Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth. Amen.
Perhaps, other than the Baby Jesus
Himself, there is no other aspect of the Nativity that garners as much
attention as the angels. I understand why, and I suspect you do as well:
curiosity. Most of us have never seen an angel – certainly not like those that
appeared on that dark night, illuminating the dark, Judean countryside, and
sounding forth the Lord’s message. An angel – remember, angel means “messenger”
– delivered the good-news message of Christ’s birth. “Unto you is born this
day, in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be
a sign unto you: you shall find the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes and
lying in a manger.” The solo voice was soon joined by an angelic orchestra who
filled the sky with song and light: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to
His people on earth.” In art and in hymnody, this angelic moment garners our
attention.
Tonight I want to tell you about another
angel. This angel I do know. She even has a name – Mrs. Stahl. Before anyone
gets too excited, let me explain: I don’t mean she was a heavenly angel, but
she was a messenger, and that is why I speak of her as an angel. Mrs. Stahl was
my kindergarten teacher at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Emma, Missouri in 1979.
The funny thing is, besides her name, I remember almost nothing about her. I
think she had curly hair, but I’m not sure. I don’t remember her face, or her voice;
I remember her as being kind, but not why. I remember our classroom – it was
big, about the size of Mrs. LaBrue’s room, but with wood floors, pink walls,
and old-school desks, the kind with the spinning chairs attached - and I
remember her desk in the front of the room, off to the side, near the windows,
with an honest-to-goodness blackboard passing behind her across the front wall.
I remember this placement because
every Friday, we stood beside her desk to recite the week’s memory verse to
her. Every Monday we were given a Bible verse to learn, by rote. We practiced
it every morning, saying it together, but Fridays we were on our own. With our
back to the class, we faced her and said our assigned verse.
What brought all of this to mind is being
here with the kids, listening to them learn the Christmas narrative, and
watching them come to the microphone and repeat their lines. You see, the very
first memory verse I learned that fall was from the Christmas narrative of Luke
2: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ
the Lord.” So, there I was, standing next to her desk and I ripped off those
nineteen words like a 5 year old auctioneer. A Plus, Gold Star, thank you very
much, and I turned around to go sit down, quite proud of my accomplishment. But
that’s not where my memory stops. I can’t remember her hair color, or the smell
of her perfume, but I remember what Mrs. Stahl did next. She touched my arm and
stopped me – in those days, teachers could still touch students. When I turned
around to face her, she praised me for getting the words right, but then asked,
“Now, can you tell me what it means?” I don’t remember my answer; maybe I said
something about Christmas and Baby Jesus but it’s also possible that I just
shrugged my little shoulders. Mrs. Stahl said, “The angel told the shepherds
Jesus was for them. But it also means Jesus is for you. He was born to be your
Savior. Jesus is for you, Jonathan.” Then, one by one, as each child came to
her desk and recited their memory, she told each child the same thing: Jesus is
for you.
It took many years for me to get it,
to figure out what she did and why Mrs. Stahl did that on that fall morning in
1979. In that Emma, Missouri classroom, Mrs. Stahl was an angel. I don’t mean a
being with wings who descended from the heavens in radiant light like happened
that first Christmas outside Bethlehem. Angel means “messenger,” remember, and
angels have both a message to deliver and someone to deliver it to. Mrs. Stahl
was an angel and the message she delivered was the Gospel, the Good News, that Jesus
is the Savior. And her audience was a group of four, five, and six year old
kids in western Missouri.
We weren’t all that different from
the shepherds, I suppose: an unlikely audience, overlooked by most folks,
important to our families but at the same time insignificant in the scope of
things. Like the shepherds, we kids probably weren’t completely sure what was
being told to us, yet we realized this angel-messenger-teacher was trying to
tell us something, that her message was unique and special: that Jesus wasn’t
just the Savior, or the Savior of the world, or the Savior for our parents and
adults but a Savior for us.
That
Bethlehem night some 2000 years earlier, God became enfleshed to dwell among
those whom He came to save. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born to His Virgin
mother Mary and stepfather Joseph, God the Son humbled Himself to fulfill the
Father’s promise made to another woman millennia earlier. Through Eve came the
curse of man; through Mary came the salvation of man. To Eve came the promise
of a seed who one day would crush satan’s head; to Mary was born the one who
would be bruised but conquer. Through Eve, hope was passed from generation to
generation. Through Mary, the hopes and fears of all the years were fulfilled.
Unto you...
Those two words take the Christmas narrative and deliver it to hearers across
the globe, across the ages, across borders, across languages. Unto you… Those
words still echo to this evening of Christmas. They carry from the mouth of the
heavenly angel…unto you. Unto you all…Jesus, born; Jesus, Savior; Jesus, Christ
the Lord.
I lost touch
with Mrs. Stahl. She left Holy Cross, and two years later we moved to Texas.
But I’ve never forgotten what she taught me that morning. She taught it better
than most of the PhD professors I had at the Seminary, in fact. The Gospel of
Jesus isn’t just words in the Bible for pastors to read and memorize. It’s Good
News for people, people who included shepherds, kindergarteners, and each one
of you here this evening. It’s delivered in classrooms and fields, in homes and
hospitals, in prison cells and in battle zones. Unto you. And when one person
shares that Good News of Jesus with someone else who needs to hear God’s grace
and mercy freely given, without any strings attached; that God deigned to be
born in a Bethlehem stable so He could live among us and die for us; that Baby
Jesus, laying in a manger, was already your Savior… when one person tells
another this story, they…you!... – in that moment – become an angel, a
Christmas messenger.
And, in that
moment, whether it’s tonight or tomorrow or a week from Thursday, whether it’s
your parent or child, a favorite in-law or a struggling step-child, a friend or
a complete stranger, you can say with the angels, “Unto you is born this day in
the city of David, a Savior which is Christ the Lord.”
Say it with
me: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ
the Lord.”
Unto you…a
Savior. Unto you.
Amen.
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