Sermon: Christmas Eve – 2023

24 Dec 2023

Text: Matt 1:18-2:12

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Two of our readings this evening come from St. Matthew’s Gospel, and they show us the coming of Jesus into our world, as well as His reception by those who receive Him.

Matthew is very clear that this is not a legend or a myth.  It’s not just a heart-warming story to make us feel good.  It’s not a morality tale about marginalized ethnicities or Marxist economics.  It has nothing to do with open borders or immigration.  It is a factual account of a miracle.  Or more accurately, it is the factual account of the beginning of the greatest miracles of all: the life, death, resurrection, ongoing Presence, and return of Jesus: who is God in the flesh.

Matthew says: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.”  St. Luke tells us that the birth of Jesus took place during the reign of Caesar Augustus, at the time of his empire-wide census, when “Quirinius was governor of Syria.”  This is not a “once upon a time” tale that happens in a “galaxy far away” in our imaginations.  This is not a fictional story.  This is a historical narrative concerning the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is the beginning of the recounting of the most extraordinary events in the history of the universe. 

The narrative begins with a virgin named Mary, “betrothed to Joseph.” Young Mary is pregnant.  But she is “with child from the Holy Spirit,” just as Isaiah the prophet spoke of seven hundred years before: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”  This name “Immanuel” is Hebrew for “God with us.”  Isaiah’s hearers in 700 BC understood this to be a miraculous sign that would indicate the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, the one who will crush the serpent’s head and save us.  He is the “man of sorrows” that Isaiah also spoke of, a man who is God, the Lamb who takes away our sin.

Things weren’t looking good at the time when Jesus was born.  The people of God were held captive: to their Pagan Roman occupiers, to their fraudulent collaborator half-breed “king,” to their priests and scribes and rabbis – who were self-serving and corrupt.  God’s Word had not been heard from a prophet in four hundred years.  Their situation calls to mind this winter time of year, when the days are shortest and the darkness is the longest. 

But, dear friends, if you read your Bibles, you will recognize the pattern: it is precisely when everything seems hopeless and dead that God plants seeds, brings life out of death, and asserts victory over evil: when it all seems impossible, when it takes a miracle to get out from under the oppressive darkness.

This is when the virgin gives birth: when all hope seemed to be gone.  That’s when our God likes to do His miraculous work the most: when the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh are boasting in their pride, power, and arrogance that they are invincible.  Well, they are not.  They are a house of cards waiting for our Lord to overturn their tables and send their moneychangers fleeing for the exits.  That is how Jesus comes into this world, but He does so as a baby in order to mock them.

His enemies are afraid.  And they should be.  They try to kill Him as a child.  It’s understandable from a strategic point of view.  Satan will later try to tempt Him, but to no avail.  The devil will try to lure Him out of His mission to die for the sins of the world, but Satan’s temptations fall flat.  And today’s world mocks us, and uses our own schools, universities, courts, and laws – that we pay for – against us. Politicians, celebrities, and even leaders of the church to try to defeat our Lord.  But it’s all in vain, dear friends.  Jesus has already won, and so have we. 

A thousand years before our Lord’s birth, His ancestor, King David, wrote in the Psalms: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed [that is, in the Greek of the New Testament, “against His Christ”].”  And they conspire with each other and say, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.  He who sits in the heavens laughs.  The Lord holds them in derision.”  And furthermore, dear friends, the Psalmist tells us that God will “speak to them in His wrath” and He will install His King “on Zion,” on His “holy hill.”  And the Father says to the King: “You are My Son; today I have begotten You.”

Think of how remarkable this is, dear brothers and sisters!  In the worst of times, God comes to the earth Himself, fulfills all of the prophecies of the Old Testament from Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and God laughs at His enemies, and the enemies of His people.

We live today in a time of apostasy in the church and oppression from outside the church.  But it doesn’t matter.  Jesus is King.  He rules, reigns, and conquers.  He holds His enemies in derision, and protects us from their harm.  We bear the seal on our foreheads: the sign of the cross.  We are marked and claimed by our baptism, and we see the salvation of the entire world in the form of the weakest of the weak: a baby born to a family descended from kings, but who have been reduced to poverty by wicked men.  Nevertheless, the King is still the King, and He remains King to this day.

And indeed, “let earth receive her King.”  Matthew tells us of the “wise men from the east” who have been tipped off about this “great and mighty wonder” in the “little town of Bethlehem.”  They saw His star in the sky, and they came to “worship Him” who “has been born King of the Jews.” 

And the enemies of God know that truth is found in the Word of the God whom they reject, and the phony King Herod’s bureaucrats and hangers-on actually unroll the forgotten scrolls to discover that “Bethlehem, in the land of Judah” is the place.  From there “will come a ruler who will shepherd [God’s] people Israel.”

And so they learn of the birth of the one who is the “Light of the world,” and loving the darkness, they seek to snuff out His light.  Of course, the Lord holds them in derision and laughs at their futility.  God is not mocked.  The Christ child grows and smashes the serpent’s head, crushing the entire Herod crime family, the phony, corrupt leaders of the Jews, and even the Pagan Roman Empire, in the process. 

And as exciting as this account is, dear friends, this is just the beginning of Matthew’s account of the destruction of evil and the triumph of light over darkness, of life over death, of good over evil, of love over hate, of the church over the world. 

I would encourage you to read Matthew’s Gospel.  Don’t be discouraged.  Don’t be put off by the devil, the world, or your sinful flesh not to.  Read it and revel in it.  It is the most exciting and encouraging account in all of human history: when God became a man, lived for us, fought for us, died for us, rose for us, comes to us in Word and Sacrament for us, and is coming again on the Last Day for us.  It is God’s Word.

It is easy to be discouraged by the world around us, to be convinced that all is lost.  But it is not, dear friends.  Shut off the television.  Throw it in the garbage if you need to.  Pick up the Bible and read.  Read Matthew’s Gospel.  Read it, be amazed, and watch your life transform from defeat to victory, from the black pill to the white pill, from pessimism to optimism. 

Yes, I will give you a spoiler: Jesus wins and we win.  Satan doesn’t want you to read it.  Your government doesn’t want you to read it.  Your schools don’t want you to read it.  Your celebrities that you watch don’t want you to read it.  Reading the Scriptures – and partaking in the Divine Service and the Lord’s Supper – are the ultimate acts of rebellion and optimism that allow you to join God in holding our enemies in derision and laughing at them. 

Our victory began with the Incarnation of Jesus, the miracle of Immanuel: God With Us: the fulfillment of the prophets.  And we participate in the miracle by being part of the narrative itself.  So read, dear friends.  Listen, dear friends.  Take, eat, dear friends.  Take, drink, dear friends.  Confess Christ, dear friends.  Join the wise men who looked upon these signs “with great joy” and who “fell down and worshiped Him.”  Let us too give Him our gifts: the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of our very lives.  Let us hold all those who try to snuff out the Light of Christ, who seek to destroy our worship and confession of Him, with derision.  Let us laugh with the God who saves us, with the King who reigns over us, “evermore and evermore!”

Amen.

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