This is the morning after. The morning after the great event – for all intents and purposes, the morning after Jesus was born, even though the calendar says today is the day when we celebrate his birth. For all I know it’s the morning after Joseph smoked the cigar (if he had one), the morning after the guests from the orient paid homage, the morning after shepherd boys paid a visit to see the child, the morning after all the commotion and excitement and overdrive. Now the fire in the fireplace is down to a smoking stump. The child, Son of Mary as much as Son of God, is hungry and starts crying. Gold and incense can’t feed him, but Mary’s breasts can. The cows in the shelter have also made their voices heard. They need to be tended to on this morning after, as life takes its normal course, despite all the lofty proclamations, despite the exotic visitors of the night before. And yet, according to John, this day marked a new beginning. He says his trademark majesty: “The Word, the Logos, has become flesh.”
The morning after a great and emotional event is usually a tough one for us, even if drinking wasn’t involved, as it often is. The body just doesn’t want to get out of bed early. Our bones are still sleepy, our moves slow, our hair uncombed, our eyes half closed, and we have to force ourselves to do the things that need to get done on the morning after. And yet John says with authority, “This is the day that marks a new beginning. The light has overcome the darkness!” Notice the prophetic certainty in his words, despite the fact that darkness is as present as it has always been on this morning-after. Darkness just caused a derailed young man to kill an innocent Polish man and plough an 18-wheeler into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin. John is betting on the superiority of the light that shines in Jesus, despite the people who got killed last night on the streets of Philadelphia or the ones that overdosed in suburban America last night, on Christmas Eve. John puts his faith in this baby born in Bethlehem, despite the fact that people are once again talking about nuclear weapons as necessity for the nation’s security. Despite all that, he says “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Bold words!
John was also called a seer, an ancient term for someone who has mystical and prophetic insights. Often times seers only see the things they are because they close their eyes. They peek into0 a different reality, they hear different music, they walk to a different tune. It would be unfair to call the unrealistic. In fact, maybe they are the only people who are realistic in a spiritual sense. John saw, John recognized that God had become flesh in this baby and he could see the darkness retreating before the ever-brilliant light of God. One we see that, once we embrace that, Christ has truly come to us.
As we enter a new year soon, an important one for our church. As we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017, I would like to offer to you some passages from Luther’s Christmas sermon on December 25, 1530. The good preachers you can quote years and centuries later. What they had to say was not tailored only to the people of their time but to humanity beyond the constricts of time and place. Here is Martin, some 486 years ago:
“Therefore this is the chief article, which separates us from all the heathen, that you, O man, may not only learn that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior, but also accept the fact that he is your Lord and Savior, that you may be able to boast in your heaboring: I hear the Word that sounds from heaven and says: This child who is rn of the virgin is not only his mother’s son. I have more than the mother’s estate; he is more mine than Mary’s, for he was born for me, for the angel said, “To you” is born the Savior. Then ought you to say, Amen, I thank thee, dear Lord.
But then reason says: Who knows? I believe that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior and he may perhaps help Peter and Paul, but for me, a sinner, he was not born. But even if you believed that much, it would still not be enough, unless there were added to it the faith that he was born for you. For he was not born merely in order that I should honor the mother, that she should be praised because he was born of the virgin mother. This honor belongs to none except her and it is not to be despised, for the angel said, “Blessed are you among women!” [Luke 1:28]. But it must not be too highly esteemed lest one deny what is written here: “To you is born this day the Savior.” He was not merely concerned to be born of a virgin; it was infinitely more than that. It was this, as she herself sings in the Magnificat: “He has helped his servant Israel” [Luke 1:54]; not that he was born of me and my virginity but born for you and for your benefit, not only for my honor.
Take yourself in hand, examine yourself and see whether you are a Christian! If you can sing: The Son, who is proclaimed to be a Lord and Savior, is my Savior; and if you can confirm the message of the angel and say yes to it and believe it in your heart, then your heart will be filled with such assurance and joy and confidence, and you will not worry much about even the costliest and best that this world has to offer. For when I can speak to the virgin from the bottom of my heart and say: O Mary, noble, tender virgin, you have borne a child; this I want more than robes and guldens, yea, more than my body and life; then you are closer to the treasure than everything else in heaven and earth, as Ps. 73 [:25] says, “There is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.” You see how a person rejoices when he receives a robe or ten guldens. But how many are there who shout and jump for joy when they hear the message of the angel: “To you is born this day the Savior?” Indeed, the majority look upon it as a sermon that must be preached, and when they have heard it, consider it a trifling thing, and go away just as they were before. This shows that we have neither the first nor the second faith. We do not believe that the virgin mother bore a son and that he is the Lord and Savior unless, added to this, I believe the second thing, namely, that he is my Savior and Lord. When I can say: This I accept as my own, because the angel meant it for me, then, if I believe it in my heart, I shall not fail to love the mother Mary, and even more then child, and especially the Father. For, if it is true that the child was born of the virgin and is mine, then I have no angry God and I must know the feel that there is nothing but laughter and joy in the heart of the Father and no sadness in my heart. For, if what the angel says is true, that he is our Lord and Savior, what can sin do against us? “If God is for us, who is against us?” [Rom. 8:31]. Greater words than these I cannot speak, nor all the angels and even the Holy Spirit, as is sufficiently testified by the beautiful and devout songs that have been made about it. I do not trust myself to express it. I most gladly hear you sing and speak of it, but as long as no joy is there, so long is faith still weak or even nonexistent, and you still do not believe the angel.”
Take to heart the words of old Martin. Jesus Christ is born to us today!
Amen.