Christmas Eve 1999 (longer draft)

One of the most momentous events of the twentieth century took place on a quiet Sunday morning in December, fifty-eight years ago. On that day—Dec. 7, 1941—353 Japanese aircraft launched a massive surprise attack on the great U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

One of the great tragedies that took place that day was the sinking of the battleship Arizona. That massive fighting ship, along with six of her sisters, was resting at anchor that quiet Sunday morning in the middle of the harbor.

In the very first wave of the attack, the Arizona was struck by a bomb. It penetrated the forward powder magazine, and the ship was torn apart by a gigantic explosion that could be seen and heard for miles.

The Arizona sank within seconds, taking 1,177 men down with her. Many of them were still in their bunks, completely unaware of what was happening.

Not all of the sailors who went down with the Arizona died instantly. Many of them were trapped alive in air pockets. 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 thought, at the time, that the Japanese were going to invade Hawaii at any moment, so every man was needed to defend the island. Nobody could save those poor men trapped inside the wreck of the Arizona. There would be no rescue mission. Those sailors were doomed to die.

For the next couple of weeks, sailors who were working in the harbor 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 observer 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 Christmas Day, Dec. 25, when the air finally ran out, it stopped altogether. That was a very grim Christmas in 1941 in Hawaii.

Why am I telling you all this? Because what happened in Hawaii 58 years ago can help us to understand what happened at Christmas 2,000 years ago. You see, Christmas is when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came here to earth on a rescue mission.

The Bible tells us that when God created human beings to live on this planet, it was a paradise—a place we could 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. Adam and Eve, who once had their eyes on God, came under the influence of that dark power, and centered their eyes on themselves.

They became trapped in the wreck of sin and evil and selfishness. Their Paradise was lost. What once had been a garden turned into a desert. Where once there had been fellowship with God, now there was alienation and fear.

And human history, in the years since, has borne that out. As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium and look back, we can see that most of human history has been a tragic tale of hatred and cruelty, greed and lust, bloodshed and war. Humanity found itself trapped—trapped in the wreckage of our own sin, submerged under a sea of wickedness that we could do nothing about. We were doomed to die.

But Christmas is the story of how God mounted a rescue mission. He sent his Son. His name was Jesus. 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.

Jesus came to open the trap, to liberate us from the grave. But in doing so, it cost him 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 some of the basic truths of Christianity. Perhaps none is as powerful as the story of a man named Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities.

Sidney Carton was an English lawyer who was friends with a French nobleman, Charles Darnay. The two men could have passed for twins, they bore such a striking physical resemblance. Carton, the Englishman, 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 French 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, who was 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, as he was 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. The Bible says “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.”

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 love—the love of God for us. The love that made each one of us matter so much to God that He gave His Son that we should not perish but have everlasting life. God’s love purchased our freedom.

Without that understanding of Christmas, it is nothing more than a cultural tradition—a sentimental holiday without any practical relevance. Don’t let it be that way for you this Christmas!