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.
This birthday of Jesus Christ, that we are celebrating, is the most significant event in the history of mankind. His birth split history. Yet I always wonder how many people even ask the question why is this 2021? How did we arrive at this date? Because if you ask that question you have to ask the question: “Who is this Jesus?” Why is he so important that we have changed our way of tracking history?
The birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem was God’s idea. He planned when it would happen, how it would happen, where it would happen and why it would happen. On that night God sent an angel to announce his arrival. The God who created the universe, set the stars in place and the world on its axis says, “I love you… no matter who you are, where you’ve come from, or what you’ve done in your life. That’s why Jesus came to Bethlehem.
For centuries Christians gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus with the “Christ Mass”. Over the past hundred years or so, culture has dropped the “s”. Just the slight change of an “s” has help change the “reason for the season.” People love the commercial trappings of Christmas, but the gifts under the tree are not our birthday gifts, they are to remind us of God’s gift of love and peace our
hearts need.
God knew the helplessness of our human experience. He knew people wanted forgiveness for our faults, our flaws our failings, our broken commandments. He came himself to rescue us from Satan grip on our souls. “When God wanted to defeat sin, his ultimate weapon was the incarnation, the birth of Jesus. His birth is the opening act of a story that ends with a crucified and risen messiah, executed for treason, who conquered the devil by rising from death.
J. Sidlow Baxter in “Awake My Heart” writes: “Separate Christmas Day from Good Friday, and Christmas is doomed ….doomed to decay into a merely sentimental…”eat-drink-be-merry” festivity of December. ( Reflections Christianity Today December 9, 1996 p. 50)
“Bethlehem and Golgotha, the Manger and the Cross, the birth and the death must always be seen together, if the real Christmas is to survive….. For the “son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many.”
This very evening as you sing about this Baby, God’s Son, your savior, you already know that His face, will be bloodied by soldiers striking Him; His back will be torn apart by the whip. His forehead's soft skin will be pierced by a crown of thorns. His hands? They will be nailed to a cross for you. He will be nailed there, and He will die. All so that the sins He is carrying, your broken commandments, and mine, might be removed from the face of a holy and righteous Creator.
He will die willingly for you, without complaint. Then three days later, His sacrifice completed, He will rise from the dead. This is what He has accomplished, in order that we might have both present and eternal peace with the Living God.
On this Christmas Eve, I do not know why you have come? Maybe you have come searching for memories past. But you have come. The holy child in the manger has drawn you hear to hear again His Story for you. You have managed to put aside the wrappings of the season. You have moved past the secular St. Nicolas with his sleigh and toys.
This is the true Christmas story. The Savior has been born in Bethlehem. He has lived for you. He has died for you. He has risen for you. On this Christmas Eve don’t let His Story be hidden behind the tinsel, the lights, the commercial wrappings of our American Christmas celebration. Your eternal address depends on the true story of Christmas.
