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Mt 1:18-25

I’d like to launch us into this message with some thoughts from the great mind of Dr. Seuss – On Beyond Zebra

Listen closely because this is the key to what I want to say

Said Conrad Cornelius O’Donell O’Dell
My very young friend who is learning to spell
The A is for ape, the B is for bear,
The C is for camel, the H is for hare
The M is for mouse, the R is for rat I know all 26 letters like that
Through to Z is for zebra, I know them all well
Said Conrad Cornelius O’Donell O’Dell
Now I know everything anyone knows
From beginning to end, from the start to the close
Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes
Then he almost fell flat on his face on the floor
When I picked up the chalk and drew one letter more
A letter he had never dreamed of before
And I said ‘You can stop if you want with the Z
Most people stop with the Z, but not me
In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never can spell if I stop with a Z
I’m telling you this ‘cos you’re one of my friends
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends
My alphabet starts with this letter called YUZ
It’s the letter I use to spell yuzza ma tuzz
You’ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found
Once you go beyond Z and start poking around
So on beyond zebra explore like Columbus
Discover new letters like wum which is for wumbus
My high spouting whale which lives high on a hill
And who never comes down till it’s time to refill
So on and beyond Z, it’s high time you were shown
That you really don’t know all there is to be known

Come with me on this journey on beyond zebra because that’s where you find Christmas. On the first Christmas, God added a new letter to our alphabet because we need that letter to spell Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us’.

What does Dr Seuss mean? I think he means that just as you and I have been given 26 letters from which to spell our words we also have mental categories in which we fit the things we experience in life. Eg. we have a category in our minds for ‘dogs’. We see dogs that fit within that category. Sometimes we find we have a category without any experience of it eg unicorns, fairy tales where we have flights into fantasy but no experiences to fit into the category.

But what about an experience without a category – that’s On Beyond Zebra – when you have an experience that doesn’t fit inside any category you have ever seen before, eg someone once told me of an experience of driving down the street one day with her teenage daughter when they had to stop for red lights at a pedestrian crossing. Glancing over to the footpath they saw a mother hen with her litter of chickens, just standing there. Then when the lights changed the mother hen stepped off the curb and crossed with the light – all the chicks following along behind her. This lady said they watched it happening right in front of them and the teenage daughter turned to her mother and said ‘This is not normal’.

It was ‘beyond zebra’, an experience without a category. The birth of Jesus Christ was not in the imaginary realm of the hen and the chicks but it was an experience without a category. It started out as just the opposite, your classic ‘boy meets girl’, Jo loves Mary – the words carved by the young carpenter on the tree in the back yard. Then they were engaged – that wonderful magical period in a young couple’s life before they are finally united in marriage.

Joseph and Mary were moony-eyed about each other with all the other accompanying symptoms. And then it happened. Mary turned up pregnant and Joseph’s garden of love dissolved into a living hell. Mary tried to explain and Joseph yearned to believe her, but there was no way even a heart full of love could dispel all those nagging suspicions in his mind. It was beyond belief. W H Auden in his poem has Joseph’s own soul taunting him –

Joseph have you heard what Mary said occurred?
Yes, it may be so, but is it likely – no.
Mary may be pure but Joseph are you sure?
How is one to tell? Suppose for instance – well?
Maybe, maybe not.
But Joseph you know what your world
will say about you anyway

You would agree with me that Joseph’s reaction was as normal as could be. According to his range of experience there was only one way a woman gets pregnant, and so of course he was angry, hurt and betrayed. But because of what the angel said to Joseph his deepest feeling was of fear. He was afraid to believe Mary.

Here we come to an ageless human trait. We human beings are afraid of the unknown. Whenever we come up against something that is unusual, or unknown we conclude automatically that it is probably bad or dangerous or false and this fear prevents us from exploring new possibilities.

For example in ancient days there were map makers – cartographers who used the instruments and the knowledge available to make maps of the known world. But whenever they came to the limits of their knowledge they would write on the edge of the map ‘Beyond this there be dragons’. They could have written ‘Beyond this is the unknown’, or even ‘Beyond this there is something beautiful’. But no, they assumed that beyond what they knew there was a place of danger – not just death by natural causes but a grissly death of getting eaten by dragons.

Lots come to the mysteries of the Bible and of the virgin birth with the same kind of attitude. Instead of saying it’s a mystery beyond our knowing, they say it’s suspicion, it’s hogwash, it’s foolishness, a fairy tale made up by people who had such a primitive knowledge of the world they had no idea of natural law. Well you tell that to Joseph. He knew the facts of life. He was not naive.

Maybe we are the naive ones. We are naive if we think we can live snug as a bug in a rug, inside our comfy world governed by the laws of nature. If we read anything at all of world affairs or modern scientific enquiry we know that the great big Newtonian system that we’ve lived with for so long is melting before our eyes. Many scientific theories are under attack today, even from within their own philosophic community. So miracle is no longer the obstacle to faith that it once was. Scientists are the first to say that there are categories out there that are beyond anything we have ever dreamed of before. Our self confident secular world is crumbling as we see people believing in Eastern religions and the occult. Many people of the 20thC have no problems in believing in miracles.

You find Christmas not just by moving beyond zebra. We have to continue on with the mystery and believe the message the angel gave to Joseph when he said the baby growing inside Mary was none other than God in human flesh. That is the miracle of miracles. His name shall be called Emmanuel. God with us! Who is this baby. Paul tells us in Col 1:15.

(Read it in Peterson’s The Message)

This baby is the one who set the stars spinning off into space. Who can grasp the totality of this baby with our human minds? The angel said Mary would give birth to an infinite infant. Nine months later that small stable contained something bigger than this vast tragic world – God in human flesh – miracle of miracles, light years beyond zebra. That is further than many people are willing to go, instead when they come to Jesus Christ and they meet him they simply subsume Jesus into a category they already know from their own experience, and they pay him a compliment by saying he is the very best in that category, eg Jesus is the greatest teacher, the greatest moral example the world has ever known. But God in human flesh, we have no category for that, we’ve never seen one of those before; which is just the way people reacted when they met Jesus. They ransacked the dictionary for words to describe him. Everywhere he went he created wonder and astonishment. They were astonished at his doctrine. Amazed – what manner of man is this? Disciples were astounded. Finally the chief priests and the scribes and the Roman authorities couldn’t take him any more, and they nailed him to a cross. They couldn’t fit him into any category so they got rid of him.

Today we are not soldiers who nail Jesus to a cross but we are inn keepers who have no room for him, or else we keep him at a distance and don’t allow him into the centre of our being. When he makes us feel uncomfortable we put up a sign ‘no vacancy’. So for this baby who does not fit into our pre-conceived notions of reality, we have no room.

Only by becoming truly human could he save us as we needed to be saved. Emmanuel, God with us. Not only did he live among us as a man, but he taught us about the Father and finally died for us. He died in our place; he took upon himself the penalty for our sins. But it didn’t stop there. He rose from the dead and sent us the Spirit to be with us forever. So that when we are weighed down with guilt and with lethargy and with a kind of death of the mind and of the soul and the heart, it is the Spirit of god who can waken us to life. In Jesus there came to this world the power which can re-make and re-create life.

He wants to forgive, to strengthen you, to bring joy into your life. He came to bring you life, a full life, a joyful life. If we limit God to our small world of reality, we will never know the extent of his love and mercy. This Christmas, let’s go ‘On Beyond Zebra’ and allow Christ to be for us what he intended to be – ‘God with us’ and thus discover the transforming power of the Spirit of God.

(Preached by Rev. Jan Croucher at Syndal Baptist Church, Christmas 1996)

With kind acknowledgement to Vic Pentz’ sermon on PreachingTodayAudio.com and  http://preachingtodaysermons.com/peviconbeze.html