The Benedictus - summitdurango.org · Jeff Huber’s Sermon – First UMC Durango – December 20-21, 2014 Page 1 “The Benedictus” Theme: The First Carols of Christmas Scripture:

Jeff Huber’s Sermon – First UMC Durango – December 20-21, 2014 Page 1

“The Benedictus” Theme: The First Carols of Christmas Scripture: Luke 1:67-79 Things I’d like to remember from today’s sermon: _____________________________________________________________________________________________

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Meditation Moments for Monday, December 22 – Read Psalm 100:1-5 – The Common English Bible titles Psalm 100 "A psalm of thanks." The psalm began with a call to grateful worship in verses 1-3. We worship (verse 1) with celebration and shouts of joy (verse 2). Our Creator God is good, and we can trust him as sheep trust their shepherd (verse 3).

What is it about God that most moves you to worship? Is there a particular attribute or quality of God that

evokes thanks and worship in you?

Verse 5 said, "Because the Lord is good, his loyal love lasts forever; his faithfulness lasts generation after

generation." In what ways have you found God to be good, loyal, and faithful? How does trusting that God is

good, loyal, and faithful make a difference in your life today, and in the future?

Prayer: Lord God, thank you that you are good, loyal, and faithful. Help me trust your goodness as my ultimate source of joy. As I find my joy in you, help me share your life-giving joy with others. Amen.

Tuesday, December 23 – Read Luke 1:57-66 – Zechariah doubted the angel’s word that he and Elizabeth would have a son. When Zechariah wrote that they would name the baby John, as the angel instructed, he was able to speak again. Luke said “everyone throughout the Judean highlands talked about what had happened”—today we’d say there was “a lot of buzz” about John’s birth. The unusual birth and naming had people asking, “What then will this child be?

Jewish people often believed a child’s name forecast (in a sense, even prayed for) the kind of life the child

would live. Zechariah was a fine name—it meant “Yahweh [God] remembers.” The Hebrew for John is,

iehoḥanan, or, “Yahweh is gracious.” Has your name in any way shaped your life? What other influences

have done that?

To obey God, Zechariah gave up the privilege of naming his son after himself which was highly prized in

Jewish families. Following his father’s model, John accepted a ministry that was always meant to point to

someone greater, not to stand out on its own. What inner quality or qualities did it take for Zechariah and

John to live out God’s call without resentment or bitterness? How can you nurture those qualities in your

life?


Prayer: Dear God, you called Zechariah, you called John—and you’ve called me to a life of meaning and purpose. Guide my steps, and cast in me your gracious, powerful vision of how you want my life to unfold. Amen.

Wednesday, December 24 – Read Luke 1:67-75 – We saw last week that Mary’s Magnificat was not about her personal hopes or wishes, but on what God was doing through the child she would bear. Zechariah’s song struck a similar note. He first praised God, not for his own son, but for the child Mary would bear. God “has raised up a mighty savior for us in his servant David’s house … He has brought salvation … he has shown mercy,” Zechariah sang.

Through the prophet Nathan, God told King David, “The Lord will make a dynasty for you … I will raise up

your descendant—one of your very own children—to succeed you, and I will establish his kingdom. He will

build a temple for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever. I will be a father to him, and he

will be a son to me … Your dynasty and your kingdom will be secured forever before me.” (2 Samuel

7:11-16). At first that seemed to describe King Solomon—but history made it clear that no human king

could live up to this promise. The first Christians joyfully preached that, in Jesus, the promise came true,

and God had come as the eternal king of David’s line. What meaning does the phrase “Jesus is king of my

life” have for you? In what ways have you given Jesus authority to rule over you?

Prayer: King Jesus, rule over my life—thank you for bringing me salvation and showing me mercy. Empower me to give more and more of myself over to your authority, to live into my “child-of-God” self. Amen.

Thursday, December 25 – Read Luke 1:76-80 – The angel Gabriel had said John would “turn many people in Israel back to their God … herald God's arrival in the style and strength of Elijah …kindle devout understanding among hardened skeptics … get the people ready for God.” When John was born, Zechariah sang that John would proclaim, “The dawn from heaven will break upon us, to give light to those who are sitting in darkness.”

The imagery of light and darkness occurs over and over in the songs and stories about Jesus' birth. In what

ways has Jesus dispelled darkness by bringing light into your life? Are you willing to trust Jesus to touch

wounded parts of your life that still need the healing that comes from “the dawn from heaven”?

We read earlier that when people in the Judean hill country heard of the events around John’s birth, they

asked, “What will this child turn out to be?” Zechariah, who’d listened to the angel, knew about John’s

mission, as verse 76 showed. Who played John’s role in your life—who prepared the way for your faith,

and introduced you to Jesus?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, only you can bring heaven’s light into human hearts that are seeking to live beyond this world’s darkness. Use me, like John, to prepare the way for you in the lives of people I care about. Amen.

Friday, December 26 – Read Matthew 3:1-17 – John boldly preached, “Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” God worked through his preaching in powerful ways, and led many Israelites to baptism as a sign of turning around spiritually. Yet John always kept a clear sense of this role as forerunner to Jesus. Matthew wrote that he baptized Jesus, at the start of Jesus' public ministry, only after humbly saying, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?” (cf. also John 1:19-30).

In verse 2, the phrase “Change your hearts and lives” translates the single Greek word metanoietei. It’s

often translated just “repent,” but the Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew noted that the

word “does not mean simply ‘to be sorry about’ or ‘to regret,’ but rather involves a change of both


attitude (or heart) and of conduct.” In what ways has a change of attitude or heart showed itself in

changed conduct in your life?

Zechariah’s song said God “has brought salvation from our enemies…from the power of all those who hate

us” (Luke 1:71). John preached that the Messiah would, “clean out his threshing area and…burn the husks

with a fire that can’t be put out” (verse 17). That fit popular hopes for the Messiah. Yet Jesus didn’t attack

Israel’s enemies or “burn” (even verbally) those who were usually seen as the worst sinners. What do you

learn about Jesus as God-in-flesh when you realize that he was willing to disappoint even some of his most

faithful followers by showing love and mercy?

Prayer: O Lord, you call me to change my heart and life. You also call me to show love and mercy, not condemnation, to others you are calling into a changed life. Increase my insight into what it means to love as you love. Amen.

Saturday, December 27 – Read Luke 7:18-30 – While in prison, John sent messengers to ask if Jesus really was the awaited Messiah. Jesus answered with actions that matched Isaiah 61—actions quite different than John had predicted. But Jesus' heart went out to his brave forerunner, suffering in prison. To the crowd he strongly defended John: “What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. He is the one of whom it’s written: ‘Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you’ (Malachi 3:1). I tell you that no greater human being has ever been born than John. Yet whoever is least in God’s kingdom is greater than he” (verses 26-28).

Once, John the Baptist’s disciples said Jesus’ crowds were bigger than his. John said, “You yourselves can

testify that I said that I’m not the Christ but that I’m the one sent before him … He must increase and I

must decrease.” (John 3:28, 30) Have you ever found ego or desire for praise keeping you captive when

God wants to use you for some greater purpose? How can you find the same kind of freedom to serve

where needed that John found?

Prayer: Lord God, you came to give light to those who are sitting in darkness. When a hectic schedule, a difficult problem or an injustice darkens my world, fill me with your joy that doesn’t depend on circumstances. Amen.

Family Activity: An angel told Zechariah and Elizabeth to name their son John, even though this name did not make sense to others. Being called by name is important to everyone. Our names help us feel cared for and valued. Notice the people around you. Do you know the name of your mail carrier? School crossing guard? Custodian at work or school? As a family, take time to learn the names of those who serve you every day. You can share God’s peace and love by introducing yourself and telling them how much you appreciate their hard work. Also, tell them you are praying for them.


Theme: The First Carols of Christmas “The Benedictus”

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber December 20-21, 2014 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

Luke 1:67-79

67 Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy: 68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people. 69 He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of his servant David, 70 just as he promised through his holy prophets long ago. 71 Now we will be saved from our enemies and from all who hate us. 72 He has been merciful to our ancestors by remembering his sacred covenant—73 the covenant he swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham. 74 We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live.

76 “And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. 77 You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. 78 Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.”

VIDEO The Benedictus – Sermon Starter

SLIDE The Benedictus

Today we continue in a series of sermons we been doing on the first carols of Christmas in which we are looking at the songs which were sung by the characters surrounding the Christmas story as recorded in the gospel of Luke. These songs are canticles and words of praise and Thanksgiving and they were in many ways the first Christmas carols because they most likely were sung by those in the early church and maybe even by those who originally spoke them. They were probably the first hymns sung by Christians and today we focus on the Benedictus which is the Latin word for blessed.

SLIDE Benedictus = blessed


This song is based on the words on the lips of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. Zechariah was a priest and his wife Elizabeth had given birth to a child and they were in their older years, having never had a child before. They believed they would never have a child and then miraculously they conceived the boy who would be the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth. You might remember that when Zechariah found out that his wife was pregnant, he didn’t believe it and so he was unable to speak until the boy was born. When John is born, Zechariah begins to prophesy over the child and over the unborn child of his niece Mary. Of course you know that unborn child who was born six months later would be known as Jesus the Christ.

I would like to invite you to take out of your bulletin your Message Notes and your Meditation Moments. You will find the Scripture listed for today at the very top and then below that some blank space for you to write something down that you might like to try and remember from today’s message. We want to encourage you to read the Bible on your own this week, especially as we move through Christmas and so you will find daily Scripture readings with questions for reflection.

I had planned for today a sermon that would simply walk through this text but this week I found myself caught up in reading about what happened to the children in Pakistan who were gunned down at the school. I was reminded of what happened two years ago this very same week in Connecticut when 20 children and six teachers and faculty members and the gunmen himself were dead just before the Christmas holiday. In many ways, this passage speaks powerfully to these kinds of events, especially the last sentence.

SLIDE 67 Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy: 68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people. 69 He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of his servant David, 70 just as he promised through his holy prophets long ago. 71 Now we will be saved from our enemies and from all who hate us. 72 He has been merciful to our ancestors by remembering his sacred covenant—73 the covenant he swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham. 74 We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness for as long as we live.


76 “And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. 77 You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins.

Would you read that last sentence with me?

SLIDE 78 Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.”

This idea of light and darkness is one of the main themes of Advent, the season that we use to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ into our world.

At the same time our world was grappling with the fact that 120 children were killed by a radical Islamic sect in Pakistan, the community in Connecticut where Adam Lanza’s home is located was debating about whether or not to tear down the home or sell it or do something else. You might remember that two years ago this week Adam Lanza killed his mother at their home and then proceeded to Sandy Brook elementary school where he entered the building, killing several adults and then opening fire on children in classrooms, most of them six or seven years old, before killing himself. As he watched the events unfold in Pakistan or here at home we have questions that we grapple with and feelings that come welling up inside of us. We are in horror and shock and disbelief and we shed tears. That gives way to anger and some of us even have feelings of hatred toward those who would do such atrocious things to children.

Some of us begin to feel despair because the world doesn’t feel like it’s a safe place, especially for our children. These are all natural feelings that we have which come up in response to circumstances like these. That’s why want to make sure we take some time during this Christmas season to think about these sorts of things because they happen and while it would be nice if we could just close her eyes and it would go away, they won’t.

We struggle with the incongruently of events like we’ve seen in the news this past week and the story we read in Scripture this season about the birth of a Savior. Somehow, these two themes seem inconsistent with each other. The truth is that Jesus was born into moments like this when we think about the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem shortly after Jesus was born. I would argue that the Christmas story is critical to listen to in moments like these and in light of what happened during this past week in Pakistan and two years ago in Connecticut and


in many other places throughout the world on a daily basis where children perish because of the brokenness in our world.

When a tragedy like this happens, it’s normal for those of us especially with small children, to wonder about safety. Are my children safe at school anymore? You would think the one place they kids would be safe would be at school and yet events unfold on the world stage and here in our nation and we wonder. Our children see the news and they wonder if it’s safe to go to school anymore when these kinds of horrible things happen. Anytime a serious and traumatic tragedy happens in our world, our world is shaken and we have a sense of not feeling safe. In the moments where I have been through tragedies in my life or with other people, it’s almost as if an earthquake is happened in the ground is no longer safe. We live with some uncertainty and wonder when the world is going to shake again. The closer you are to the tragedy, the more you feel that way.

We will move beyond the feelings that we’ve had this past week quicker than those who live in Connecticut and they will move through those feelings quicker than those who live in the regions of Pakistan affected by the kind of violence that we saw this last week. While it’s not a good thing that we have children being killed in public schools, it is still one of the safest places for our children to be. Schools are overwhelmingly safe places for our children to be. Most recent public school shooting happened in Portland, Oregon and in light of that and what happened in Pakistan you may have read that there have been 7 violent shootings in public places in the last 12 months. We read that Sony pictures canceled the release of a film in movie theaters about the dictator in North Korea because of fear of violence around those theaters in that movie being released. We begin to think that no place is safe when we start seeing things at the beginning of the movies which says, “If you see any suspicious behavior, please report it to staff here at the theater.”

We begin to wonder if anyplace is safe anymore. I find anger welling up inside of me when I see things like this and I want somebody to blame. I thought about the culture of violence that we live in and how our children grow up playing violent video games and seeing violence on television. I begin thinking about guns and gun control and then I saw a bumper sticker here in town which said, “Gun control means using two hands.”

I find myself getting worked up about all of that but then you look at the


facts and you see that over the last 20 years, violent crime has actually come down each year. It peaked in 1991 but this year the number of homicides in the United States is down almost 50% from where was in 1991, despite this public violence that we continually read about on the 24 hour news cycle. I say that simply to remind us that when we feel unsafe, it’s helpful to know the world is not as unsafe as it feels right now, and our schools are not as unsafe as they feel right now. Yes there is violence and yes we need to figure out how to deal with it and combat it at some point, but let’s not let the constant barrage of media get a hold of our emotions to the point where we forget the facts.

One of the things that we struggle most with during times like these was reflected by one of the families they interviewed who lost two children in the school in Pakistan. They simply kept mumbling a question that many of us feel, “Why?” We are desperate to find out information as to why and so now there are newspaper columns and editorials talking about the politics behind why this happened. When we read about the latest shooting in a school or public place we want to know, “Why?” The trial is set to begin for the young man who opened fire in the movie theater in Aurora two years ago and many people keep saying they will be glad when they can finally get answers as to, “Why? Why did he do this? What was he thinking? Could somebody have prevented this?”

What I find interesting is that we may find out the answer as to why those gunmen went in that school in Pakistan and why that young man went into the movie theater in Aurora and why that young man went into a school in Newtown, but I’m not sure we will be satisfied with the answer. Will we feel better knowing the answer? You see we might find out the answers but they won’t make sense to us and then we will just have more questions. There really is no appropriate answer to the question, “Why would you kill 120 innocent children? Why would you kill 20 innocent children? Why would you kill one innocent child?”

Where they mentally ill? Did they have a political motivation? Were their own children or families killed and was this retaliation? Even when we get the answers to these questions, I’m not certain they are going to satisfy. What I do know is that each one of these shooters gave into darkness and evil. We have this picture of darkness and light in Zechariah’s song and we see in our world what happens when people give in to that darkness. These persons consciously chose to do these acts of violence and murder that somehow made sense to them using some sort of twisted logic. They gave into the darkness.


We began this year with a sermon series on the line between good and evil and part of what we recognized is that the line between good and evil, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, cuts through the heart of every human being. The truth is that all of us make decisions every day in which we have to choose if we will do good or not this last week a group of Islamic militants made conscious decisions to choose the wrong for whatever reasons we can’t fully understand.

Most of us don’t struggle with decisions as catastrophic as the ones that these militants made, but all of us wrestle with the darkness and the light in the struggle between them. Every day I decide whether I’m going to say something which hurts someone or not. Every day I decide whether I am going to try to seek revenge or show mercy. Every day I decide whether I will act selfishly or selflessly. Every single day the thoughts in my mind and the words that come out of my mouth and the actions that I take are about wrestling whether to give into the darkness or pursue the light. I suggest that all of us wrestle with these questions every day such as faithfulness or infidelity, kindness or cruelty, getting even or letting go, retribution or forgiveness.

This is our epic battle as human beings, between light and darkness, good and evil and every one of us struggles with it. It’s why we go and see movies during the Christmas season like The Hobbit Trilogy or Lord of the Rings. We have several hundred of you here in worship this weekend and I wonder how many of us sitting here in worship might struggle with hate from something in the past or with such pain that we’ve thought so many times about how we would get revenge if we could. We struggle with anger which lashes out at any given moment.

The struggle between light and darkness affects us at different levels but we all are subject to the pain of what it means to be human. All of us have anger or hate or hurt that takes over at times. We fantasize about what it will look like if we do this thing and give into the darkness and if you ever struggle with this I hope you will talk to somebody or call us here the church and let us know that you need somebody to talk to about this struggle between light and darkness. Talk to one of our Stephen Ministers or call us on our Congregational Care Phone but reach out to somebody because we want to help you not to give into the darkness.

Here is one thing I can promise you. As much as you might feel the


temporary relief when you give in to the darkness and it promises to make things feel better and make the pain go away or that you will be vindicated somehow, is just not true. All of those are lies. The devil is an expert at lying to you and getting you to believe that the outrageous make sense in the moment. We have to choose to not listen to that voice. We need to find somebody who will help us see things more accurately because we make these choices in the darkness and then after words we realize that choice doesn’t bring us satisfaction but brings pain. Eventually we end up living with shame or guilt and then we can’t even carry that any longer and the darkness leads us to a place of taking our own lives.

So if you are wrestling with these dark thoughts, especially during this Christmas season, please reach out to us. We have counselors and grief therapists and others who would love to come alongside of you and help you see the light in the midst of the darkness, but don’t give in to that darkness because the darkness is a lie and it never works out the way you think it will.

Often, when people asked the question, “why,” they are asking a theological question. We want to know how we can reconcile a God of love and grace and mercy with this evil and horrible thing that happened. That becomes especially challenging for nonbelievers who hear Christians say things like, “It must’ve been the will of God. It must be part of God’s plan. Everything happens for a reason.” I’m guessing that most of us have said those statements in the past and we have to be careful we do that. When we say that, “Everything happens for a reason,” the implication is that there is a grand plan behind this tragic event and if there is a grand plan then God wanted these Islamic militants to go and shoot 120 children. If you actually go down that road you come to a place where you realize that can’t be right. We need to be careful what we say and how we say it during moments like these, because the reason that this happened has something to do with what was going on in the heads of some very delusional radical militants.

We find very clearly in the Scripture that God abhors violence towards children. God was angry with some of the Israelites would sacrifice their own children to the pagan gods or even to him because they thought that’s what God wanted. Jesus says that it is better for someone to have a millstone tied around their neck and then cast into the sea than to lead one of these little children astray or harm them in any way. It is never God’s will or part of God’s plan for children to be violently killed while they are at school. God actually had plans for


each of those children and dreams. I think back to the great passage in Jeremiah 29:11 where God says to the prophet.

SLIDE 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

God has that kind of plan for every child. How does God look at these moments? I have always believed that God loves my children more than I do and they belonged to God before they belong to me. If God loves these children who perish in acts of violence like this more than their parents, then how do you think God responds or feels or experiences the murder of more than 120 of his little babies? Even if you have adult children I know that many of you would lay down your lives for them so how do you think that God felt about the teachers and school leaders who perish in the shootings trying to protect those children?

Last year about this time there was a school shooting at Arapahoe High School which is where my brothers and sisters went to school. The anniversary of that shooting was this past week also and the father of the shooter finally placed an obituary in the newspaper and there were many people who are outraged. We don’t often count that person who pulled the trigger as a victim but there is apparent who still lost a child. If one of your children did something horrible like this, what are you feeling then? There still your child and you are probably horrified at what your child did and you’re broken and you don’t understand, much like the general public.

I believe God weeps over these moments. I believe that God is angered when his people treat each other this way because the plans of God and the dreams of God are shattered, just like they are for us.

But God does stand at a slightly different perspective than earthly parents, because at the moment of their deaths, God reaches out his arms and says, “Little one, come here. You are safe in my arms and will experience eternal light. It’s going to be okay. I have you.”

Of course the question we really want to ask is, “Why didn’t God stop it?” We know that God didn’t cause it and didn’t want to happen, but why doesn’t God stop it because God is all-powerful? I have asked that question 1 million times and spent many moments with some of you wrestling with that question and here’s the only answer I come up with. The fundamental theme that runs


throughout the Bible is that God created us in his image and he gave us choice. In the Garden of Eden we find the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and God says to the first humans, “Don’t eat of this tree, because the day that you do, bad things will happen. You can eat anything else you want in the garden, just a way from that tree, because if you don’t then death will come in the world and there will be brokenness and pain.”

Why did God put the tree there anyway? Why not leave the tree out of the garden altogether? That story is meant to point to an important truth of what it means to be human, which is that we always have the choice as to whether we are going to do the right or the wrong. We can be people of mercy or people who are merciless. We can serve ourselves or serve others. We always have the choice to either love or hate. This is what it means to be human and it is both horrifying and awesome at the same time. There is potential and possibilities and responsibilities which come with that freedom which makes us human beings. Every day we have a chance to decide how we respond to the things that happen in our lives. The truth is that we are willing to fight and die for those freedoms. I think of the Korean War Memorial and Washington DC which has a haunting picture of the soldier walking to the field in the wintertime. On the granite we see these words.

GRAPHIC 1 “Freedom Is Not Free”

We’ve all said that we would die for our freedom. Do we want God to take it away? Do we want God to say, “I’ll give you freedom, but only to a point? The moment you start to do something wrong I’m going to stop you. You only have the freedom to do what I want you to do.” That doesn’t sound like freedom to me and I’m pretty sure most of you would want that either.

God did this amazing and terrifying thing by giving us the freedom, which allows us to rebel against him and thwart his plans. God will not take that freedom away. It comes with awesome responsibility and horrifying consequences when it’s misused. But it also comes with beautiful possibilities. All of those things come with the freedom that God has given to us. We have to decide how we want to exercise that freedom. You know that we make these decisions every day like whether to gossip or not to gossip. Will we honk our horn or not honk our horn? Will we drink too many drinks and get in the car and drive or not? We multiply that out and we see people with the ability to do terrorist


acts and pick up a gun and go to a school and it’s a part of our human story that is terrifying and challenging to figure out what to do with.

God grieves and God weeps and God begs us to do the right thing. God shows us in the Scriptures and God leads us by his Holy Spirit. In the end, God sent his son to be the light that would guide our feet into the path of peace but we have to, somewhere along the way, decide to walk in that path of light or we end up walking in the darkness. This is our daily struggle. We walk in the light or will we walk in the darkness? This is what it means to be human and free.

It’s God’s power working through us in which we become the instruments to defeat evil and to shine light in the darkness. We either add fuel to the fire or we put water on the flames of evil and we put it out depending on how we choose to follow God’s call. We’ve talked the last few weeks about the characteristics that the Christmas story tells us we should be full of as people of faith who long to follow Jesus Christ. These are the things by which evil is defeated.

Two weeks ago we talked about how God chooses and uses people who are graceful. Last week we talked about how God looks for people to be merciful, those who have compassion and care for people who are broken and in need. In these ways, by being people of grace and mercy, we defeat evil. The ultimate defeat of evil come through the power of love and this is what the Scripture talks about time and again in the New Testament. Sacrificial, selfless love is what defeat evil and we find this being delivered on Christmas.

When we read about events like school shootings, whether they happen in Newtown Connecticut or in the Denver area or in Pakistan, it feels like evil has won. If you talk about those evil acts and you personify then we talk about the devil and it looks like the devil is winning when we see things on the daily news that seem horrifying. It seems like evil and darkness have the upper hand in the devil is laughing in those moments, watching humanity destroy itself.

But what frustrates the devil and is absolutely true, is that out of the darkness, always comes 1000 acts of light. Every time it looks like darkness has one you will find it overwhelmed and smothered by light. While we experience intense pain in the days after a tragedy, healing will begin to happen as people respond and reach out. The world will begin to look like the kingdom of God in places like Connecticut and Aurora and Pakistan and wherever there is tragedy


when people begin to set aside their differences and surround each other with love. We carry each other through these moments and in this way, and 1000 little tiny pricks of light, evil is defeated and the darkness is overcome just at the moment when evil thought it had the victory. That’s how it always works.

One of my favorite singer songwriters is David Wilcox and in one of my favorite songs of all time, “Show the Way,” he expresses this beautifully.

You say you see no hope You say you see no reason we should dream That the world would ever change You're saying love is foolish to believe 'Cause there'll always be some crazy With an army or a knife To wake you from your day dream Put the fear back in your life Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify What's stronger than hate Would they not arrange the stage To look as if the hero came too late? He's almost in defeat It's looking like the evil side will win So on the edge of every seat From the moment that the whole thing begins, it is Love who makes the mortar And it's love who stacked these stones And it's love who made the stage here Although it looks like we're alone In this scene set in shadows Like the night is here to stay There is evil cast around us But it's love that wrote the play


For in this darkness love can show the way

We know this is true. It’s why we need Christmas. It’s why we’ll go see movies like this on Christmas.

VIDEO Unbroken Movie Trailer

I don’t get excited about too many films, but I can’t wait to see this one. It’s based on the true story of Louis Zamperini. Louis got to see the film just before he died earlier this year and his son Luke shared:

GRAPHIC 2 Louis Zamperini

What my father was most pleased about, though, is how Angelina handled the subject of his Christian faith. Dad, you see, survived the horrors of war physically unbroken, but returned to the states emotionally shattered. Suffering from PTSD, he tried to kill the pain with alcohol and was consumed by visions of murdering his chief Japanese tormentor, a sadistic man nicknamed “The Bird”by inmates. It was only when, at the urging of my mother, he attended a Billy Graham crusade in 1949 and surrendered his life to Jesus Christ that my father truly became unbroken. The nightmares stopped. So did the drinking. And he dedicated the rest of his life to serving others –especially wayward kids, through the establishment of his non-profit organization, Victory Boys Camp Inc.

The film version of UNBROKEN does not spend a lot of screen time on his Christian conversion –detailing it in a series of text cards before the closing credits. And that is exactly the way my Dad and our entire family wanted it. As he said in his autobiography, DEVIL AT MY HEELS, “The great commandment is that we preach the gospel to every creature, but neither God nor the Bible says anything about forcing it down people’s throats.”

UNBROKEN tells my Dad’s story the way he told it: chronicling all he lived through so that what he did after becoming a Christian –forgiving his captors –would have the most resonance with audiences of all faiths, and no faith at all. I’ve talked to many people all across the country who have screened the film in advance, most of whom haven’t read Hillenbrand’s book and many of whom are not Christians, and their most common question to me is, “After all he went through, how was Louie able to forgive those guards who beat him so mercilessly?” Dad got those same questions, thousands of times over five decades plus, and he used them as an opportunity to explain how Jesus had removed the


hate from his heart. Who knows how many people –hardened to the things of God –pondered his answer and now find themselves sharing heaven with my father because of it?

That was his greatest hope for the film version of UNBROKEN: not that it would be applauded by fellow Christians, although he certainly would have been honored and humbled by their appreciation; but that it would be seen by non-Christians drawn to a rousing epic about the indomitable human spirit who, when the credits have finished rolling, might just discover there’s a whole lot more to his story than that.

His story reminds me of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King while he sat in the prison cell.

GRAPHIC 3 Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.

Hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. We have to hate these kinds of acts, when humans destroy humanity, but we can’t give into hate for others. We can be confused and angry and we might actually feel hate inside, that we don’t give in to that hate in the end because hate is not how we have the victory in our lives. Hate only ends up ruining us and evil ends up winning when we come to harbor hate in our own hearts. That’s what Dr. King was saying and that’s what Louis Zamperini learned and that’s what Jesus taught and that’s what Zechariah prophesied in his song.

Every day we choose good over evil, love over hate. It is a choice that we make to walk in the light, which leads us back to the Scripture passage we have today and the feelings we often have around Christmas. I read an article this week that a number of the families who lost children in the school shooting in Pakistan were Christians, which is not easy to do in a predominantly Muslim country. I think about the parents who lost children in the shootings in Connecticut two years ago who took down the Christmas decorations because it just felt empty.

For many of you sitting here today, it may feel like Christmas is the cruel hoax because it seems like Christmas is meant to be about all of these things that we are not experiencing in our lives right now. Part of the problem is that our definition of Christmas and how we understand it doesn’t come so much from the


Gospels of Matthew and Luke but from people like Andy Williams, Julie Andrews and Bing Crosby and all the Christmas Carol that we sing this time of year. In our minds Christmas is supposed to be like this,

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year. With kids jingle belling and everyone telling you be of good cheer. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the hap, happiest season of all; with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings, when friends come to call; it’s the hap, happiest season of all.”

For some of you, it is like that, and there are often moments like that during the Christmas season. But there are a whole lot of people for whom this doesn’t feel like the happiest season this time of year. There are people who are unemployed and people have lost a loved one, some of them recently. Some are walking through depression. When you are walking through darkness this doesn’t feel like the most wonderful time of the year or the most happiest season of all. Life doesn’t always line up with our experience of Christmas.

It’s not just the songs, but also the images that we have the go way back, like this image from Norman Rockwell. This is a picture of the happy holiday.

GRAPHIC 4 Norman Rockwell Christmas Dinner

You look at this image and the turkey is perfect and everybody is smiling and their hair looks great. It’s just perfect. Everybody is happy and has just the right mood. Yet, hardly any of our Christmases actually look like this. Norman Rockwell tends to get a bad rap because we think of him as drawing these idealist paintings and never really happened. Occasionally however, he was a realist. You see this in this next picture which is what Christmas actually looks like for most people.

GRAPHIC 5 Norman Rockwell Christmas Mom

Christmas for many of us looks more like the second picture and less like the first picture. Again, our picture of Christmas doesn’t always match our experience. I know some people who have told me they are not putting up Christmas decorations this year because of a tragedy or a tough time it’s going on in the life of their family.

Let me try to give us a corrective in our thinking about Christmas. If December where the happiest time of the year and the world really looked like


the first Norman Rockwell painting, then we really don’t even need Christmas. We don’t need a light to dawn upon us if it’s light all the time. We don’t need a Savior if were not trouble. We don’t need hope if we are never walking through the valley of the shadow of death. That first Christmas was not about how the world was so happy and Jesus came to celebrate with us. Christmas is about the fact that the world is messed up and Jesus came to give us hope and to shine a light in the midst of the darkness. Jesus came to give us life that was rich and meaningful in the midst of the hurt and the pain.

When the Christmas story is happening, Zechariah offers us this beautiful, prophetic word about what God is going to do. The life experience of Zechariah was not about happiness all the time. Life is not like that in first century Palestine. In that first century, the Romans were the occupying force and there were soldiers in every village and town. Their tax collectors extracted massive amounts of money from people who were already poor as dirt. We complain about a 50% tax bracket in the US for the wealthiest and yet in the first century literally everybody had a tax rate of 80 to 90%. On top of that, you had King Herod ruled with the authority of the Roman army and was a megalomaniac. He was paranoid and loved to put people in the slavery who couldn’t pay any taxes so you have workers. He built massive building projects which were paid for by those taxes and by the people he enslaved who couldn’t pay their taxes. Most of the people who lived in this region during this time had nothing. This is the world in which the people lived and in which the first Christmas happened.

Remember that right after Jesus was born, King Herod who was paranoid sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill every child that was under two years old trying to keep himself in power and kill any would be Messiah. The sounds not so different from the world we experienced this week as we watched families grieve children who were slaughtered in their school, innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shortly after Jesus was born, Herod died and the people rebelled against the Romans. They were so tired of being oppressed when they rose up, the Roman Emperor sent a Legion from Syria into the Galilee into a town I taught you about a couple of weeks ago, Sepherus. It’s a town that is just a few miles from Nazareth and was beautiful and had about 35,000 people. The Romans literally raised every building in that town and burned everything to the ground. They killed many of them on the spot. They took thousands back to Rome as slaves.


They took 2000 of the rebels from that community near the Galilee and marched them 10 days down to Jerusalem. They constructed 2000 crosses and on one day they crucified 2000 Jews, surrounding the city of Jerusalem so the people of Jerusalem would learn a lesson about what happens to those who resist Rome.

Does that sound like the most wonderful time of the year? Into that world, Zechariah things that God is about to do something great. Let’s remember these words which are the last line of the Benedictus.

SLIDE 78 Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.”

Christmas is God’s response to the brokenness and pain of this world. It is our hope when we are walking through the holiday blues. It is what gives us strength when we feel weak and alone. Christmas is God’s answer to the cruelty and the oppression and the horrible things that we sometimes do to one another. It is God’s way of dispelling the darkness and bringing light into our world. We need Christmas and I’m hoping and praying that people in Connecticut and Denver in Pakistan and Portland who might be taking down the decorations, might at least leave up their nativity scenes. We need light and they need light now more than ever.

Pastor Tom Arndt was just out of seminary and was serving a church and Charleston, South Carolina. It was a small church and one of the older members was named Ruth. She was a bright spot in that church. Tom would stand out in the greeting area as people left church and more people would go and talk to Ruth then would talk to him as the pastor. They always made their way to see Ruth and she always had a smile on her face. She was always encouraging and a bit of sunshine in the entrance to the church. After people spent time with Ruth they always felt better as they went away.

After watching this week after week, Tom decided he needed to know her story. He sat down with her and said, “Ruth, please tell me your story. You are an amazing person that seems filled with joy and you share with others. Would you please tell me your story and how it is you came to be this way?”

Ruth said, “I will tell you one part of my story and it’s the part that is shaped every other part of my life. I married my husband Ryan and we had three boys. We had a wonderful life and my husband had a passion for sailing. He would


take the boys out on sailboats and by the time they were in middle school, they all knew how to run the sailboat. They were outstanding sailors and enjoyed being on the boat together.”

“When my middle son Philip graduated from college, he decided to take three of his buddies out to sea on the sailboat. They did notice the storm that was brewing. It was four days before he found the boat and we never found their bodies.”

Tom asked a silly question that really showed how young he was in ministry, “Ruth, you seem so filled with joy. How did you ever get over this loss?”

Ruth smiled knowingly and said, “Mothers never get over that kind of loss. We carry it with us always. I will tell you that when I was in the Valley of the shadow of death, I learned something. Every day the sadness is waiting. I don’t know if it will come with the coffee or the paper. I don’t know if it would speak to me in the grocery store or penetrate my dreams. But every day I prayed, ‘God, don’t let the sadness win.’ It took me a long time but I began to see that everyone has sadness in their life at some point. Everyone knows the dark night of the soul. Everyone knows heartbreak and heartache. I know what that’s like and God has taught me how to speak a little bit of joy into the world, even when it’s dark.”

“I began to pray more than ever, ‘God use me to push back the darkness and the sadness and other people’s lives.’ That’s my ministry now. I still pray on a regular basis, ‘God, don’t let the sadness win. Let me push back the sadness not only in my own life but in the lives of everyone that I meet.’”

She concluded with these words, “Tom, I’m not a bright woman. I’m not particularly talented. But I do know how to smile. I can often bring a smile out of someone else. I know it’s not much, but it’s my ministry. It’s what I do to push back the darkness on a daily basis.”

Ruth makes a choice to be that light in the darkness and God helps her to do that each day to push back the darkness.

There are really two different ways to look at the darkness. First, we can see it is evil as we see horrible tragedies unfold in the world around us. We talked first in this sermon about how we make a choice every day to not give in to that darkness. We all have a choice every day as we hear that whisper of the dark side, telling us that it’s going to win. So we choose every day whether we want to walk


in the light or walk in the darkness. We can give in to the darkness or we can fight and push back the darkness with the light.

We also talked about the darkness as sadness, sorrow and grief. That darkness can feel despairing and hopeless. Even in the midst of those moments, Christ is the light and Christmas is about bringing light into that darkness. We can make a conscious decision, even here in the midst of the Christmas season and in the midst of our grief and sadness, to trust in that light and ask God to help us push back that darkness.

There are 700+ people who will hear this sermon this weekend. I think all of us are called to leave this place and push back the darkness. I pray that you will hear that word, that hope and that good news from Zechariah’s song today. Let’s pray

SLIDE Prayer

God, we pray once more for the people of Pakistan and all across this country who are grieving today the loss of their loved ones. We pray that you would surround them with love and care, with people who will cover them with love and grace and mercy. We pray that your light which shines in the midst of the darkest places this Christmas season. We pray that all of us would remember the meaning of Christmas and find in you our hope, our strength, our Savior and our redeemer.

We pray that you would help us every day in our own lives to push back the darkness when we hear the whispers of the evil one. When we have a tendency to do the things that will bring pain and not blessing, help us to remember the light. Help us to walk in the light as you are in that light. In those times when we feel darkness surrounding us; when there is despair, sorrow or pain overwhelming us, help us to remember Christmas. Help us to remember the one who is the breaking Dawn and who illuminates the shadow of death.

Help us to trust in you and find hope in you that we might push back the darkness. We pray these things in your holy name. Amen

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The Benedictus - summitdurango.org · Jeff Huber’s Sermon – First UMC Durango – December 20-21, 2014 Page 1 “The Benedictus” Theme: The First Carols of Christmas Scripture: