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.