Violent Night

Propers: The Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas III), A.D. 2016 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning we read the Christmas Story, the Nativity of Our Lord, according to St John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” How very fitting a witness from the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved, the same Apostle who laid his head against our Lord’s chest at the Last Supper, and heard the beating of His Sacred Heart! John wants us to realize just how monumental, how brobdingnagian, are the implications of the Christmas Story.

God Himself has come down to earth! The One who birthed all of Creation is now reborn within His Creation, as one of us, as a little Child, cradled and held and nourished by His loving Mother, protected and provided for by His earthly adoptive father. God has come into the world, not at the head of great armies, but within the tender vulnerability of a humble Holy Family. The Messiah arrives at last, yet not in the way that so many generations had expected—at least not to mortal eyes.

But John has another Christmas Story. Did you know that? He sort of snuck it in to the Book of Revelation. There the devil sees a vision of God’s great plan for the redemption of humankind, the salvation of all worlds—and he is utterly appalled. Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, cannot stand to see the Lord and God of All crudely born as a naked ape into a filthy world of mud and blood. And so he rages, rages that it is the humble Virgin Mary, and not his own seraphic might, that shall bear the Creator into Creation. See how you have fallen, O Shining One.

But don’t take my word for it. The following is a reflection upon John’s other Christmas Story by Lutheran author and apologist Chad Bird. And I quote:

I'm still searching for a Christmas card with a red dragon in the nativity, lurking amidst the cows and lambs, waiting to devour the baby in the manger. None of the Gospels mention this unwelcome visitor to Bethlehem, but the Apocalypse does. John paints a seven-headed, ten-horned red dragon onto the peaceful Christmas canvas. You can read all about it in Revelation 12. It’s the nativity story we don’t talk about. A dragon trying to eat our Lord.

The red dragon was standing “before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” Clearly, more was going on at Christmas than drinking eggnog and kissing under the mistletoe. Or even peace on earth.

December 25 marks the genesis of war. God invading our world. Hell’s foundations quaking as the ancient terrors of demons awake. The dragon spreading his wings and flying into battle, flames bellowing from his lungs of brimstone and fire.  Philip Yancey writes, “From God’s viewpoint—and Satan’s—Christmas signals far more than the birth of a baby; it was an invasion, the decisive advance in the great struggle for the cosmos.”

Silent night,
violent night,
hell and heaven
meet to fight.

Wars have been waged over money, property, honor, power and oil. But this war—the greatest conflict in human history—is over us. The dragon sports many names—the serpent, the liar, the god of this world—but perhaps his most fitting name is Satan. It means Accuser. That’s what John calls him later in the chapter: “the accuser of our brethren … who accuses them day and night before our God,” (12:10).

He wields the weapon of accusation. And by it he enslaves us in guilt, shame, depravity, and lies. Each evil is a link in the chains that bind us. And each chain the Accuser wraps round and round our souls. His greatest fear is that we will hear that his enemy has come to set us free. So, in the little town of Bethlehem a red dragon swoops in to swallow this child who has come to liberate us from accusation. To make us children of his Father. To shatter every chain that binds us to a life of bondage. He must be stopped. He must silenced. He must be killed.

The Christmas story begins the narrative of violence that marks the life of the Liberator. The dragon misses his opportunity in Bethlehem. So he hounds our Lord down to Egypt. Then back to Galilee. He trails him into the desert with tempting words. And, finally, after 33 years of warfare—and repeated defeats—he finally wins. In so doing, unbeknownst to this beast, he ate poison. For if anything will destroy an accuser, it is taking freedom into his bowels.

At the death of Jesus there was a great rattling of chains. The links of evil that bound us snapped in two. A world held in bondage to the dragon was, in the death of the Son of God, immediately and irrevocably freed forever from his captivity. It all began in Bethlehem. Unseen by human eyes, hell and heaven battled over us. And heaven, in the end, stood on the neck of hell and pressed his foot into the throat that had so long accused us. The accuser of our brethren, John wrote, “has been thrown down,” (12:10). He was conquered “by the blood of the Lamb,” (12:11).

All the dragon gets for Christmas is a mouthful of shattered teeth, fiery lungs flooded with oceans of divine wrath, and a sword swinging down from above to chop off the head that spouted accusation.

Merry Christmas! The dragon is dead, the baby is alive, and his victory has set you free.

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