11:00 p.m., December 24, 1999
LESSONS: Isaiah 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20
SERMON TITLE: Time and Again: Another Opportunity for Greatness
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Mike Mason in, THE MYSTERY OF THE
WORD (1), tells the story of Joe Szloboda.
"During the Christmas season the first thing Joe Szloboda liked to do on his shift was to go to the front of the store and inspect the nativity scene that was set up there.
"It was just inside the big set of revolving doors that opened onto the street, and often careless shoppers would have tossed scraps of paper and other litter among the figures of Mary and Joseph, the animals, the wise men and the shepherds.
"Once Joe had found a pop can in the cradle.
"So he liked to clean these things out and dust off the figures. It was a way of reminding himself that whatever work he might engage in, his real task was to do everything as if for the Lord himself, to be caretaker in the house of his God.
"One night he stood before the stable scene and thought of the Lord's first earthly home.
"This night in particular the scene in front of him with its life-sized characters began to seem so vivid that he might have been there himself, just one more of the humble figures gathered around the cradle in Bethlehem, adoring.
"To have leapt back over two thousand years, and yet to be in the present, in the presence of Eternity Himself--this was an indescribable sensation, passing understanding.
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"Yet all at once an even stranger sensation came on top of this one, and Joe actually put his hand up to his hair because there seemed to be static electricity coming out of it, effervescing all over his head.
"At the same time his attention was diverted by something in the creche, something that appeared different about it.
"His entire body tingled now with expectation vibrant as a thrummed cord.
"And then Joe's mouth fell open in astonishment.
'Jesus!' he whispered.
And then, 'Oh, my precious Lord!'
"And just as if his own name were being called, out Joe Szloboda stepped forward and walked right into the center of the creche and knelt down beside the cradle.
"Joy was welling up inside him, a great bolt of pure, bounding joy, energetic and muscular like a huge fish leaping out of the water into the sunlight.
"For as Joe gazed into the cradle he knew beyond any doubt that what he was seeing there was real.
"It was the incarnation of God and he was seeing it with his own eyes and it was real.
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"There was no question of how real it was."
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"Yet all at once an even stranger sensation came on top of this one, and Joe actually put his hand up to his hair because there seemed to be static electricity coming out of it, effervescing all over his head.
"At the same time his attention was diverted by something in the creche, something that appeared different about it.
"His entire body tingled now with expectation vibrant as a thrummed cord.
"And then Joe's mouth fell open in astonishment.
'Jesus!' he whispered.
And then, 'Oh, my precious Lord!'
"And just as if his own name were being called, out Joe Szloboda stepped forward and walked right into the center of the creche and knelt down beside the cradle.
"Joy was welling up inside him, a great bolt of pure, bounding joy, energetic and muscular like a huge fish leaping out of the water into the sunlight.
"For as Joe gazed into the cradle he knew beyond any doubt that what he was seeing there was real.
"It was the incarnation of God and he was seeing it with his own eyes and it was real.
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"There was no question of how real it was."
1. Mike Mason, THE MYSTERY OF THE WORD (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), pp. 33-35.
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