Why Shepherds? Why You? Why Me?

[This is the message prepared for last evening's Christmas Eve services with the people and friends of  Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. But something the nurse practitioner at the doctor's office called viral gastroenterits hit me yesterday, meaning that I shouldn't be around people. Living Water's worship and music director Mark Brennan shared the message while doing all of his other work. Thank you, Mark!]

Luke 2:1-18

The accounts of the first Christmas in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels are filled with characters. 

Of course, there’s Jesus, God the Son Who comes into the world as a baby Who will one day die and rise to give forgiveness and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. 

There are Mary and Joseph, the couple chosen by God the Father to be Jesus’ earthly parents. 

There’s Caesar Augustus, the most powerful of the Roman emperors, who ordered a census in his conquered territories, meaning that to register, Joseph and Mary, both descendants of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, where the Old Testament prophecies said the Messiah would be born. 

There are the angels and the animals. 

Later, there are King Herod, and scribes, and wise men from the East who, following a portentous star, arrive sometime after Jesus’ birth to bring gifts to the Baby they perceive to be a King. 

In their way, the appearance in the nativity histories of each of these characters makes sense.

But what about the shepherds? When you think about it, the shepherds’ part in this story seems misplaced. 

It’s easy to understand why Mary and Joseph are in the story. 

Easy to understand too the presence of Caesar, who turned the lives of ordinary people upside down when he ordered them to walk distances of eighty miles or more just for the privilege of being taxed by a foreign overlord. That order meant that Jesus would be born in the right place.* 

It’s even easy to understand the presence of the livestock.

Unlike kings, emperors, and wise men though, the shepherds had no earthly power. Shepherds were poor. Shepherds had no influence. They were vulnerable. And they were thought of as among the lowlife of society. No Judean child thought, “When I grow up, I want to be a shepherd.”

And unlike the animals at the manger, the shepherds would not have been physically close to the place where Jesus was born. They had no reason to be in Bethlehem; their place was in the fields.

Yet it was to shepherds keeping watch over their sheep that God sent an angel to announce the birth of the Savior of the world. 

But God must have thought the angels were important on this night. 

And just in case the shepherds thought the angels’ message was really for someone else, just like all the other good news and happy blessings of the world always seemed to be, the angel’s message could not have been clearer. He tells the shepherds: “...I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

The shepherds weren't a Christmas afterthought on God's part. It's significant that the angel didn’t go to the powerful king, priests, or scribes in Jerusalem to let them know. The big shots in Jerusalem were too busy being big shots to rejoice over an angel pronouncing the Messiah’s birth. Besides, as Matthew tells us, it was these elites who regarded Jesus as a threat and determined that any newborn Messiah would need to be exterminated in his crib.

The shepherds have none of what the Jerusalem elites have. 

They have no power, perks, or comfort. 

Like the poor and weak of every age, their daily lives show them how vulnerable and fragile they are. 

And it is precisely to people who see their vulnerability that Christ comes. 

• He comes to those who know that they are sinners in need of the grace and forgiveness He gives to all who believe in Him. 
• He comes to those who are weak and heavy laden and offers them rest. 
• He comes to those who are rejected by the world and gives them God’s eternal acceptance. 
• He comes to the poor and the poor in spirit and gives them the riches of heaven and His presence with them always!

God sent the angel to announce Jesus’ birth to the shepherds and so fulfilled what Mary, the virgin chosen by God to be Jesus’ mother, had said would happen when the Messiah arrived. 

She had told her kinswoman Elizabeth that her soul magnified God because “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty...just as he promised our ancestors.” (Luke 1:52-53, 55)

God comes to those willing to cast aside their delusions of self-sufficiency, self-importance, and self-righteousness. 

The God we know in Jesus comes to those willing to pray, “Hallowed by Your name, Father. Your kingdom. Your will be done, Lord.” 

It is to  just such people that our Savior comes today so that He can raise them with Jesus. 

To many people--if not to most people--this will seem crazy, foolish. “But,” the apostle Paul writes in the New Testament, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things...so that no one may boast before him.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

Friends, the angel’s “good news of great joy” is for you. The Savior Jesus will give never give life with God to those who are too busy being busy or pretending to be self-sufficient to hear His call to new and everlasting life. But Jesus does give life to those who, like the shepherds, listen to God’s voice and follow where Jesus leads. 

And Jesus does give life to those who, broken by the knowledge that they are sinners in need of a Savior and made new by the Gospel Word that God so loves the world--God so loves you--that He gave His Son to live, die, and rise for you, replacing your sin and death with His righteousness and His risen life.

To you this day Christ has come. 

To you every day Christ comes. 

Run to Him when He calls you, then tell the good news of the Savior Who, unlike kings or scribes or presidents or emperors, is always and forever and totally for you. 

God knew that that message would mean everything to the shepherds and that because of it, they would run to see the baby and then tell others about the Savior. 

May the angels’ message given on the first Christmas mean everything to you and me too, so that every day, we run to spend time with Jesus and every day, we point others to Jesus. 

Merry Christmas, friends!

*Eighty miles is the approximate walking distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Fine Print

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 2:22-40
Whenever people get new high-tech gizmos, as some of you may have received on Christmas morning this year, their response usually follows a two-step pattern. Step one follows the initial excitement over getting the gizmo: They try to make it do all of the things that they’ve heard it can do. Step two follows the realization that they don’t understand everything about the gizmo: They have to stop and read the instructions, including the fine print, the tough stuff. This can be overwhelming. But the promise is that if we’ll put up with the pain, there will be gain.

Our gospel lesson this morning sort of follows this same pattern. Only both the pain it talks about is infinitely more difficult and the gain is eternally more sublime.

And today, God asks us, “Will we take the pain in order to experience the gain?”

The lesson recounts an incident that took place many weeks after Jesus’ birth. On that night, the shepherds went to the child and confirmed for Joseph and Mary what this couple already believed they’d heard from God, that this baby really was the Christ, the Savior long promised by God. That must have been a moment of quiet euphoria for Mary and Joseph. They weren’t crazy. The two of them truly had been chosen by God to play a part in the salvation history of the world. (Just as you and I have our roles to play in salvation history as we follow Christ and share Him with others.)

Take a look at our lesson, please, Luke 2:22-40. It begins: “When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took [Jesus] to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord’), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: ‘a pair of doves or two young pigeons.’”

Under Old Testament law, a woman who had given birth was required to wait several weeks, then be purified--offering a sacrifice--in order to be able once more to fully participate in Jewish religious life. (By the way midwives had to undergo such purification as well. Because Joseph acted as Mary's midwife, some scholars believed that both Mary and Joseph were at the temple to offer sacrifices for purification.)

So, purification was one reason for the visit to the temple. But Mary and Joseph also went there to consecrate or dedicate their child to the Lord, God the Father.

They were soon to learn through two unexpected interruptions, only the first one of which we’ll talk about this morning, that God had them in the temple for other reasons. Have you found yourself in a similar situation? You go somewhere for your reason and then learn that God has you there for His reasons. Our niece told us yesterday about going to the grocery to pick up a few items. But while there, she ran into a friend going through a tough time and spent an hour-and-a-half listening and offering encouragement. On that day in the temple, there were two things that Mary and Joseph needed to be told. That's the reason God wanted them to go to the temple when they did.

Verse 25 and forward: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God…”

This wasn’t part of Mary’s and Joseph’s plan. A stranger, an old man who, it turns out has deep faith has been praying that the Messiah would be revealed to him before he died appears. When the old man sees Jesus, he does a shocking thing, taking the baby Jesus from His parents, he cradled Jesus in his arms. The man’s name is name is Simeon, meaning God has heard in Hebrew. Simeon was overwhelmed with joy because he knew that, at long last, God had heard his prayers. The Holy Spirit had assured him that his prayers would be heard. And on that day, the Holy Spirit moved him to go to the temple courts.

Is there any good or godly thing for which you’ve been praying for years? Or that you started to pray for and then gave up, not because the Holy Spirit seemed to tell you that God wanted you to stop, but because you got tired of praying? Because you were discouraged. Because you felt defeated. Ann and I were talking about that very subject on the way here this morning. There's something we've prayed about for years and nothing seems to change. Have you been there?

Listen: In another chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is quoted telling a parable about a widow who had been wronged by someone in their community and a corrupt judge whose judgments were usually bought and paid for. The widow had no money. She couldn’t pay the judge off. (Any more than you or I can buy God off!) Jesus says though that because the woman would not give up on petitioning the judge to bring her justice, the unjust judge finally gave in and saw to it that the woman got all the money that was owed to her.

After telling this story, Jesus says that if an unjust judge can be worn down to do right by a person and hear their pleas, how much more will our loving God in heaven Who wants to do the right things for us answer our prayers?

There are, as we’ve said before, four answers that God can give to our prayers: no, maybe, wait, and yes. When we pray to God for answers, we’re asking God that His good and gracious will be done. We do the asking, but we leave the answering up to Him. And God will answer prayers offered in Jesus’ name at just the right time.

This isn’t magic. This is faith. And sometimes, God’s answers to our prayers will require us to give up on our imperfect will to yield to His good and perfect will.

Sometimes, God's answers to our prayers will mean turning away from sinful habits we enjoy so that we can embrace the blessings wants to give to us or to those for whom we incessantly pray.

Apparently, in Simeon’s quiet times with God, the Holy Spirit had assured him that he would see the Messiah. Now here Jesus was in the temple courts! You can understand why he scooped Jesus up into his arms!

Then Simeon did what people on whom the Holy Spirit rests always do: Simeon prayed some more! Verse 29: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Years ago, I heard a hospice nurse tell the true story of an old man in her care. As his life ebbed away, the man was in a coma. The nurse knew that the man deeply believed in Jesus, the only One Who can give us everlasting life with God. She didn’t know if he could hear her, but she decided to worship God and sing what she knew was his favorite hymn. “Jesus loves me, this I know / For the Bible tells me so / Little ones to Him belong / They are weak, but He is strong” [You know the words] “Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / The Bible tells me so.”

She had just sung those last lines when the man opened his eyes, pushed himself off the bed, and said, “And don’t you forget it!” In the next moment, he fell back to the bed and peacefully passed from this life.

In the temple, Simeon tells God that he can peacefully die because God had sent the Savior to bring new life not just to God’s first people, the Jews, but also to Gentiles, like you and me, who repent and believe in Jesus!

Mary and Joseph heard in Simeon's prayer further confirmation of Who their child was (and is).

But then came part two, the fine print, the kind of stuff we like to gloss over, the hard part (verse 34): “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Anyone who really gets around Jesus sees things about themselves they’d rather not see. Coming into the presence of the “Light of the world” is not an easy thing.

When we come to Jesus, we see our sins in the light of His perfection.

We see our mortality in the light of His eternity.

We see our weakness in the light of His infinite strength.

Like Adam and Eve after their fall into sin, we want to hide.

Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we want to farm out our relationship with God to preachers and Sunday School teachers.

But Jesus wants us to come to Him personally because it’s only when we see our sin and our neediness that we’re ready to turn to Him for life, strength, and hope. 

It’s only when we let Him crucify our sinful natures, that He can bring us to the life God has in mind for us: a life with God filled with His goodness!

Simeon was telling Mary and Joseph, especially Mary, a hard truth: The world would speak against her Son, the world would demean Him. And when she saw Jesus die on a cross, Simeon warned her, the pain in her heart would be like a sword piercing her soul.

Mary and Joseph needed to give up on any thought that they could control the Child, the Savior, Who had come into their lives.

This was the fine print that God chose Simeon to deliver that day in the temple.

It’s our fine print too.

This baby is the Savior of the world, the only One Who can dispense life to human beings who are otherwise destined for death and separation from God.

But like Mary and Joseph, if we’re to take hold of all the grace God wants to give to us through Jesus, we must daily surrender our wills to God’s will and ask God to give us the strength to let go of all that keeps us from following Him.

We need to accept the momentary pain that sometimes seems it will never end in order to experience the eternal gain Christ died and rose to give to those who trust in Him.

We need to daily ask God to make room for Jesus in our lives, because that’s really what faith is: God, through the power of His Word, spoken, preached, taught, and given in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, clearing out the sin and death in our lives to make room for Jesus.

And as we daily receive God’s grace given through Christ, we, like Simeon, faithfully pray and live and follow and see how God acts to give us resurrection life with Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who Are The Favored People?

[This was shared last evening with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during three of the four Christmas Eve worship services. (One of our Christmas Eve service, the Family Service, has no sermon, but a reading of the Christmas history from a children's book.)]

Luke 2:1-20
“Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’” (Luke 2:13-14) 

It’s these two verses from Luke’s narration of the events of the first Christmas on which I want to focus tonight. 

The question raised by the angels' words recorded here is this: Who exactly are the people on whom God’s favor rests?

Ann and I have a friend who, when we were all in our late-twenties, seemed to have a favored life. 

Her husband, it appeared, adored her. 

Both she and her husband had good jobs that paid them well, allowing them to own a beautiful new home and to take nice vacations. 

They had a healthy child, at that point, aged two. 

Then it happened. 

The husband who adored our friend announced that he wanted out of their marriage; he’d found someone else with whom he felt more compatible. 

There was the custody to negotiate and a divorce to endure and a new way of life to establish. 

Our friend said that the whole experience was like being on a flight for a planned trip to Italy only to learn once the plane landed that she was in Hungary instead. 

The life she’d begun to experience and projected into the future was no more.

Had our friend lost favor with God?

There’s an idea that’s been popular in this world from the moment that Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the garden of Eden, an idea probably even more popular today that it’s ever been. The idea, put simply, is that the most favored people in life are those who enjoy success, happiness. We’re told that life’s most favored people get the best educations, have the best jobs, take the nicest vacations, make the biggest killings in the market. 

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with good educations, jobs, vacations, or even “making a killing” on Wall Street. 

But are the people who have these things going on for them God’s most favored people? 

Are they the ones about whom the angels, God’s messengers, told the shepherds, “peace to those on whom [God’s]” favor rests”?

A clue as to what the angels meant (and what God means) when speaking of people favored by God can be found in something another angel, Gabriel, said to Mary, the virgin chosen by God to become the earthly mother of God in the flesh, God the Son, Jesus. 

When Gabriel met Mary to announce God’s plans for her, he said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored!” (Luke 1:28) 

Luke, the gospel writer says that even Mary “wondered what kind of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). 

Understandably! Mary had none of the things that the world sees as indicators of being favored. From a worldly perspective, she would come to have even more reason to doubt the angels’ words once the angel told her that, a teenager and unmarried, she was going to give birth to a Son, the Savior of the world. 

It seems that God’s idea of being favored doesn’t conform to our world’s ideas on the subject.

God’s favored ones aren’t necessarily those God picks to know this world’s wealth or good health or the applause of others. In fact, Jesus tells us, having it all can be an impediment to the everlasting life with God He came into the world to give: “...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle [Jesus tells us] than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).  

God’s favored people, it turns out, are those who are obedient to God. 

• They’re like Mary, who told Gabriel, “I am the Lord’s servant...May your word to me be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:38) 
• God’s favored people are like the impoverished shepherds on whom the world looked down, people who were considered to be the low-life, riff-raff of society, who weren’t too busy with the rewards of the world to say to each other after the angels had told them of the Messiah’s, the Christ’s, birth, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” (Luke 2:15)

The obedience of the shepherds, as with the obedience of Mary, had nothing to do with the world’s conception of what it means to be religious. As you may have noticed already, it's entirely possible to be scrupulously religious and completely unfaithful as a Christian!

Neither Mary nor the shepherds saw God as some cosmic Santa Claus, “making a list, checking it twice, [figuring] out who’s naughty and nice.” 

While the disciple of Jesus Christ will seek to obey God’s will for his or her life and pay heed to God’s commands, true obedience to God, the obedience that gains us the favor of God, is all about trusting in Jesus Christ alone for life and hope and salvation from sin and death and futility. 

Jesus tells us who God favors in a simple passage in John’s gospel: "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29) 

God’s favored people are those who seek, however imperfectly, to welcome His Son, Jesus, with faith, whether the world considers them blessed or successful of favored or not.

Put another way: This work of God, the obedience of faith, of forsaking everything else in order to bet our lives on Jesus Christ each day through lifestyles of daily repentance and renewal is what brings us God's favor. 

It’s what brings us the peace from God the angels proclaimed on the holy night of Jesus’ birth. It’s a peace that can’t be achieved or striven for, but a peace that simply must be believed and received. It’s what Saint Paul calls “the peace that passes all understanding,” the peace that God gives to those who daily trust in the Christ Who bore the shame of our sin on a cross and rose from the dead to give eternity to all who turn from their sin and trust in Him to be their Savior.

In the midst of her pain and uncertainty, our friend came, gradually, to turn to Jesus as her God and Savior. She moved from valuing the favor above all else of the world to valuing the favor of the God we meet in Jesus. 

There are some people who would say, “She needed a crutch and that’s when she turned to Christ.” Exactly!

Listen: It’s a sign of maturity and self-awareness to realize that, in fact, we all desperately need the crutch that is Jesus Christ. 

• Only Jesus gives us the power to face this life with joy and hope and peace. 
• Only Jesus gives us the power to turn away from the world’s selfish ways and to embrace God’s command that we love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
• Only Jesus gives us the power to look death in the eye without fear, knowing that nothing, not even death, can separate us from God’s love, God’s favor. 
• Only Jesus gives us the confidence to see Him face to face, despite our imperfections and our sins and His perfection and sinlessness, knowing that this same Jesus, by grace through our faith in Him, covers us with His holiness and perfection, fitting us to live in His kingdom. 

You see, Christmas tells us that God wants to favor people with His grace now, in the midst of this imperfect, sometimes painful, inexplicable world, and in eternity, a realm with no pain or tears, no regrets and no goodbyes, a world in which obedience is no grim obligation, but simple faith in the Christ Whose birth among us we celebrate tonight.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God’s favored ones, keep entrusting your lives to Jesus. 

And then, like the shepherds long ago, “...spread the word concerning what [has been told you] about this child” (Luke 2:17) so that others will come to believe and know the life of God’s eternal favor you and I have in Christ tonight as bring worship to Jesus!

Merry Christmas! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Christmas: For You! (AUDIO)

Here's the audio for the message shared during the Christmas Eve candlelight services, which happened at 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00pm in the building of Living Water Lutheran Church this past Sunday night. (We also had a Family Christmas Eve service, featuring the Christmas story for children, at 3:00pm that day.)

Below are the pictures that are referenced in the message.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Christmas: For You

[This was shared during four Christmas Eve worship services with the people, family, and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 2:1-20
Have you ever had this experience?

You go somewhere special or spend special time with someone you love, then later regretted that you hadn’t really taken the time to savor it?

Hadn’t taken the time to just let the moment penetrate the recesses of your memory?

Or allowed yourself to think, “This is so special, I need to always remember exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and doing”?

Life tears by and we often fail to mark the special times in memory and reflection.

The next-to-last verse in tonight’s Christmas gospel lesson tells us, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

The word translated as treasured is, in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, a compound word that means gathered together. Mary gathered together the events of that night and pondered or, in Luke’s original words, threw them together.

In other words, Mary made a point of noting and remembering everything that happened on the first Christmas.

Then she threw them together in her mind, turning them over, seeking to see what they all meant, how what was happening all jibed with God’s centuries-old promise of a Savior-Messiah and with the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would give birth to that Messiah.

Mary collected her memories and thought about their significance.

This is what I want to ask you to do over the next few minutes.

The Christmas story, as recorded by Luke and Matthew, is so familiar to us that we forget not only the details, but also their meaning.

We take Christmas for granted.

This Christmas, I beg you to not do that.

Christmas is one of the most important events in human history--and in our personal histories, surpassed only by Good Friday and Easter Sunday, neither of which could have happened had Christmas not happened.

Tonight, we consider and praise God for the moment when God the Son took on human flesh and took up residence in this world, not as a king or a president, not as a celebrity or a tycoon or a general, but as a baby born in a barn to an impoverished and unmarried couple who hadn’t yet consummated their union.

If you want a picture of just how much God loves you, Jesus in the manger will do.

It says even more than what we might think at first, in fact. Take a look at verse 7 of our gospel lesson, please.

The stage had been set by God. God had revealed through the prophets more than seven centuries earlier that the Messiah, the Son of God, God-enfleshed, would be raised in a home of descendants of King David, and that He would be born in Bethlehem, David’s city. God had orchestrated events so that Mary and Joseph would be in Bethlehem when the baby was born. God had even put it into the head of the Roman emperor to order a census in Judea so that Joseph and Mary would have to be in Bethlehem, their ancestral home, to be counted.

And then, the birth happens. Verse 7: “...and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”

What must Mary have thought when she placed her newborn in that manger?

For sure, one thing that she must have thought about was the depths of God’s love, the lengths He was willing to go to in order to rescue you and me from sin and death. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” Jesus would tell Nicodemus decades later. And this Son would die and rise to set all who trust in Him free of the shackles of sin and death, to set you and me free to be the people God made us to be when He lovingly formed us in our mothers’ wombs. All of this had to be have been part of Mary’s pondering.

But she must also have considered the significance of the fact that her son’s first crib was an animal feeding trough.

In the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, there were two words that could be translated as manger, table, or crib. One of those words was παχνί. The other was φάτνῃ (phantne).

When the second word, phantne, is used, it seems to usually refer to a certain kind of manger. Let me show you a few pictures ancient phantnes.

As you can see, these mangers were hewn stone, not comfortable surfaces to sleep on.

With hay in the manger and the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, it may have been a bit more comfortable.

Still, Mary would have known that this Child did not come into this world to be comfortable. He came to bring comfort, the comfort of God to a human race fallen into sin and its consequences, death.

Maybe Mary thought of words she often heard read in the Nazareth synagogue, Isaiah 40:1-2: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for…”

This baby came to pay for our sins, yours and mine, with His shed blood and His earthly life, on the cross.

And maybe Mary thought of something else as she saw her first-born in that hard manger, of something else hewn from stone.

It may have been dawning on her that the only way Israel and the rest of the human race could be saved from sin and death was for an innocent human being, also God, to bear our punishment for sin, to die, so that when God raised Him from the dead, He could raise all who repent and believe in Jesus, would have everlasting life with God.

Jesus had come to die and rise in order to be our advocate in the halls of heaven. As God’s Word says: “...this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).

Mary may have begun to understand all of this. And if the idea was just dawning on her that night in Bethlehem, it would have been made clearer to her in a short time. Eight days after Jesus’ birth, Simeon, an old man who identified Jesus as the Messiah warned Mary of the suffering her Son would endure and the stone tomb in which He would be laid, when he told Mary: “...sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.” (Luke 2:35, Good News Translation)

As I told the Church Council this past week, there is a whiff of Good Friday in that stone manger, a foreshadowing of the tomb where Jesus’ lifeless body would be lain.

But, listen: There’s also the scent of Easter because the tomb of stone couldn’t contain Jesus and His grace for sinners any more than the news of His birth, His death, and His resurrection could have been contained these past two-thousand years.

Thank God that sin and death met their Conqueror that night in Bethlehem!

The Child has come to rescue you from sin, death, and purposeless living.

He’s come to cover your sins in His amazing grace and make you new.

He’s come to stand with you, by you, and for you as you trust in Him and call on His name.

He’s come to make sense of your living and give you life beyond your dying.

Jesus came into our world, precisely and specifically, because He loved not just the human race as a whole, but because He loved and loves you in particular.

His birth, death, and resurrection all happened for you.

And one day, He will raise all who trusted in Him from the dead. I pray that includes you and everyone whose lives we touch with the good news of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.

This is the Christmas truth that I hope you will ponder and savor tonight and tomorrow as you celebrate the miracle of this night: This Child, the Savior of humanity, has come for you.

For you.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Message We Need to Hear

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship yesterday.]

Mark 1:1-8
On Thursday, Bloomberg Businessweek reported the latest trend in Silicon Valley. The tech businesses there are bringing in models and actors, male and female, who are given fake biographies and sign non-disclosure agreements, to show up for companies’ Christmas parties. They’re supposed to bring some life to the otherwise dreary gatherings of tech geeks.

Believe it or not, as a different kind of geek myself, this story made me think of John the Baptist.

John, the Baptizer, first-century outspoken and ill-clad man of God, would never be hired by the mavens of Silicon Valley to spread Christmas cheer among their twenty-first century employees. And yet, during Advent every year, as we Christians gather to worship God and prepare for Christmas and for eternity, we invite John to speak to us and, in a different way, liven things up. That’s true again on this Second Sunday of Advent.

Is that a good idea?

I think so, because, unlike the models recruited for high tech Christmas parties, telling people the things they want to hear, John came into the world to tell people, including you and me, what we need to hear.

John and his message are front and center in the gospel lesson, Mark 1:1-8, for today, the Second Sunday of Advent. Take a look at it, please. (And if you have your Bibles with you, be sure to underline passages and make notes in the margins.)

The lesson starts with a simple and significant sentence fragment. Verse 1: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…”

Mark is here signaling that the entire succeeding sixteen chapters are just the beginning of the gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life with God for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are just the beginning of what this gospel--this good news--is doing.

The fact that you and I are here this morning testifies that the gospel is still at work giving life to all who believe.

And it will keep on giving those who trust in Christ life for all eternity!

This good news, as Mark says, is “about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…” The phrase, Son of God, doesn’t mean that Jesus descended from the Father. It means that He is one with the Father. He is the Messiah, God’s anointed King, to be sure. But He is also God Himself.

By the way, this is a good time to mention someone is invited to all Christmas season gatherings, sacred and secular every year: Saint Nicholas. Nicholas, celebrated every year as a gift-giver, was a bishop and theologian. History tells us that he was so committed to biblical truth, that no heresy ever arose in the diocese of Bishop Nicholas.

He also reportedly smacked or punched a guy named Arius in the nose for saying that Jesus was only "like the son of God" and not actually the "Son of God," as Mark says in today's gospel lesson.

Arius and the adherents to his ideas claimed that God had created Jesus before Jesus came to earth. They repudiated the idea that Jesus had been God the Son before He was born in Bethlehem.

The Arians, as they were called, missed the point of the prologue to John's gospel, which tells us: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." (John 1:1-3, 14)

Nicholas threw the punch at Arius during the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. At the end of the council, the gathered bishops and theologians issued a statement of faith--the Nicene Creed, which we don’t recite nearly often enough--that includes the confession that Jesus is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”

Mark tells the good news about Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God.

In verses 2 and 3, Mark cites two passages from Old Testament prophecy, Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1. Hundreds of years before the births of either John the Baptist or Jesus, these words point to a messenger, a voice, who would prepare the world for meeting the Son of God. Mark says that that messenger/voice was John the Baptist.

Verse 4: “And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

As I’ve pointed out before, Jews were not unfamiliar with baptism. Gentiles who became Jews were required to be baptized because Gentiles were seen as dirtied by sin and Jews were seen as clean, simply because they were the genetic descendants of Abraham. (No condescension there, right?)

But, John is preaching that if his fellow Jews want to be ready for the Son of God to enter their lives, or to become part of the Messiah’s eternal kingdom, they needed to repent for their sin. They too were unclean. They too needed to own their sinfulness. They too needed to receive God’s forgiveness.

Now, in other times, Jews would have completely repudiated John’s message. And some, most notably King Herod, would repudiate John. Ultimately, Herod would have John killed.

And, let’s be honest, most of the time, you and I don’t like to hear the truth about our sinful natures or our sinful actions. When I get called to the carpet for my sins, whether by other Christians or by God and His Word, I don’t like it. When this happens to us, we want to dismiss both the message and the messenger.

But, at least for a season, John the Baptist wasn’t an unwanted guest. Verse 5: “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

There are probably two reasons for this astounding response to John’s preaching.

One, of course, is that John was moving on God’s timetable and in response to God’s call.

The other is that the people of the Judean countryside and those in Jerusalem--the hayseeds and the sophisticates, notice--were living in desperate times. They were under the boot of Roman occupation. They were largely poor and destitute.

When we are vulnerable, we see reality more clearly.

When things are going well--when we’re doing OK financially, we’re healthy, or our families are seemingly functioning well, it’s easy to delude ourselves with the idea that our good fortune stems from our virtue and goodness.

It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve got everything under control and don’t need God. Or at least that we only need Him on the edges of our lives, when we can fit Him in.

But when life makes us vulnerable, we see how much we need God.

Vulnerability also causes us to look at our own characters, our faults, our sins.

Until we’re aware of our own vulnerability, we won’t be open to God. 

Nor will we be open to our need for repentance and forgiveness.

The people who thronged to meet John in the wilderness were vulnerable enough--honest enough--to confess their sins and trust in God so that they could be ready to meet Jesus.

Are we living our lives with the same kind of vulnerability so that we’re ready to meet Jesus whenever it happens?

Now, John’s baptism was only a symbolic action. It was a way for repentant people to outwardly demonstrate to God, themselves, and others that they wanted to turn from sin and live under the gracious reign of the Son of God.

But, at the end of our lesson, John points to another baptism, a baptism instituted by One greater than John.

Verses 7 and 8: “[John said] After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

“I’m just a voice. I’m just a messenger. This baptism is only a symbol,” John is saying. “But soon the Son of God will be here and when His Word connects with water in Holy Baptism, much more than a symbol will be seen. The fire of His Holy Spirit will meet you in the water and you’ll be set ablaze with the very life of God.”

There in the Judean wilderness, John was pointing away from himself and from his symbolic baptism.

Instead, he pointed to Jesus and to the sacrament of Holy Baptism in which God, without our help, gives us life and makes us His own, gives us a share in His crucifixion, where our death is atoned for, and a share in His resurrection.

John is pointing to the time when all believers baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, will be able to live with the Son of God Who the crowds who thronged to John in the wilderness waited for.

As twenty-first believers in Jesus, we also wait, of course.

But we don't wait for Jesus to show up and do something.

We know that Christ has already done something.

He already has appeared and already died and risen for us.

He already has conquered our sin and our death for us.

He already has set apart baptized believers to be His for eternity.

Hebrews 10:10 says that: “...we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

What we wait for is Jesus to return. We wait to meet Jesus.

We need not fear facing Jesus or facing the death that will likely precede that moment.

If, like those vulnerable and open people in the Judean wilderness, we will daily turn from our sin and trust in Christ, the God Who has set the fire of the Holy Spirit ablaze within us in our Baptisms, empowering us to believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, we can rest assured that the moment we meet Jesus face to face will be infinitely and eternally more joyful and wonderful than we can imagine.

And that joy and wonder will never go away. Nor will it ever be taken from us!

This is the truth, the message, to which John, voice and messenger for Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, was pointing. With a message like that, I move that we keep inviting John the Baptist to spend time with us during Advent. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]