and went to the local pharmacy to speak to the manager.  The groom-to-be said, “Sir, we’d like to know, do you have Ace bandages here?”  “Yes, we do.”  “Do you have Tylenol PM?”  “Yes, we do.”  “Do you have ibuprofen and Ex-lax?”  And he just kept naming different health aids and treatments until finally the manager said, “Yes, we have all of those things.  Are you in need of them right now?”  To which the groom-to-be replied, “Well, we don’t need them right now.  But this woman here is my fiancée.  We’re getting married soon and we were just looking for a store where we could register for our wedding gifts.”

   So we learn to cope, we learn to adjust to our waning strength.  Some time ago I remember reading that champion cyclist Lance Armstrong can ride a bike 32-mph for an hour straight.  Strong healthy college students were tested and they were able to maintain that speed for only 45 seconds.  I could probably do it 20 seconds before I would want to throw up.  But he can do it for an entire hour, but only for an hour.  Then even his strength begins to wane and he has to rest.  Not so with God.  His strength never wanes.  He is strong forever.

   Think about God’s strength for a moment.  He never pauses to eat.  He never stops to ask the angels to take over.  He never says, “Let me just rest my eyes for a few minutes.”  He never calls in reinforcements to handle all the prayer requests that come his way.  Ps. 121:4 says: “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”  So my friends, if you need a strong hand to hold in your moments of weakness, if you need a tireless friend who never grows weary of listening to you, you’ll find it in this God whose strength never wanes.

   Another thing you’ll find in him is one whose truth never waivers.  Oh that we could say the same about ourselves, but we can’t.  How many of you have changed a conviction or two in your life?  How many of you had firm beliefs about how to raise children until you actually had children?  How many of you emphatically stated and even sent on to others what you thought was a truth because after all you received it in an e-mail, only to have to eat your words later on when you found out that it was just another one of those silly urban legends that gets passed around the internet all too easily and all too often?

   Though our convictions and our opinions and our words sometimes waiver or change, God’s never do.  Isaiah 40:8 says: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."  Ps. 119:89 says: “Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.”

   When I read that passage I was reminded of something that happened when Marilyn and I were serving our vicarage year down in Bradenton, Florida.  When we were there, there was a bridge that spanned Tampa Bay called the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.  It rose 250 feet above the surface of the water.  It was an architectural masterpiece.  But one stormy morning, as a barge was passing beneath it, the wind blew that barge into the pylons that held that bridge up and it collapsed, sending 46 people plummeting to their deaths. 

   My friends, you need never fear that God’s bridge of truth will collapse like that.  To be sure, throughout history there have been those who have tried to bring it down.  Atheists and agnostics, scholars and scientists have bumped against this bridge and bumped against this bridge, but it still stands firm.  And it always will because God’s truth never waivers.  So when God says as he does in Rom. 8 that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from his love, you can believe it.  When he says as he does in I John that the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us of all sin, you can take it to the bank.  When he says as he does in Acts 4 that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved, you can bet your eternity on it.

   Then the last thing we want to note about God’s unchanging nature today is that his love never weakens.  Sadly, our love does because we have a tendency to love other people based upon how they love us; how they treat us; what they’re going to do for us; what they’re going to give us.  Ours is a conditional love.  But God’s love is unconditional.  Because of that, one of the greatest pillars of truth that is found in the Bible is this: You cannot impact God’s love for you.  You can’t sin so much that his love for you grows weaker.  Nor can you be so good that his love for you grows stronger.  Do you understand that, my friends?  I hope so because what a profound sense of stability this truth can bring to your life. 

   Here’s how it works.  The love that sent Jesus to the manger is the same love that is going to help you manage your Monday.  The love that empowered Jesus to heal the sick and raise the dead is the same love that will be in charge of your Tuesday.  The love that caused Jesus to walk on water to the disciples in the midst of the storm is the same love that’s going to walk with you through your Wednesday.  The love that motivated Jesus to dine with sinners and associate with the underdogs of the world is going to accompany you through your Thursday.  The love that led Jesus to faithfully fulfill his earthly mission is going to faithfully follow you on your Friday.  The love that moved Jesus to be forsaken by his own Heavenly Father on that splintered Roman cross is the same love that is never going to forsake you on your Saturday.  And the love that defeated death for you on Easter morning is the same love that’s going to bring victory to your Sunday.

   Back in the days of Martin Luther, when the Bible was finally being published in the German language and made available to the common person, the daughter of a printer was given the task each day of sweeping up her father’s shop where the Bible was being printed.  She’d never read the Bible before because her family was not a religious family.  Her only understanding of God was that he was a God of anger, wrath, and judgment.  Consequently the only emotion she felt toward God was fear.  But one afternoon as she was sweeping, she picked up a small scrap of paper that had just a portion of John 3:16 written on it.  It said, “For God so loved the world that he gave.”  And it stopped there.  But that was enough.  She took it home and showed it to her mother and said, “Mother, look!  It says here, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave.’”  And the mother said, “But what did he give?”  The girl said, “I don’t know, but that he would give anything is enough to change me forever.”

   Well, we know what he gave, don’t we?  He gave us the greatest gift of all – his love in human form wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  I pray that that gift is enough to do for you what it did for that girl, to change you forever as you find in God this Christmas season what we’ve talked about today: a strength that never wanes, a truth that never waivers, and a love that never weakens.

Amen.