Unafraid

Life Lessons: Sermons to Live By and Tales of Listeners Learning to Live Unafraid

Ibsen, Ibsen

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274784
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In Unafraid, selections from nearly thirty years of timeless, straightforward sermons are grouped according to the church year (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost) beginning with Christmas 1939. Reconstructed from Harald Ibsen's sermon notes by his daughter Joy, each sermon is followed by a listener's story (some autobiographical, some fictional) showing the relationship of the message to that person's life.To experience The Living Word between pew and pulpit creates a heightened awareness of the critical dynamic between pastor and parishioner, teacher and student, author and reader.The Ibsen sermons and the stories serve as a spiritual dialogue addressing questions such as: What is the truth about our lives? What is the main task of parenting? How does one respond to evil? Why do we continue to engage in warfare? Did God want Jesus (and now us) to suffer? How do we know when the Holy Spirit is present? What is the downfall of official religion?Listeners' stories begin when the author, a replacement child, is in her mother's womb, and extend to church members confronting huge personal issues: career choices, marriage difficulties, child-rearing problems, addiction, financial crises, war, terminal illness, grief, pride, jealousy, regret, loss of faith, etc. Thoughtful, honest interpretation of Scripture as it relates to everyday life is essential if we are to live in a community, unafraid, enjoying a simple life, a merry heart. What could be richer? At a time when church membership is dwindling and ethnic identity alternately wanes and flourishes, Unafraid increases awareness of the significance of the Church in the lives of its members.

Part One

Christmas

Christmas 1939, Minnesota

“Christmas is here with joy untold,” declares B. S. Ingemann in his Danish hymn. By 11:00 o’clock on Christmas Eve, the Diamond Lake country church was overflowing. After squeezing latecomers—Hans and Anna Hansen, Pete Petersen, Jorgen and Lena Andersen, Viggo Jensen, and Astrid Sorensen—into the few remaining spaces in the pews, the ushers set noisy metal chairs along the back of the church and down the center aisle. Human cares about crops and wartime had been carefully placed on pantry shelves, stored over the Christmas holidays, to be taken out and dealt with in the New Year. A gift of well-being and familial excitement enwrapped the congregation. Christmas was here!

The Danes loved their Christmas, a time when sons of Thor and daughters of Mary mixed preparations for the Christian arrival of the God-baby with ancient pagan customs. Their Christian faith merged seamlessly with timeless celebrations of life—a fresh-cut evergreen, a myriad of burning candles, homespun gifts, singing, and feasting.

Harald Ibsen, the minister of the church, was lean and strong, a good speaker. In preparing his sermon he studied the meaning of the Bible lesson, often focusing on a paradox or important detail, and then relating that meaning to everyday life. At times he would share a question or problem that puzzled him, and suggest the best solutions he could offer.

His three-year-old son sat in the front pew, Kere lille Dave (Dear little David), as he was called by the older members of the congregation, who rolled the Danish words with genuine affection. Dressed up in a blue hand-knit suit, lovingly crafted for him by his bedstemor (grandmother), David sat quietly, leaning against his mother, Asta, named for the morning star. Her head was a mass of light brown curls. A city girl with slim beautiful ankles, Harald’s young wife was a musician and schoolteacher transported to the prairie.

It would be Asta’s first Christmas without Paul, their infant son who had died the winter before. His death had left a depthless ache in her heart. She would never forget him, and when she would die fifty-five years later, his name, Paul, would be the last word she would ever speak.

Now as Asta stood for the gospel lesson, the new life in her womb moved. She smiled: such a restless child, so different from Paul or David. All that bouncing around concerned her. At the end of the hymn, she watched her husband step into the pulpit. For a moment Ibsen looked out at all their faces. Then he began to speak:

Again we are gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ. May God help us to celebrate this day, to receive the Christmas message deep within our hearts, that we may have a treasure of spiritual wealth to satisfy our soul’s demand not only today, but also in the days to come.

Before the gospel came to this world in the Son of God, and through the Son of God, there was a time of Advent. Or we may say, the gospel has a prologue, which can by summed up in the words of John the Baptist in the wilderness of Judea when he spoke to the multitudes, “Repent ye, the Kingdom of God is at hand.” His is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.”

As we are about to celebrate Christmas this year, these words seem more real than ever before. We hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness of the world, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

The Christmas season of 1939 finds this world in a state of wilderness, in bewilderment, perhaps more than has ever existed in history. Nation after nation is drawn into the war. No one knows where it is going to end. This war with all its suffering is only what we see on the outside of the body of humanity. I believe the war is only a symptom of that disease from which the whole world is suffering—sin, neglect, greed, and selfishness. From that world of sin and suffering there seems to arise a faint cry for help: “Prepare ye.”

I do not know whether it is the voice of the body of humanity, the millions who suffer in so many ways, the soul of this generation, or whether it is the voice from God. It seems as if it comes from the child whose birthday we are celebrating today. Perhaps it is all of these, since mankind is made in the image of God, something we must never forget.

One of the deepest reasons for the bewilderment in our world is that all too many of us never let the Christ child grow to maturity. There is too much romanticism and not enough realism in our Christmas celebration. Christ was not always the little child in the manger. He grew to maturity, in favor with God and man. John writes, “We saw His Glory.” It is not the glory of the manger, but the glory of His death and resurrection.

In one of our beautiful Christmas carols we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” In the last stanza we sing:

He rules the world with truth and grace

And makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness

And wonders of his love.

It is a beautiful song, a beautiful dream. It has been the dream of the Christian Church throughout the centuries. I love that hymn, but the sad thing is that it is not true. He does not rule the world. If He did, this world would look much different. He rules only as far as we let Him. Nations have tolerated Jesus as a child, even worshipped the child of Bethlehem, but not let Him grow up and rule. This is true not only of nations, but to a large extent, of the Christian Church.

Today, the Christian Church is celebrating Christmas all over the world. In our large cities many churches are crowded this night at their candlelight services. But the tragic thing is that to the great majority it is only an experience of a Christmas mood.

If you had been to a service in the city this evening, you might have seen a manger near the front of the church, beautifully decorated, and in the manger, a doll. It is supposed to be a symbol. I believe it is a symbol, but of what?

I am almost afraid to tell you what I think. I think of coffee. In Europe, people are experiencing a coffee crisis; some even refer to it as a coffee famine. The shortage of coffee is causing people to look for substitutes. So it is when Christ is absent from our hearts. We try to find a substitute, even if we must invent one, especially at Christmastime when we want to be in the Christmas mood.

To the majority of people, Christmas is a game of make believe, only a mood which disappears like smoke when we are confronted with the hard facts of life. I am afraid the organized Christian church, to a large degree, has been living on substitutes, moods without power. The Christ child did not grow up.

I know there is another church, a living church, consisting of men and women in whom the child grew to maturity. In every community, there are people in whom Christ is the ruling power. They are the salt of the world whose Christmas joy is real; they do not need substitutes.

Christ was born 2000 years ago, and He was born in you and me when we were carried to the baptismal font. For our own sakes, the Christ child must grow up and become our ruler. As such, the Christmas light will penetrate the deepest darkness.

Let us all pray . . .

Coffee? Did he say coffee?

Soren and Anna Sorensen exchanged looks and laughed along with other members of the congregation at the minister’s reference to coffee, which was almost as precious as Christmas itself.

In the front pew Asta was smiling. Soren was delighted the minister’s wife was pregnant again; he had been worried about her. Asta had been so depressed after losing the baby, and such a tiny babe. What an awful thing to happen. Better get that man of yours a good cup of coffee, Soren thought.

Soren enjoyed a good strong cup of coffee, as much as he enjoyed rain in the spring, or warmth in the winter. He looked forward to the cups of rich, fresh coffee he and Anna would enjoy later that evening along with the applekage (apple cake) after Christmas dinner. Anna made the best coffee in the world, always making it with a fresh farm egg in a large, white coffee pot on top of their corncob-fueled stove.

He thought of how coffee grounds lingered at the bottom when he finished his last cup. He could almost smell rich, black coffee, fresh and pungent as newly mowed hay. Did his family in Denmark have coffee this Christmas? It would be terrible if they didn’t! Would coffee ever be rationed in the United States? Soren couldn’t imagine it.

Coffee. The Christ child. Baby Jesus. Real coffee. A real baby who cried, urinated, who needed someone to walk him at night the way they each had walked their daughter Sara wh...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Mange Tak
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part One: Christmas
• Part Two: New Year
• Part Three: Epiphany
• Part Four: Lent
• Part Five: Good Friday
• Part Six: Easter
• Part Seven: Pentecost
• Part Eight: Trinity
• Part Nine: Advent
• Part Ten: Christmas
• Appendix