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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
A children’s Christmas program I attended earlier this month featured a reading of popular author Max Lucado’s story The Crippled Lamb, which no doubt is, as his website describes it, an “inspiring story that has encouraged thousands of children who have felt left out or who have special needs” (Lucado). In the story, God had a special role for the crippled lamb to play in keeping Jesus warm after His birth, much like the various roles the animals played in the song “The Friendly Beasts”, which some of us may remember. Yet, to some extent both of those tangential and fictional “tellings” of the Christmas story can take us away from its central focus on the birth of our Savior and what the Bible reports as its true details. Already, only about two-thirds of the Americans surveyed recently report believing the historicity of such things as Jesus’s being born to a virgin and laid in a manger, an angel’s announcing His birth to shepherds, and a star’s guiding to Him “wise men” who brought Jesus gifts (Pew). We hardly need to add less‑likely fanciful aspects to the story or suggest the Bible’s accounts are themselves inadequate!
In fact, there is no registering, journey to Bethlehem, “sold out” inn, swaddling cloths, or manger in the Divinely‑inspired St. John’s account of Jesus’s birth, which we heard in the Gospel Reading this morning. I am not suggesting that those things are untrue, but simply drawing our attention to St. John’s in some ways “simpler” account: the Word that from eternity always was with God and was God became flesh and dwelt among His creatures (confer Brown, ad loc John 1:1-18, 30). The drama of even that “simpler” account of the Incarnation is no less but perhaps more ponderable! Think about it: the Word that from eternity always was with God and was God became flesh and dwelt among His creatures. In that vein, a line from a sermon by Church Father St. Augustine is quoted on your bulletin cover: God Who made man was made man. And a longer more‑extended version of that sermon quotation describes all the things that, once made man, He was able to do, all ultimately, as the Nicene Creed puts it, for us people and for our salvation.
You and I—and undoubtedly at least a few of our members, family, and friends who are not here with us this morning for whatever reasons—likely know and appreciate God’s loving gift to us in the Incarnation of His Son (1 John 4:9). The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not understand it (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration, II:10). The Creator of the world was in the world, and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. Elsewhere St. John records Jesus saying that our sin‑plagued and so death‑deserving flesh is of no help at all, but life comes from the Spirit (John 6:63). Apart from the Holy Spirit, you and I (and our absent members, family, and friends) also do not understand the Light, know our Creator, or receive our Savior. The Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes to the Corinthians that “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV). Yet, God, in His wisdom, saves those who believe through what we otherwise regard as folly: namely, Christ not only born but also crucified for us (1 Corinthians 1:21, 23). The Holy Spirit leads us to turn from our sin and trust God to save us from our sin for the sake of the Word not only made flesh but also crucified for us.
We who, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther points out, otherwise lack grace, are full of falseness, and only displease God (Luther, “The Gospel for the Main Christmas Service”, 52:88), nevertheless are made to receive from the fullness of grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. Not the Virgin Mary’s own sinlessness, but the Holy Spirit and/or the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity’s own holiness made His flesh conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary to be without sin. He is, as we heard in the Epistle Reading (Hebrews 1:1-6), the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, not only through Whom He created the world, but also the world’s upholder. The Virgin Mary conceived and bore a son, and God is with us (Isaiah 7:14). In the flesh of Jesus, God dwelled among His creatures as He had dwelled previously in the Tabernacle and Temple, showing forth His glory, only in Jesus’s case God’s glory was shown in His crucifixion for us (John 12:20-33). The Jews destroyed the temple of Jesus’s body, and in three days He raised it up (John 2:19, 21), inviting His disciples to touch His resurrected flesh that He shares with us (Luke 24:39). Born under the law, Jesus kept the law that we fail to keep, and He redeems us from our failure to keep it, by sending into our hearts the Spirit Who leads us to cry out to Him and makes us His children (Galatians 4:4-6).
We are His children, as St. John declares, born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but born of God. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to Spirit, and so in Holy Baptism we are born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5-6). Holy Baptism is understood as our illumination, God’s giving us His light, and so we believe in His Name. The Word Who is at the Father’s side makes God known to us, speaking to us through Holy Scripture read and preached (confer Proverbs 8:22). So, we understand the Light, know our Creator, and receive our Savior. The Word made flesh breathed out the Spirit on His apostles—and the Spirit is passed on to their successors, including our pastors today (2 Timothy 1:6)—for them to forgive sins in individual Holy Absolution (John 20:22-23). And, on this Christmas Day we have the “Mass” of Christ. Bread is the Body of Christ and wine is the Blood of Christ—Body and Blood born, crucified, and now given here today all for you. We eat His flesh and drink His blood, have life in us, and will be raised up at the last day (John 6:53-54).
Some people may try to think otherwise, but Jesus was born in order to die. Christmas is nothing without Good Friday and Easter! We who are made God’s children should expect nothing different than what Christ experienced: we also experience the cross before the fullness of our resurrections (confer Pieper, III:68). We suffer not only because we are Christians, but also because God permits other afflictions, at Christmas and throughout the year, afflictions to discipline us and so to draw us closer to Him in faith, and ultimately to take us through death to eternal life. As Job asked his wife, can we accept good from the Lord and not also what we might think of as bad (Job 2:10)? With the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, we thank and praise God for chastising us as He does (Luther, Postil sermon on John 1:17, cited by Plass [#37], 15)! In the Word made flesh is life, and He gives life to whom He will (John 5:21); He is the resurrection and the life, and those who have died believing in Him live yet with Him (and are united with Him and so also with us as we celebrate this Christ-mass), and all who believe in Him now or ever will also live with Him (John 11:25‑26). We have that comfort, peace, and joy even now.
So, this Christmas Day I say to you, as the Divinely-inspired Isaiah said in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 52:7-10): Break forth together into singing, for the Lord has comforted and redeemed His people; the Lord has bared His holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +