| | December 8, 2002 | Pastor Brian Shimer |
"On Beyond Zebra"
Matthew 2: 1-18
12-8-02 "On Beyond Zebra" from a message by Vic Pentz of Pennsylvania. Matt 1:18-25
I. This Christmas I want us to get our theology of the season more set in our thinking. How we believe affects everything. So, we will begin today our thinking about the theology of Christmas with one of the great minds in theology, Dr Suess in his book "On Beyond Zebra"
READ p 1 through: "It's high time you were shown that
You really don't know all there is to be known…"
On beyond Zebra
What does Dr Seuss mean by "on beyond Z…?"
We set limits on what we believe and how we relate to life.
We create mental categories -- "animals" "home" "work"
For each category, we have experiences, instances, that verify the category and beliefs about it.
We also have categories for myth and story into which things go for which we have no experience, such as, Unicorn, Bigfoot, Lochness Monster
But then we have experiences with no category. When we encounter something that is beyond any of our categories we are moving On Beyond Zebra.
Story: I gave Danny, a ride to Seaside, shared lunch and Jesus with dear soul.
The most amazing thing: "my car used no gas the entire trip to Seaside"
I kept watching the gauge. I thought, great now the gauge is broken. It didn't move.
The whole time Danny was in the car -- it stayed put. Now, my car never does this.
I dropped danny off, and started home, and then the car began to use gas.
Seaside is always a 1/2 tank, this time it took a quarter. I had heard of God doing such things, but never experienced it.
This was on beyond zebra. It was an experience for which I have no category other than GOD. I rejoiced all the way home.
The Birth of Jesus Christ was such an instance without a category
It began normally --- an arranged marriage for Joe and Mary--- JbJacob loves MbHeli initials in tree out back
He much older, she young and ready to settle into housekeeping as Joe's wife
Joseph a good carpenter -- builder -- kind of general contractor
Working with rocks and with wood and carving
In this normal daily Jewish life,
everyone knew what to expect: marriage, babies, setting up house.
Then: Mary turned up pregnant-- the Bible leaves no doubt to how this took place:
V 18: "before they came together, she was found to be with child THRU the Holy Spirit"
The book of Luke confirms Matthew's account: "the HS will come upon you, power of the most high overshadow you, so the holy one to be born of you will be called the Son of God."
The book of John testifies to this divine son: "who was the great I AM" "who is the preexistent God" "who became flesh and lived among us"
Paul writes of Christ's birth using a word that reflects that Jesus came to be without the agency of a human father. (Ro 1:3, Gal 4:4,23; Phil 2:7). In 1 Cor 15 contrasting Jesus to Adam he says, Christ came from heaven.
Joseph was not involved in the conception:
The conception occurred before they had come together, which makes Mary a type of EVE. As Tertullian wrote in the 2nd C (he lived 160-240) "As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced." (Oden, p 149). Mary had to be a virgin! And it was of the virgin's seed that God promised to satan: "her seed will crush your head." (Ge 3:15) (For Adam did not "know" Eve sexually until after the fall, hence sex was also tainted by the fall).
The early church argued that Jesus was one person not two. Logically, had he been born both of the HS and of a human father, it might be argued that he was two persons, not one. Such reasoning was circumvented altogether by his special conception. So this was uniquely "a fatherless birth to Him Who was born of the Father before the ages" (Gk Orthodox Catech 32, p 26; quoted Oden p 147).
Virgin Birth is then is on beyond zebra, it is a new letter in the human alphabet, and it only got used once.
We could not spell the Word "Immanuel" God with us, without the virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth is an essential feature in faith. The very concise Apostles' Creed, which was possibly penned by the apostles at Jerusalem, even in its brevity still includes the statement of Jesus: "I believe "He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary".
Can you imagine with me a moment the difficulties encountered if Jesus was not born of a virgin?
Here, through theologian Thomas Oden, is what you would have: "an unmarried couple would be chosen to give life to the Son of God who is without sin, the One who would forgive the sins of others, who without the premise of the virgin mother, would have been legally treated as an illegitimate son born out of wedlock -- hardly a probable hypothesis and one not made more plausible by the failure of the modern sexual revolution.' Due to the alleged (and renounced) teachings of Zaninus of Pergamum it became necessary in 1459 to formally declare the premise of the illegitimacy of Jesus an outrageous, and therefore, non Christian view. (Pius II, quote Oden, p 146)
If no virgin birth, the savior could not have saved, could not have righted any wrong, for as 2nd C leader Athanasius said: "You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself."
The Pharisees were of the gossips view, saying: "We were not born of fornication"
John 8:41
The public questioned Christ's origins: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" "Is this not Joseph's son?" (Mk 6:3; Lk 4:22). Some of them were like the Innkeeper: with no room for the savior.
Joseph who KNEW: 1: how Babies were conceived 2: that Mary would not lie to him.
Yet, normalcy ended with this news
V 19: "Because he was a righteous man
It was not so much that she was pregnant, that bothered Joseph, but if it is true this is the child of God… Joseph was a Righteous man. What does righteous mean?
1. relationship with the Lord: OT; NT = "blood washed" "in Christ"
2. Joseph feared God
3. Joseph believed Mary and therefore, thought, this is too big for me.
4. A great preacher of a century ago said the three steps in the work of God: "Impossible, Difficult, Done" and Joseph not having heard that, was uncertain in his ability to handle the impossibility of rearing God so wanted to back out!
The Angel cuts Joseph to the quick by identifying this conflict within as the emotion fear. "Don't fear to take Mary as your wife..." he said. Don't fear.
The unknown, the stuff beyond Z, the things for which we have no mental category gives us fear. Like map makers in ancient days who described that which lay beyond the limits of their knowledge with these words: "Beyond this there be dragons"
So for us the unknown is often a place of fear. Those map makers would not just claim it was unknown, but a place of unknown terrors, where after being BBQd you'd be eaten for lunch! Fear is a primary reason people denounce the virgin birth of Christ as hogwash, myth, or couldn't be.
So the angel who came to Joseph told him: "Don't fear to take Mary as your wife…" and tells him again the origins of Jesus, "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" Mary became pregnant through "hearing" -- that is still how people conceive faith for new birth. They must "hear" the Word and Receive it within. Mary received the conceiving of Christ in her womb with the words: "be it done to me as you have said". No sensation. No feeling. No pleasure. Just obedience.
The angel also told Joseph: You're going to name the boy Jesus. He will have the name, for "he will save his people from their sins"
Nothing to fear, Joseph, this is the one you have been waiting for! And it says, he married her immediately but kept her a virgin until the birth of Jesus.
The virgin birth is a letter beyond "z" for us. We use it to spell Immanuel-- God with us. Jesus was fully human, being-- born of a woman, born under the law-- who encountered all our human frailities, but, also -- fully God as well. Colossians 1 says this well.
This baby is the one who knew all the stars by name and set them in place! To encounter Jesus was to meet God face to face, veiled in human flesh. But it was also to meet a man, fully alive, of whom the disciples were often amazed, feared exceedingly, and said, "What manner of man is this?"
Athanasius, again from the 2nd century: "At one and the same time - this is the wonder - as Man he was living a human life, and as Word he was sustaining the life of the universe, and as son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it."
This is Jesus - one who takes us into wonderful new places "on beyond zebra" as we step beyond his virgin birth.
This Week Kathleen Stevens wrote an email to many in testimony to a great occurance for her that was Jesus pouring grace and care into her life. It began with taking a back way home, having an impulse to get the car lubed, enroute, the radiator hose broke, the car limped in, the guys there went all over, got a part, fixed the car, stayed late, did the lube, and only charged her $99 after 2 hours of labor and lots of running around. She went on her way staggered at God's grace and mercy. It was "on beyond zebra".
To meet Jesus takes us light years beyond Zebra.
Julie Ackelson: Dr - "mom has 48 hours" a bit in shock. Near tears. "get me home" at elevator a big, potbellied, sweat suited, guy, came bungling into the lift. He said, "You okay?" "I will be." All the way down, this guy, in brief, calm, phrases said things that built Julie up, encouraged her. As they stepped out, this guy put his big arm around her shoulder and walked with her through the hospital and out. She said, if he had not been the kind of guy he was, she would have slugged him, but rather, comfort flowed through her being. As they stepped out into the day, she turned to say "thanks" and he was gone. Not inside, nowhere outside, no way he could have stepped into a car. Just gone. A strange sensation hit her, and she just realized in todays terminology: "she had been taken on beyond zebra". She calls him, "her angel".
"you'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found Once you go beyond Z and start poking around!"
Yesterday Leslee told me a story about her nephew and she said she can't wait to hear the end of the story: "how God will work this one out" She is looking for the hand of God in her nephew's circumstance. She is expecting something "beyond the ordinary".
What have you experienced? Where has our big, huge God been encountering you? How have you responded to the beyond zebra experiences in your life?
Give a 2 min synopsis of sometime God has taking you "beyond zebra" to your neighbor. For those who think: "I've never experienced anything like that" perhaps you have a desire to experience more of what God intends for you. This morning come talk and pray with me or one of our two prayer ministers as the service continues.
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