A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Isaiah 9: 2 – 4, 6 – 7; Psalm 96: 1 – 4, 11 – 12; Titus 2: 11 – 14; Luke 2: 1 – 20
“Class, it’s a pleasure to do theology!”
So said one of my theology professors at seminary….(In fact, every class began with this greeting.)
Taking a hint from my theology professor, let’s do some theology around the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Specifically, let’s look at how Jesus’ coming among us as one of us (the technical, theological term for this is “incarnation”, that is to say, Jesus’ coming in the flesh) relates to an ancient reality of human existence:
Blessings and Curses
Blessings and curses have to do with God, with God’s holiness and God’s mercy, and with our circumstance as fallen human beings, human beings who are capable of committing sin, human beings who, in the process of sinning, fail to measure up to God’s standards of holy living.
In the course of this sermon, in examining the concept of blessings and curses, we will keep four traits of God in view at all times:
- God is holy
- God is merciful
- God saves His people
- God uses human beings to do the saving
Now, we begin by looking at the curse under which the human race lives:
Curses come by virtue of our own wickedness….for we bring upon ourselves untold misery by our rebellious ways. Like Adam and Eve, who fell for the serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden,[2] and who separated themselves from God in the process, we human beings, being children of our original parents, Adam and Eve, also separate ourselves from God by our sinfulness, for we know that God is holy, that God cannot tolerate the sin and the rebelliousness that sin represents.
So, Adam and Eve separated themselves from the blessing of having a face-to-face relationship with God, as they walked with Him in the Garden of Eden .
Ever since, humankind has endured this separation.
Now we said at the outset of this sermon that God is not only a holy God, but He is also a merciful God.
In response to our original parents’ (Adam and Eve) rebellion, God could simply have “written them off”, casting them out of the Garden of Eden, only to die spiritually and physically because of their separation from God, who created them and who sustained them by providing for them everything necessary for their livelihood in the garden.
But God did not do that….Instead of divine judgment in the form of death, God provided a way for them to conceive and to bear children (though, as a result of their sinfulness, only with pain), so that death’s power was blunted (though only temporarily) through the succeeding generations who would be born to Adam and Eve’s children, and to their children’s children.
By virtue of the power to conceive future generations of men and women, the possibility of relating to God was preserved, even though the separation that became a reality with Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden remained in place.
Down through time, God’s holiness was evident again and again as wicked human beings were punished for their evil ways. Genesis recounts some of these events: The Great Flood (Genesis 6 – 8), and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18: 16 – 19: 29) are two examples.
And yet, God is merciful: for God preserves the human race through the agency of Noah and his sons, who built an ark in response to God’s command. Likewise, Abraham and members of his family were spared when the fire and brimstone rained down on the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
For, you see, God is holy, but God is also merciful. God saves His people, and God uses human beings to do the saving.
(For further evidence of these traits, consider also Moses, who led the Chosen People out of bondage in Egypt, through the Red Sea waters, to the Promised Land, or the Old Testament prophets who called God’s people to repentance and holiness of life time and again, speaking of God’s holiness and God’s mercy.)
Now these threads that we have been considering, God’s holiness, God’s mercy, God’s saving of His people, and God’s using human beings to do the saving, all come together in Jesus Christ, and so it is to that part of our theological reflection that we now turn:
God’s holiness: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus said to Thomas.[3] In Jesus Christ, we see the holiness of God the Father, made manifest in the perfect life of Jesus Christ, seen in His teachings and in His manner of life.
God’s mercy: God could easily have written the human race off, given our sinful, hard-headed ways. But Jesus’ birth demonstrates two things: 1. That God was willing to set aside all divine power and prerogatives to come among us as one of us (fully human), taking up our human life in the weakness and humility of the babe who was born in a cow’s stall in Bethelehem. Such a self-emptying[4] is most clearly seen in Jesus’ birth; and 2. That God cared enough to “send the very best”, himself!
God saves His people: We’ve already recounted some of the ways that God demonstrated His saving power over the people that He loved, people that He had chosen to be His own possession. Now, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God’s saving power is clearly seen, as the babe who was born in Bethlehem grows into manhood, then suffers and dies for our sins on the cross. Since we, in our sinfulness, are unable to pay the price for our own sins, God had to take the initiative, and to provide the sinless means by which we could have a face-to-face, personal relationship with God restored to us. Succinctly put, Jesus Christ restores to us what was lost in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve’s sin, for now we are able to approach God the Father through Jesus Christ, the Son, our sins covered by Christ’s blood. (The theological term for this payment for our sins is called the atonement – literally, the “at-one-ment” by which we are made one with God through Jesus Christ.)
God uses human beings to do the saving: For God to save us, God had to enter the human situation, even as He had done before in dealing with Noah, in making a covenant with Abraham, and in dealing with Moses. Now, God enters the human circumstance by taking on our humanity completely. Jesus is born as a baby in Bethlehem, becoming one of us, in order to save us. In so doing, God now came to know personally all of our hurts, our pains, our sorrows and disappointments (that’s one of the essential messages of Good Friday and the cross). There’s nothing we experience in our daily lives that God doesn’t know firsthand through the life and experience of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ comes to us in His birth at Bethlehem, and in so doing, stands between the blessing and the curse. He blocks the power of sin’s curse, pulling us up (if you will) out of the mire of the consequences of our own sinfulness. God’s mercy is seen in Jesus Christ’s birth, his coming among us, which we remember at this holy season of Christmas.
Jesus Christ not only blocks the power of sin’s curse, He also brings God’s blessing with Him, restoring a personal relationship with the Father, proving God’s love for us (see especially in the depth of love that the cross represents), and guaranteeing to all who believe the reality of eternal life in heaven with Him, Eden restored!
Sometimes, given the symbols of the season, it’s hard to see the great theological work that lies behind the Christ Child whom we see in our Nativity scenes. But before us, whenever we see the Baby Jesus in a crib in a Manger scene, ought we also to see the great and wonderful work of God, the God who shows us His holiness, the God who shows us His mercy, the God who saves His people, and who uses human beings to do the saving in the baby who lies before us tonight.
For Jesus Christ comes, bringing and proving God’s mercy and holiness. Jesus Christ comes, bringing God’s blessing, and delivering us from the power of sin’s curse.
Thanks be to God!
AMEN.
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[1] The essential concept for this sermon grew out of a discussion at our Wednesday morning Informal Discussion Group about three weeks ago.
[2] See Genesis 3: 1 – 15, read as one of the lessons in the service of Advent Lessons & Carols, for a detailed account of Adam and Eve’s sin in following the serpent’s suggestions. Genesis 3: 16 – 24 also goes on to chronicle the woes that became a part of the human race’s condition as a result of their transgression.
[3] John 14: 9
[4] The theological term for this self-emptying is kenosis.
