Well, it's a delight to be with you all this morning.
It's it's uh interesting.
We've been uh talking about ministering God's word from the pastoral epistles, and I was thinking, how do I do a Christmas or Advent message from the pastoral epistles?
So, we'll we'll see how this goes.
If you've got a Bible or there's a Bible in front of you, open up to Titus chapter 1.
And we're going to be looking at the first four verses from Titus chapter 1.
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which God who never lies promised before the ages began.
and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our savior.
To Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would open our hearts and minds to receive from you what you have for us today in this great message of eternal life through our savior Jesus Christ.
We pray in his name.
Amen.
Well, one of our little traditions on Christmas Eve as a family when our boys were very little was after the Christmas Eve service and we at Central we called it the Christmas Eve circus.
um which if you've been to that 5:00 service, you'll know why.
Um was to pick up McDonald's on the way home, plop down on the couch, and watch a Charlie Brown Christmas.
Now, for pastors, this can be a difficult watch.
It feels too real.
You see, Charlie Brown is struggling and confused.
He ends up at Lucy's little psychiatry booth, pays his nickel, and submits to a series of diagnostic questions focused on his fears.
Eventually, Lucy diagnoses Charlie with pantoophobia, the fear of everything.
But Charlie knows that that's not what's bothering him.
He comes clean.
It's Christmas that's the problem.
He confesses, "I just don't understand it.
Instead of feeling happy, I feel sort of let down." Maybe you can relate.
One of the secrets of ministry is that it's not just people in the congregation who feel this way.
Pastors and church leaders sometimes feel it, too.
The Advent season is a time of packed schedules, high emotions, and competing expectations.
Families are coming together or not, and sometimes falling apart.
For pastors, the year-end gifts that will make or break the budget are coming in.
There are 37 additional services, 15 varieties of special music, and more fire hazards than at any time in the lurggical year.
And yet all this extra special stuff can somehow feel like a letdown.
Why?
Lucy's conclusion is that Charlie Brown needs involvement.
She says he needs to get involved in some real Christmas project.
And of course, Lucy needs a director for the school play.
And that's how Charlie Brown ends up directing the Christmas play.
But as we'll see, that's not what Charlie Brown really needs at all.
It's not what pastors need.
It's not what ministry leaders need.
It's not what Christians need either.
Paul knows that Titus is up to his eyeballs in pastoral involvement on the island of Cree.
And that's why he spends so many words in this greeting drawing Titus's attention to the only kind of involvement that truly matters for a pastor.
The kind that doesn't leave us depleted and depressed, but invigorated, enlivened and hopeful.
He reminds Titus and us that pastors, like the apostles, are heralds of eternal life.
But what does that mean?
And why does it matter?
What does it mean to be a herald of eternal life?
Well, Paul begins by focusing our attention on what pastoral ministry is for.
And in short, it's for the transformation of God's people.
It's for our growth, the church's growth in the theological virtues of faith, love, and hope.
Look at verses 1 and two.
Paul a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life.
Our ministry is aimed at the transformation of God's people.
Do you see it?
uh as Paul says elsewhere, his goal is to present God's people, his church, God's church, mature in Christ.
And here that maturity has three structural elements.
Where there is unbelief and ignorance, Paul aims to bring faith and knowledge of the truth.
He wants God's elect, his people, to trust God and to know the truth about God and the world that he has made.
This faith and knowledge is itself according to godliness.
Where there is impiiety, crudeness, hatred, and wickedness, Paul aims to show how real trust in God and true knowledge of his world and his ways calls forth a response from God's people.
That is, it produces piety in the true sense of that word.
It creates a people who flourish in loving God and their neighbors.
And all this is pursued in hope.
We walk by faith and not by sight.
We walk in a love that hopes all things.
And we do all of this because God is at work.
We do it in the expectation that the eternal life that is revealed in Jesus Christ will bring life out of death, light into darkness.
Charlie Brown is asking the right question.
What is Christmas all about?
And we could even say that his initial approach is on the right track.
He knows that Christmas is not, as Lucy puts it, a commercial racket that is run by some Eastern syndicate.
It's got to be more than that.
And in this, he agrees in part with Paul.
Christmas is in a way about the transformation of human community.
That's why Charlie takes his role as director so seriously.
It's why he sets out with Lionus on the search for the perfect Christmas tree for the play.
Charlie Brown wants the chaotic cast of his classmates to come together for a united performance for the play.
And he thinks the tree is just the thing to unite them.
Well, spoiler alert.
Uh, if you recall the story, that's not what happens at all.
Annoyed by the commercialism he sees all around, Charlie rejects all the big, shiny, artificial Christmas trees and chooses a real tree, a humble, scrawny little tree.
Remember what Lucy said, Lionus warns.
This doesn't seem to fit the spirit of the modern age at all.
And surely enough, when Charlie arrives, the tree doesn't unite the group.
It enrages them.
The abuse comes thick and fast.
Violet, boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown.
Peppermint Patty, what kind of tree is that?
Lucy, you were supposed to get a good tree.
Can't you even tell a good tree from a poor tree?
Violet, I told you he'd goof it up.
He's not not the kind you can depend on to do anything right.
Peppermint Patty, you're hopeless, Charlie Brown.
Freda, the girl with the naturally curly hair, completely hopeless.
Charlie says, "Rats." Lucy, you've been dumb before, Charlie Brown, but this time you really did it.
All laugh, all laugh in mockery, including Snoopy.
What a tree, Lucy says.
[snorts] Lionus approaches stage left.
Charlie says, "I guess you were right, Lionus.
I shouldn't have picked this little tree.
Everything I do turns into a disaster.
I guess I really don't know what Christmas is all about." Charles Schultz was an artistic genius, and this little 30-minute TV special is proof.
At this point in the story, that genius shows up in Charlie Brown's tree.
You see, the tree represents many things at once.
Most simply, it represents what a modern and commercialized view of Christmas rejects.
The desire for the shiny, wildly colored, artificial tree, for an image of power and dignity is a rejection of Christmas itself.
Because it's a rejection of the incarnation.
It is a failure to witness to the humility of God the Son who in becoming a human being became vulnerable and weak, you might even say scrawny for us.
But the tree also represents Charlie Brown's lack of understanding.
He doesn't know that the tree is a symbol.
He feels that there's something wrong with the shiny glitzy approach, but he doesn't know that the joy and power he's looking for is not in the tree, but in the one it points to.
It's not the tree itself that might unite everyone, but the God whom the tree represents.
He can do that.
This is a profound reflection on the dangers of missing the point at Christmas and it is especially relevant to pastors.
The power and joy in Christmas is obviously not commercial as if the incarnation of the son of God is a product to be bought and sold.
But it's also not in the mere activities of celebration themselves.
Why do pastors and Christians sometimes feel let down at Christmas?
Well, one reason is because we get distracted by the activities and we lose sight of what they mean and who they really are about.
Excuse [clears throat] me.
They become just another series of things we have to do, expectations we have to fail to meet.
And when that happens, we would do well to ask the exact question that Charlie Brown shouts, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" Of course, Lionus knows.
He says, "Sure, I can tell you what Christmas is all about." He walks center stage.
He says, "Lights, please." And he reads from the King James version of Luke, chapter 2.
I knew I'd get choked up at some point.
I just didn't know where.
Well, [clears throat] this is it.
Well, and there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them.
And the glory of the Lord Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people.
For 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, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with an the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." Lionus says, "That's what Christmas is all about." Charlie Brown, pastoral ministry is for the unity of God's people.
It's for our growth in faith, hope, and love.
But how does that come about?
It comes about through preaching.
It comes about through the public and private witness of God's people to the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and return of our Lord Jesus Christ, the humble God man.
Like Lionus and Paul, ministers lead God's peoples as heralds of eternal life.
Look again, beginning in verse one.
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which God who never lies promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been tr entrusted by the command of God our savior to say that the transformation of the human The transformation of the world comes about through preaching.
Even here at Covenant Seminary where we are doing a whole chapel series on ministering God's word.
It sounds cliche.
It sounds trit.
It sounds simplistic.
But listen again to how Paul frames all this.
The eternal life we preach, it was promised by God before the ages began.
Not only is this God outside of time and so unconditioned by time and so able to do what he wills, this God never lies, he is not prone to mood swings.
He does not shade the truth.
He does not fudge because his character is actively eternally fully good.
It is this eternally good, unchanging God himself who at the right time at the hinge of the ages disclosed eternal life in his word.
It sounds simplistic but it is not.
It is humble but that does not mean that it is not powerful.
As Lionus preaches, "And this shall be a sign unto you.
Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
One [clears throat] of my dear friends preached an Advent sermon years ago.
His message was simple, and it's one that I will never forget.
King Ahaz is cornered.
Should he align with Ephraim and Aram, with Assyria, or should he depend on the Lord's deliverance?
God through the prophet Isaiah commands Ahaz to ask for a sign.
Ahaz hides his unbelief in showy piety.
Far be it from me to put the Lord to the test by asking for a sign.
And God says in effect, here's a sign of strength for you.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.
In the face of all the powers of the world, God shows his strength in humility.
The son of God by nature gives us himself in a little baby.
This is the word that we preach.
Our God who is veiled in flesh.
This is the eternal life that we preach and in whom we hope.
The one who is so strong that the humility and vulnerability of our human nature is something he gladly takes.
[sighs] [snorts] Of course, in a seasoning piling up with budgets and services and then pastoral crises sandwiched between the budgets and services, this is hard to hold on to.
When everything else around us seems so strong and we feel so weak, it's hard to remember that this eternal life we preach, this humble message of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ is the only strength and lasting joy we have.
In a way, every minister, every Christian is like Charlie Brown.
When the little tree that we have seems so weak when it's despised by those who want the showy power the world offers.
It's hard to remember that it's not about the tree itself.
It's not about the services.
It's not about the music.
It's about who the tree represents.
It is about God who is himself eternal life and yet comes to him his people in humility.
He is our strength.
Paul knows this and so like Lionus he preaches the good news of eternal life to Titus and to us even at the outset of this letter.
Look at verse four.
to Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Savior.
Even pastors, especially pastors need to hear the good news.
[snorts] We are heralds of eternal life as those who ourselves have been brought from death to life through the apostolic preaching.
We have received grace.
We have received peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
And though this message seems weak, in it is in fact the very power of the living God.
Let us join the angels in announcing it to the world.
Would you pray with me?
>> [snorts] >> Heavenly Father, we give you thanks that you are patient with us and that you teach us, Lord, that you are humble and loving and that in your humility is great power.
Lord, we pray that you would help us to entrust ourselves to it this Advent, this Christmas, and every day.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.