St. Luke 2:1-20– Christmas Eve 2013

St. Luke 2:1-20– Christmas Eve 2013
Zion Ev. Lutheran Church, McHenry, IL
December 24, 2013 

Merry Christmas! In the name of Jesus. Amen. So many myths surround Christmas, it’s magical! There are family traditions. Songs. Carols. St. Nick, Jingle Bells, red nosed reindeers, Buddy the Elf, Scrooge, mistletoe, and frosty snow men. 

Christmas brings out the best in people. We gather together. We love one another. We forgive one another. After all, it’s Christmas! It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

But the Christmas Gospel isn’t some myth of Christmasses past.  It doesn’t begins like some children’s fairy tale, “Once upon a time.”  The Birth of Christ actually happened in real history.  The real Caesar Augustus was reigning over the Roman Empire. The real Quirinius was the governor of the real the Roman province of Syria. Those big wigs in Rome wanted more money, so they had a census for tax purposes. Can it get any more real than that? 

So, pious Joseph travels with Mary, his betrothed, from Nazareth, to Judea, to Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David. He takes with him his betrothed. Mary is with child by the Holy Spirit. The Baby in her womb is the very Son of God. 

Babies don’t tend to come when you expect them. While they are in Bethlehem, the Virgin gives birth to her first-born Son. So many people were in town for the census, that they couldn’t find room in an inn, so they find someplace for the Baby to be born – maybe a barn or a cave.

The Blessed Virgin took her child and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger. A manger is a food trough. It’s a container from which dumb animals eat. 

That’s not a place for a newborn Baby. That’s certainly not a place for God to lay. But, in real life, sometimes, you have to make do. Tonight, the Son of God sleeps in a manger.

There were shepherds, the ones keeping watch over their flocks by night. They were the lowest of the low. Before these common guys, stood an angel of the Lord announcing, “Fear not! I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be to all people! Unto you – for you – is born this day in the City a David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Then, not just one angel, but a whole host of them, an army of them appeared, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on whom His favor rests.”

God has intervened. He has broken into your world and changed it forever. He has acted where you couldn’t act to save people who couldn’t save themselves. For the Christmas Gospel didn’t just happen. It happened for you. 

This is how your God is.  God’s favor rests on you. You can believe this because there was a real Baby wrapped in real swaddling clothes lying in a real food trough.

You see, Christmas isn’t Christmas unless all that happened on Christmas happened for you! Christmas isn’t Christmas unless the Baby wrapped in swaddling clothes is wrapped in swaddling clothes for you. Christmas isn’t Christmas unless everything baby Jesus does, He does for you, and He saves you.

God the Son, God’s Son, is born. He’s wrapped in swaddling clothes. He’s laid in a manger to grow up and die on the Cross on Good Friday for your sins and to rise again on Easter morning.

You are saved today because Jesus was born to die. You will have eternal life because He traded the wood of the manger for the wood of the Cross. You will never see hell because He was wrapped on Good Friday, not in swaddling clothes but burial clothes.

Change, today. Change. Really change. Not just from being a old Scrooge to the new Scrooge who kept the Spirit of Christmas. Change from living as if this Gospel isn’t true or doesn’t really matter. Turn from thinking that God doesn’t care for you. Stop living as if this world is a series of random events that befall you from a careless universe or from a God that didn’t send His Son.

Your faith isn’t a compartment of your life that you give a nod to a few times a month or twice a year. Let the truth of this Gospel of the Birth of the Son of God into your world change how you live with those around you, how you care for your families, how you love others. 

On Christmas, God changed the universe. For the shepherds found the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manager. 

Now, no matter what else happens, whether you have success or failure, sickness or health, wealth or poverty, even suffering and death, God has already worked it out for your good in the One born of Mary. 

Come tonight to the Lord’s Supper. For the same Jesus that was born of Mary is here this night, not in the arms of the Virgin or even in some Christmas-y feelings of our hearts this time of year. Tonight, He puts Himself on the altar. Take eat. Take drink.

Christ is born for you. Unto you. To change your world. To bring you peace. To lift you up. To save you. And so that you, and your family, and your friends, and friends would have a Merry Christmas in the forgiveness of your sins. Merry Christmas! In the Name of Jesus. Amen.