Friendship Sunday

Just last week, we observed the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the great tragedies that took place on that Day of Infamy was the sinking of the battleship Arizona. That great ship was struck by a bomb. It penetrated the forward powder magazine, and the ship was torn apart by a gigantic explosion. It sank instantly, taking 1,177 men with it, some of them still in their bunks, unaware of what was happening.

Not all of the men who went down with the Arizona died instantly. Many of them were trapped alive in air pockets, and over the next couple of weeks, they held out, waiting to be rescued. The Navy knew that there were survivors trapped in the wreck of the Arizona, but it could spare no men to mount a rescue effort. Everyone believed that a Japanese invasion was imminent, so every man was needed to defend the island. Nobody could save those poor men. There would be no rescue mission. They were doomed to die.

For the next couple of weeks, sailors onshore near the Arizona’s wreckage could hear a constant tapping sound, as the men who were trapped underwater pounded with wrenches on the metal bulkheads of the ship, awaiting a rescue which would never come. One of the survivors said that the men on shore wanted to cover their ears. Just to know that a friend nearby was doomed to die, and to actually hear him in his agony, was too terrible to bear. Gradually, the tapping became less and less, until by Dec. 25, when the air finally ran out, it stopped altogether. That was a grim Christmas in 1941 at Pearl Harbor.

What happened in Hawaii fifty years ago can help us to understand what happened at Christmas 2,000 years ago. You see, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came here to earth on a rescue mission.

The Bible tells us that when man first lived on this planet, it was a paradise - a place we could easily imagine being a lot like Hawaii. But then something terrible happened in Paradise. There was a sneak attack. A dark power invaded Paradise and brought death and destruction. Man, who once had his eyes on God, came under the influence of that dark power, and centered his eyes on himself. He became trapped by sin and evil and selfishness. His Paradise turned to ashes. What once had been a garden turned into a desert. Where once there was fellowship with God, now there was only alienation and fear.

And human history, as it unfolded, bore that out. History became a tragic chronicle of hatred and cruelty, greed and lust, bloodshed and war. Man was trapped - trapped in the wreckage of his own sin, submerged under a sea of wickedness that he could do nothing about. He was doomed to die.

But Christmas is the story of how God mounted a rescue mission. He sent his Son. His name was Jesus Christ. He came down from his home in heaven - down from a land of light and air and life; down to where we lived in the black murky depths where death reigned supreme. He came to free us from the trap, to liberate us from the grave. But in doing so, it cost Jesus his life. He died so that we might live.

The Bible says “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And at Christmas, Jesus came to do just that.

In many of the novels of Charles Dickens, there are powerful images of the basic truths of Christianity. Perhaps the most beautiful is the story of Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.

Sidney Carton was an English lawyer who was friends with a French nobleman named Charles Darnay. The two men could have passed for twins, they bore such a striking physical resemblance. Carton was single, but Darnay was married to a beautiful French woman.

It was the time of the French Revolution, and Charles Darnay had been arrested by the revolutionaries. As a member of the aristocracy, he was sentenced to die.

On the evening before Darnay was to go to the guillotine, Sidney Carton visited his friend in the dungeon cell. After the guard had left, Carton overpowered Darnay, and drugged him with an anesthetic. While Darnay was out cold, Carton changed clothes with him. Then, calling the jailer, Carton, now dressed as the prisoner, explained that his visitor had been overcome with grief and needed to be taken home. The unconscious Darnay was removed from the cell and taken to freedom.

The next day, on his way to be executed in the place of his friend, his hands bound behind his back, Sidney Carton said “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.”

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend. In the Christmas carol ” O Holy Night”, there is a line which says “The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger, in all our trials born to be our friend.”

The Christ of Christmas is our friend in the same way that Sidney Carton was Charles Darnay’s friend. He came to save us. He came to lay down his life for us as our substitute. That’s why we sing “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.” He bore them so that we would not have to.

So what’s the reason for the season? It’s friendship - the friendship of God for man. The friendship that made each one of us matter so much to God that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God’s friendship purchased our freedom.

Babette is going to close our service with a song that goes: Jesus is the best of friends. He’s the forever kind. He’s the best of friends, who’ll never change with time. When you look beyond tomorrow, there’s a love that never ends. Jesus offers nothing less - He wants to be the best of friends.

And the question I leave with you this Christmas is “Will you let Jesus be your best friend?”