Listen here.
Ninety-seven
days ago this place was decorated with green and red. The windows had bows and
lights. On the altar the tree glowed warmly as candles lit our faces and we
sang Silent Night.
This night has a different silence to it. There is a
somber quiet as we consider the cross and sing the praise of Him who died to
atone for our sin … our Lord Jesus.
There is a line in the Christmas gospel that I think
speaks an important message to us tonight. Luke 2:19 says, “Mary treasured up
all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
That is what we are here to do tonight. We are here to
treasure God’s love in our hearts. We take this account and place it in a safe
place to remember that this is God’s love – that He gave His Son to die for us.
We listen to Jesus’ words from the cross to protect them … to make sure we
never lose them. We gather because we believe that Jesus has won an amazing
treasure for us by his death and that by faith we receive forgiveness, eternal
life, everlasting hope and joy.
And we are here to ponder these things in our hearts. But
I want to be careful as I say that, because I think there is a temptation to
use thinking and pondering as an excuse for not acting, not doing. We ponder
the cross in our hearts to urge us to action … to urge us to turn away from sin
… to urge us to cling to this forgiveness … to urge us to live in the faith
that the blood of Jesus – shed on the cross – cleanses us … to urge us to live
with hope because Jesus died for our sin … to urge us to share the hope, the
forgiveness, the life that Christ died to win for us.
Tonight we remember Jesus’ death. We treasure the love he
shows us on the cross and ponder all this in our hearts. For as Psalm 119:11
says, “I have treasured Your Word in my heart, O Lord, the I might not sin
against You.” Jesus’s Word is not dead letters on paper, it is living and
active, and when it gets into our hearts it transforms our lives. Jesus’ Word
gives us new life and leads us in God’s ways. His Word speaks salvation and
love into our hearts so we may bear that love to our families, to our
neighbors, to the world. So we treasure the Word, and the Word delivers God
love, so we listen all the more closely as Jesus speaks to us tonight from the
cross. Amen.
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