God—In A Messy Place
by Don Bromley

The angel said to the shepherds, “Don’t be afraid. I bring you good news, great joy which will be for all people everywhere. Today in the town of David a Savior is born and this Savior is the Messiah. He’s the King, he’s the Lord, he’s the one this sorry dark world has been waiting for all these centuries.”

And then the angel says this intriguing thing, “Here’s the sign, here’s the tip-off, here’s the dead giveaway that will enable you to recognize the real deal when you get to him.”

And if you’re a shepherd, you most likely expect this sign’s going to be pretty impressive. If this is a royal child you’re expecting the angel to say you’ll recognize the baby because you’ll find him wrapped maybe in silk and lying in a golden crib and living in a fabulous palace because that’s how kings do it in this world.

But the angel doesn’t say anything like that. The angel says, “You’ll find this baby born in a barn, wrapped in rags, laid in a feed trough.”

It’s a very ironic thing because in our day whenever you see a nativity scene in somebody’s home or in a shopping center, it always looks so neat. People in the nativity scene look like they just got out of the shower and sprayed their hair. Their robes look all ironed and everything.

But in the actual barn where Jesus was born, it wasn’t that way. Because a barn’s a messy place. I’ll guarantee you when Mary found out that’s where she was going to give birth to her baby, she didn’t say to Joseph, “Hey, they’re giving us the stables, sweet. This is kind of neat, kind of a quaint thing.”

Nobody went through the barn and scoured it with Softscrub ahead of time. It looked and smelled the way barns always looked and smelled. It was not a nice place to have a child. And when the shepherds showed up in the barn, they didn’t bring a big increase in class and suaveness to the affair. They don’t buy their clothes at Nordstrom’s, shepherds don’t. They’re not known for hygiene. The baby got laid in a manger and a manger is not a high-end product in the crib line, is it? A manger is a feed trough.

The angels say the fact that Jesus ended up here is not an accident. They don’t say this is a sign to you like in a movie sometimes where you say a stranger is going to recognize another stranger because they’ll be carrying a red geranium or something. It’s not arbitrary the fact they would find Jesus in this condition. This is a tip-off, this is a dead giveaway that this is Jesus and no ordinary king.

Here’s the clue: you can recognize him because he will show up in the messiest place you can imagine.

No power.
No money.
No fanfare.
No applause.
No newspapers.
No headlines.

Born in a barn, wrapped up in rags, surrounded by animals, entrusted to this poverty-stricken young couple.

The king of the universe, the alpha and the omega enters into human history in a little bundle, wrapped in obscurity and poverty and humility, because this is Jesus’ signature.

Because there is no place he won’t go, because there’s no thing he won’t do, because there are no depths he will not descend to in order to bring God’s power and God’s love and God’s grace and God’s peace and God’s goodness and his presence to anybody who will have him.

This will be a sign to you about this Jesus. You will see God in a messy place.

The reason this is good news to us is because we’re messy people – we live in a messy world. Every day it gets a little messier.

Think about this last year: war and terrorism and scandals in every sphere, an AIDS epidemic that is so frightening we try not to think about it, and poverty and little babies born in horribly desperate conditions. Pick up a newspaper any day and the headlines say here’s how the mess of our world got a little worse yesterday. That’s what newspapers say. And it’s not just the world out there. We all contribute to the mess in our own little ways.

So the angel says, “Here’s the good news. Here’s the good news of Christmas. Our God’s not afraid of a mess. Not our God. The God who was born in a stable and laid in a manger will come right in the middle of your life no matter how messed up it is, and mine too, if we just ask him.” That’s his signature, his sign, a dead giveaway that it’s Jesus.

I say this because sometimes people think to themselves, “I’ve got to get my life cleaned up first. I’ve got a mess somewhere and I have to do some kind of moral improvement job first. Then I can come to God.”

But God says no, it’s not that way at all. Maybe you walked in this room tonight and part of what you are thinking is, “I made some resolutions at the beginning of this year and I haven’t followed through on any of them.” Or “I had some bad habits that I was determined I was going to get straightened out and I didn’t get them straightened out.” Or “I had a relationship that was kind of broken and I said I was going to fix it and I didn’t fix it.” Or “I made some decisions this year that I really regret.”

I want to tell you if that’s your condition, you came to the right place because all this is a room full of people who just keep messing stuff up. That’s what we do.

I want to do a quick “mess” inventory here – just to level the playing field. I want you to reflect on the last 12 months. Think about whether you’ve had at least one area in your life that got messy – it could be relational, vocational, maybe financial, maybe academic if you’re in school, spiritual, moral, parental, romantic maybe.

How many of you would be bold enough to say there is a least one area in my life where things got messy over the last 12 months? Raise your hands, really high so everybody can see, will you? Look around, that’s what I thought. How many of you think you had a pretty good year but the person next to you looks pretty messed up?

Here’s the good news about Jesus. He really doesn’t care how messy your life is. It doesn’t scare him at all. Because he started his life in a mess, dressed in rags, laid in a manger and he ended his life in a mess wrapped in rags and hung on a cross.

And in between the first day and the last day, he mostly just hung out with some pretty messed up people. He kept loving them, and embracing them and teaching them about a better way. That’s what he does, that’s his signature. When he went to the cross, the reason he went to the cross was that he was taking on the whole mess of this world, the mess that you and I can never straighten out - my sin, my junk and yours. That’s what he was taking on himself. Mess doesn’t scare him at all. It’s his signature.

What delights God is when somebody just comes to him and says, “God, I know I’m messed up apart from you. Just come in and help me, would you?”

There’s a part of it that’s up to you and me – there’s a decision. I hope that this night, above all, whatever that decision looks like for you, you’ll make it.

Some of you may be in a seeking mode spiritually. You’re searching for God. You really don’t know. I think that the decision God’s inviting you to make is like what the shepherds did.

When the angels came, the shepherds didn’t know Jesus at this point. Their decision was to say I’m going to take this seriously and I’m going to check this out. They say to each other let’s go to Bethlehem and see if this is really true.

For some of you that’s the decision that’s going to change your life – to say I’m going to get serious about spiritual things. I’m going to connect with a church. If this one can help you by all means start coming. If it’s some other place, some other community faith, if you live some place else, then do that. But get serious about it. For some of you it’s the shepherds’ decision.

For others, maybe you made a commitment in your spiritual life some place but you’ve been in kind of drift mode. Maybe your decision is similar to what Mary and Joseph decided when they knelt by that manger and they said, “You know what – from this day forward we’re committed to this child, to this Jesus. We’re part of his family.”

And for some of you the decision maybe is to say, “I’ll honor that commitment that I’ve made. I want to get serious about growing spiritually.”

For some who’ve been walking closely with God for a long time, your decision is really, “God I know you love to surprise people. I would love for you to surprise me – I’m wide open. I’m available. If there’s some mess some place that you could use me, you say the word. I’d love to be used by you in that way.”

We’re going to sing a beautiful song in a moment that reflects this – Go Tell It On the Mountain? We’ll sing:

Down in a lowly manger
Our humble Christ was born

What kind of king gets born in a barn? What kind of God comes to messy places? Our God.