Don't think for a moment that I would abandon a high Christology. Credo the Messiah was God with us, consubstantial with the Father, and let me never deny it. Only today, as we talk about that ineffable glory enfleshed in the weakest of vessels, a little infant, I would reflect on Jesus the man.
Today is the mass of Jesus, and it is precisely by looking at that man amidst the procession of church heroes, squarely between St. Ambrose and St. Stephen in the December calendar, that I am gladdened by the feast of his birth, and I understand the scriptural account of his coming. As I read the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the first light in which the man Jesus presented is as a prophet, prophesied by those prophets before him, coming out of the prophetic tradition, and then going as a prophet into the adult form where we know and meet him. We learn later that he should be our priest and savior and sacrifice; still later we learn he would be our King and God. But it is first in the echoes of Isaiah and strange foretellings of the days of Caesar Augustus that we meet our Lord as a child.
I usually hear one of two Christmas sermons. There is sometimes another sermon about the cross and forgiveness of sins, but I don't think that's a Christmas sermon. It's a Good Friday sermon that someone accidentally preaches in December, and I shall come back to it in a moment, for it's more telling than we might think. The first Christmas sermon, which is still special and instructive to all of us, is the portrait of the baby, and the staggering realization of what that baby means in a high Christology. I pass by that portrait this morning, not because I think it unimportant, but because it's best left to another voice. It's more suited to Grandfather's knee, and not your stiff and dour cousin. The second type of Christmas sermon probably comes from the narrative-deconstructing current of postmodernity, and is all about how dirty the stable and manger were, and how the little Jesus surely did not 'sleep in heavenly peace,' but wailed and fussed all through Christmas night, and therefore all of our old songs and nativity sets have it wrong. I don't know why we hear this sermon so often. Perhaps it comforts those many people in our time who feel, especially around the holidays, like they're losing some measure of control and sanity, and they are comforted by other dirty living rooms and screaming children. But again, I suspect that to the postmodern mind, it's simply more fun to knock things down that to try building and protecting anything complex.
On this feast of Christmas day, I raise a glass to the man Jesus. I marvel at the paradox of his incarnation, and I pause, as I should much more often, to think of his example and mighty deeds, especially, marvelous as they are, his deeds for me. And I then ask, now what? Should we preach Good Friday sermons on Christmas as well? If this baby were come only to be born sinless of a virgin and die an atoning death for sinners, why did his parents take him to the temple for circumcision, and not sacrifice? We know that Jesus meant to die when he entered Jerusalem thirty years later, but why were the thirty years necessary? What were they about? How, in other words, does the birth of Jesus lead, not only to his death and resurrection, but to his life?
This Christmas season and New Year, let us learn from our Lord what he meant as a prophet, when he began to describe a Kingdom of God that was coming into the world. Let us learn what he meant as a teacher, when he so resoundingly answered the lawyers and professors of his day. Let us understand who he was a priest, and how, in some way, we have been made members of his priesthood. Let us realize what it means to be citizens of the King, and what we must do to advance his rule while we await the King's return. Let us, as ever, remember he is our salvation, always an salvation lowly, from a baby in a stable to an executed criminal on a cross, that we should receive him in humility. And let us remember that this Christ-child is our hope, by his message, reign, atonement and resurrection, for us and for our people. Amen and Merry Christmas!
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