What? Who? Why? To understand the uniqueness of
the Church’s celebration of Christmas, we need to know what
happened at Bethlehem, who was involved, and why it happened.
Leave out the what, the who, and the why and you’ve lost the whole
point of Christmas. Lose the point of Christmas and we may as
well wish each other “Happy Holidays” and go home now to get an
early start on our family dinner. The what, the who, and the why
are essential to any real celebration of Christmas.
Just about everybody could tell you what happened
in Bethlehem that night over two thousand years ago. A baby was
born. A real, human baby, with arms and legs and fingers and
toes. A baby with a set of lungs and a need for His mother’s milk
and a digestive system that worked just as yours and mine does.
It was no fairy-tale birth that happened that night. It wasn’t
mythological, it wasn’t legendary. Just ask Mary if the baby she
clasped to her breast was real. Yes, she’d say. I’ve counted His
fingers and toes. I’ve run my hand over the curves of His tiny
face. I’ve looked into His eyes. I’ve changed Him and laid Him
down to sleep. He’s real, all right.
What was it that happened at Bethlehem two thousand
years ago? A baby was born. Not exactly an earthshaking event,
to be sure. After all, babies are born every day. But there was
something earthshaking about this particular birth. It wasn’t the
“what” that made this birth so important. It’s the “who.” Who
this baby is – that’s why the Church remembers and lauds and
proclaims this holy birth over two thousand years after the fact.
The Scriptures tell us who this baby is. He is God
Incarnate. God become Man. Listen to how St. John explains the
miracle of this birth: In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was
God. He was in the beginning with God. . . And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Did you get that? In Jesus, the Word who is the 2nd
Person of the Godhead – God the Son, to be exact – became Man. He
clothed Himself with our human nature. Though He existed from all
eternity with the Father and the Spirit, He entered time and space
when He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit. God
became man in Jesus Christ.
Other Scriptures confirm who the baby born to Mary
is. Isaiah and Matthew call Him Immanuel, which means, God
with us. The angel Gabriel announces to Mary before her
conception that the son she will bear will be called the Son
of the Highest, the Son of God, precisely because He is
conceived by the Holy Spirit. In his epistle to the Romans St.
Paul states clearly that Christ is God over all, blessed
forever. In Colossians we read:
He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all
things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-
all things were created through him and for him. . . For in Him
all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
In the
Gospel of St. John, Jesus referred to Himself as I AM,
that is YHWH, the name by which the Lord revealed Himself at
the burning bush to Moses. Finally, in the prologue to his Gospel
John writes that through Him (that is, through the
Word made flesh) all things were
created, and apart from Him nothing was made that has been made.
Who is the
Baby born to Mary? He is the One who was outside time but who
entered time through the Incarnation. He is the Creator of all
things who became a created thing through His conception by the
Holy Spirit. He is God made Man, the Lord and Sustainer of the
universe who in becoming a child made Himself subject to Mary and
Joseph and dependent on their care if He was going to survive.
To look upon
this baby was to see the face of God. To cradle this baby in your
arms was to hold God near to your heart. To listen to His infant
gurgles and cooings was to hear the voice of the One through whom
the universe was spoken into existence. That’s who Mary’s baby
is. God in the flesh. God become Man. Immanuel. God with us.
But the Church
doesn’t stop with the “who” of Mary’s son. Neither do the
Scriptures stop there. We must move along to the “why.” Why this
baby was born. Why He is God Incarnate. To stop with the what
and the who is to miss the whole point of Christmas.
Let’s let the
Nicene Creed tell us the reason why God the Son went to all the
trouble to be conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin.
The Creed says it was for us men and for our salvation that He
came down from heaven. It was for us men and for our salvation
that He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and
was made man. It was for us and our salvation that He was
crucified under Pontius Pilate, that He suffered and was buried,
that on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures
and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the
Father. For us. Because we need Him. As sinners we need the
mercy and forgiveness and salvation that God alone could bring.
But that mercy
and forgiveness and salvation had to be gained for us by a Man.
After all, it was by a man that sin and death and judgment came
into the world. The man Adam blew it for all his descendants when
he disobeyed God. It therefore had to be a Man who would make
things right again for all people. It had to be a Man who would
undo Adam’s disobedience. It had to be a Man who would take the
guilt of human sin upon Himself and atone for that sin. It had to
be a Man who would recover and restore the perfect righteousness,
innocence and blessedness that Adam had so carelessly thrown away.
That’s why the
Scriptures refer to our Lord Jesus Christ as the Second Adam. He
makes right what Adam made wrong. As in Adam all sinned and all
must die, in Christ, through faith in His name, all are counted
righteous and are made alive. It wasn’t just a baby born to Mary
that long-ago night in Bethlehem. It wasn’t just God in the
flesh. It was the Second Adam, the fountainhead and source of a
whole new race of forgiven children reconciled to God by the Son
of God’s holy life, His sufferings, His death, His resurrection.
Why did God
become Man in Christ Jesus? Because you and I are sinners who
apart from Jesus would be exiled from God forever. We are by
nature enemies of God, sons of wrath, the Scripture says, but
through His Cross and through our Baptism Christ has called us
back from our exile. He took upon Himself the wrath we deserved
so that by grace, through faith, we could receive the blessing of
His Father’s mercy and forgiveness.
God became Man
in Christ Jesus to repair a universe broken and ruined by sin. He
became Man to ultimately make all things new. He became Man to
bodily enter this creation which was disfigured and distorted by
sin. He became Man restore to us the perfection that our father
Adam once possessed before the fall into sin. God became Man in
order to die and be raised again and vanquish sin, death and hell
forever.
This is why
God became Man. This is why the Creator became a creature. For
you and your salvation. For you in your sin, guilt, despondency
and despair. For you in your secret sorrows, you in your
struggles, you in your brokenness, you in your death. God became
Man in Christ Jesus for you.
But in
addition to the what, who and why of the Incarnation, there is
also the “where” to be considered. Where does the forgiveness
Christ brings intersect our lives with all our sin and sorrow and
brokenness? Where is God in Christ to be found now? We can’t go
back to Bethlehem, can we? We can’t listen to our Lord preach by
the Sea of Galilee. We can’t stand on Golgotha and watch Him
suffer and die on the Cross for the sins of the world.
The
forgiveness, life and salvation which Christ won for you are found
in the Gospel. Specifically, they’re found in the Word and water
of your Baptism through which Christ was born in you. They’re
found in the preaching of Christ who is God become Man to die and
be raised again for you. They’re found in the precious gift of
His Body and Blood given in the Sacrament for us sinners to eat
and drink.
There’s a “whereness”,
a locatedness to the Gospel. It’s where God has promised that
Christ and His saving grace are to be found. The what, who, and
why of the Incarnation are pointless without the where. And the
where of Christ’s Incarnation is in Word and Sacrament. For
through the Word and through the Sacraments Christ’s where becomes
a there-for-you, a God-with-you, for the forgiveness of all your
sins, for your eternal life. Where He is, therefore, you must be
also.
What, who,
why, where? This is the uniqueness of the Church’s celebration of
Christmas. God come down from heaven as true Man for us and our
salvation. God is with us in the Means of Grace. He’s present
with us in earthly elements of words and water and bread and wine,
to love us, to forgive us, to comfort us, and to save us. God is
with us forever in Jesus, world without end. Amen.
In Nomine Patris. . .
