I’m going to talk briefly this morning about role models. We all have them, whether we mean to or not: and many people at different times of their life will choose a role model: a sporting hero like Richie McCaw, or a glamorous actress like Scarlet Johanssen. If you think you don’t have one, then I suggest your default role models may be your parents…
But first, who remembers the story of Scrooge? It’s in a book by Charles Dickens called ‘A Christmas Carol’. Ebenezer Scrooge was a mean old miser; he didn’t want his staff to take time off over Christmas to be with their families, and if someone wished him ‘Happy Christmas’ he would reply, ‘Bah humbug’.
In the story Dickens shows us how Scrooge was once a normal young man, but he loved money more than people and slowly that love of money consumed his life. In the story, Scrooge realises that his future will be to die a sad and lonely old man. This scares him so much that he begins to take an interest in the lives of those around him. By the end of the story it is as though his cold, bitter heart has melted and he is back to the way he was created: someone who can love, and be loved.
This year we had a couple of friends who celebrated 40 years of marriage. Their children and grandchildren came to a special ceremony where they renewed their marriage vows; and also, their friends and extended family came too. And people spoke about what this couple had done for them: and the stories just kept on coming. People told how they had been welcomed into our friends’ home as teenagers when they had gone off the rails; how they had been helped out when their marriage broke up; how they had been loved and counselled when they were grieving through bereavement or illness. We thought we knew the couple quite well and we just loved them as lovely people; but I had no idea about the impact their lives are having on other people. And as the day wore on and the stories kept flowing, it occurred to me that there is no great mystery about the life we are called to live by God. It is quite simple really: as Jesus summed it up, love God, and love your neighbour.
At Christmas we remember that God didn’t just make the world, and the whole universe, and put us in it so He could sit back and watch what would happen next. No, He created this amazing world, and this enormous Universe, because he is a Creator God; and He made us to be His friends; and He expects us to be friends to others, sharing in their joys and sorrows and helping people realise they are never alone, no matter what they are going through. And God has given us the perfect role model: in the shape of Jesus, born as one of us, living a life of loving service, dying to set us free from the power of sin (which gets in the way between us and God) and rising again so we can choose to be His friends for ever and ever. That is the message of Christmas: God knew that, by coming to live with us as a regular guy, starting off life as a helpless baby born to a poor couple in the Middle East, He could show us all how to live; and by dying for us at Easter, He could set us free to be with Him forever.
So, role models. Would you choose Scrooge, whose lack of love for others hurt himself most of all? Or to be like our friends who chose Jesus as their role model; they let His Holy Spirit make them a little more like Him every day? They learnt that the love they had poured out to those around them over 40 years of marriage, without thinking and without counting the cost, had transformed the people they were in touch with. The choice… is yours! Happy Christmas.
Christmas 2011
But first, who remembers the story of Scrooge? It’s in a book by Charles Dickens called ‘A Christmas Carol’. Ebenezer Scrooge was a mean old miser; he didn’t want his staff to take time off over Christmas to be with their families, and if someone wished him ‘Happy Christmas’ he would reply, ‘Bah humbug’.
In the story Dickens shows us how Scrooge was once a normal young man, but he loved money more than people and slowly that love of money consumed his life. In the story, Scrooge realises that his future will be to die a sad and lonely old man. This scares him so much that he begins to take an interest in the lives of those around him. By the end of the story it is as though his cold, bitter heart has melted and he is back to the way he was created: someone who can love, and be loved.
This year we had a couple of friends who celebrated 40 years of marriage. Their children and grandchildren came to a special ceremony where they renewed their marriage vows; and also, their friends and extended family came too. And people spoke about what this couple had done for them: and the stories just kept on coming. People told how they had been welcomed into our friends’ home as teenagers when they had gone off the rails; how they had been helped out when their marriage broke up; how they had been loved and counselled when they were grieving through bereavement or illness. We thought we knew the couple quite well and we just loved them as lovely people; but I had no idea about the impact their lives are having on other people. And as the day wore on and the stories kept flowing, it occurred to me that there is no great mystery about the life we are called to live by God. It is quite simple really: as Jesus summed it up, love God, and love your neighbour.
At Christmas we remember that God didn’t just make the world, and the whole universe, and put us in it so He could sit back and watch what would happen next. No, He created this amazing world, and this enormous Universe, because he is a Creator God; and He made us to be His friends; and He expects us to be friends to others, sharing in their joys and sorrows and helping people realise they are never alone, no matter what they are going through. And God has given us the perfect role model: in the shape of Jesus, born as one of us, living a life of loving service, dying to set us free from the power of sin (which gets in the way between us and God) and rising again so we can choose to be His friends for ever and ever. That is the message of Christmas: God knew that, by coming to live with us as a regular guy, starting off life as a helpless baby born to a poor couple in the Middle East, He could show us all how to live; and by dying for us at Easter, He could set us free to be with Him forever.
So, role models. Would you choose Scrooge, whose lack of love for others hurt himself most of all? Or to be like our friends who chose Jesus as their role model; they let His Holy Spirit make them a little more like Him every day? They learnt that the love they had poured out to those around them over 40 years of marriage, without thinking and without counting the cost, had transformed the people they were in touch with. The choice… is yours! Happy Christmas.
Christmas 2011