Hebrews 1:1-6, 2:14-18, John 20:10-18 "It's Jesus" Scott Hoezee

In the past couple months I've had some dreams about my first day back in Calvin's pulpit after four months away. A couple of times I dreamed that I was back here but it was two or three weeks earlier than planned. Those weren't nightmares exactly but I did awake feeling pretty protective of the time remaining on my sabbatical! The dreams that were somewhat nightmare-like were the typical scary dreams pastors have all the time: I was back here on the right Sunday and all but I had completely forgotten to write a Christmas sermon! I realized everyone was expecting me to dish up a delicious homiletical main course after sixteen weeks of study and reflection, but for some reason in these dreams I showed up here with nothing in hand, nothing with which to feed you.

As I said, such dreams are not unusual for preachers. But I suspect these dreams came in part because of a comment someone made to me on August 27 at the farewell reception you gave Rosemary and me. Someone came up to me and said, "You know, that Sunday you get back here after all that time away: that had better be one good sermon!" Not to put too fine a point on it but such words do tend to stick in one's mind like a sharp needle.

What comforts me, however, is that this day of all days is not about me. Christmas is not first of all about any of you, either. Nor does Christmas have much to do with whether tonight's candlelight service succeeds in generating a level of emotion which we deem appropriate for this "magical" season. Listen: Christmas is about a person. Christmas is about a very real person named Jesus. Now that may seem so merely obvious as scarcely to warrant a moment's attention, much less an entire sermon's worth of attention. But if Christmas is about a person, then we would do well to wonder what that means.

What does it mean to assert that Christmas is about a person? Well, it means a bevy of things. It means that our faith, our hope, and our joy are anchored to history. If Christmas is about a real person, then that necessarily refers us to actual events in the actual history of this world. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about George Washington, Julius Caesar, or Mother Teresa of Calcutta, when it's a real person who is occupying your thoughts, you are forced to deal also with the specific time during which that person lived.

When a character is not real, you can move him or her around history at will. So, for instance, when the "Superman" comic books first came out in the 1930s, Superman was said to have landed in Kansas sometime in the early twentieth century so that by the time of the Great Depression--a time when people needed heroes--the Man of Steel was an adult who could do his superhero work during that difficult time. But when they made a full-length movie about Superman in 1978, the writers moved the time of his arrival from Krypton to the 1950s so that he would be an adult in the 1970s and could chase errant nuclear missiles.

When a character is not real, it doesn't matter when he or she is said to live--what the character stands for will work most any time. But that's not true for real people. You can't re-tell the story of George Washington but turn him into a twenty-first century figure. Washington must stay in the eighteenth century or else there is no story about him to tell! So also with Christmas: what we are celebrating has a definite spot on the chronological time line of the planet. The story of Jesus is not some eternal truth or symbol which would have meaning whether or not it ever really happened. Jesus is too real, too specific for that.

But it means more. Because if Christmas is about a real person, then that means Christmas is personal in the sense that we meet up with Someone. As we all know, every person we've ever met was a definite, distinct, unique individual. If you get to know someone, you may like this person, dislike him or her, or you may even fall in love. But what you always know for sure is that you've met someone who is unmistakably real. What's more, we know that people are wonderfully complex. So what goes into your finally liking, disliking, or loving a person is not just this or that one thing. No, our assessments of people are always comprised of a host of complex, inter-related characteristics and features.

Because of that you cannot always put your finger on just why you like or dislike someone. Who among us, when trying to describe someone we love, can ever fully succeed in identifying precisely what it is about so-and-so that attracts us? Oh, you may be able to list a few traits you appreciate: "I love the way she laughs. She's considerate. He's easy to be with. She's so funny! He's real thoughtful and gentle." Now all of those things may be true but no one of them explains the whole of why you love this person. That's why even people who don't know French often resort to a wonderful little French phrase. "I can't really tell you why I like him so much as a friend. It's just that he has a certain je ne sais quois," which is French for "I know not what."

Real people are undeniably unique. Once you get to know a certain person, your attraction to and friendship with her may indeed finally be a kind of je ne sais quois but the fact is that you would know this person anywhere. There's no mistaking him, there's no missing her. In and through that myriad of factors that goes into making a person a person we discover a personality. People are like snowflakes: there are no two alike.

Among the many things I learned about this fall when reading in the area of science is the staggering complexity of the human brain. Scientists estimate that the total number of atoms in the entire known universe is about 10¹⁸ atoms. That is the number 10 with eighteen zeroes behind it. But inside every single cranium in this sanctuary is a brain with trillions of neurons. When you tote up the total number of possible ways of connecting and inter-connecting those neurons, you end up with a total of something like 10¹⁵ and some even think it is pretty close to 10¹⁸ possible ways of configuring your brain! In other words, the number of possibilities for human uniqueness within your brain approaches the number of atoms in the entire cosmos! No two brains patterns are alike. So once we get to know the pattern of someone, we'd recognize that pattern, we'd know and love that person, anywhere.

Listen: Christmas is about a person. Jesus is a certain Somebody. He's not a generic spirit of kindness and generosity. He's not some overarching essence that you can "catch" the way old man Scrooge gets into "the Christmas spirit" in the famed Charles Dickens story. He's not some community ambiance that can make the Grinch's heart grow five times bigger and he's not a holiday glow. He's a person. Would you ever describe your mother by saying no more than, "Ah yes, my mother. You know, when I think of her, I immediately am led to reflect on the definition of maternity." If someone asked, "What was your mother like?" would you reply, "The epitome of all that stands for the maternal spirit"? Of course not! You'd get very specific very fast. You'd describe her kind eyes, the way she sparkled whenever she got to play hostess to some guests, the gentle way she used to kiss your skinned knees. You would not talk about motherhood you'd talk about Mom!

You would be specific because that is the way we talk whenever there is a real person as the focus of our attention. And if you really know someone, you would never confuse him or her with anyone else. Of course we've all had the experience of being at Woodland Mall and walking up behind someone whom we are just sure is Jane. So we tap her on the shoulder only to have to say, "Oops, sorry. Thought you were someone else." That happens. But such a mistake would not happen after spending an hour or two chatting with Jane over coffee at Kava House. Unless you are a few pine nuts short of a good pesto, you would not, half-way through a coffee date, suddenly have to say to your good friend, "Oh, sorry. Here we've been sitting here for an hour and all along I thought you were somebody else!" No, no, when you know someone, then there is no mistaking him or her for anyone else past, present, or future. The more you know someone, the less he or she seems like anyone else.

Christmas is about a person--a singular, unique, blessedly irreplaceable Somebody. As Hebrews 1 makes clear, the person we're thinking about is ultimately the very Son of God: eternal, glorious, as far superior to angels and also to us as can be imagined. But as Hebrews 2 points out, since it was human persons he came to save, the Son of God became a very definite human person, too: one named Jesus.

Two weeks ago yesterday Rosemary and I took the kids (and ourselves!) to New York City for the Radio City Music Hall "Christmas Spectacular." It was a fun show: ninety minutes of non-stop production numbers, songs, and dances. There was a total of nine different acts, the first eight of which were hosted by Santa Claus. There was a scene which featured a compressed version of "The Nutcracker," a lavish act celebrating snow in New York City (replete with a real ice rink which rose from the orchestra pit), a visit to Santa's toy shop at the North Pole, and even a number with not one, not two, but fifty dancing Santa Clauses (or is it Santas Claus?)! It was all pretty much what you would expect.

But then somewhat to my surprise there was a kind of P.S.: a living nativity scene. And this was no bargain basement creche. This was not the First Church of Boontown, Nebraska, re-creating Bethlehem with some cardboard sheep and a little straw strewn on the platform. This nativity featured four real camels, a real donkey, five or so live sheep, and all manner of colorful costumes. This scene had drama, it had pageantry, it had spectacle and music and twinkling lights. Do you want to know the only thing it did not have? Jesus!

The scene lasted ten minutes and included a fair amount of narration by an unseen announcer. Near the very end it also featured three paragraphs of words which were projected onto a giant screen. The words were titled "One Solitary Life," and talked about someone who had been born in Bethlehem, and who lived and who died but who for some reason, even two millennia later, still influences lots of people. But in all that--in and through all of the words printed in the program, projected on the screen, read by the narrator, or sung by the choir--not once was the name Jesus mentioned.

It was an absence with more substance than what was present on the stage. It was a silence that spoke louder than the words that were read. It was like re-creating Washington's crossing the Delaware but never mentioning the name of Washington! Strange. Because listen: Christmas is about a person, and real persons have names. This one was named Jesus.

Christmas is about a person. It's not about an atmosphere or spirit or essence. No, it's about a real person who lives still: a person every bit as real and alive as anyone in this room. And speaking of all of us in this room, Jesus as a person is what allows Christmas to mean the world to the rest of us real persons. If all we're gathered around today is an idea, a spirit, or a symbol, then it's hard to know how that changes anything. After all, you could spend your entire life thinking about the idea of love or the spirit of romance, but could a concept ever come remotely close to what it is like to be loved by another person? Ideas can only take you so far, at least if you are a real flesh-and-blood human being.

In a memorable Christmas sermon Thomas Long related that when leading worship seminars in different parts of the country, he often meets up with people whose number one complaint about worship services has nothing to do with contemporary music, new hymnals, or bad sermons. Instead Long has heard some people complain that what nettles them the most about worship services are the announcements. We all tend to think that what we mostly ought to get out of a church service is inspiration with some real emotional highs.

And so perhaps one week you've just come off a rousing rendition of the hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy." The organ was piping at a glorious full throttle, the choir's descant was just perfect, and you felt as though you were winging your way into the very precincts of heaven. Until suddenly you hear the pastor say, "Oh by the way, the building committee will meet Thursday evening at 7:30 in the lounge," and the whole thing is shot! Or worse yet, you pivot from a meaningful rendition of a Bach anthem by the choir to hearing, "Let's remember Beatrice who is back in the hospital with another intestinal blockage."

But in a striking homiletical turn, Long points out that such things fit perfectly well, at least if it really is true that the Word became flesh. If Jesus is just a symbol, just a certain way of experiencing life, then it maybe would be enough if worship also were mostly just atmosphere. But if the Son of God is a real person who let himself get incarnated smack into this world of bad digestion, committee meetings, and all else that seems so mundane, then the mundane is important.

God so loved the world that he sent Someone into it. The Bible does not tell us that God so loved the world that he lifted that world up into heaven where all the mundane details of life would evaporate the way the morning dew burns off the lawn once the sun comes up. No, God so loved the world that he sent a real person to this very real place we call earth. The gospel says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us not that our flesh became Word so that we could dwell in a place of vapor and mist and cloud.

Christmas is more real than that. It's about a person, and he's real, he's definite, he's unmistakable, he's irreplaceable. And so he understands. That's why we read a passage which, on the surface anyway, seems like it does not fit today: the Easter story from John 20. Mary is weeping (and who wants to read a passage about weeping at Christmas!). But we need to hear Mary crying today because in this passage Mary knew she'd lost someone dear. Mary knew that Jesus was a person and she also knew he was dead. There was no replacing him. The memory of her feelings for Jesus were not the same as Jesus himself. The spirit of all he stood for was not the same and it was not enough. And so Mary wept. She wept and she kept on crying when somebody asked her what was up. She told him, and he replied with but one word: "Mary." He spoke it the way only he could, the way he'd spoken it who knows how many times before. She'd know him anywhere.

When I was in seminary, we had a guest one day in one of my pastoral care classes: it was a hospital chaplain who specialized in working with sick and dying children. She told us several stories, one of which was about a little boy, perhaps six or seven, who was end-stage leukemia. In what proved to be his last week of life in the hospital, the little boy had no small measure of pain causing what seemed to be some hallucinations. Several times the little boy saw a man passing by the doorway to his room, causing the tyke some alarm which always required his mother's reassurance that no one was there but that mommy was there. One afternoon, as the mother cradled her mortally ill child in her arms, the little boy again cried out, "That man is back, Mommy!" The mother was about to reassure him yet again when suddenly his thin body relaxed. The boy looked his mother in the eye and with a smile said, "Oh, Mommy! It's Jesus! I have to go now." And with great peace he died.

Christmas is about a person. On this all depends. There needs to be Someone in all his unique definiteness whom we can see and recognize and ultimately go with into the bright future which he himself secured for this entire universe. Like Mary in the garden, we need Someone to call our names in a way we could never mistake for anyone else's voice.

And so today and tomorrow, look hard, my friends. Look through the holiday folderol of tinsel and eggnog, of presents and of stockings hung by the fireplace with care. Look beyond anything and everything that tries to reduce Christmas more to generic sentiment than to a personal presence, more to good cheer than to a supremely good person. Cut through all of that to pick out again that irreplaceable, recognizable face of the person at the center of it all. May you have a profoundly merry, joyful Christmas, my friends. It's good to see you again. But don't look at me. Look into that manger--look hard. It's Jesus. Why, we'd know him anywhere! It's Jesus! Hallelujah and Amen.