"Christmas Is Not Your Birthday”

In Jesus Holy Name December 24, 2021

Text: Matthew 1:20b-21 Christmas Eve - Redeemer

“Christmas Is Not Your Birthday”

It’s Christmas Eve. Excitement & anticipation are in the air. Christmas trees light up our homes with bright lights and shiny ornaments. Colorful bows, adorn boxes wrapped in Christmas colors of red and gold. Dinners are planned. Every family has their own unique traditions. Some families will open gifts Christmas Eve, others Christmas Day. Some families will choose to draw names for Christmas gifts, just to limit the cost and number of gifts, the one exception will be grandparents who ignore the rule of limiting gifts for grandchildren.

With countless gifts under the Christmas tree, it looks like the celebration of someone’s birthday. Writer Mike Slaughter challenges our comfortable traditions with the title of his book, reminding us that: Christmas Is Not Your Birthday.

One of my favorite cartoons is the 1965 classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas." When Snoopy attaches every blinking light and gaudy decoration he can get his paws on to his dog house, Charlie cries, "My own dog has gone commercial. I can't stand it." It is true. The real meaning of Christmas can get lost in the chaotic clutter of shopping, spending, making exhausting preparations for the family meal.

Finally when all seems lost, Linus reminds everyone of the story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

Christmas is not your birthday nor mine. Christmas is the celebration of the entrance of the Creator of the Universe into His world as an infant, born in Bethlehem. It is His birth the day of Christmas is supposed to remember.

The true miracle of Christmas is the Incarnation of the Word of God. In Jesus, God became fully human, even as Jesus was also fully divine. In the Incarnation, God’s own self came to earth as a human. I wouldn’t pretend to guess how divinity interacted with human DNA, but that’s the mystery the Virgin Birth. This is the marvelous, mysterious miracle of our Christmas celebrations.

Jesus did not have his beginning in a little Judean village. His story does not start with the stable. Jesus cannot be confined to the limitations of earthly time and space. For before the earth was…. He existed. (Decision December 1987 Philip Kelly)

There never was a time when Jesus never existed. He is God. He is Yahweh. He is Christ, the Messiah. Regardless of what you might hear about Jesus in our culture these days, He is deity. He left the expanse of heaven to dwell in the confines of human flesh, God incarnate for us.

Sorting through the stack of cards that arrived at our house this Christmas, I observed that all kinds of symbols have edged their way into the celebration. Overwhelmingly, the landscape scenes render New England towns buried in snow, usually with the added touch of a horse-drawn sleigh. Santa and reindeer shout out greetings for Christmas. Angels have made a huge comeback in recent years announcing “Fear not!” words desperately needed in a culture that is afraid to venture outside and socialize with others.

How did the child of two simple villagers end up changing history more than anyone before or since? Max Lucado in his book “God Came Near” provides and answer. “The Omnipotent, in one instant, made Himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And He who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus is a mystery beyond our understanding. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The creator of life being created.

No silk. No ivory. No hype. No party. No hoopla. Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts.

The tiny hands of the infant Jesus just over 2000 years ago, will grasp no pen, guide no brush. No, His tiny hands are reserved for works more precious:

to touch a leper’s open wound,

to wipe a widow’s weary tear,

to claw the ground of Gethsemane.

His infant hands, so tiny, they aren’t destined to hold a scepter nor wave from a palace balcony. They are reserved instead for a Roman spike that will staple them to a Roman cross.”

The angel Gabriel promised Mary that her son “will be great.” Great enough to silence storms, banish demons, command viruses, vacate a few graves, including his own. He’s going to be great.” Call Him Jesus, the angel told Mary and Joseph because He will bring salvation and redemption to all who seek peace with God.