Holy Christmas Day
Christmas as a Confession of Faith
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen! God says to us in today’s Old Testament, from Isaiah the prophet:
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare the way for the people;
build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones;
lift up a signal over the peoples
Dear Christian friends,
One of the pastors in town left a message on the answering machine a couple of
weeks ago, warning that someone had stolen the baby Jesus from the outdoor
nativity scene at his church building. It is not exactly a new practical joke,
it is a little bit funny, and judging from the message on the answering
machine, apparently more than one baby Jesus has gone out on the lam recently.
Our society’s perception of Christmas appears to be shifting beneath our feet.
Stolen yard ornaments might be some cause for consternation, but this prank
might actually indicate a golden opportunity that is brewing for us Christians
in the not-too-distant future. Other indicators of the opportunity that is
opening up for us also include 1) the increasing popularity of Kwanza, a
holiday designed to provide an alternative to Christmas celebrations; and 2)
the increased use of the slogan, “Happy holidays,” rather than “Merry
Christmas.” (Perhaps you saw in the newspaper a letter to the editor that
complained about the “Happy Holidays” greeting that stands in front of our
county courthouse.) Our culture is making great strides in eliminating Christ
from its celebration of Christmas. Probably nothing better could happen for our
holiday!
I say it again: it is a good and blessed thing—and a golden opportunity for
us—that our culture would prefer to eliminate Christ from its Christmas.
Outdoor manger scenes without a plastic baby Jesus might be exactly what the
doctor ordered!
What I mean is this: When the unbelieving culture around us stops singing
“Glory to the newborn king,” then these Words will finally gain relevance for
our unbelieving culture. Stated another way, when the Baby Jesus stops being a
five-and-dime feature to everybody’s Christmas—when everyone in our unbelieving
culture stops singing about this Child—then it will finally grow quiet enough
for them to hear what we Christians have to say about this child.
Right now, we might not be saying enough about the birth of our Christ. We
might not be able to say enough about the birth of our Child. If for no other
reason, we might not be saying enough about the birth of our Christ because so
many people already have their own ideas about the birth of our Christ. It is
difficult to sing an aria while the alley cats are howling on the back fence.
It is difficult to point to the significance of our Lord’s birth while
everyone’s mental picture of Jesus’ birth is cast in plastic and stuck in the
basement for eleven months out of the year.
The increasing popularity of Kwanza may end up giving great help to the Church,
precisely because Kwanza deliberately seeks to eliminate Jesus from its holiday
equation. The slogan, “Happy Holidays,” might not find its best response in the
counter-slogan, “Keep Christ in Christmas.” It might be good for the Christ
Child to be whisked off to Egypt for a while, so to speak. It might be good for
the Christmas carols on our radios to fall silent, even while those carols
continue to ring and peal in our Christian churches and our Christian homes. It
might even be good for us Christians here at Grace Lutheran to have our own
manger scene out in the front yard, complete with every character except for
the Baby Jesus. Then we could place a little sign nearby: “For the Christ,
Please Enter the Building.”
God says in today’s Old Testament, “build up, build up the highway.” Imagine
how much easier our highway-building might become when everyone else stops
using our material! God says in today’s Old Testament, “remove the stones.”
There is hardly stone—anything—that will prevent people from hearing and
trusting Jesus more than their misconception of Jesus. God says, “Lift up a
signal over the peoples.” As another translation of the Bible states this
verse, “Raise a banner for the nations.” That banner is our Christ, whose birth
we celebrate this Christmas Day. That “banner to the nations” is the
proclamation of hope and forgiveness and eternity, which our Christ has earned
and given to you and to me. That banner indicates God’s desire to draw all
people unto this Child—Mary’s Child. A golden opportunity is growing on our
horizon, dear saints! God Himself is making his own banner more and more
visible to the nations, and the
sight of it will become all the more clear as the false banners fall aside and
no longer flap in the breeze.
Merry Christmas, Christians! The peace of God which passes all understanding
guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
_______________________________________________
Sermons mailing list
[email protected]
http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
