There Are No Secrets With God
Canon Graeme Winterton at Holy Trinity Kew - Christmas 1 - 1st. Jan 2017
Luke 2:15-21The Shepherds spread the news of Messiah’s birth.
I came across a manipulative management book in which the writer outlined a sure fire way to maintain a grasp on influence and power. The author claimed that all you had to do to be successful and to ensure you always remained in control was to: retain information. The secret to success lay in only releasing as much information, on a need to know basis, as you decided was necessary to induce people to believe that you alone held the inside information. The author struck me as a very insecure person uncertain of himself and frightened of sharing himself with others. Inroduction:
No secrets with God.
1. The book reminded me that there are no secrets with God. The events celebrated at Christmas did not happen in a comer behind closed,doors! Christmas is not the special secret of a select inner group! Christmas is for the whole world!God has blazed it abroad! 2. Events surrounding Christmas reveal God’s openess in every aspect of his relationship with humanity. The depth and breadth of God’s love is unfathomable and satisfies the deepest need and yearnings of the human heart. The scriptures record the experiences of ordinary people as God revealed his purposes of love and revealed his intention of sharing in the outworking of his plan through the involvement of ordinary people like you and me. Page 1
3. We are privileged and blessed to have this truth etched deeply within our collective psyche by some very special Christmas traditions embedded within our rich English heritage. To name just two: a. The first is “ The Nine lessons and Carols” traditionally presented by Kings College Cambridge each year from 1928 onwards. They encapsulate the themes of hundreds of years of mystery plays and carols which go back to the lOth. Century. They were, and remain, vehicles of the Gospel story for the people. b. The second, Handels Messiah, is very much closer to our time; it too too unfolds the scriptural story of God’s involvement with humanity in grace and love down the centuries. It begins in Eden and traces the story progressively in the lives of the patriarchs, kings and prophets, and culminates in the Christmas story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. 4 The message of God to humanity is that a saviour in the person of Messiah would come to redeem all of life & usher in the kingdom of God. (As an aside, I can’t see televised commercial driven Christmas programming telling the story of costly sacrificial redemption ans passing the message from generation to generation — can you?) Openness & Love
5. There are no secrets with God in the nativity event. The Nativity reveals the purposes of God as intensely personal and actuated by love and openness. The record shines a spotlight on the way in which God approaches all the people involved in the birth of Jesus. God seeks their cooperation and participation when the “fullness of time” arrives. It is a wonderful story of mutual cooperation based upon information sharing. [ A very different approach than the one taken by the management book author who sought to cooerce and manipulte others in order to achieve his own ends.] 6. Caring love is illustrated in the experience of each person involved in the unfolding series of events which lead us to the first Christmas. Spend a moment to reflect upon some of them. • Mary is invited to share in the mystery and wonder of God’s entry into the world of human experience. The archangel Gabriel is commissioned to announce the divine intention because even Mary required an exceptional and special experience to convince her that the impossible was about to occur and to help her cope with the misunderstanding of even her nearest and dearest. Page 2
• Joseph is not left to harbour doubt or bitterness but is shown God’s intention. God broke into his life in the traditional extraordinary method of dream communication experienced by the Jewish prophets to quell his ourtraged sense of betrayal and to transform him into the caring protective person he needed to become. • Zechariah in the temple & cousin Elizabeth shared the revelation long before the event. ( I wonder why Zechariah was struck dumb. Could it be that he couldn’t be trusted with a secret?) - But that’s unkind, he was an elderly faithful priest who was respected by everyone and just the right person to bear faithful witness to the authenticity of Mary’s account of events. • The prophets through the ages had been party to God’s intention and had prepared the hearts of the nation. When the time was fully come God ensured that everyone would know about it by announcing the news to the shepherds, low on the social scale, who with the innkeeper, and any number of the ordinary people, certainly made sure the story spread like wild fire. God acts with real compassion and intent.There are no secrets with God in the nativity event. 7. It is a masterly strategy for events proved that authorities and people of influence could not be trusted. One shudders to consider the depths and lengths to which they would go to eliminate the threat to their hegemony. The birth of a Messiah born in the direct line of King David presented an immediate danger. It was in fact the motive for Herod’s massacre of all male children in Jesus’ age group sometime later in the historical record. It could have been much worse. Certainty & Testimony
8. The consistency of the biblical revelation given historically by God through the prophets and to the people present on the first Christmas, under-girds the experience of believers right down to the present time. God’s redemptive action did not cease with the apostles at the beginning of the first millenium! History records the ongoing witness to the Acts of the Apostles in the lives of people such as: Augustine - St. Francis - Cranmer - Wesley -Mandella - Tutu - Martin Luther King - Mother Teresa and many others beyond our capacity to mention. 9. Our own personal experience is also a part of ongoing history! You and I are adding to the story. People in every generation speak of a personal meeting with the risen Lord. The form of the encounter varies. Some speak of a deep conviction transmitted through the words of a Christian friend or preacher, another tells of a quiet inner voice, others of a vision or of some other unmistakeable experience. Page 3
10. It appears that our Lord accomodates himself to the spiritual and psychological need of each person to ensure they are left in no doubt that they have met him and been changed by him. We need not fear that we are alone with this inner knowledge. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would teach, convince, convict, lead to the truth and indwell the believer. St.Paul called the phenomenon ‘the witness of the Spirit’. We are not crazy. We are in good company and in tune with the wisdom of the ages for in our relationship with the risen Christ we enter into the mystery of God’s purposes which were made open for humanity in the nativity of our Lord on the first Christmas. Conclusion
11. There are no secrets with God. God is light and reveals truth and shares his intentions for each of us. God desires that we live holy lives which honour him. Because we are the people of God we are also the people of light, the people of truth and the people of love, the people who have no secrets, the people to whom Jesus committed the message of the gospel. God continues to draw people into his kingdom and comes to everyone of us. God knows us intimately, better than we know ourselves, and quietly calls us by name and speaks through the events of our lives; through joy and sorrow, through stress and trial, through tragedy and illness and in the quietness and stillness of our souls. 12. Let this Christmastide mark an eternal moment in which there are no secrets between yourself and God, and like Mary and Jesus be willing to commit your destiny to the Living God and say, “Yes Lord, not as I will, but according to your will, your word and your promise.”
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