In Luke 2, heaven opened when the angels met the shepherds. It’s interesting how much this theme of heaven opening shows up in Advent and Christmas hymnody, e.g.
• “O Come O Come Emmanuel” – “Key of David come and open wide our heavenly home”
• “Good Christian Men Rejoice” – “he hath opened heaven’s door”
• “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” – “good will henceforth from heaven to men, begin and never cease”
• “All Praise to Thee Eternal Lord” – “forlorn and lowly is thy birth, that we may rise from heaven to earth…to make us, in the realms divine, like thine own angels round thee shine”
• “Once in Royal David’s City” – “for that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone”
• “Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendor” – “stooping so low but sinners raising, heavenward by thine eternal plan”
What does this mean? The lowly shepherds are types and representatives of all God’s people. The shepherds are given access to heaven, which is now the privilege of all Christians in union with Christ (Heb. 4, 10, 12). In Christ, we are priests with access to the shekinah-glory and throne room-sanctuary of heaven.
Many Christmas hymns also move straight from his birth to his death, which also fits well with the another theme in Luke 1, namely, the way Luke’s birth narrative foreshadows the passion narrative. The swaddling of baby Jesus foreshadows the way he will wrapped in a linen garment when he is buried. The fact that he laid in a feeding trough shows he will become food for the world — which happens in the Eucharist, inaugurated on the eve of his death.
The trajectory of Christmas points to the cross. In other words, the event of Christmas already contained within it the event of Good Friday. The initial humiliation of entering our world and our humanity in such a lowly condition was just the first downward step in a life of downward mobility. Donald MacLeod captures this well:
“In becoming incarnate God not only accommodates himself to human weakness: he buries his glory under veil after veil so that it is impossible for flesh and blood to recognize him. As he hangs on the cross, bleeding, battered, powerless and forsaken, the last thing he looks like is God. Indeed, he scarcely looks human. He looks like nothing but a hell–bound, hell–deserving derelict. Everything about him says, “An atheist and a blasphemer!”…
We should notice, too, that the kenōsis involved the willingness to go ever lower. Behind it, there lay two great decisions. The first, pre-temporal, was a decision of the eternal Son to assume the form of a servant in the likeness of men. Second, taken once he was incarnate, was the decision to humble himself even further.
From this point of view, the humiliation of Christ was not a point, but a line. Its greatest single step was that by which he became the child in the manger. The condescension involved in that is beyond imagining. Yet it was only the beginning of the long downward journey through homelessness, poverty, exhaustion, shame and pain to Gethsemane; and beyond that to Calvary. . . .
Every moment in that journey from Bethlehem to Calvary was chosen; and every moment on the cross, from the third to the ninth hour, was chosen. Every day of the Lord’s life he re-enacted the kenōsis, renewing the decision which had made him nothing and choosing to move further and further into the shame and pain it involved. He loved his own, and when eventually it became clear what that love would cost he went forward, trembling, to be what his people’s sin deserved.” [The Person of Christ, 218].
—
John Donne on the same theme:
“The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr. … His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.”
—
Charles Spurgeon on Christmas feasting:
“Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast. Go to the house of feasting to-morrow, celebrate your Saviour’s birth; do not be ashamed to be glad; you have a right to be happy. Solomon says, “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.
Religion never was designed
to make your pleasures less.
Recollect that your Master ate butter and honey. Go your way, rejoice tomorrow, but in your feasting, think of the Man in Bethlehem; let him have a place in your hearts, give him the glory, think of the virgin who conceived him, but think most of all of the Man born, the Child given.”
—
Jonathan Edwards:
“His infinite condescension marvelously appeared in the manner of his birth. He was brought forth in a stable because there was no room for them in the inn. The inn was taken up by others, that were looked upon as persons of greater account.
The Blessed Virgin, being poor and despised, was turned or shut out. Though she was in such necessitous circumstances, yet those that counted themselves her betters would not give place to her; and therefore, in the time of her travail, she was forced to betake herself to a stable; and when the child was born, it was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. There Christ lay a little infant, and there he eminently appeared as a lamb.
But yet this feeble infant, born thus in a stable, and laid in a manger, was born to conquer and triumph over Satan, that roaring lion. He came to subdue the mighty powers of darkness, and make a show of them openly, and so to restore peace on earth, and to manifest God’s good-will towards men, and to bring glory to God in the highest, according as the end of his birth was declared by the joyful songs of the glorious hosts of angels appearing to the shepherds at the same time that the infant lay in the manger; whereby his divine dignity was manifested.”
—
John Chrysostom from on of the oldest Christmas sermons we have:
“What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infants bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness.”
—
Wes Baker on Mal. 4:2, the date of Christmas, and the meaning of Christmas:
The most common efforts to calculate the date of his birth began with the conception of John the Baptist near the time of the fall equinox (just after Zechariah’s ministry at the feast of Tabernacles). This led them to date Jesus’ conception six months later around the time of the spring equinox, finally concluding that his birth nine months after that would have been at the time of the winter solstice. Whatever one thinks of these calculations, we can surely appreciate their efforts to pick up on the symbolism of this verse. In the dead of winter, at the winter solstice, when all looks bleak and dreary and hopeless the sun actually reverses course and begins its journey back, enlightening again the northern hemisphere with its warmth and radiance. The birth of the world’s true King did indeed bring light to a cold and dark world. But this verse suggests that the rays emanating from him are actually rays of righteousness and justice (the word carries both senses)–righteousness, enabling us to stand before him as judge of the living and the dead, and justice, as his calculated determination to banish all injustice and unrighteousness from the world. Leave it to a missionary to conclude that Christmas is really about missions: It is about God’s mission to save us by sending his only Son into the world, and thus it is also about our mission to go into all the world to announce good tidings that the Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in his wings!”
—
John Piper:, on the reasons for which Jesus came, and thus the divine rationale for the incarnation:
- “For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).
- “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8; cf. Hebrews 2:14–15).
- “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
- “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
- “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
- “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).
- “For God so loved the world that whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16).
- “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
- “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
- “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many may be revealed” (Luke 2:34ff).
- “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).
- “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarches, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:7–8; cf. John 12:27ff).
—
Gregory of Nazianzus:
“What he was he continued to be; what he was not he took to himself. In the beginning he was, uncaused; for what is the cause of God? But afterward for a cause he was born. And that cause was that you might be saved, who insult him and despise his Godhead… He was laid in a manger—but he was glorified by angels, and proclaimed by a star, and worshipped by the Magi… He was baptized as a man—but he remitted sins as God… He was tempted as man, but he conquered as God… He hungered—but he fed thousands; yea, he is the bread that gives life, and that is of heaven. He thirsted—but he cried, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.”… He was wearied, but he is the rest of them that are weary and heavy-laden. He was heavy with sleep, but he walked lightly over the sea… He prays, but he hears prayer. He weeps, but he causes tears to cease. He asks where Lazarus was laid, for he was man; but he raises Lazarus, for he was God. He is sold, and very cheap… but he redeems the world, and that at a great price… As a sheep he is led to the slaughter, but he is the shepherd of Israel, and now of the whole world also. As a lamb he is silent, yet he is the Word, and is proclaimed by the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He is bruised and wounded, but he heals every disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the tree, but by the tree of life he restores us… He is given vinegar to drink mingled with gall. Who? He who turned the water into wine, who is the destroyer of the bitter taste, who is sweetness and altogether desired. He lays down his life, but he has power to take it again… he dies, but he gives life, and by his death destroys death. He is buried but he rises again; he goes down into hell, but he brings up the souls; he ascends to heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.”
—
John Calvin:
“When Christ was thrown into a stable, and placed in a manger, and a lodging refused him among men, it was that heaven might be opened to us, not as a temporary lodging, but as our eternal country and inheritance, and that angels might receive us into their abode.”
—
Philip Schaf:
The life and character of Jesus Christ is truly the holy of holies in the history of the world. Eighteen hundred years have passed away since he appeared, in the fullness of time, on this earth to redeem a fallen race from sin and death, and to open a never-ceasing fountain of righteousness and life. The ages before him anxiously awaited his coming, as the fulfillment of the desire of all nations; the ages after him proclaim his glory, and ever extend his dominion… He is the author of the new creation; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Prophet, Priest, and King of regenerate humanity. He is Immanuel, God with us; the eternal Word become flesh; very God and very man in one person, the Saviour of the world. [from “The Person of Christ, The Miracle of History”]
—
Athanasius:
“The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord’s body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of all through His union with it, ” might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death.” Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God’s good time for each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety of the resurrection, says: “This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?’”
—
N. T. Wright:
“Something is happening before our very eyes, as we gaze upon the baby in the manger, the Word made Flesh, and reflect on what it all means.
God’s gift of his own very self isn’t, as people so often imagine, a kind of alien invasion, an intrusion from outside.
It is of course a matter of grace, of totally undeserved mercy, the free gift of an uncaused and overflowing love – and if you want to see what free and overflowing love looks like and feels like, (and which of us doesn’t?) then read the rest of John’s gospel and marvel at Jesus loving his own who were in the world and loving them to the uttermost.
But this free grace, coming to us from beyond the world, is precisely coming from the one who created the world in the first place and made it to be a place of truth, of solid reality… so that when grace happens, truth happens. And in the baby in the manger we see them both happening; we see them both married for ever.
In the Word made Flesh we gaze upon the glory not just of the living God, coming to us in utter love in the person of this tiny baby, but of God’s design for his whole world. As St. Paul put it, God’s plan from the beginning was to unite, in Christ, all things, things in heaven and things on earth.
And part of the point of Christmas is that this marriage of heaven and earth, of grace and truth, has now begun and isn’t going to stop until it’s complete.
Welcome to the wedding.”
—
N. T. Wright:
“The wonder of Christmas morning is that today we are summoned to look at the baby in the manger and recognise whose stamp, whose imprint, he bears. On Christmas morning we find ourselves gazing at God inside out. This baby is what you get when the stamp of divine nature leaves its exact imprint in the soft metal of a human being. Jesus is the coin that tells you whose country you are living in. Jesus is the seal that tells us whose authority the document carries. Jesus is the alphabet, Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, Chi and Rho, the Christ, Sigma for Soter, Saviour, Tau for the cross – the letters that speak of his identity, his vocation, his victory. When the living God wants to become human, this is how he spells his name, spells it in the character, the exact imprint, of his own nature, writes it in flesh and blood, soft, vulnerable human tissue, stamps it into the innermost being of the foetus in Mary’s womb, the light of the world who blinked and cried as his eyes opened to this world’s light, the source of life who eagerly drank his own mother’s milk. This is God inside out; O come, let us adore him. This truth is so dazzling, so nourishing, that we ourselves blink at its brightness even as we come to feed on its richness.”
—
John Calvin:
“The Lord held to this orderly plan in administering the covenant of his mercy: as the day of full revelation approached with the passing of time, the more he increased each day the brightness of its manifestation. Accordingly, at the beginning when the first promise of salvation was given to Adam it glowed like a feeble spark. Then, as it was added to, the light grew in fullness, breaking forth increasingly and shedding its radiance more widely. At last – when all the clouds were dispersed – Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, fully illumined the whole earth.”
—
Martin Luther:
This is the chief article, which separates us from all the heathen, that you, O man, may not only learn that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior, but also accept the fact that he is your Lord and Savior, that you may be able to boast in your heart: I hear the Word that sounds from heaven and says: This child who is born of the virgin is not only his mother’s son. I have more than the mother’s estate; he is more mine than Mary’s, for he was born for me, for the angel said, “To you” is born the Savior. Then ought you to say, Amen, I thank you, dear Lord.
But then reason says: Who knows? I believe that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior and he may perhaps help Peter and Paul, but for me, a sinner, he was not born. But even if you believed that much, it would still not be enough, unless there were added to it the faith that he was born for you. For he was not born merely in order that I should honor the mother. This honor belongs to none except her and it is not to be despised, for the angel said, “Blessed are you among women!” [Luke 1:28]. But it must not be too highly esteemed lest one deny what is written here: “To you is born this day the Savior.” He was not merely concerned to be born of a virgin; it was infinitely more than that. It was this, as she herself sings in the Magnificat: “He has helped his servant Israel” [Luke 1:54]; not that he was born of me and my virginity but born for you and for your benefit, not only for my honor.
Take yourself in hand, examine yourself and see whether you are a Christian! If you can sing: The Son, who is proclaimed to be a Lord and Savior, is my Savior; and if you can confirm the message of the angel and say yes to it and believe it in your heart, then your heart will be filled with such assurance and joy and confidence, and you will not worry much about even the costliest and best that this world has to offer. For when I can speak to the virgin from the bottom of my heart and say: O Mary, noble, tender virgin, you have borne a child; this I want more than robes and gold, yea, more than my body and life; then you are closer to the treasure than everything else in heaven and earth…You see how a person rejoices when he receives a robe or ten coins. But how many are there who shout and jump for joy when they hear the message of the angel: “To you is born this day the Savior?” Indeed, the majority look upon it as a sermon that must be preached, and when they have heard it, consider it a trifling thing, and go away just as they were before.
—
Dorothy Sayers (perhaps my all-time favorite Christmas quotation):
The central dogma of the Incarnation is that by which its [that is, Christianity’s] relevance stands or falls. If Christ were only man, then he is irrelevant to any thought about God; if he is only God, then he is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life. …the outline of the official story—the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and the hero.
If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore; on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies….
For what it [that is, the Incarnation] means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile….
And here Christianity has its enormous advantage over every other religion in the world. It is the only religion that gives value to evil and suffering.
What do we find God ‘doing about’ this business of sin and evil?…God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead…
—
Martin Luther:
There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: ’If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby! I would have washed his linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!’ Yes, you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don’t you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.
—
C.S. Lewis:
“He came down from heaven” can almost be transposed into “Heaven drew earth up into it,” and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. The pure light walks the earth; the darkness, received into the heart of Deity, is there swallowed up. Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?
—
Michael Card:
“All we could ever imagine, could ever hope for, He is. He is the wise royal Counselor who fills us with wonder, the bringer of true understanding between all individuals and nations. He is the God of Might, whose power can accomplish any and every task His holiness demands. His power we need not fear for He is also the Father Eternal who is Tenderness Itself and who is ever motivated by His everlasting love for His children. Finally, He is Prince of Peace whose first Coming has already transformed society but whose second Coming will forever establish justice and righteousness. All this and infinitely more alive in an impoverished baby in a barn.
That is what Christmas means. Finding in a place where you would least expect to find anything you want, everything you could ever want.”
—
Jeff Meyers:
You’ve probably saw the reports a few years back, mostly on the internet, that the famous atheist Anthony Flew at age 81 (or so) now believes in God. The headlines would have you believe that Flew had some sort of conversion and is now a believer. Remember Anthony Flew? For over 50 years he has been an icon of religious skepticism and a committed atheist. In 1950 he wrote a short essay called “Theology and Falsification.” And ironically this paper was presented to Oxford’s Socratic Club, led by C.S. Lewis (until 1954). Dorothy Sayers was part of this club, too. The paper has had an enormous impact. He began with a parable adopted from someone else: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing both flowers and weeds. One explorer said, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagreed, “There is no gardener.” So they decided to pitch their tents and set a watch. But no gardener is ever seen. The first explorer says, “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the “believing” explorer is not convinced. “There is a gardener. But he is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last his friend, the skeptical explorer despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?” The original claim that there is a gardener (an invisible deity that cares for the garden) has died the death of a thousand qualifications. The claim that there is a gardener (God) is not even meaningful. There are, of course, a number of problems˜philosophical, theological, and biblical˜with this parable and what it supposedly proves. But this is not the time or place to analyze something like this for every false assumption and error in logic. But I should note that Flew to date has not retracted his rejection of an invisible Gardner deity. When Flew says he “believes in God” that’s not what he means.’ So, does Anthony Flew now believe in God? Yes and no. There are three problems with this statement “Anthony Flew believes in God.” First, the verb “believes. Second, the noun “god.” And third, just one small little detail — Flew denies that he has come to any kind of religious conviction about a supreme being.
What does it mean that Anthony Flew now believes? Anthony Flew now “believes in God” means “Anthony Flew now thinks there is a god” (small “g”). No, he doesn’t believe in God. Rather, he now is of the opinion that there may be some sort of deity. That’s not the same thing as believing in God. Trusting in God. But his “believing” clearly has no impact on his life or relationships. For us Christians “believing in God” is not merely some private philosophical opinion or a religious sentiment. Jesus birth was very public and his public life demanded change in the real world, not just in the hearts and minds of believers. You are either for Jesus or against him. He said “follow me,” not simply “form an opinion about divinity.”
Then there’s this little word “god.” Whom do you refer to when you say “god’? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or some generic supreme being. They are not the same. We often say that people who think that some supreme being exists “believe in God” but that’s not accurate. They think that a god exists. To “believe in God” is to trust in the living and true God, the Creator and Redeemer revealed in Jesus Christ. Anthony Flew, however, says this: “I’m thinking of a god very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.” Would Flew ever think that God was a cosmic oriental despot if he took the time to carefully consider the significance of the incarnation of God the Son? Modern man treats the substance of Christmas — the birth, the enfleshment of God himself — like they would a dead animal on the sidewalk — we walk carefully around it and try to avoid looking at or smelling it. Christmas becomes a metaphor, a symbol for something happy, something sweet, something — let’s not define it too carefully or identify it too concretely — something nice to think about once a year. Very interestingly this is admitted by the champion of religious relativism and pluralism in our generation, John Hick, the English religious philosopher. In his book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick argues exactly this way. The title of his book says it all. He is happy to believe in the incarnation as a religious “idea,” a metaphor of God’s nearness to man. But he will have nothing to do with it as history, as an event in the real world, as something that actually happened. He wants nothing to do with the Christmas history as it is related in the Bible — God the Son begin born a human child to a virgin mother. We cannot believe that God actually became a man in Jesus Christ, Hick argues, because if we did that, we would have to accept that the Christian Faith is alone the truth about salvation and peace with God. We would have to accept Christianity’s exclusive claim. We just can’t do that, we can’t believe that.
So it turns out there’s nothing but the colors, lights, the warmth of Christmas fires and cider, the smell of evergreen and cinnamon. But underneath nothing. Nothing at all. Ultimately, when Christmas sentiments have freed themselves from the story of Christmas, then every man and woman must imagine his idea of Christmas. These days Christmas provides an opportunity for one’s own privatized religious feelings. So year after year we have the same old tired “meaning” trotted out for us to “celebrate.” The “meaning of Christmas is giving” Yawn. The true meaning of the holiday season is enjoying family and friends and helping those who are less fortunate than we are. Sigh. No, these do not explain the true meaning of Christmas. Rather, they summarize how we are to respond to the miracle of Christmas eve. How we are to live in the light of the real meaning of Christmas the incarnation of God the Son. But the focus of Christmas should not on us some humanistic reduction of Christmas to religious sentiments or humanitarian concerns. These horizontal, social concerns are important, but they are not central, they arise because of the vertical. God reveals himself to us in Jesus, comes to us first and then we love one another, give to one another. You forget the one and you will never truly have the other. I would hope that even our littlest children know that believing in God means trusting in the One who came to live among us and die for us. Christmas is the time we remember not an invisible Gardener, not a parable, but the true story of God’s becoming man for us. And the invisible God that is made know to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not a cosmic dictator or tyrant. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a divine community of love and service turned outward toward his creatures. Believe in God, believe also in me, Jesus said.
—
C. S. Lewis:
“The Son of God became man to enable men to become sons of God.”
—
Bernard of Clairvaeux:
“You have come to us as a small child, but you have brought us the greatest of all gifts, the gift of eternal love. Caress us with your tiny hands, embrace us with your tiny arms, and pierce our hearts with your soft, sweet cries.”
—
Charles Spurgeon (another of my favorites):
“Infinite, and an infant. Eternal, and yet born of a woman. Almighty, and yet hanging on a woman’s breast. Supporting a universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother’s arms. King of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph. Heir of all things, and yet the carpenter’s despised son. Oh, the wonder of Christmas.”
—
These notes go with my sermon from December 25, 2011.
TPC Pastor's Page 