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Sermon 5
Go
to
Luke
2:15 December
25, 2007 Sisters
and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of God the
Father, Son (X) and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is Christmas and we are filled with joy because we have
heard again the good news of great joy that the angels gave to the
shepherds long ago in Christmas TinselBut there isn’t
much around us or even within us to support this metaphorical trip to a time
of pious devotion rather than a carnival,… such people were always in
the minority. It may not be going too far to say that Christmas has
always been an extremely difficult holiday to Christianize
[Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle
for Christmas (1996) p. 8].
This is because during Christmas we go the way of the fool in
Luke 12:19-20 and say to ourselves, “take your ease, eat, drink and be
merry.” We do this rather than “counting the cost” of a life of
sacrifice and discipleship with Jesus (Luke 14:28) – which includes
denying ourselves and suffering daily (Luke 9:23). Even Myles Davis in
his 1962 song, “Blue Christmas,” notes this: See
right through all the waste, all the sham, all
the haste, and plain old bad taste… It’s a time
when the greedy give a dime to the needy.
So in order to go to To Show God’s Love Aright So against these
frivolities welling up at Christmastide (see Ephesians 5:4), we pit
another message – one grounded elsewhere, in the Bible itself. This
message heralds Jesus, that “illegitimate child,” who comes
“without genealogy” (Hebrews 7:3), “an alien, outside society” (KW
21:160-61). This makes him the neglected one, the disrespected one. The
Staple Singers, of all people, sing about this Biblical child in their
1970 pop song, “Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas”: People
all over the world,…. too busy Having
fun, drinking with everyone, Showing
no respect for Mary’s baby son.
No, this alien savior doesn’t come for merriment or
light-heartedness. Oh no, Mary bore him for entirely other reasons. This
is well expressed in the beloved Christmas carol, “Lo, How a Rose
E’er Blooming” [Service Book
and Hymnal (1958) Hymn 38]: To
show God’s love aright, She
bore to men a Savior, When
half spent was the night. So Jesus comes to
shed light in our darkness. That is, he comes to straighten out the way
we think about divine love – making sure we see it “aright,” as it
were. And the right way to see it is to note that it rests on the
sacrifice of God’s dear Son, Christ Jesus (1 John 4:10) – the very
“lamb of God” (John 1:29). Therefore we can’t depend on some sort
of generic divine love to get us through this life and on into the next.
No, not at all. So we Lutherans teach that it is only because Christ
died on the cross that “satisfaction” is made and that our debt to
God is paid, so that we might be “restored… to the Father’s favor
and grace” (BC p. 414). And
this, we go on to say, is “the chief doctrine of the Christian
faith,” that “in the same Person, Jesus Christ,” righteousness and
sin collide
with… a powerful impact. Thus the sin of the entire world attacks
righteousness with the greatest possible impact and fury…. In this
duel… it is necessary for sin to be conquered and killed, and for
righteousness to prevail and live…. [So in Christ] you see sin, death,
the wrath of God, hell, the devil, and all evils… put to death….
Because [Jesus] took upon Himself our sins… it was right for Him to
bear the punishment and wrath of God…. It is above all for this
doctrine… that we bear the hate and persecution of Satan and of the
world (Luther’s Works
26:281-85).
So if this sacrificial death, with its power to appease God’s
wrath, is neglected in any way, then all that will be left of
Christianity is “scarcely half of Christ…. [For] the wrath of God is
real, not imaginary…. Were it false, mercy would be false…. [For]
when genuine wrath is at its highest, so is genuine mercy” (LW 28:264). Virginally Conceived But if Jesus, the
eternal divine Word and holy second person of the Blessed Trinity, had
not become flesh (John 1:14), none of this would have happened. His
sacrifice would have been impossible. For without the incarnation there
would be no body to pierce with nails and spear (John 19:34, 20:25;
Romans 8:3; Hebrews 10:10; 1 Peter 2:24). And without that body, no
blood would have been spilt to save us from our sins (Romans 5:9;
Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:22; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 5:9). So the
beloved St. Athanasius (298-373), taught early on that Christ was
“appointed” to take on a body in order to “surrender” it on the
Cross, and thereby “offer it to the Father” as a sacrifice for sin [On
the Incarnation, trans. P. Lawson (1946, 1981) p. 14]. So while the
incarnation alone can’t save us – by supposedly ending the hostility
between the human and the divine by perfectly joining these two natures
together in Christ [Kallistos Ware, The
Orthodox Way (1986) p. 98], it nevertheless is essential for our
salvation.
And that’s because this blood wasn’t ordinary (1 Peter 1:19).
Besides being human, it was also fully divine, albeit incarnate (John
5:18, 10:30; Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 4:15) – which is why it could
cover the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). And it was holy blood
because Jesus was virginally conceived (Luke 1:34-35; Matthew 1:20) –
not by some holy coitus [contra
the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, Revised Edition (1999) §485, regarding Mary being
“divinely fecundated”] but simply by Mary believing Gabriel’s
word, “You shall conceive” (Luke 1:31) (LW
36:341, 37:89-90). This odd sort of conception signals that Jesus comes
from above (John 1:1, 14, 5:26, 16:5, 28, 17:5, 24), that he is divine,
and not some ordinary human who had never lived before being born of
Mary. No, he is instead the pre-existent Word who, already existing,
becomes incarnate when born of Mary.
And we shouldn’t either balk at this weird conception. We
should instead honor it because it isn’t “necessarily unreasonable
just because it seems unreasonable” to us, remembering that “God
is… far beyond all reason” (LW
36:343; Isaiah 55:8; 1 Corinthians 2:4). Unlike us, God is able to do
“whatever he pleases” (Psalm 115:3), whether it lines up with our
view of what’s possible or not (LW
44:275). Even Herod couldn’t stop this birth, though he was able to
force an enrollment (Luke 2:1). Jesus simply was born
when “the time came” (Luke 2:6)! So believe in Jesus’
virgin birth, knowing that this “inscrutability” (Romans 11:33) is a
bona fide
part of it. And also do so, knowing that “a sinless birth was
impossible except through the instrumentality of a virgin woman who was
able to conceive… without the aid of man” (SML
6:249). With the Barn Animals And this
inscrutability is also part of the reason why Jesus was born with no
fanfare. Denied this sort of worldly celebration, he’s pushed off into
a barn (Luke 2:7) – where the only real “alliance” he has is
“with the horses” (KW 21:161)! This happens because he’s just too unlike the world to
be endorsed by it (John 1:10-11, 3:19, 32, 7:7, 15:18; 1 John 2:15).
This worldly chiding, then, immediately…
distinguishes sharply between his kingdom and the world’s…. [He’s
born] in a strange locality where he has no home, in cold winter,… in
a place and at a time when he is totally forsaken by everyone and
without the usual necessities…. Miserable were the circumstances, with
a world more hostile and loveless towards this King than to lions and
bears [Luther’s House Postils, ed. E. Klug (1996) 1:100-101].
But Jesus doesn’t care. There are no Christmas lamentations for
this social, political, cultural slight. All we hear instead are
exaltations of peace and glory (Luke 2:14). This is because Jesus does
not stand in awe of the world…. He conducts himself over against the
world…. as a poor beggar who has come to earth to declare that he is
no worldly king,… but that his kingdom belongs to another world and
life…. Christ has not come to earth in order to seize power from
Caesar Augustus…. The ultimate end of the church is not peace and
comfort on earth, nice homes, wealth, power and honor, but…. to
proclaim the treasure for trouble and anguished consciences which Christ
has earned,… namely, the forgiveness of sins and everlasting peace (LHP
1:101-103).
So it would be a misfire to rail against Christmas because
“mistletoe doesn’t work” when you’re trying for “a little kiss
from a pretty little miss” (Sonics, “Don’t Believe in
Christmas,” 1965)! For Christ, the light of the world, shines in the
darkness and the darkness doesn’t “overcome it” (John 1:5) – but
neither does the light completely eradicate the world’s darkness (John
12:35). Three Unlikely Signs No wonder, then,
that the meager “swaddling cloths” (Luke 2:12) are a sign of this
king’s presence on earth. But they stand for more than darkness and
neglect. They also stand for the Bible which is the only “witness on
earth to Christian truth” (LW
52:21) – even though the worldly regard it as but “God’s poor
candle” (LW 47:117). This is
because the cynics limit the Bible and restrict it to, or “enclose”
it in, quaint reports from the cultural past, thereby refusing to see in
it any trans-cultural or global, “ultimate answers” [Jacques Ellul, The
Humilation of the Word (1985) p. 32].
And this leads to the second sign – that he will be a “sign
that is spoken against” (Luke 2:34 and my “Christ as a Sign of
Contradiction,” Pro Ecclesia,
Fall 1997). The reason for this is not just to beat-up on Christ, but
that “the thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35).
So when we attack Christ for his stridency (Matthew 7:14) and
exclusivity (Matthew 11:27), it’s exposed that we “love the darkness
rather than the light” (John 3:19). For if you’re an unrepentant
sinner, you’ll go against Christ. This is because his way of salvation
“must suppress and cast out the salvation, peace, life, and grace of
the flesh…. that the spirit… may come to life” (LW 14:335). And this we intensely deplore.
Because we’re “hardened” by the deceitfulness of our sin
(Hebrews 3:13), we have this last sign, the “sign of Jonah,” which
Jesus says is all that our wicked generation deserves (Luke 11:29-32).
Through it we learn that the unrepentant are condemned and that no slack
is cut for us. So while there’s kindness is Christ, be warned,
there’s “severity” and “fury” too (Romans 11:22, 2:4-8). Forced Into Against this
uncompromising integrity of Christ, Herod rears his ugly head, drives
the newborn Christ from for the
children were taken out of this world… into heaven…. By his
butchery…. Herod tore the little children from the mothers’
bosoms…. [which] for the parents was a terrible thing, but it happened
for the eventual good of the children; they felt no anguish in their
souls. So the Lord took them away at the time of his own advent into the
world, as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to himself. Thus much good would
yet come from Herod’s murdering (LHP 3:260).
And so it did. Following in their very path, Jesus himself was
brutalized and killed – but this time for our salvation (Romans 4:25). Far as the Curse is Found So Christ comes into
a world teeming with wickedness – a world in which we cannot save
ourselves (Romans 7:24; Psalm 49:7). This is because of the “curse”
upon us from our ancestral disobedience (Genesis 3:14-19). But Jesus
doesn’t prance around in all his divine glory here. No, he instead
assumes “sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). And by so doing he becomes a
“curse” to save us from the curse of our punishment (Galatians 3:13;
4:4-5). And so we sing in the favorite Christmas carol, “Joy to the
World,” that Jesus comes to make “his blessings flow far as the
curse is found” [Lutheran Book
of Worship (1978) Hymn 39].
Yes, indeed, “far as the curse is found”! For this is the
glory of Christmas, and in this blessing we get exactly what we so
desperately need – salvation from our ancient, abiding and terrifying
curse (Luke 16:28). And this Christ can now provide on the Cross, “for
what we deserved – to be cursed and damned – He underwent and paid
for us” (LW 26:261). He was born in the flesh so he could be crucified in the
flesh and save us from the condemnation of the flesh (Romans 8:3). No
one else could do this for us. So feeling our desperate need for this
salvation from God alone “is the only way in which a person can truly
love God” (KW 17:188). Beauty & Belligerence But Christmas
includes more than giving thanks and singing Christmas carols. It also
includes good works in Jesus’ name (Colossians 3:17; Titus 2:14).
“So then, as we have opportunity,” let us do good works (Galatians
6:10). By so doing we can work to move our cultural Christmas beyond
what Charles Dickens called “the delusions of our childish days” [The
Pickwick Papers (1837) ed. M. Worwald (1999) p. 361]. And we can
also show that Jesus’ birth is to lead us into rebirth (John 3:3-6; 2
Corinthians 5:14-17).
Here, then, are two good deeds to do during Christmastide. The
first is in Psalm 96:8-9, Ascribe
to the Lord… honor; bring offerings and come into his courts. Worship
the Lord in the beauty of holiness, let the whole earth tremble before
him.
So see to it that churches are beautiful and awesome. Give money
to them to pay for it – as the magi of old did (Matthew 2:11). Lay
your gold before the Christ child – rather than giving it to the poor
in his name. Don’t cut corners. Don’t skimp on altar vessels,
vestments, windows and pipe organs. Let there be grandeur in God’s
house that we might tremble before his Word – being put in our place
by the architectural and artist majesty of it all (Ezekiel 43:10). And
call on God to help you with this offering, since we can do nothing
without him (John 15:5). Not even the magi from the East gave their gold
without the miracle of the star leading them (Matthew 2:2, 7, 9, 10).
That guidance, however, gives no astrological value to the star, which,
if taken, would only amount to indulging in “idle quackery,” as
Luther said (LW 52:169). And
the other good work is prescribed in Psalm 96:3,5, 10, Declare
the glory of the Lord among the nations…. As for all the gods of the
nations, they are but idols; but it is the Lord who made the heavens….
Tell it out among the nations, “The Lord is king!”
This means that Christmas is a time for evangelism – so get out
the good news in all of its righteous purity. Don’t water it down in
hopes of larger gains. Let the hard truth be known that all other ways
are false – as belligerent as that may sound (1 Kings 18:19, 40;
Matthew 3:12). Let it be known that only Christ is Lord (Acts 4:12).
Tell everyone about it – calling on God for help, that he would fill
your words with needed insight and compassion. Amen. (based on a compilation of Christmas sermons from 1997-2007) |
