Christmas: For You

[This was shared during four Christmas Eve worship services with the people, family, and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 2:1-20
Have you ever had this experience?

You go somewhere special or spend special time with someone you love, then later regretted that you hadn’t really taken the time to savor it?

Hadn’t taken the time to just let the moment penetrate the recesses of your memory?

Or allowed yourself to think, “This is so special, I need to always remember exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and doing”?

Life tears by and we often fail to mark the special times in memory and reflection.

The next-to-last verse in tonight’s Christmas gospel lesson tells us, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

The word translated as treasured is, in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, a compound word that means gathered together. Mary gathered together the events of that night and pondered or, in Luke’s original words, threw them together.

In other words, Mary made a point of noting and remembering everything that happened on the first Christmas.

Then she threw them together in her mind, turning them over, seeking to see what they all meant, how what was happening all jibed with God’s centuries-old promise of a Savior-Messiah and with the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would give birth to that Messiah.

Mary collected her memories and thought about their significance.

This is what I want to ask you to do over the next few minutes.

The Christmas story, as recorded by Luke and Matthew, is so familiar to us that we forget not only the details, but also their meaning.

We take Christmas for granted.

This Christmas, I beg you to not do that.

Christmas is one of the most important events in human history--and in our personal histories, surpassed only by Good Friday and Easter Sunday, neither of which could have happened had Christmas not happened.

Tonight, we consider and praise God for the moment when God the Son took on human flesh and took up residence in this world, not as a king or a president, not as a celebrity or a tycoon or a general, but as a baby born in a barn to an impoverished and unmarried couple who hadn’t yet consummated their union.

If you want a picture of just how much God loves you, Jesus in the manger will do.

It says even more than what we might think at first, in fact. Take a look at verse 7 of our gospel lesson, please.

The stage had been set by God. God had revealed through the prophets more than seven centuries earlier that the Messiah, the Son of God, God-enfleshed, would be raised in a home of descendants of King David, and that He would be born in Bethlehem, David’s city. God had orchestrated events so that Mary and Joseph would be in Bethlehem when the baby was born. God had even put it into the head of the Roman emperor to order a census in Judea so that Joseph and Mary would have to be in Bethlehem, their ancestral home, to be counted.

And then, the birth happens. Verse 7: “...and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”

What must Mary have thought when she placed her newborn in that manger?

For sure, one thing that she must have thought about was the depths of God’s love, the lengths He was willing to go to in order to rescue you and me from sin and death. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” Jesus would tell Nicodemus decades later. And this Son would die and rise to set all who trust in Him free of the shackles of sin and death, to set you and me free to be the people God made us to be when He lovingly formed us in our mothers’ wombs. All of this had to be have been part of Mary’s pondering.

But she must also have considered the significance of the fact that her son’s first crib was an animal feeding trough.

In the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, there were two words that could be translated as manger, table, or crib. One of those words was παχνί. The other was φάτνῃ (phantne).

When the second word, phantne, is used, it seems to usually refer to a certain kind of manger. Let me show you a few pictures ancient phantnes.

As you can see, these mangers were hewn stone, not comfortable surfaces to sleep on.

With hay in the manger and the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, it may have been a bit more comfortable.

Still, Mary would have known that this Child did not come into this world to be comfortable. He came to bring comfort, the comfort of God to a human race fallen into sin and its consequences, death.

Maybe Mary thought of words she often heard read in the Nazareth synagogue, Isaiah 40:1-2: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for…”

This baby came to pay for our sins, yours and mine, with His shed blood and His earthly life, on the cross.

And maybe Mary thought of something else as she saw her first-born in that hard manger, of something else hewn from stone.

It may have been dawning on her that the only way Israel and the rest of the human race could be saved from sin and death was for an innocent human being, also God, to bear our punishment for sin, to die, so that when God raised Him from the dead, He could raise all who repent and believe in Jesus, would have everlasting life with God.

Jesus had come to die and rise in order to be our advocate in the halls of heaven. As God’s Word says: “...this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).

Mary may have begun to understand all of this. And if the idea was just dawning on her that night in Bethlehem, it would have been made clearer to her in a short time. Eight days after Jesus’ birth, Simeon, an old man who identified Jesus as the Messiah warned Mary of the suffering her Son would endure and the stone tomb in which He would be laid, when he told Mary: “...sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.” (Luke 2:35, Good News Translation)

As I told the Church Council this past week, there is a whiff of Good Friday in that stone manger, a foreshadowing of the tomb where Jesus’ lifeless body would be lain.

But, listen: There’s also the scent of Easter because the tomb of stone couldn’t contain Jesus and His grace for sinners any more than the news of His birth, His death, and His resurrection could have been contained these past two-thousand years.

Thank God that sin and death met their Conqueror that night in Bethlehem!

The Child has come to rescue you from sin, death, and purposeless living.

He’s come to cover your sins in His amazing grace and make you new.

He’s come to stand with you, by you, and for you as you trust in Him and call on His name.

He’s come to make sense of your living and give you life beyond your dying.

Jesus came into our world, precisely and specifically, because He loved not just the human race as a whole, but because He loved and loves you in particular.

His birth, death, and resurrection all happened for you.

And one day, He will raise all who trusted in Him from the dead. I pray that includes you and everyone whose lives we touch with the good news of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.

This is the Christmas truth that I hope you will ponder and savor tonight and tomorrow as you celebrate the miracle of this night: This Child, the Savior of humanity, has come for you.

For you.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Getting Ready for a New Day

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, yesterday.]

Mark 1:1-8

Truth is a rare commodity, it seems... 

From the advertisers who tell us that their products will make us happy, healthy, or sexy to the friend who soothingly says that that article of clothing doesn’t make us look fat... 

From the bigot who claims, “I’m not prejudiced” to the politician who insists that the other guy is a crook...

Truth is often is short supply.

One reason for this is that truth isn't always the socially acceptable option. 

During Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign for president, a reporter visited his mother Miss Lillian in Plains, Georgia. “Miss Lillian,” he said, “your son says that he will never lie to the American people. Has he ever lied?” Miss Lillian replied, “Oh, I suppose he might have sometimes told a little white lie.” When asked what might constitute 'a little white lie,' she responded, “You remember when you came in here and I told you that I was glad to see you?” 

Miss Lillian told her little white lie because sometimes, maybe more often than we like to admit, we would rather be lied to than to be told the truth. The truth can hurt. 

Especially when it tells us things about ourselves, our characters, our actions, or our lives that are less than moral or healthy or wise or Godly.

Today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 1:1-8, brings us face to face with John the Baptist. Even though John lived in New Testament times, he was, in a way, the last of the Old Testament prophets. 

You see, the chief characteristic of a prophet wasn’t that they foretold the future, although their messages often contained such “prophecies.” The main thing a prophet did was tell the truth. Prophets told and sometimes acted out truth that God had revealed to them. 

They shared God’s truth whether people wanted to hear it or not. 

Many of the prophets over the centuries, for example, told Israel that it needed to turn back to God at the very moments when Israel was dividing its loyalties between God and various idols. (Just to cover all the bases.) This message of return to God was the last thing Israel wanted to hear when everything in their lives seemed to be working so well, when the GDP was high, when there was full employment, when their military seemed invincible. 

They believed that their worldly success indicated that God was for them and that the prophets were wrong. 

They couldn’t believe that a loving God would mind it if they mixed in a little self-reliance in with His calls for utter reliance on Him alone. 

They couldn't imagine God being offended when they lied and cut corners to get ahead of those they saw as the undeserving people of their society or those from other countries, religions, and races that they encountered. 

And they certainly would not have liked it when one of the prophets spoke God’s truth to their selfishness, idolatry, materialism, and injustice. Micah wrote: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” [Micah 6:8, ESV]

But there were other times when the truth of the prophets came like healing salve to wounded skin or like living water for thirsting souls. 

For example, in the first two verses of today’s Old Testament lesson, the prophet Isaiah speaks to an Israel that had been conquered, seen its livelihood destroyed, witnessed its best and brightest sent into exile, all because it had arrogantly walked away from God. 

Now, what was left of Israel had humbly turned back to God and through the prophet God said, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” [Isaiah 40:1-2]

Prophets always told God’s truth. 

Prophets called people mired in sin and arrogance to repent, to repudiate their sin and turn back to God. 

Prophets also called people who did repent to trust in God’s forgiveness and grace.

This is exactly the message of John the Baptist. Take a look at today’s Gospel lesson on page 699 of the sanctuary Bibles. Verse 1: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” This is the title that Mark gives the gospel.

I believe that Mark meant this sentence fragment to be the title of his book about Jesus. The story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are only the beginning of the Gospel, the good news, about Jesus. It's only when people come to faith in Christ and only after Jesus has returned to judge the living and the dead and to usher in the new creation, that the Gospel will be completed.

Verse 2: “...as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”--’a voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”’” 

Because Isaiah was considered the more important of the Old Testament prophets, Mark only mentions Isaiah here. But part of what Mark quotes is also from Malachi. No matter, the point is that these Old Testament prophecies said that God was going to send a prophet to get things ready for the arrival of the Savior of the world. 

That prophet--that messenger--they’re talking about would “prepare the way” for the Messiah. 

Malachi said that this messenger would “make straight paths.” That’s road construction language. John appeared in the wilderness to be a bulldozer! 

He came to build a freeway to give the world access to the Savior. 

Through John’s ministry, all that might keep people from seeing and trusting in the Messiah--all their sin, cynicism, despair, and arrogance--was to be cleared away. 

He would clearly speak the truth about what they needed to receive the Messiah’s favor--repentance and faith. 

People would either accept that truth or they wouldn’t. But no one, after hearing John. could honestly say they didn’t know how to prepare for the coming, the advent, of the Messiah. Neither can we.

Verse 4: “And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” 

Mark is engaging in hyperbole here. He doesn’t mean that every house in Jerusalem and Judea was emptied. We know, for example, that the king who would eventually order John’s execution didn’t go out to hear John’s message. But he did hear about it. Which is what John got in trouble. Kings don’t always like to hear that they’re sinners in need of repentance and surrendering trust in God. Few people do. 

What was it, though, that, despite the distastefulness of his message, attracted the crowds to John? 

It wasn’t because of his dress or diet. Verse 6: “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” Both his clothes and his food would have been considered weird ven back in first century Judea. 

And it wasn’t because John thumped his chest and proclaimed how great he was. He didn’t promise that his message would make anybody wealthy or healthy or trouble free. Verse 7: “And this was his message: ‘After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.’” 

John was pointing to Jesus. 

At the very moment he did so, thousands of people were hanging on his every word. 

He was the center of attention. 

Some were even claiming that John himself was the Messiah. Heady stuff!

But John says, “I’m just a messenger. I'm an unworthy slave.” 

In those days, tying and untying the straps of a great man’s sandals was the job of the lowliest of servants. John says that he wouldn’t even be worthy of doing that for the Messiah about to appear. 

This is a truth about ourselves that we must all learn to accept. 

And it’s harder for us to accept than it should be. 

I know that it is for me. 

It’s the very truth that the human race has resisted and chafed under since Adam and Eve bit into the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

It’s this : God our creator is infinitely greater than we are and we must submit to His will, not the other way around. 

In the Advent and Christmas seasons, we remember again how great God truly is. 

But His greatness can't be measured by the means that this dying world uses.

Jesus' greatness is beyond worldly greatness. The Savior Who was so great that John couldn’t get a job as his slave, bore the full weight of our humanity, becoming a servant of the whole human race, washed the feet of His disciples, suffered the consequence of our sin by dying on a cross, then rose from the dead so that, despite our unworthiness, all who repent and entrust themselves to Him can live with God forever. It's a truth summarized in the Bible's most famous verse. 

We know it by heart. But I'm not sure how much we take it to heart. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16] 

This describes the great God worthy of our complete surrender!

Verse 8: [John said:] “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 

John’s baptism was a symbolic washing that repentant people underwent to demonstrate to God that they turned from sin and were ready for the Messiah to come into the world. In it, the person who was baptized was the main actor. 

Later, Jesus instituted a completely different kind of Baptism. In Holy Baptism, God sends His Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Who moved over the waters in Genesis to bring the universe into being, and gives new life in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He does this to people who are utterly incapable of helping themselves or of making themselves right with God, whether they're brought to the baptismal waters as infants, teenagers, or adults. God is the main actor. We are the recipients of His gracious will to make us part of His new creation.

The Messiah, John the Baptist was saying, was coming to make people new, to make the whole creation new. 

In Advent, we remind ourselves that the Messiah is coming again. 

We need to be ready for that day. 

We prepare ourselves in the same way that John’s preaching commended: We willingly confess our sins, turn from them, and trust the God we know in Jesus Christ to make us new. 

Confessing sin means accepting hard truths about ourselves. We’re not always the good people we think we are or portray ourselves to be. 

Trusting in Jesus means shelving all pretense of self-sufficiency. That wounds our pride. 

But when, day by day, moment by moment, we repent and trust, we are ready to meet the Messiah, our God and King. 

And that’s the truth about God and about us that will stand for all eternity. Amen

[For a discussion of Holy Baptism, see here. For more on confessing sin, see here. And, to see a discussion of repentance, look here.]