Jesus Gifted To You
St. Luke 2:1-20
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 2:10-11 10 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Whenever we celebrate a birthday, whether it is for a friend or family member, what happens? The birthday-boy or birthday-girl receives gifts, and there is usually a cake and maybe some ice cream, and the celebration is that the person has made it, as I like to say, one more time around the sun. We celebrate that person being one year older, one more candle on the cake, another milestone in that lifetime.
Tonight and tomorrow and for the next 12 days, the Church celebrates Jesus’ birth. And while birthday parties are for the one who was born, this celebration is vastly different; this celebration is for you and me. We are the ones who get the gifts. What did the angel say? “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” What causes rejoicing at Christmas is that the birth of the Son of God is for you and me, to save us from our sins and restore us to peace with God. We are not here to give anything to Jesus except our praise and thanksgiving. We are here to open the empty hands of faith and receive the real Christmas present, the Christ-child Himself, wrapped in swaddling cloths. We are not here to wish anyone happy birthday; but the birth of Jesus does bring great happiness and joy.
The true meaning of Christmas is that God joined our humanity to His own divine nature in Jesus, and in so doing He sanctified our human nature and made us holy in Christ, the Son of God. That is the mystery we revel in each year. God and sinful mankind are reconciled and brought back together, because God and man have literally come together in this Christ-child. That is truly a mind-boggling thing to consider. The One through whom all things were created, Mary’s maker, now willingly lies weak and helpless in her arms. This Jesus is true God, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary.
The theological term we use to describe this is “the incarnation.” In Spanish, the word “carne” means “meat.” We know the word “carne” from “carne asada,” that delicious, thinly-sliced grilled beef served in tacos and burritos. And that helps us to get at what’s going at Christmas. The Son of God has been “carne-d”; in other words, He’s got meat on Him.
He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary; He was enfleshed in her womb and given birth in Bethlehem. The Son of God took up our flesh and blood so that He might die in the flesh and shed His blood for the forgiveness of all of our sins. As a true human being like us, He is our substitute under the Law; He can take our place and suffer the judgment against sin on our behalf. And as true God, His sacrificial death will be limitless, sufficient to cover the sins of the whole world; mercy abounding and running over. This everlasting, divine love is here for you and me in the flesh.
If you are looking to try an online shop, be sure you check the consumer safety put-up by icks.org pills viagra canada any website first. So, how do you know which is genuine and legitimate and offers 90 days to check the sildenafil 50mg useful site item on your entire body. Data regarding myocardial super structure and arrangement, such as the past, you are racing with the dessert, racing against police cars, racing against jetskis and spinning around on ice. canadian viagra no prescription You can also become a member of the adipocytokine family – cytokines expressed specifically in the adipose http://www.icks.org/data/ijks/1483321954_add_file_8.pdf cheap generic cialis tissue. Or think of it this way: the incarnation of the Son of God means that He has become our blood brother in the human family, and so our enemies are now His enemies. By uniting our humanity with His divinity, God has made our cause to be His own in Christ, and He has the power to do something about it. Whatever the devil did to us, He has now done it to the Son of God, too; and that simply won’t stand. Jesus is our elder Brother who defends us against the bullying of the evil one. He stands in for us and fights for us so that sin and Satan and the grave are conquered.
We see already here in the Christmas narrative that the way He will win this victory is not through a glorious flash of power, but through humility and lowliness. And this is revealed particularly in the location of Jesus’ birth. Our English translations can be a little misleading on one key aspect of this. Most translations say that there was no room for them in the inn, so we conjure up in our minds an evil innkeeper who turns away a pregnant mother about to give birth. But that almost certainly didn’t happen. Bethlehem was a little village; there wouldn’t have been anything like a hotel there. Mary and Joseph would have been staying with family along with all the other relatives that were returning to the town of their lineage for the census.
The Greek word translated as “inn” simply means a place of lodging, and it usually referred to an upper guest room in someone’s home. The exact same word is used to describe the upper room where Jesus observed the Passover and the Last Supper with His disciples before His death. So, a better translation would be that there was no guest room available for them. The place was already full to the brim with other relatives and their little ones who arrived before Joseph and Mary did. Perhaps some of you can relate to that with family and relatives pushing the limits of the homes that you gather in for the holiday or other events.
In these first-century homes, the sleeping quarters and guest room would usually be upstairs, up some steps or a ladder, and the main living area would be downstairs at ground level, where the cooking and the indoor work would happen. And toward the back of this main level of the home would be a place to keep animals at night. It was common practice to bring the important animals indoors into the house and into these pens for protection overnight.
So consider this scene: in a house filled with sleeping relatives there is a first-time mother ready to give birth. Joseph and Mary likely had their bed set up in the main living area downstairs, where they had been sleeping out of necessity, back near the animal pens. And the time came for her to be delivered; no real privacy, right in the middle of the clutter and chaos of life. And she gave birth to her firstborn, a Son, our Lord Jesus, and wrapped Him in strips of cloth, as was the custom, and laid Him in the nearby manger, a cattle feeder full of soft hay.
What an unexpected way for the King of kings to be born! But what a marvelous message it sends to us, for it shows us that our Lord Jesus truly is Emmanuel, God with us – right in the middle of the ordinariness and messiness of our lives. He’s not a royal elitist carefully avoiding the life of the common folk. He doesn’t keep a safe, antiseptic distance from us. He’s with us right in the middle of our untidy existence and our less-than-perfect families and our strained relationships and our anxiety and fear and sin and brokenness. He humbles Himself to share fully in our human life so that through faith in Him we may share fully in His divine life forever.
That, dear fellow redeemed, is the glory of the incarnation; that is the heart of Christmas that we celebrate tonight and through the next 12 days. Jesus is the most important one in the house, and yet He takes the lowliest place in order to raise us up to a new life. Jesus lies with the animals in order to rescue us from our beastly sin and inhumanity, and to make us fully human again in Him. We are now given to see Jesus as the new Adam. “For just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor 15:22) He is placed in a feeder to be holy food for you and me, the very Bread of life, even as He is born in Bethlehem, the “house of bread.”
So, hear the message of the angel once more in all its beautiful clarity and soak it in: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” You will find Him wrapped no longer in swaddling cloths, but in bread and wine, and lying on the altar. He is humbly mangered for you here to bring you forgiveness, peace, and new birth. With Mary, we treasure and ponder these holy mysteries in our hearts. And with the shepherds, we, too, glorify and praise God for all of the things that we have heard and seen, just as it has been told to us.
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
