Christus Natus

Propers: The Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas III), A.D. 2018 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

It’s Christmas! What are you doing here? Don’t you know there are celebrations to be had? Oh, I get it. You people are religious. Well, if you’ll permit me to say so, I do believe you’ve chosen the better part.

It’s been a long year, hasn’t it? We’ve come through a lot, you and I: through trials and tribulations, stresses and celebrations, worries, fears, ailments, accomplishments, and another journey upon this earth around the sun. And we have come now to the crown of it all, to Christmas Day, the summation of all our hopes and dreams and longings lo this past twelvemonth.

It’s true, isn’t it—the sun seems a little brighter this day, the air a little crisper? Everything real seems realer. Everything natural seems supernatural. And for as busy as December has been, as supersaturated as our schedules have grown, it’s all been worth it. No matter what arguments we’ve had with family, no matter what gifts we do or do not find beneath the tree, it is Christmas, and for a day, a week, a fortnight, all is right with the world.

Of course, to say this is to risk accusation of romanticism, if not outright maudlinism. But why shouldn’t we be romantic? Isn’t that half the fun? At Christmas we needn’t be cynical, needn’t be worldly, needn’t be jaded. The armor can come off. At Christmas we—like the God in whom we live and move and have our being—may become a child again, become young again, viewing the world itself as a wonder.

You heard the words of the prophet this morning:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” … And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

On this day our God is born. Not that He is begun, of course, for God is immortal and eternal. There was no time when He was not; indeed, He Himself creates time. But this day He is born as one of us: as a Child, weak and innocent and needy; as a human being, with all the freighted baggage that entails.

And so the division, the distance, torn by our sin, between God and Man, between the Creator and Creation, is utterly obliterated. You cannot be more intimate than a newborn nursing at His mother’s breast! As Adam said of Eve, this at last is bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. This at last is the God of All made visible, made tangible, made lovable in our love for one another.

As Luther wrote, the Father, God in Heaven, is too great, too high for us to know. Embrace therefore the Son, who is our God made flesh, incarnate on this earth. For to know Jesus Christ is to know the Father, that by loving the God made visible, we may know and love the God whom we cannot see. This truly is, I believe, why the real seems realer today, the natural supernatural. Because at Christmas, Creation becomes what it was always meant to be: one with the Creator, Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit, who suffuses all worlds with His love.

Thanks be to God that on this day, in this season, we are given a glimpse of eternity, a foretaste of the feast to come. For at the end of all things, at the fruition of the cosmos, when Christ hands His Kingdom over to the Father, and God at last shall be all in all, then, my brothers and sisters, it shall be Christmas and Easter forever.

Now—you good people are here bright and early on a Christmas morning. So I’m guessing that you already know what the lesson of Christmas ought to be: that we are to take this joy and to proclaim it abroad, to live it out not just for one day, but for 12, and then 40, and then 365. We are to take the miracle of Christmas, the crown of the year, and make it a reality every day. And I don’t mean that we’re to leave our holiday decorations up year ‘round, nor that we’re to awaken every morning singing Christmas carols—though I suppose there are worse ways to start the day.

Rather, we are to take the miracle of Christ’s birth and carry Him within us—God made Man, the Creator become part of His Creation—so that we see and live and act in such a way that the love of God is revealed as saturating everything around us. Thus every single moment, every heartbeat, every breath, is known for what it is: pure and abundant gift. We needn’t be saccharine sweet. We needn’t pretend that life is all gumdrops and rainbows. But we must recall that in all our trials, all our sufferings, all of our doubts, Christ is with us. Christ is for us.

He does not cause disease and disaster, for indeed God cannot do or be evil. If He could, He wouldn’t be God. But because Christ is born for us this day, we know that we are never alone in what we endure; that loneliness, illness, heartache, disaster, addiction, poverty, cruelty, even death and hell, none of these things will have the final say. Our world is fallen and broken, but Christ has come to set it right. Christ has come to take it back.

He knows what it is to suffer unjustly, knows what it is to die in agony alone, because He has gone before us, into the tomb, into the grave, even into the deepest pits of hell—and there He has conquered. There is nothing human that Christ does not claim as His own, taking our very nature upon Himself, taking even our brokenness and sin. And in doing so He has overcome! He has filled up the chasm of death torn by our sin with His own infinite life poured out for the world from the Cross.

Christmas means the King has come, the battle’s won, and the world is saved. And so everything now is Christmas: an opportunity to give, a season to love, a time to hope and to heal and to sing. And it will be so for 12 full days until Epiphany, and 40 full days until Candlemas, and before we know it, it will be Christmas again, Christmas anew, Christmas forever.

For long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas, my brothers and sisters. May we keep it all the year. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, “God bless us, every one.”

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