This sermon was preached at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (18-Dec-11, 3pm), St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (18-Dec-11, 7pm), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (23-Dec-11, 6.30pm) and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (24-Dec-11, 7pm).
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew 1:22-23)
All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
What do you think Christmas is about?
Well, first of all, it’s not about the end of the year. It’s not about end of year work-parties, or break ups. It’s not about falling into a heap when the craziness is finally over.
It’s not about families. It’s not about family baggage that gets trotted out year after year, dragged out of the family closet. It’s not about playing cricket in the backyard.
It’s not about food. It’s not about ham, about turkey, barbecues, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, Christmas pudding, fruit mince pies, white Christmas, and candy canes.
It’s not even about presents, about businesses, about buying and selling. It’s not about Santa Claus, and Rudolph. It’s not even first of all about children, and its not even first of all about singing.
Christmas is the commemoration of one event in history which changed the world as we know it. Christmas is the day where we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, and the day Christmas is about nothing else.
Everything that we know about Christmas, and everything that we look forward to at Christmas is the result of years and years of culture and society building on this one historical event. Sometimes these things were designed to promote the birth of Christ, and sometimes these things were designed to take our attention away from it.
St Paul says: If Christ had not been raised, then my preaching is in vain, and so is your faith.
In the same way, we could say, If Jesus Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary, if he was not conceived by the Holy Spirit, and truly born of a virgin, then my preaching is in vain, and so is your faith. Christmas would be a waste of time, and we would do ourselves a favour not letting the church have a foot in the door every year. We should commemorate something else.
But the word Christmas is made up of two words: Christ and mass. There is no Christmas without Christ, no matter how hard people might try to wrench the person of Jesus out of the occasion. And there is no Christmas, without mass, without a church festival, without people going to church throughout the world celebrating and singing, without the word of God, and without the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Christmas simply is these things. If we try and make it something that is not these things, we will at least always have the word Christmas, Christmas, Christmas ringing like church bells in our ears reminding the whole world what hypocrites we have all become and calling us to worship the baby who is the reason for the festival. Even our calendar which is up to its 2011th year is based not on the resurrection of Jesus but on his birth.
And so the gospel of Matthew says: All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means God with us).
The year 2011 has been an interesting one. It has been one of great political and social unrest all around the world, with natural disasters one after the other. But it also found people in the western world remembering the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York city on 11th September 2001. And why is this significant?
Since this time, there has been a counter-attack not just on the Middle East, and the Islamic world, but on Christianity. The argument for the last ten years has gone like this: “9/11 happened because of religious extremism. All religion is bad. Therefore Christianity is just another version of the same hate-filled, war-mongering, intolerant, prejudiced, loveless rope that is choking the world of its life.”
And so, we’ve had the resurgence of a vigorous atheistic movement, almost an evangelistic atheist movement, almost a “religiously-extreme” atheistic movement which has set out as its goal to destroy the foundations of religion, and especially in the west, Christianity. Atheism today is not indifferent to Christianity, it is against Christianity. And there have been situations where the church itself has rotted away to such a filthy corpse of a shell, where it simply bowed down and said Yes and Amen not to the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ, and been responsible for sex abuse and all sorts of things, and made the integrity of the church fair game and a good whipping boy for all of the problems in the world that we would like to shake off. And the church in these places has sometimes deserved everything they get.
And so, it has been said, that to teach bible stories to children is child abuse. That everyone who believes the Christian faith must have been brainwashed and is simply not capable of thinking for themselves.
And so most Christians today hang their heads in despair looking at the valley of dry bones, and say: “God, can these bones live?”
But all of this distracts us from the simple event of Christmas:
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
At this Christmas time, each of us needs to consider and think whether we believe that this event happened in history or not. It’s as simple as that. So do we believe that a baby boy was born in Bethlehem in the year 6BC? The gospels themselves, the gospels of Matthew and Luke, spell out in great detail what was happening at the time. We know that King Herod was on the throne at this time. We know about Caesar Augustus at this time. We know about Quirinius being the governor of Syria. All this historical details which you can go and check for yourself. There is not just one record of the birth of Jesus, but there are two, one in Matthew and one in Luke. Matthew tells it more from Joseph’s perspective, Luke is more from Mary’s. But the two accounts match. The manuscripts have been passed down through the centuries pretty well. In fact, the New Testament is one of the most well-preserved documents in history. The event itself fulfils many different prophesies from older times.
But then we sit back and say: But are the gospels reliable? After all, they are not a neutral book. But then, look at the history of other people. Look at the history of Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Rome. Many things we read about Julius Caesar in history books are taken from records which are a lot less “scrupulous” and “reliable” than the New Testament.
But then we might say: But all of this impossible! It’s not possible for a virgin to conceive and give birth. Your argument has a hole in it: Just because you’ve never seen it before, and probably will never see one in the future, doesn’t mean it’s possible. It doesn’t mean that it is not possible. Of course, if God simply didn’t exist, then it would be impossible. If that’s where you’re at, then that’s your business. If we want God to be subject measurement and experiment, then we would make ourselves God and we make him less than us. That’s not the way he made it.
We notice in our reading from Matthew:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Notice how all the details come together. There are all sorts of things that have happened precisely at the right time and have happened at the right moment. She is betrothed, but still a virgin. She is promised to be married, but she has never been with a man. Now in those days, if she had become pregnant outside of marriage, then she could have been stoned to death. But she’s protected, because Joseph is happy to still marry her. They both know what they did and didn’t do. They knew that no exchanges, as it were, took place.
And so, God appears to Joseph in a way that is not usually what we would read in a history book. He comes in a way that is offensive to our sense of reason and common sense. He comes through an angel in a dream.
We tell our children from a young age that dreams are not real. But there are many dreams and many angels that appear to Joseph for all sorts of reasons in the gospel of Matthew. He recognises something real in them and things work out right for them. The wise men from the East are warned not to go back to Herod in a dream. Joseph and Mary escape to Egypt because Joseph was warned in a dream. They came back because of an angel in a dream.
But if the dream’s not real, then neither is God. Just because we’re talking about a dream here, doesn’t mean that something real, factual, and external to Joseph didn’t take place.
All the many historical details, and historical circumstances, and world events, the basic record that Jesus lived an historical life we can read in other places, in other history books. Josephus, a Jewish historian from that time, recorded some things about the life of Jesus. There are other historical accounts that point to all this.
But still, God does not convince you simply by historical facts, but he calls you to faith simply through the mystery of a dream.
And we read: All this took place. The historical details and the dream together, all took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
God is always with us. But the text is pointing us to the fact that this person in history, Jesus Christ, a human being, was also in actual fact, true God. He was born of the virgin Mary, and also conceived by the Holy Spirit. He is a true human being, a real man with real flesh and blood, and also he was true God. That’s what it means when we call Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.
But without the virgin birth, without the event of Jesus birth, without this person coming into our world in this way, and in these circumstance, the whole thing is a scam. Christianity is the only religion that lets you investigate these things for yourself. But of course, many people will not investigate these things, and refuse to, because once the investigation has begun, that person begins a dangerous road, because Jesus says: “Seek and you will find.” “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will in fact be satisfied.”
God bless you this Christmas! May the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ fill you with such joy, that your voices and blended and mixed in with the voice of that great angelic choir that came down and sang to those shepherds in the fields that night, singing: Peace on earth, good will to all people! The angel says: “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy!
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” which means God with us. And when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And she called his name Jesus.
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that you were conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. We thank you for this event in history, and for making us part of this wonderful and glorious history through your living and active word, and the community of your holy church on earth. Bless us with the Holy Spirit, and give us a happy, safe and blessed Christmas. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment