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Christmas Eve Service of Lessons and Carols Text: Luke 2: 1-14 Theme: The Lord Condescends to Us For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior Who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Vs. 11 More than reflective learned scholars have pondered the question, what is God really like? Or even more momentous questions such as; What does he think about us? Does he care? From mature intellectuals to young inquisitive children, questions such as these have been mulled over and debated in every age. At some point in our lives, perhaps we, too, have desired to take the measure of God - and wondered - what would it be like to actually meet him face-to-face? Meetings with God, however, as many in the Old Testament understood only too well can be a very interesting affair. With Moses, we understand, how of our sinful frailty, makes meetings with God a rather complicated thing. Living in the legacy of Luther, we understand how the Lord of His Church has chosen to be with us and reveal himself hidden in common things of this world. We call them the means of grace. In the Divine service, He makes himself personally known through his Word. We hear it when it is taught and proclaimed and it is made visible in baptism and the Lord's Supper. As Luther would say, with the masks of such earthliness as common language and the simple elements of water, bread and wine, our gracious God has not simply descended to us, but condescended to us. Here He continually gives us the opportunity to take him in with all our senses in long, slow and unalarming ways. But what about meeting him - face to face as Moses desired on the mountain, but was turned down? This Silent Night on the Eve of Christmas is the story about how God carried out his plan to meet us and be with us . . . face-to-face. He has no desire to blow us away with his terrible majesty and holy splendor. He wants to love and tenderly embrace us as his own. His burning desire from creation on has been to make us his own - that we might respond to his love with a returning love - repairing and renewing what once was a magnificent love relationship and life together. But how to accomplish such a delicate task? As we know, love always complicates things for us. Well, although few understand, it complicates things for God, too. It was Soren Kierkegaard who illustrated God's problem well in the following parable: Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his very kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist - no one dared resist him. But would she love him? She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing private grief for the life she left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross over the gulf between them. The king convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend. He clothed himself as a beggar and approached her cottage incognito, with a worn cloak fluttering loosely about him. It was no mere disguise, but a new identity he took on. He renounced the throne to win her hand. We are here this evening to celebrate and take in the truth of Kierkegaard's parable as it entered human history in the baby Jesus. Paul eloquently summarized the historical version of the story in Philippians 2: "Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" The king cast off his regal robes and became a helpless baby, a lowly foot-washer, and as the glory of his life, a shameful cross-bearer. . . Nothing as frightful as what Moses beheld in the burning bush or the fireballs from heaven witnessed by Elijah and the crowd on Mt. Carmel, but that is precisely the point. In Jesus, God has love and courtship on his mind. In Jesus, God has come to meet us face-to-face. Incognito - veiled in human flesh. He has come humbly to win us over with a dying, sacrificial love to be his own bride forever. But we get ahead of ourselves. It is Christmas and we have come to witness and marvel at the magnificent yet mean entrance into human history of the Christ, God’s own anointed. Kierkegaard eluded in his parable of a man who perhaps was born to be king. We marvel this night of the King, the King of Kings . . . who was born to be man. The wonder of this night, indeed what almost blows our mind, is not simply peering into a manger and finding not cattle feed, but a baby human child, but rather it is the realization of who this child is and where He came from. This is the Creator of the universe you are beholding . . . wiggling around helplessly and all adorned with 1st century diapers. It is simply astounding to gaze at his and realize that He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the mighty God, the everlasting Father . . . and yes also as Isaiah foretold . . . the Prince of Peace. Here is not simply human royalty . . . rather here is the one who is both a royal Son of David and David’s Lord all at the same time. And He is our God and Lord. But here we see him with a face that is real easy to behold and take in with long slow and calm gazes. Nothing frightening here! Here is your face-to-face God as we are not scared a bit by Him. Now the Angel in the fields was a little spooky, but not this little guy. He had come to steal your heart away. He has come into the world to win you over - to become God’s own - both a part of the spotless innocent bride of Christ, and an adopted child of the Most High God and Father. Make no mistake. This is no wimpy God who has come down here to earth, hat in hand, as it were, to ask us if he could have our permission to save us. He comes with a fixed mission of God’s design and to be carried out with eternal resolve by God’s own doing. He neither asks for our help nor needs it. This Immanuel is God with us, and this child we behold as but a babe will grow up and, by himself, will execute the justice of the Lord throughout the Land - a justice that will have him resolutely succumbing to the cross and to the atoning work of His Father in our behalf. By the strips that he will endure, we will be healed. And by his death, we will be raised up with him unto a newness of life. He will not plead or bargain with us about these things, nor will he ask us if this contemplated atoning passion is OK with us. Nevertheless . . . nevertheless, He has come into this world to execute this saving plan of the Father and - and - to win us over to his designs and purposes for us in the process. He comes into the world to redeem you, to save you from your sins. But he comes in the power of his Word and all his works - works which he undertakes beginning this night - to win you over again and again with what will be a dying love, yet a love that at this point just looks up at you with baby eyes, and gurgles, from a feed trough in a musty barn. He has come to win you heart, to captivate and capture you to be his own. Yes a Silent Night . . . but a very active night. The God of mercy is with us and has begun his work. Starting right now, he has begun this night to win you over, to steal away your heart, again and again, to be his own beloved. . . to be his own beloved, forever. A-men. |
Shepherd
of the Springs
