Sermon: Christmas Eve - 2021

24 December 2021

Text: John 1:1-14 (Isa 7:10-14, Mic 5:2-4, Isa 9:2-7, Matt 1:18-25, Matt 2:1-12)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The wonder of Christmas is God breaking into time and space. 

Time is a funny thing in how we perceive it.  When we’re children, waiting for Christmas seems like forever.  When we grow up, we scratch our heads thinking that just yesterday it was July 4^th.

God’s people of the Old Testament waited for hundreds of years for God to break into space and time.  Our reading from Isaiah as written seven hundred years before Christ: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name ‘Immanuel.’”  “Immanuel” is Hebrew for “God with Us.”  For in Christ, God is with us in space and time. 

And this was prophesied even earlier than the days of Isaiah.  Back in the Garden of Eden, after man’s fall into sin, God made the devil an offer that he couldn’t refuse.  He said that the “Seed of the woman” as coming to destroy him.  The “Seed of the woman” is a strange thing to say.  For women produce eggs, not seed.  Isaiah’s prophecy makes it clear: the Savior would come without a human father.  And when the centuries of waiting had passed, when the fullness of time had come, “the angel Gabriel from heaven came” to our “most highly favored lady.”   

Our God breaks into time, where we dwell.  Or more accurately, “when” we dwell.

But He also comes to us in space, dear friends.  The prophet Micah was preaching about the same time as Isaiah.  And God revealed to him where the Christ would come: Bethlehem.  The “little town of Bethlehem” – “who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for Me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”  And this “ruler” (the “Seed of the woman”) “shall be great to the ends of the earth.  And He shall be their peace.” 

Unlike the other religions of the world, Jesus is God in the flesh, He comes in time and in space, Bethlehem being a real place in the world: a world in need of redemption and peace.  For it is there and then that He comes to us and abides with us: “Our Lord Immanuel.”

Isaiah has more to say about the Christ – again seven centuries back in time.  For darkness will be removed by the “great light” that the prophet points out has come to “the people who walked in darkness.”  At the darkest time of the year, in the dark of the night, when life as at its gloomiest, darkest, and coldest – it is then when “the world in solemn stillness lay” that we “hear the angels sing.”

And their song is “Peace on the earth, goodwill to all, from heaven’s gracious King.”  The darkness of our waiting was broken by the angel hosts singing from the “cloven skies” – the heavens themselves torn in to like the veil of the temple will be after the baby in the manger becomes the King on the cross.  “For to us,” to us, dear friends, “for to us a child is born.  To us a son is given.”  And “His word of peace shall to the earth God’s ancient promise bring.”

And this King, the Creator of the universe, does not come down to us brandishing a sword or riding on a stallion.  Indeed, he comes “away in a manger, no crib for a bed.”  For just as the prophets of old had been saying for hundreds of years, “Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”  And the angel told Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, “She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”  The name “Jesus” means “God saves.”  Jesus is the Savior.  He is God with us, in the flesh, in space and time.  He is the fulfillment of hundreds, even thousands of years of prophecy and waiting.  And like when a woman is ready to give birth, no force can stop it.  And as our Lord was coming into space and time, men and demons conspired to snuff out His life, to extinguish the light, but their conspiracy as all in vain. 

And the plotting of evil men as foiled by a child, a helpless baby and a very ordinary couple – whose life was anything but ordinary. 

And so all the world – friend and foe alike, ask the great question: “what child is this?”  There have been billions of children born.  But who is this one?  Who is He “whom angels greet with anthems sweet while shepherds watch are keeping?”  We ill learn more when the “wise men from the east” will come to Jerusalem in search of this child, this “Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing,” and they will “haste to bring Him laud, the babe the Son of Mary.”

And they will offer this king their treasures: “gold and frankincense and myrrh.”  And we join their praises and their worship, singing: “Joy, joy, for Christ is born, the babe, the Son of Mary.”

And lest we forget who He is, lest we be fooled by His coming as a little child, Scripture reminds us that He is “the Word.”  He is the voice and mind that brought all creation into being.  Jesus has taken on flesh, but He is eternal.  Jesus has joined creation in space and time, but He is no creature; He is the Creator.  He was “of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be.”  He is the “Alpha and Omega” and He is from evermore to evermore.

Jesus was there “in the beginning.”  He was “with God” and at the same time “was God.”  And He is indeed the Light in the darkness,” the “true light, which enlightens everyone” has indeed come “into the world.” 

“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

And so on this Christmas Eve, we sing with not only the Church around the world, in every time and place, but also “with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven.” Singing:

Christ to Thee, with God the Father,
And O Holy Ghost to Thee
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving
And unending praises be,
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory
Evermore and evermore.

Amen.

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

 

Sermon: Rorate Coeli (Advent 4) - 2021

19 December 2021

Text: John 1:19-28 (Deut 18:15-19, Phil 4:4-7)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

John the Baptist is a preacher of the Gospel because he is a preacher of Jesus.  When he as causing a stir while calling multitudes of people to repent and be baptized, “the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”

This is a funny question.  For what they are really asking is this: “Are you the Messiah?”  John had a large following.  A lot of people were wondering the same thing.  He could have taken the glory for himself, but instead, “he confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’”

They also asked him if he were Elijah come back to earth.  “No.”  How about the Prophet spoken of by Moses in Deuteronomy?  “No.”  And so they ask him again, “Who are you?”  And here is where John reveals both his mission and who he is according to the Old Testament: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” 

At this point, the Pharisees who are conducting this interrogation should have figured out that John is the forerunner to the Christ.  But they are still fixated on John.  “Why are you baptizing?” they ask him. 

And here, John confesses not only who he isn’t, but also who Jesus is: “I baptize with water,” he says, “but among you stands one you do not know, even He who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 

They are perplexed by John, but there’s more where that came from.  As much grief as John is giving them, they haven’t seen anything yet.  The one who is coming after John, the one about whom John cries out: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” John’s cousin Jesus, whom John will baptize and about whom he will hear the voice of the Father and see a miracle of the Holy Spirit – this Jesus will confound the Pharisees, the priests, the Levites, the Sadducees, the scribes, and the lawyers.  He will berate them, mock them, call them to repent, challenge them, and perform miracles on the Sabbath Day right in front of them, because He knows that this is their hobby horse.  They are more concerned about rules – rules that they made up in the first place – than they are about loving God and serving their neighbors. 

They’re already terrified of John, and they have no idea what’s coming.

While the world ponders chestnuts roasting on an open fire, a reindeer with a red nose, and “happy holidays,” the church winds down Advent and prepares for Christmas by meditating on John the Baptist’s message to the ones who will ultimately conspire to crucify the Christ child thirty years after the first Christmas.

John’s message is that Jesus is coming.  And for the Pharisees and those who are obsessed with the law, this is a terrifying prospect.  For Jesus will knock them off of their self-made pedestals, but will forgive tax collectors and prostitutes.  In the words of our Lord’s mother – which we sing to this day – “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the lowly.”

Jesus comes to put the proud in their place, but to raise those who have been beaten down: by the devil, by the world, and by our own sinful nature.  To the Pharisees, Jesus is a menace and a challenge to their power. But to us “poor, miserable sinners,” Jesus is our Savior.  They see a dangerous man who must be put to death for His supposed sins; we see a righteous man who is put to death for our sins. 

As we approach the remembrance of our Lord’s birth, we allow John, the prophets, the apostles, the entirety of Scripture, and preachers of every age to point us to Jesus, to the cross, and to the manger.  We meditate on what it means that God has come to earth in the form of a baby, in the form of a man who was baptized in the Jordan, in the form of a preacher who puts the Pharisees in their place, a man who is convicted of terrorism and publicly tortured and executed – and a man who walks out of His own tomb to the consternation of not only the Jews, but also the Romans – and at first, even the disciples themselves.

And this is why Christmas brings Christians such joy, dear friends.  It goes far beyond family get-togethers and parties and children opening gifts.  Our joy transcends trees and decorations and festive lights.  The real joy of Christmas is in the Christ, the Messiah, the Prophet spoken of by Moses, the one Elijah and Moses will speak with on top of the Mountain of Transfiguration, the one John baptized with water, the one who comes to baptize us not only with water but into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  We Christians cannot contain our joy because God has come to earth to save us, and He comes to us as one of us: as a baby, as a man who suffers, but also as a mighty king, as God in the flesh, as the one who deals the death-blow to Satan and who rises from death to destroy death.

All of this joy is pent up in us as we count down the days until our Lord’s birth – even as we bubble over in the joy that we know He is coming again to save us, to raise the dead, and to re-create the world anew.  Jesus will come again to liberate us from today’s Pharisees: unbelievers, scoffers, those who lord over us, those who are hell-bent to destroy civilization and turn the world upside-down, to call evil good and good evil, and to serve the cause of Satan.

In spite of it all, we look to the manger and we rejoice.  We rejoice with the angels and the shepherds, with Mary and Joseph, with the animals and all of creation – and eventually with the wise men who will come and bring the good news back to the Gentiles.  We rejoice with the Lord’s followers who rejoiced at His resurrection. We rejoice because He is coming again.  We rejoice with St. Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Amen.

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

Sermon: Wittenberg Academy - Dec 14

14 December 2021

Text: Rev 2:1-29

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

In today’s reading, we hear four of the seven letters of Jesus to the churches delivered by John the apostle.  There is a pattern that should cause us in our modern churches to take notice.  Our Lord judges the churches based on two things: their doctrine and their works – which our Lord often speaks of as love.

For indeed, there are two ditches into which we Christians and our congregations can fall.  The first is to be doctrinally pure, but lacking in love and good works.  This is an easy trap to fall into dear friends.  We can reduce the faith to abstracts, to logical deductions, to memorized proof texts from the Scriptures, and to nothing more than dogmatic rightness – while overlooking actual righteousness. 

Our Lord praises the Church of Ephesus for their fidelity to the apostolic doctrine and in their condemnation of the Nicolaitan heresy.  But He warns them to “repent” as they have “abandoned the love [they] had at first.”  And “if not,” He will “come to [them] and remove [their] lampstand from its place.”

The other extreme is to focus on good works, but to be doctrinally unfaithful.  This is a cross for many of our modern churches that are more concerned with “niceness” and image than fidelity to the Scriptures.  Our Lord warns the Church of Pergamum, who “held fast [His] name, and [they] did not deny [His] faith” even under persecution “where Satan dwells.”  However, unlike the Ephesians, the Christians at Pergamum tolerated the Nicolaitans.  Jesus commands them to “repent.”  And “if not, [He] will come to [them] soon and war against them with the sword of [His] mouth.

Similarly, our Lord praises the Church of Thyatira for their “works, [their] love and faith and service and patient endurance.”  However, they are tolerant of a certain woman in the congregation who claims to be a “prophetess” who is committing the same errors as the Nicolaitans: sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols.  However, our Lord also encourages those who rejected this so-called prophetess and her teachings to “hold fast… until I come.”

The Smyrnaeans are given a different kind of letter – one that warns them of persecution to come and encouragement to “be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life,” says our Lord.

 

The Christian life is both doctrine and practice, both confession of the truth and living a life of love.  We must not neglect love in pursuit of doctrine.  We must not neglect doctrine in pursuit of love.  We are called to hold both, even as our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us in purity and loves us.  And we must also take our Lord’s encouragement to heart concerning times of persecution and tribulation.  For “the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”   

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Amen.

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