Sermon for Christmas Day: December 25, 2021 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
On this holy day, the celebration of our Savior’s birth, we rejoice that the Word of God was not hidden from us forever, but was revealed for our benefit, instead of our condemnation. It was our heavenly Father’s will not to leave us lost, in our sins and errors pining. He wanted us instead to break forth together with singing, taking part in the comfort that He brought to us as Isaiah foretold, with His bared, holy arm. His Word was never meant to be a dead, cold letter left frozen on a lifeless page in a book closed to the world. Rather, His Word would be a living Word, a Gospel of peace, published for all to hear it and be saved. Not merely would He announce that salvation and good things would soon return to you if you buckle down and do this or that first. No, that’s not Good News. That’s just a con game, a bunch of empty promises that the world knows all too well, and even in all of the festive veneer of a Christmas shopping season (which you can tell is ending today, instead of the real Christmas season that is just beginning), the worldly happiness just doesn’t last.
Christmas tells us that the Good News is Jesus. He is the glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. He is the one who spoke to His people of old by the prophets. He is the Word who was with God because He was, and always has been, and always will be, God. Yet this timeless Word did not stay away from us and send down this or that set of directions like Mohammed and other seemingly enlightened men have said. In a total reversal of what the world would expect, the Son of God Himself came down from heaven and became incarnate—that is, He put on human flesh. God’s Word all of a sudden was not a mysterious voice with booming, thunderous sound that rattled a mountain and burned a bush. Now, thanks be to God, all of a sudden His Word had a human heartbeat, ten little fingers and toes, and most importantly, a human voice to speak peace and human blood to give in sacrifice for all.
What could ever keep such a joyous message from being heard? Why doesn’t everyone realize that beautiful feet come from a beautiful Gospel message meant for the ears of all? As the Evangelist John tells us in the Gospel, He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden and their eyes were opened to their now shame-filled nakedness, it was actually what they heard that suddenly urged them to flee and hide. They had to have taken some time in order to sew the fig leaves together and cover what they didn’t want each other to see. You get the impression, there doesn’t seem to be a need to panic yet. Our first parents were still at that time laboring under the delusion that they could fix their own problems with their own cleverness. So stitch by careful stitch, the first green, all-natural clothing made its debut to the fashion world. Perhaps they were proud of their handiwork. This being like God idea, possessing more wisdom from that forbidden fruit, may work out after all.
Yet that fateful day, it was the sound that was worse than the sight. The heat was tapering off, so the day was coming to an end, perhaps around sunset, when a gentle breeze would start to kick up. The sound that Adam and Eve heard came from the Lord God, who was Christ before He put on human flesh, and He was walking in the garden He created. The one sound that should make all of creation rejoice in praise of its Creator, was the one sound that made Adam perk up like prey that just became aware of its hunter, and hide in the trees in vain escape. Something about the sound made it much more terrifying than the sight.
It was because the sound they heard had made these first members of the human race face the consequences that they knew were coming. They had already heard from the Lord, If you eat of that tree, you shall surely die. The Lord’s sound meant certain judgment, even when their sight may have been deceiving them. Even the innocuous, almost playful question, “Where are you?” was the last thing Adam wanted to hear. He was not comforted at the presence of God. He was painfully aware of his nakedness; even with the fig-leaf garments on, it was not going to take the shame of sin away. And so upon hearing the Lord, Adam hid from his own Creator and life-giver. Because he heard the voice of the Deceiver, as did Eve, they both had to hear the bad news about how sin and death would infect their lives, their children, and their world from that moment on.
That curse is the bad news that you and I and the rest of this world know only too well. But we are not mere passive victims of all of it. We have contributed our own part to the sin that runs rampant all around us. We may feel like innocent casualties, especially when others trespass against us, but each of us has chosen to hear and obey our own voice of deception rather than God’s pure voice of His will as we read of it in the Ten Commandments. You and I have not rejoiced at the sound of our gracious God and His forgiveness among us, but we have instead taken His Word for granted, as a liability to be avoided, as an aspect of our lives that we would want to remain hidden and private. Sure, we can say we get too busy, or our work takes us away too much as it is, or the people can be hard to deal with, but it all comes back to that voice. We don’t want to hear it. It bares the shameful nakedness of our sinful hearts, and we can do nothing to cover it up, so we hide from our Lord God, as if we thought that were possible.
But then we come to Christmas, to the time when our Lord God began His walk among us once again. This time, the sound of His voice came from human lungs and lips. His beautiful feet that brings good news would fit into sandals whose straps John said he wasn’t worthy to stoop down and untie. The Almighty Word entered our world not in a lush garden paradise, but wrapped in strips of cloth out of utter poverty and lying in a lowly manger located in a crowded city of people registering for taxes they could hardly afford. The news of His birth startled King Herod and all of Jerusalem, so that they trembled with fear by the time the Magi arrived. But most of all, our infant Lord’s arrival sent the devil reeling, because the battle was engaged. This battle would be decided at Easter, but the outcome was guaranteed to be in our favor already at Christmas.
As you hear the news of your Savior’s holy birth in Bethlehem of long ago, you do not any more need to cover yourself or run and hide as Adam did. Because Jesus completed His mission of salvation that we confess in the creed, suffered, crucified, died, was buried, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, the sound of our Lord is no longer a sound of judgment but of peace, heavenly happiness, good things restored to their originally created Goodness, the reign of God established among His faithful in Zion, which is the Church. Isaiah 52 is so joyful and waxes eloquent about beautiful feet because the next chapter, chapter 53, describes in detail how it all would happen: He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, stricken, smitten and afflicted, wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, cut off out of the land of the living, making intercession for us, the transgressors.
This is what changes the sound of the Lord in your hearing today. Instead of condemnation and guilt over your rebellion against God, you hear a message of reconciliation, of peace on earth and mercy mild. Justice and fairness have come to their ultimate fulfillment, and you have been pardoned by grace. Your death, which you know is there and with all the difficulties around you can feel it’s coming, but that death has been transformed into a passageway to eternal life, thanks to your baptism into Christ. Your merciful Father assures you that you do not need to rely on yourself as if you had no God—He will take care of you, for He has called you by name and gathered you by the Holy Spirit with your fellow Christians in the one true faith that you confess together at this altar.
And as you feast this holy day on the human Body and Blood that is mysteriously here because of Jesus’ promise and His spoken Word, you may break forth into singing. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling also in you. The waste places of your heart have been restored to the pleasant planting of the Lord, a new garden in which Christ is pleased to walk and speak His Word of constant comfort to your soul, the Word of forgiveness and absolution that is yours for the strengthening of your faith. You are the Jerusalem that He has redeemed, a Bethlehem in which there is room for Jesus. Your hands come together to make a manger bed for the Bread of His Body to lie in as you bring Him up to your mouth to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Soon, you will be back home or with your loved ones. Some of us will soon get in touch with family that is far away from us. Your rejoicing and celebrating will come to an end and you’ll be tempted to put it all away just like you did those lights and ornaments last year. But the Word made flesh remains true to you, faithful as ever no matter how far you may roam from His smooth, reassuring voice. He constantly calls out to all who would hear His voice and be forgiven of all their sins in Jesus Christ. With a renewed heart that is yours thanks to the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of peace will bring you Christmas joy all year every time you hear the precious Word of God, the promise that you will be with your Lord in the Paradise to come.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
