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I received an e-mail from my uncle the other day that included children’s favorite Christmas Carols as told to their teacher.  I thought I’d share a few of those with you:

• We three kings of porridge and tar
   

• He's makin a list, chicken and rice.
   

• O come, froggy faithful
   

•  With the jelly toast proclaim
   

•  Later on we'll perspire, as we dream by the fire.
   

• Oh, what fun it is to ride with one horse, soap and hay
   

• Noel. Noel, Barney's the king of Israel.

Sometimes there are so many messages bombarding us that we can get a little mixed up.  Frosty and Rudolph, Joseph and Mary, White Christmas and Blue Christmas, Shepherds and Elves, Scrooge and Herod, Santa and the baby Jesus.  I thought with all those stories it would be nice to add some clarity and spend this month on favorite Christmas stories.  Mine is not a long one.  In fact, it is found in only one verse of scripture.  I would like for all of us – men, women and children to read this verse together and allow this story to happen to us.  The verse is Luke 2:20, found on page 58 of the New Testament in the pew Bibles.  Together, let us proclaim the Word of the Lord:

The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been told them.

This is the Word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.  In this one verse Luke announced to his audience that a moment at the manger made all the difference to shepherds.  Let us pray.

When the good news of Christmas really happens to you, you’re never the same again.  My hope for this morning is embarrassingly simple.  I just want us to camp around this one verse of scripture until what happened to the shepherds, happens to us.  I don’t want us to wander through Advent any further without the good news being whispered in our souls.  When that happens, when the good news of Christmas really happens to us we will be expressive, experienced and our expectations will be fulfilled.  

WHEN THE GOOD NEWS OF CHRISTMAS HAPPENS TO YOU, THERE IS AN EXPRESSION OF PRAISE.

I don’t know what it is about shepherds that fascinate me, but they do.  They seem to be the cowboys of the Middle East - quiet, self-assured, loners, people of few possessions, mysterious.  They probably do not share a lot of stories of, “Guess what happened to me today”, because everyone they could tell was already there.  So I imagine hours passing by without a word spoken and everyone being okay with that.  But when the good news of Christmas happened the silence was broken.  They hurried to Bethlehem to see if what the angel told them was really true.  Could it be that the savior of the world had been born that night and that they were the first to hear about it, right where they were?  Could it be that not only were they the first to hear about it, but they were also privileged to be the first to tell about it.  Fred Craddock points out in his commentary on Luke that it was customary for poets and orators in the ancient Middle East to proclaim peace and prosperity of one who was to become emperor.  For the Savior of the World, the announcement came from shepherds not in a palace but in a stable.  Virtus Gideon wrote in his commentary that they probably cut across fields to get to Bethlehem rather than taking the long way on the provided roads and well-worn paths.  Which way they went back, I am not sure, but I am certain that they were no longer the same.  They were expressive, “glorifying and praising God.”

There seemed to be a lot of expressive people around town the day after Thanksgiving.  Zachary and I were watching the Aggie/Longhorn football game on the edge of our seats nearly the entire game.  The one point difference at the end of the third quarter did not give us a good feeling.  We had already seen the Aggies lose by one-point two weeks in a row.  Then in the last quarter, the Aggies marched down the field for 88 yards in over nine minutes and scored a touchdown.  We were excited, but did not over celebrate.  We had to wait until the game was over.  Finally, the clock expired and the Aggies had beaten their archrivals.  High fives were exchanged and we began our own version of the post-game show.  “Did you see that interception?  What an amazing game!”  Before long the doorbell rang.  Porscha Buck, one of our high school seniors ran two and a half blocks to our house and gave victory hugs then returned to the company that was at her house.  “I just had to come down here and tell you how great this is!” she exclaimed and then was gone almost as quickly as she had arrived.  The phone started ringing and people began to congratulate the pastor who was fortunate enough to pastor A&M United Methodist Church.  It was an expressive afternoon.

Now if you’re not a football fan, I know you just don’t get how people can get so excited about a silly ole ballgame.  But if you are a football fan, maybe you can get how the shepherds felt on their way back to their flocks.  They were different, they were expressive!  I want the good news of Christmas to happen to you like that.  I want you to feel it so profoundly that you glorify and praise God for the wonder of the incarnation.  When the good news of Christmas really happens to you, you’re never the same again.  You are expressive.  

When The Good News of Christmas happens to you, there is an Experience of God.

The angel Gabriel’s message and the chorus of angels must have been fascinating, but it was the moment at the manger that changed these shepherds’ lives. Only after they experienced the sights and sounds of the Christ-child were they changed.  They glorified and praised God for all they had heard and seen.  This appears to be a theme of Jesus’ ministry.  The people of Samaria would tell the woman, who announced that she had found the Messiah, that they believed because they had heard him for themselves.  Thomas spoke about the resurrection that only after he saw for himself would he believe.  When Jesus appeared to him a week later, he believed alright.  When the shepherds had heard and seen the sights and sounds in that stable, they had experienced the good news of Christmas.

I have written two stories about these shepherds in the last ten years.  One of them I shared last year at the 5:00 Christmas Eve Service about a shepherdess named Poimena.  This poor, powerless child suffered exclusion on so many levels, but when she was the first to hear about the Christ child in Bethlehem, she knew all that was about to end.  She would be famous for being the first to hear and she would be powerful once she reached the side of the savior of the world.  But when she looked at his face and he looked at hers, all her dreams of vengeance and getting even dissolved in her tender tears.  The other story I wrote was also about a child.  His name was Hezron bar Jonas, a fatherless boy who was determined not to walk in his father’s footsteps.  His father had been a compassionate shepherd that had a way of getting sheep to follow him with the just the sound of his voice.  But when he died his son realized that no one knew how great this man was.  His value and worth had been wasted on sheep and the few shepherds who knew him.  Hezron was determined to be a famous musician that everyone in town would know.  He too was changed when he looked into the manger.  While the other shepherds told of the angelic announcement and celestial chorus, Hezron bar Jonas just looked into the manger and wept as his heart so hardened by grief, melted with one gaze of the savior who rescued that boy that night.

It does not take an experienced analyst to uncover why those stories came from my head.  I am convinced that once we really get a glimpse of the savior, once we truly experience what the shepherds had heard and seen, we will never be the same again.  Hearts will soften, pride will vanish, love will well up in our souls.  When the good news of Christmas really happens to you, you’re never the same again.  You are experienced - you experience God. You are expressive and  

When The Good News of Christmas happens to you, Expectations are fulfilled.

The shepherds experience was just as they had been told.  They had walked right into one of those, “Thus saith the Lord” moments and there was no disappointment.  When God speaks, it will be “as it had been told them.”

This is not always so in our world.  In fact, we have a term for the marketing gimmick that lures customers into the store, only to hear a different story. It is called “bait and switch”.  Last year I was very excited to pick up the Thanksgiving newspaper and discover that I could buy a laptop computer for $400.  Never mind that I really did not need a laptop computer, I could not see how I could pass on such a bargain.  I consider going down to Wal-mart and picking one of those computers up.  Then I read the fine print, “Guaranteed to have ten in each store.” Ten?!  How long would ten computers last?  I found out the next night on the news that it wasn’t very long.  In Beaumont a policeman had to break up the unruly crowd with pepper spray.  In Orlando, a man tried to cut in line and was wrestled to the ground, by a security guard.  Frightened employees started throwing the few computers they had into the mob in order to be spared injury.  Perhaps that’s why this year’s flier assured customers of no gimmicks.  But it is not just the Day after Thanksgiving when we are prone to disappointment.  When I typed in the words, “Holiday Blues” into one of those search engines on the web, I received a report of 15,900,000 relevant sites.  I was also instructed to look under “holiday stress” and “holiday depression”.  One of the common causes for this prevalent condition is unfulfilled expectations.  People look at the commercials, read the heart-warming stories and listen to the music and expect a Currier & Ives Christmas, only to discover unfulfilled expectations.

If that story is too familiar then I invite you to soak up this one verse of scripture.  In it is an expression of praise, an experience of God and expectations fulfilled.

When the good news of Christmas really happens to you, you’re never the same again.   

There will still be finals, still be a busy work schedule, still be housework, rush hour and shopping.  Like the shepherds we will have to return to where we were before we were met with the good news of Christmas, but we don’t have to return the same.  In fact, when the good news of Christmas really happens to you, you’re never the same again.  Amen.