Christmas Day - The Nativity of Our Lord

Titus 3:4–7
St. John 1:1–18

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If we weren’t mostly selfish, if we weren’t mostly concerned with our own happiness, or the happiness of the people who make us happy, then we might wonder, “Can we really have a merry Christmas? Is it really okay to have so much fun, when so much of the world is in so much pain?”

Over 3 million children die of hunger every year. And some of us have so much money that we can let food go bad in the fridge. We might not want to waste it, but it happens, because we simply were not hungry enough to eat it, we didn’t need it. Let us also consider all the children who come from or live in broken homes. It’s almost too hard to count the ways home and marriage are broken now. And do not forget those children who will not be wrapped in swaddling clothes, they will not even be given the dignity of a manger for a bed, but they will be literally discarded with the clinic’s garbage. And sorry, I’m not done yet—so many people are abused, children as well as adults. Others do abuse to themselves. Some people are overcome by depression and they don’t have the strength to wish you a Merry Christmas. And there are others who are drowning themselves at the bottom of their bottles. There are people, all kinds of people, people you might not even suspect, who have messed up so many times, or have had so much evil happen to them, that they never hear anyone say anything like, “I love you. You matter. You are precious to me,” or even, “You are precious to God.”

If we seriously consider this broken world—this world that we have broken by our sins against God and against each other—can we really justify this month or more of feasting? Is it really appropriate? Don’t we have serious work we should be doing? The Bible says we do have serious work.
Be sober-minded (1 Peter 5:8).
Be wretched and mourn and weep (James 4:9).
Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause (Isaiah 1:16–17).
Give to the needy (Matt. 6:2).
O you who love the Lord, hate evil! (Psalm 97:10).
Deny yourself and take up your cross daily (Luke 9:23).
That is the Word of the Lord. In other words, stop tinseling over the pain with a holly jolly Christmas. You can’t ignore the depravity of this world. And isn’t it strange how Christmas is probably the most noticeable time when reality doesn’t meet expectations. As hard as we try to make it picture–perfect, things have a way of spoiling. That’s what happens in a world broken by sin. And even when we know the real reason for this season, that we’re supposed to be celebrating the absolutely greatest thing to ever happen: God come in the flesh—even then, it often doesn’t feel quite that great.

If you came to church this morning just to hear something nice so you can forget about all the problems for a while, and pretend there’s nothing wrong… I’m sorry. That’s not going to happen here. That can’t happen in a Christian Church. We deal with sin honestly. Even on a happy day like Christmas, we began our service with painfully familiar words: “I, a poor, miserable sinner.” This is God’s judgment: the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light because their works were evil (John 3:19). That’s you and me. Our works are evil. We love darkness. This world’s brokenness is our fault. But then in a Christian Church, we also hear about the real cure to all these injuries, the real answer to all these problems. Christmas is actually the answer. And Good Friday and Easter. Jesus is the answer. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Now, there is also a cheap, false Christmas, that the world certainly celebrates, and that we might also fall into. But we can get the real Christmas back. Because the world really IS full of pain and suffering, hunger and abuse. And Christmas exists BECAUSE of that. Christmas wasn’t invented by men to just paper-over the evil. Christmas is real because of all the evil things we have done and all the evil things that have been done to us. 

The real Christmas is the only real way to deal with the pain and suffering. The right place for us to go, the healing place, is to a shack in Bethlehem where a little boy was born to a mother and a step-father who weren’t even in their own home, and weren’t entirely sure what would happen next. And then what happened was soldiers tried to kill their baby, and succeeded in butchering many other little baby boys. That’s Christmas: the birth of a Savior, right in the middle of our pain, our darkness, our death.

Now, follow that baby boy into Egypt; then back to a little town where He had to grow up, hearing the tongues wagging about that illegitimate son of the carpenter. Follow Him as He lived and suffered the way you do. Follow Him to the very end, where everyone hated Him, where the lips He had made for praise spat on Him and called Him a liar, where the hands He had made for good works seized Him and nailed Him to a cross. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.

And now remember that Jesus came into this evil, broken world, and suffered in this horrible way, to save this world. The whole reason Christmas exists at all is because Jesus came to suffer all that this world and our sinful hearts could throw at Him. He came here, to us, and over this broken, nasty world, the angels of heaven sang “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy. He saved us. And to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave the authority to become children of God. That means, He saved us… by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

That’s what we’re celebrating: Jesus’ birth in the flesh, and your rebirth into heaven. That’s what all our lights and trees and family gatherings and church services ought to be about. So, in order to really celebrate—to cut through the lies and broken promises and disappointed expectations—we do need to look hard at the darkness of this life. We need to own it, confess it. And then, marvel at the fact that God was made a man. I don’t have to paper things over. I don’t have to paste on the smile, make merry, and carry on. I don’t have to blast the carols just to drown out the world’s problems. I just need what Christmas really gives.

Real Christmas—the right place to go, the healing place to go—is right here. Christmas Morning Divine Service is all about the healing, the cure, the answer for all our hurts, all our evil. That is why we have here our own Christmas feast. It’s quite different from what you might enjoy at home—no ham or cookies—just a bit of bread and a sip of wine—a memorial of death. But also more than a memorial: the very body and blood that died on that cross and rose from the dead. The very same body and blood that was born in Bethlehem. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And here He is! At our altar, for you. 

Jesus came to this evil world to save it. And He still comes, to you, poor sinner, to save you. In this greatest of Christmas feasts, we see His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. More than we deserve, more than enough to heal us and bring us into His new and unbroken world to come. 

Now THAT is a reason to party. That is the reason to sing as loud as you can. That’s the reason to enjoy the decorations and the rich food. How can you not? We magnify this Day, even though there’s not enough electric lights in the world to celebrate what our God has done. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us… And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace… upon grace. Now that’s a Merry Christmas.

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.


Preached at Trinity, Clinton, IA & Immanuel, Charlotte, IA

The Nativity of Our Lord - Christmas Day

Micah 5:2–5

St. John 1:1–18

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

You can’t get much bigger, much grander than the first chapter of John’s Gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Not only does that imitate the opening line of Genesis—in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but John 1 goes back even further, beyond the beginning of creation and time, to when there was only God and nothing else, only the three eternal Persons in one God: the Father, the Spirit, and the Word—the Father’s eternally begotten Son. Then starting from the Trinity, from that grandest of beginnings, then John comes to creation. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

            This is a truly epic story, on a higher level than any human myth—beyond the epic poems of Homer, or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, or any movie that might begin, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” We’re dealing with heavy stuff here: Life itself (capital L), the Life who makes all other things live. And the uncreated Light (capital L again), the Light who gives all other light meaning, the Light who cannot be grasped or understood or ever put out. This Word, this Life, this Light, is the Son of the Father, long before He was ever known by the name Jesus.

John’s Gospel takes us soaring higher than the loftiest of man’s philosophies. It strains our little imaginations to get such a bird’s eye view of the universe. John 1 gets about as close as we can get to God’s perspective. And so we hear in this first chapter about Christmas on a cosmic scale: the Word who is God from eternity, the Word who brought all things into being, that Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. This is the biggest, most epic of stories.

But on the other hand, we heard from the prophet Micah, and we got a story with one of the smallest settings. The cosmic story of Christmas zooms in from the perspective of God and the universe down to the little town of Bethlehem. Where John 1 might’ve left us a bit breathless and dizzy, in Bethlehem, everything gets simple and real, like dirt under the fingernails. Bethlehem—the name means, House of Bread. Not House of pastry or House of fine wines or House of exotic spices. House of Bread—can you get more ordinary than that?

Bethlehem, in the region of Ephrathah, humdrum, workaday, stinking with shepherds and dung, too little to be among the clans of Judah. But it’s the city of David, right? That’s got to count for something. It’s David’s hometown, but not his capital. He didn’t stay there when he became king. City of Jesse, is more like it—the place where his son David lived when he was still only a little shepherd boy.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for Me One who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Ancient days? Try, “He is the One from before the ancient days began.” Ordinary, common, plain, little town of Bethlehem. Even with Micah’s prophecy, I don’t think they were really expecting it when the new King was born and laid in one of their mangers. The Word came there. The eternal Son of the Father, the Maker of the Cosmos, the Life, the Light, He showed up in little Bethlehem.

Why? We dare to ask. It boggles the human mind. But the answer is not so hard to grasp as the question. Because He loves us. He chose to be with us, one with us—common, ordinary humanity, with all our stink, with all our sin. He took us on as we are, not perfect, not grand, not even very nice or good. His love brought Him down to earth, down to our lowly level, even down into the lowliness of our sin and death. His love brought Him down so that His love could bring us up. He became as we are, so that we might become as He is. 

This is the great cosmic Christmas exchange. The whole universe was turned upside-down at Bethlehem: we gifted Him our sin, our filth, our doom, and He gifted us with His Life, His Light, Himself. As one of our Lutheran poets put it:

Thou Christian heart,

Whoe’er thou art,

Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move thee!

For God’s own Child,

In mercy mild,

Joins thee to Him;

How greatly God must love thee! (LSB 372:4)

And not only does He love you, not only is He with you, but also He is FOR you. He’s on your side. * The Word became flesh, and the Word endures forever. No one can snatch the Word made flesh from us. Nothing can steal the joy we have in the Word made flesh. 

In that sense, Christmas is eternal. Long after the decorations are taken down and the music is turned off and the crowds at the mall are gone, the Word they still shall let remain. This world may not care for it. They may even hate it. They may think as little about it as a little, nothing, one-stop-sign town like Bethlehem. But none of that matters. Because He is the Word that endures forever. He is that blessed Word that created all that is. He is that blessed Word that came to His own, and His own people did not receive him. Still, He came to save this miserable human race. He is that blessed Word made flesh, sent from God to reconcile us back by His own blood and to speak us back into fellowship with Him. * And so, to all who did receive this Word made flesh, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but born of God. In your Baptism, you were made a part of this grand, epic story. And nothing can change that.

And finally, this all-creating, cosmically powerful Word that was born a man in Bethlehem, He brings a little Bethlehem to you. He has built His Bethlehem, His House of Bread right here. And it’s a beautiful church. But as beautiful as it is, it’s still a bit ordinary. It’s a country church, by no means the greatest or grandest in the world or in the Missouri Synod for that matter. Nevertheless, this is Bethlehem for you here: a real House of Bread, where you eat and drink, not common food for common earthly life, but in this Bethlehem, you eat and drink the eternal Word’s very body and blood. So, you are given His very Life and Light.

What an epic Christmas story! And it’s not “once upon a time…” It’s happening right now. Word of the Father THERE (at the altar) in flesh appearing! O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

Merry Christmas!

In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.

*…* Section based on Rev. Jason Braaten (Christmas 2017)