Christmas Eve
St. Luke 1.26-38; 39-45; 2.1-14; 22-32; 41-52
St. Luke 1.26-38: Beloved, this first reading, in which the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus, we right away read: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. It’s Nazareth, not Jerusalem or some other bigger or important city; and the holy angel comes to an insignificant young woman named Mary, and not, for example, the wife of some big-wig like Herod or Caesar. What does this teach us? It teaches us that God comes to the lowly; it teaches us the holy, almighty God comes to us. And isn’t that what Christmas is about? –God coming to us; He is not so separated and removed from us. Instead He comes to us and, in fact, becomes one of us and lives and suffers here at the hands of sinners in this sinful world.
That the almighty Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, came into this world in the no name town of Nazareth, to be born of an insignificant young woman, a virgin, named Mary is a beautiful picture of how Jesus operates even today. In fact, only to the lowly and humble can He come. After all, only the lowly and humble—the spiritual lowly and humble—us Christians, desire the Lord to come to us; because we recognize our need for the Lord we want Him to come to us and to give us what we truly need: forgiveness of sin, life, salvation. We have none of these things on our own. St. Mary would say later [Lk 1.52-53]: [The Lord] has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away empty. None of us is too lowly/ insignificant that the Lord would not come to us—after all He came to the lowly virgin in little, despised Nazareth.
Do you want a truly blessed Christmas this year? Then become lowly and humble—that is, recognize and confess your sins; see your need for a Savior from sin. Rejoice in the announcement that your Savior from sin has been born and has come into this world and receive the best gift of all this Christmas—forgiveness.
But let us not forget Who it was who was conceived that moment in the womb of Mary. And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” For here is the Christmas miracle—the Lord, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, took His human nature from Mary. The Holy Spirit formed the fruit of the womb, preserved it from the stain and any fleck of sin, forming it into the temple of the holy body of Jesus. The One in St. Mary’s womb is the true eternal God, He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and He is also true man having clothed Himself/ taken His human nature from Mary. Jesus, the One born that first Christmas, is in one Person both the eternal God/ Second Person of the Holy Trinity and also true 100% man of the virgin Mary.
Luke 1.39-45: The angel Gabriel told Mary, And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, so now St. Mary goes to visit her relative. This miracle of St. Elizabeth was that she was an old woman past childbearing years who never had a child and now she was six months into her pregnancy; this was a miracle at the other end of the scale from Mary—a young woman, a virgin who is with child. By the miracle of St. Elizabeth’s conception of St. John the Baptizer, Mary was strengthened to believe the angel’s announcement all the more firmly that she, a virgin, would give birth; and not only give birth but, also like the angel said, that she would be giving birth to the very God. How wonderful that time was that these two saints must have spent together talking about the Lord’s grace and mercy to them in choosing them and blessing them to be the mothers of the Savior and His forerunner.
We do well to follow their example this Christmas. Don’t be afraid to talk about Christ and what Christmas is truly about when you are at get-togethers this Christmas. You will be strengthening others in their faith as you share the blessings of Christmas and your fellow Christians will be strengthening you as they share what great things the Lord has done for them.
Then there are these marvelous words in our reading: And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Notice, St. Elizabeth is not speaking off the cuff nor is she just trying to be nice. Instead, she’s filled with the Holy Spirit; she’s speaking by divine inspiration and what does she declare? The mother of my Lord [has] come to me. By that word, by that divinely inspired word she declares and confirms that in the womb of St. Mary is the God-man—one who is one Person but both God and Man, the Christmas miracle. Here, by the Holy Spirit, she rightly identifies Mary as the Mother of God— The mother of my Lord—although she is a woman, born/ living in a certain place and time, in her womb is the eternal God Himself to whom she will give birth.
And another great event happens here—the 400 years of silence when there were no prophets after the OT prophet Malachi, has come to an end: For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. St. John the Baptizer leaps for joy, prophesying the presence of the Savior. St. John, filled with the Holy Spirit already in the womb [Lk 1.15] was doing his work as forerunner, preparing the way for Jesus by welcoming Him and pointing to Him.
By the work of the Holy Spirit, both SS. Elizabeth and John recognize and confess the unborn babe’s divine kingly dignity.
St. Luke 2. 1-14: Here is the event we are celebrating in earnest tonight—the birth of Jesus, true God and true man. What is striking, is the simplicity of St. Luke’s description of the birth. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. But there’s beauty in this simplicity because how can human language sufficiently extol this great miracle? What human words can do justice to and describe the fact that God became man? So just say the fact simply and beautifully without any embellishment: And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
And there’s something else to this simplicity. Here the true almighty and eternal God comes into this world—and He is born of a woman and wrapped … in swaddling cloths and laid … in a manger. What does this mean? He doesn’t come to frighten and terrify; He doesn’t come as a strict Judge to judge and condemn the world/ us because of our sin. Instead He comes as Savior; He comes to rescue the world from its sin, death and damnation. He so humbled Himself and in no way showed His divine glory and majesty lest we be frightened and turn away from Him. Who can consider a baby a terrifying threat? Don’t most people generally gravitate toward babies? Jesus came to us so we can come to Him as He invites us in the Gospel [Mt. 11.28]: Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. We don’t come to a strict Judge, but to our dear loving Savior who comes to us first in all lowliness and meekness to be our Savior—a baby born of the Virgin.
And then we hear the angels tell the shepherds: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. The angels point the shepherds directly to this lowly, humble Savior, a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. That’s not how/ where human reason/ logic would expect to find the Savior and true God, Christ the Lord. So by directing the shepherds’ attention to the lowly Child, the humble circumstances/ lowliness of the Baby should not be an offense/ a stumbling block. In the same way today, we are still directed to find Jesus in the simple, humble word and sacraments—to find Jesus in the word of Scripture, to find Him in the waters of holy Baptism, to find Him and eat His body and drink His blood under the bread and wine of the Blessed Sacrament.
By pointing the shepherds directly to the lowliness and humble condition of the Baby Jesus and seeing them as an offense, we continue to be pointed to the lowliness and humility of Jesus on the cross. There and there alone is our salvation—our forgiveness of sin and our rescue from sin devil and death. At Christmas, we see the lowliness and poverty that mark His coming—and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn—as the beginning of a thorny road that led to the cross. Already in the manger Jesus was wrapped…in swaddling cloths—strips of cloth that resembled the burial wrapping, which, too were linen strips wrapped around a body. Here is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ suffering and death. The cross and Jesus’ suffering and death are what we are pointed to today for in Jesus and His saving work alone is our salvation.
St. Luke 2. 22-32 We now meet the Holy Family 40 days after Christmas. Here we see Jesus in all humility submitting Himself to the Law of God—here the Ceremonial Law. What a strange scene—the very God who gave the Law has now placed Himself under the Law. And why? To keep it! To keep all of it for us and our salvation. So, what do we read? The Holy Family went to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Here we get a further glimpse into the lowliness the Savior was born into, how greatly He humbled Himself because in the OT the words St. Luke quotes, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons, are preceded by the words [Lv 12.8]: If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring... The point? The poverty of the Holy Family since it cannot afford the first option: a year-old lamb for a burnt offering.
But really, didn’t the Holy Family really fulfill that first option of a year-old lamb for a burnt offering? After all, even though they did not bring an unblemished lamb, they brought Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, the true unblemished Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. But this was not the time for His perfect, once for all sacrifice. That was yet to come.
In the temple, the Holy Family meets Simeon, a man the Holy Spirit told that he would not die until He had seen the Savior. He is described as: righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. He is a picture of all people, the poor and lowly, in whom the Holy Spirit created a longing for a Savior from sin. What a glorious scene as enlightened by the Holy Spirit, Simeon sees his salvation and the salvation of all the faithful realized in this Baby: your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples. He takes and holds, the Savior, in his arms. Each time we receive the Blessed Sacrament we hold/ receive that same Savior/ salvation that Simeon did. Simeon in his arms, but we in our mouths.
St. Luke 2.41-52: Now we find Jesus as a 12 year old boy in Jerusalem for the Passover. That Baby born that first Christmas grew up. What joys there must have been during those 12 years—but also trials and sorrows, like fleeing for their lives into Egypt! But now there is a new trial. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it. But what is interesting—Jesus was lost for three days. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Here, too, is a foreshadow of an even greater time of sorrow and anguish—Jesus’ three day rest in the tomb.
But what was Jesus doing? He was in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. What great insight and questioning Jesus must have shown! How blest these teachers were because in their very midst they had the Teacher Himself, the very God, the One on whom rested [Is 11.2], the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. Jesus still comes to us and sits in our midst and teaches us. Each time we gather around His word, He is there teaching us in His Word, by His Holy Spirit enlightening us and strengthening our faith and leading us deeper and deeper into the truths and comfort of His holy word/ doctrine, strengthening us against the attacks and deceptions of the devil. Not only does Jesus in His Word teach us about Him, but in His word as He teaches us He gives us the gifts and blessings He won for us on the cross. That’s what He has done this evening as we ponder the joyous mysteries of Christmas. He has in His word revealed Himself to us, deepened our faith and understanding, increased our love of Him and given us the gifts of forgiveness of sin, peace and joy in Him. Blessed Christmas!