Christmas is more than a one day celebration, it is a 12 day season, there is more to cover than the event of the birth of Jesus to complete the Christmas story. We often think of the coming of the wiseman as the icing on the cake to complete the Christmas story.
But our worship service this morning, readings and propers, work together to paint a broader picture of Christmas. This morning as we have gathered here for worship we see that we are given a part to play in the Christmas story. The full story of Christmas describes us. Specifically, how the birth of Jesus changes us and restores us to our previous position as God’s children.
In the Introit we heard: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” Israel was protected as a child, nurtured and cared for. Israel was treasured as God’s own child. Out of Egypt God called Israel and led them to the promised land.
Jesus fulfilled this identity of Israel, as he was himself called out of Egypt, as Joseph and Mary took him there to protect him from the violence of King Herod. As Jesus returned to Israel and settled with his family in Nazareth, Jesus embodied Israel’s history to make clear that He was God’s Son, and that we are loved because we are joined to Him.
We heard in the prayer of the day how Jesus restored our human nature. We prayed to be alive in Him, who made himself to be like us. These verses of scripture this morning help us see how an important part of the Christmas story is that we are restored as God’s children, that we have become son’s of God because God’s Son joined our world in his birth.
Part of the story of our sonship in Christ is that we fail, we grieve the Holy Spirit. As we heard in our reading from Isaiah. “But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit, therefore he turned to be their enemy.” But God does not stay angry at His people’s sins: “”Then he remembered the days of old, of Moses and his people.” While we turned away and grieved the Holy Spirit, Christ was born for us. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”
As third stanza of the Hymn ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’ celebrates. “Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.” Precisely because we kept rebelling against God Our Savior was sent to us.
In our gospel lesson, part of the Christmas story is Jesus’ deliverance from danger. The new born Jesus was protected. Even as he was born in particularly difficult circumstances, those circumstances themselves shaped the fulfillment of prophecy including that Jesus should grow up in Nazareth.
Perhaps the most significant contribution to the Christmas story is our Epistle reading from Galatians. When the fullness of time had come. Paul, himself so late on the scene, Paul who as Saul had persecuted Jesus through persecution of early Christians. How qualified could he be to tell the Christmas story?
What would he know about the arduous journey to Bethlehem and a scramble for a place to stay leading up to a birth in a manger well into the night. He was not on the scene when the Heavenly host and Angels sang or when the star appeared over Bethlehem.
But Paul is quite qualified precisely because he was faced with the bitterness of regret and pain for his past sins against the church. He had failed his Lord in the worst way imaginable- and yet Jesus has redeemed him as one born under the law.
So Paul tells the Christmas story from the perspective of what it means for us sinners who have turned away from God as a wild vine time after time- that Jesus is born for us.
In Verses 4 and 5, in this one sentence Paul summarizes the purposes of God since the beginning for to our salvation.
This Christmas story in a sentence contains 5 major topics of thought. The first topic: the fullness of time. After all of the prophets had come preparing the world to know what the Savior was going to be like the fullness of time had come. After Israel had failed God time after time- only to be redeemed and saved by God’s visitation to His people in acts of mercy- the fullness of time had come.
After the temple had been destroyed 2 times and now was rebuilt by Herod- only to be used for all of the wrong reasons- was the fullness of time at hand for Jesus to come.
After Alexander of Macedonia- known in History as Alexander the Great had conquered much of the ancient world including Israel and spread Greek culture and language for spans of thousands of miles- was there a fullness of time for the New Testament to be written in Koine Greek, the dialect spoken throughout the lands Alexander had conquered. Thus rapidly spreading the communication of the gospel in those first generations of the church.
Likewise the influence of Rome was used by God in the fullness of time as the Roman roads carried messengers of the gospel in those first centuries- allowing early Christians such as Paul to boldly confess the name of Jesus in an empire that called Caesar a god.
And finally we see the fullness of time in the specific historical circumstance described in Luke chapter 2: In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus… and while they were there the time came for her to give birth.
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. Topic 2 God sent forth His Son. God did not stop at creating the world and calling his creation his children. God sent his own Son to save his wayward children. As the Hymn “O Love How Deep How Broad” puts it: ‘He sent no angel to our place of higher or of lower place, but wore the robe of human frame, and to this world himself he came.’
Again Galatians is saying exactly what Luke chapter 2 says in greater detail about how God sent forth His Son: “The Angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin, and he came to her and said ‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the most high.”
Topic 3, Born of woman, born under the law. Jesus was born through the specific means of the virgin birth. He could have been born of clay like when Adam was created. Yet Jesus was born under the same difficult circumstances of all people.
The same difficult circumstances with the one exception of Mary’s Virginity. Not to imply that married life is more sinful than virginal life but instead to create the unique circumstances where the sin inherited from Adam would not be passed down to Jesus.
Jesus was born under the law in that there were no shortcuts to his life, no escape from hardships and the need to follow a close order of worship and devotion under the law as the way to have right relationship with the Father. He was born under the law so that he might redeem those under the law.
Topic 4, Redeem those under the law. By living the law perfectly were all had failed since Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, Jesus redeemed us through his keeping of the law. He became for us the obedient child that Adam failed to be.
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His son, born of woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. The final topic of our Christmas story in a sentence, number 5: our adoption as sons.
Listen to the heavenly Host at the birth of Jesus: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he is pleased!” Peace among the earth because of the unity we once again have with God. Jesus is our peace. Jesus has brought us our adoption as Son’s of our living God.
In the Old Testament there are two major themes of how God delivers his people: from above and from below. From above God saves his people through acts of deliverance such as freeing Israel from Pharaoh, as we heard reference to in our Old Testament Reading from Isaiah: “who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for them an everlasting name, who led them through the depths.
From below God saves his people through prophets and mediators like Moses and the priests with their appointed sacrifices. Jesus has come in the fullness of time to save us both from above in coming down from heaven as the Son of God, born to us in the fullness of time; and from below in taking on our human form and living out the law, following the Father’s will in everything- even to the point of death on the cross.
We see the full Christmas story in that Christ died for us. In that we have become his children because of the Baby born in Bethlehem. Now we live as sons of God. We live in faith in God’s purposes for us, we trust in the Father’s unconditional love for us- even to the point of sharing this love with others.
The Christmas story is completed as we live in response to His Word as “little Christ’s” to others, loving others unconditionally, serving others, forgiving others. The Christmas story is complete as the reign of God’s kingdom continues through us.
His birth has changed us, his presence to us in worship has changed us. We celebrate today that we are people created through his birth, our God has given us the inheritance of the nations. We are no longer slaves, but sons and daughters- heirs through God! Amen.