John 1:1-4
Our waiting for Christmas is over. I’m sure in most homes, the presents have all been open and the living room floor is a foot thick in wrapping paper. If you’re still waiting on anything, it’s for family to arrive after stopping first at an in-laws or it’s for the turkey or ham, or in our case, the pork loin to be done. I hope you that remember some of what we’ve talked about during Advent this year. I knew waiting was a prominent theme in Scripture, but since starting this series I've found the theme popping out from all over the Bible, especially in the Psalms. We wait for God’s coming, but we don’t do so passively. While we wait, we live and enjoy the world God has given us. While we wait, we rejoice that God came to us as a man, as Jesus Christ our Lord. And Jesus promises he’ll never abandon us; he will be with us in Spirit until comes back to call his own home. As the Allstate man says, we’re in good hands. But we, the faithful, really are in good hands!
One of the exciting things for me about Christmas is the electric train under the tree. Christmas is the only time of year I take the train out and I enjoy lying there next to the Christmas tree, watching the train pull through the curves as it makes its loops around the tree. I get to serve as President and engineer of my own railroad. I don’t have to worry about making a profit; featherbedding is encouraged on my line.[1] Last year, I brought myself a Christmas present, a model of a CK&S box car that I spotted in a hobby shop in Kalamazoo. The CK&S was one of two railroads that served Hastings. The last remaining structure of the train in our town is the trestle over the Thornapple, out by Hastings Manufacturing, which is now a foot bridge.
CK&S stood for the Chicago, Kalamazoo and Saginaw. The line never lived up to its name; failing to reach both Chicago and Saginaw. It only made it eight miles outside of Kalamazoo and the north end was at Woodlawn, where it liked up with the Pere Marquette. It was a favorite train of sportsmen, as fishermen and hunters would take the early morning train out of the city and hop off a one of the many lakes: Crooked Lakes, Wall Lake, Cloverdale Lake, Long Lake and a host of others. The railroad bragged about serving 46 lakes along its 56 miles of track. Sportsmen would spend the day fishing or hunting and then catch the late train back home in the evening. It was said that a fishing pole waving in the air was all it took to flag down the train. But it must not have been too prompt, for the line was nicknamed the Cuss, Kick and Swear and it went into bankruptcy in 1937. The one time during the year the train seemed to enjoy lots of passengers was during the Barry County Fair. Those living on farms around Prairieville and Delton, Schultz and Quimby, would hop the train into Hastings. I’ve read that there’d be so many people that the engineer would have to slow the train down in order to allow the conductor enough time to collect all the fares. If you haven’t figured it out, I love trains and, as if I haven’t ridden enough of them this year, we’ll be boarding the train to Utah tomorrow morning. I’ll be going out to meet my grandson.
Thinking about model railroading, which led me down this rabbit trail, I recall a story about a home in which Santa had brought a train for Christmas. On that Christmas morning this house looked like a disaster had struck. Tossed across the floor were boxes and wrapping paper and bows, ribbons, and of course new toys. In this particular house the most exciting toy was the train. This boy loved racing the train round and round, as fast as it would go, but in the confusion, a discarded box got on the track, and the train derailed.
Bending down over the train, this young budding engineer kept trying to get it back on the tracks, but he couldn’t get the wheels to seat properly. Finally, his father realized what was happening. “You know, you can’t do that standing up above it,” he said. “You have to get down beside it.” The father then dropped down on the carpet and laid beside the tracks and with his son by his side, proceeded to show him how to put the train back on the tracks.
That’s one way we can think about the incarnation, the coming of God, how God comes to us as a child. The human race has derailed from sin. We’ve all had a few boxes in our paths. We need to be put back on the right track in life. It just couldn’t be done from up above – God has to come down beside us in order to put us back on track. And that’s what God does in Jesus Christ. He comes to save the world.
But Christ doesn’t just come for the world; that sound esoteric. Jesus comes to save you and me. In Luke 2:10, the angels proclaim to the shepherds and to all of us who read this cherished passage: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people; for there is born to you this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Martin Luther in his 1521 Christmas Day sermon, preaching on the Lucan passage, noted this:
The angels “do not simply say, Christ is born, but to you he is born. Neither does he say, I bring glad tidings, but to you I bring glad tidings of great joy… The Gospel does not merely teach about the history of Christ. The gospel is personal; it is addressed to each and every one of us. The gospel enables all who believe it to receive it as their own.”[2]
Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir today, that you all know this, but it is something we should be reminded of over and over again. The meaning of Christmas is in the incarnation, which means that God loves us so much that he came to us as a Son, in Christ Jesus, that we might receive him as our own. And if we do, we become God’s children and are promised an inheritance that’s much greater than we can ever comprehend.
Be of good cheer, for Christ, whom we’re told by John was there at creation, came to earth for you and for me. And remember, we’re waiting his return. With the hope we have in our Savior, I pray you’ll have a wonderful Christmas Day. Amen.
©Jeff Garrison and First Presbyterian Church, Hastings, MI
[1] Featherbedding is a requirement of having more employees than needed to do a job, a practice common on the railroads as they switched from steam to diesel.
[2]Martin Luther, “Sermons for Chirstmas Day; Luke 2:1-14, 1521-1522” as quoted in Watch for the Night: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001), 221, 223.
