“I wish you a mystery Christmas.”
John 1:14-18 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'" 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
Did you know that the most popular Christmas song of all time has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus? The song is “White Christmas.” It was written by Irving Berlin in 1942 during WWII. He wrote it for a musical called “Holiday Inn.” It was recorded by Bing Crosby and became an instant hit with the troops overseas. It pushed on all the nostalgia buttons that make us feel good at times of trouble like Grandma’s cookies, Mom’s apple pie and a White Christmas. Not a him of Jesus. In fact, Berlin deliberately set out to write a Christmas song that had nothing to do with Christ –- a Christmas song for the rest of the world, so to speak.
Most people don’t know that Irving Berlin actually hated Christmas. Berlin was Jewish, born in Siberia, and immigrated to this country at the age of five. His life was filled with tragedy. His first wife died of typhoid five months after they were married. His second wife, Ellen Mackay, was a Roman Catholic Christian. Their mixed marriage was a public scandal paraded in the newspapers.
In 1928 their first child, Irving Jr, died on Christmas Day of what we would call today SIDS. The Berlins eventually had three girls, who were raised as Christians. For their sake, they put up a Christmas tree and set presents under it every year. As the children opened their gifts, Ellen and Irving would slip out of the house to put flowers on the grave of their son. After the girls were grown and moved out of the house, the Berlins never celebrated Christmas again.
If you take Christ out of Christmas, there really isn’t much left to celebrate.
Our culture seems to have discovered this for itself. When you leave the Child who is God in the Flesh come to save us out of the picture, there really isn’t much to celebrate. You may as well say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and call it “Sparkle Season” or whatever you wish. Without Christ, there is no point to Christmas.
That’s why I am happy that Christmas has disappeared from the cultural radar. I may be a lonely voice here, but I’m going to rejoice in the fact that some grinning sales clerks no longer take the Savior’s name and title in vain in exchange for my money. Now if I could get crosses out of pierced body parts, I’d be even happier. Some people are all bent that our President says “Happy Holidays” to the nation instead of “Merry Christmas”. I for one am not. The President’s job is not to preach, that’s my job. His job is to defend my liberty to preach, and our liberty to worship on Christ’s Mass, the Mass of the Nativity.
The world may stuff its Christmas celebration with Santa, Rudolph and Frosty. They may enjoy parades, parties and presents. They may prefer “winter solstice festivals,” “season’s greetings,” and “happy holidays.” They can fill up their Christmas Day with NBA games and the big movies opening in the theatres.
The world can wish itself a politically correct greeting of “Best wishes on an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most joyous traditions of your religious persuasion, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others, as well as those who choose not to practice any religion at all.”
All of that’s OK. It shouldn’t bother us. The world doesn’t even want a veneer of Christ. It has openly removed the façade that it wants a Christian holiday. The world can have its secular holiday for it is handing us back our Christian holy day. The secularists are leaving it on our front steps with a note saying, “Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t want Christ in our Christmas.”
Our culture is having one big Irving Berlin moment: without Christ, Christmas means nothing. The world is already taking down their Christmas trees, packing up their decorations, putting everything away for another year. Not us. This is too big a holy day to only be celebrated on a single Eve or a Day. For the Christian Church, we are still celebrating Christmas. Today is a special day because it is very rare that we get to have two Sundays after Christmas and then culminate our celebration with the Gentiles’ Christmas on January 6 with our Epiphany Festival.
Don’t lament that the world celebrates a Christ-less Christmas. They are only doing what comes natural to them. Don’t waste your time protesting that the culture doesn’t respect our beliefs. Why should it? It’s my job, and yours, to disciple the nations, to teach the world that Christmas is about “glory to God in the highest and peace on earth.”
The world can have its Christ-less Christmas. But let’s take back these holy days of the Mass of Christ – the worship of Christ. It’s a bit like getting back a stolen car – a little dented and dinged, but still roadworthy and the engine is running fine.
What do you have when you take away the holiday shopping sprees, the piles of presents, the decorated trees (fake or real, take your pick), family expectations up to the eyeballs, office parties, eating, drinking, baking, Christmas cards, strings of lights, and all the other do-dads of cultural Christmas? What’s left after eggnog, mistletoe and White Christmas?
This one little sentence: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
That’s why angels sang, the shepherds left their flocks, and the Wise Men came from afar. That’s what Mary pondered in her heart. That’s why Christians from the third century on made December 25th a celebration of Christ’s birth, even as their culture partied its way through the dark nights of December. They celebrated the glorious fact that on a magnificent night in Bethlehem when the fullness of time came and God delivered on His Promise to save the world through His Son.
The Word became Flesh and made His dwelling among us. It strains the brain to think about it. This is bigger than E=MC2, and that was pretty big too. That rocked the scientific world when Einstein conceived it. We would never look at matter and energy the same again. “The Word became Flesh” means we can never look at God and humanity the same. God became man in Christ. The Creator became the creature. The Infinite dwells in the finite. King Herod tried to kill the King of kings. Joseph was the guardian of the omnipotent Lord. And Mary kissed the face of God.
Here again, Christianity stands alone and parts ways with all other religions. All other religions have man reaching up to touch the face of God. Some religions even have man becoming a god. But the Christmas gospel declares the opposite - God became man. The Word became Flesh, and in the flesh, He dwells among us full of grace and truth.
God came to us. A God we do not love, a Savior we do not want, the Lord we do not listen to – He is the One who came into the world of sinful flesh and blood, as sinless flesh and blood. Because we could not come to Him,
He came to us. Because we could not become like Him, He became like us.
Because we find three days of worshiping God in a row – Christmas Eve, Day and the first Sunday after Christmas, as just too much time with God – He came to spend time with us. Because we are hard-pressed to give worthy and expensive gifts to our God – God gave us the greatest Gift of His Son wrapped in human flesh. We like committing our best and favorite sins in the darkness, so the Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness refuses to understand it (John 1:5). We enjoy being in the world and of the world, so that when the Creator of the world came, the world did not recognize Him (John 1:10). He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him (John 1:11).
He is the angel of the Lord visiting His Old Testament people. He is the One who hears and shares our misery. He is the God who sees us (Genesis 16:1-16). He is the Word become Flesh. Humanity is honored by God. God tabernacles (tents) here. He dwells among us in the flesh. He is the image of the invisible God, and He restores the image of God to fallen humanity. This little Child, sleeping in a manger, cooing in His Virgin mother’s lap, nursing at her breast, is perfected humanity come to save sinful humanity. He is the new head of the human race, the second Adam come to trump Adam’s death with His own death and life.
That’s why I don’t get upset when the stores mandate to stop wishing me a “merry Christmas.” Instead I want to thank them for not trivializing the holy Mystery of Christmas. For how can you have a “merry Christmas” if you do not first believe in the mystery of Christmas – of “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The mystery that “today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Mystery that “the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”--which means, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Instead of wishing everyone a “merry Christmas,” we can wish upon them the mystery of Christmas. The mystery that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary so that you might be born again of Water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism – born of holy mother Church, with God as your Father, Jesus as your Brother, and the Holy Spirit as your Friend and Counselor. The mystery that Jesus was born in flesh and blood so you might receive His sacrificial flesh and blood as your food and drink to keep you strong and steadfast to your death. The mystery that in Jesus – whether in the manger, in the desert, in the upper room, in the Garden, on the cross or out of the grave – “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Jesus came once and was laid in a manger. He continues to come to us every worship service. His humble manger is the Word of Scripture, the words of absolution, the waters of Baptism, and the bread and wine of His Supper.
Had Irving Berlin believed in the mystery of Christmas, he would not have had a hollow White Christmas. His Christmas would have been blessed and truly merry knowing his little son was safe in God’s Son born for him.
Let the world have its “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” and even “Merry Christmas.” For we have back our Christian Christmas holy days. For while wishing people a “Merry Christmas” now is odd since their Christmas is over, the mystery of Christmas continues for us. I wish you a mystery Christmas. Amen.
2nd Sunday after Christmas at Epiphany on January 2, 2011
Did you know that the most popular Christmas song of all time has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus? The song is “White Christmas.” It was written by Irving Berlin in 1942 during WWII. He wrote it for a musical called “Holiday Inn.” It was recorded by Bing Crosby and became an instant hit with the troops overseas. It pushed on all the nostalgia buttons that make us feel good at times of trouble like Grandma’s cookies, Mom’s apple pie and a White Christmas. Not a him of Jesus. In fact, Berlin deliberately set out to write a Christmas song that had nothing to do with Christ –- a Christmas song for the rest of the world, so to speak.
Most people don’t know that Irving Berlin actually hated Christmas. Berlin was Jewish, born in Siberia, and immigrated to this country at the age of five. His life was filled with tragedy. His first wife died of typhoid five months after they were married. His second wife, Ellen Mackay, was a Roman Catholic Christian. Their mixed marriage was a public scandal paraded in the newspapers.
In 1928 their first child, Irving Jr, died on Christmas Day of what we would call today SIDS. The Berlins eventually had three girls, who were raised as Christians. For their sake, they put up a Christmas tree and set presents under it every year. As the children opened their gifts, Ellen and Irving would slip out of the house to put flowers on the grave of their son. After the girls were grown and moved out of the house, the Berlins never celebrated Christmas again.
If you take Christ out of Christmas, there really isn’t much left to celebrate.
Our culture seems to have discovered this for itself. When you leave the Child who is God in the Flesh come to save us out of the picture, there really isn’t much to celebrate. You may as well say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and call it “Sparkle Season” or whatever you wish. Without Christ, there is no point to Christmas.
That’s why I am happy that Christmas has disappeared from the cultural radar. I may be a lonely voice here, but I’m going to rejoice in the fact that some grinning sales clerks no longer take the Savior’s name and title in vain in exchange for my money. Now if I could get crosses out of pierced body parts, I’d be even happier. Some people are all bent that our President says “Happy Holidays” to the nation instead of “Merry Christmas”. I for one am not. The President’s job is not to preach, that’s my job. His job is to defend my liberty to preach, and our liberty to worship on Christ’s Mass, the Mass of the Nativity.
The world may stuff its Christmas celebration with Santa, Rudolph and Frosty. They may enjoy parades, parties and presents. They may prefer “winter solstice festivals,” “season’s greetings,” and “happy holidays.” They can fill up their Christmas Day with NBA games and the big movies opening in the theatres.
The world can wish itself a politically correct greeting of “Best wishes on an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most joyous traditions of your religious persuasion, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others, as well as those who choose not to practice any religion at all.”
All of that’s OK. It shouldn’t bother us. The world doesn’t even want a veneer of Christ. It has openly removed the façade that it wants a Christian holiday. The world can have its secular holiday for it is handing us back our Christian holy day. The secularists are leaving it on our front steps with a note saying, “Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t want Christ in our Christmas.”
Our culture is having one big Irving Berlin moment: without Christ, Christmas means nothing. The world is already taking down their Christmas trees, packing up their decorations, putting everything away for another year. Not us. This is too big a holy day to only be celebrated on a single Eve or a Day. For the Christian Church, we are still celebrating Christmas. Today is a special day because it is very rare that we get to have two Sundays after Christmas and then culminate our celebration with the Gentiles’ Christmas on January 6 with our Epiphany Festival.
Don’t lament that the world celebrates a Christ-less Christmas. They are only doing what comes natural to them. Don’t waste your time protesting that the culture doesn’t respect our beliefs. Why should it? It’s my job, and yours, to disciple the nations, to teach the world that Christmas is about “glory to God in the highest and peace on earth.”
The world can have its Christ-less Christmas. But let’s take back these holy days of the Mass of Christ – the worship of Christ. It’s a bit like getting back a stolen car – a little dented and dinged, but still roadworthy and the engine is running fine.
What do you have when you take away the holiday shopping sprees, the piles of presents, the decorated trees (fake or real, take your pick), family expectations up to the eyeballs, office parties, eating, drinking, baking, Christmas cards, strings of lights, and all the other do-dads of cultural Christmas? What’s left after eggnog, mistletoe and White Christmas?
This one little sentence: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
That’s why angels sang, the shepherds left their flocks, and the Wise Men came from afar. That’s what Mary pondered in her heart. That’s why Christians from the third century on made December 25th a celebration of Christ’s birth, even as their culture partied its way through the dark nights of December. They celebrated the glorious fact that on a magnificent night in Bethlehem when the fullness of time came and God delivered on His Promise to save the world through His Son.
The Word became Flesh and made His dwelling among us. It strains the brain to think about it. This is bigger than E=MC2, and that was pretty big too. That rocked the scientific world when Einstein conceived it. We would never look at matter and energy the same again. “The Word became Flesh” means we can never look at God and humanity the same. God became man in Christ. The Creator became the creature. The Infinite dwells in the finite. King Herod tried to kill the King of kings. Joseph was the guardian of the omnipotent Lord. And Mary kissed the face of God.
Here again, Christianity stands alone and parts ways with all other religions. All other religions have man reaching up to touch the face of God. Some religions even have man becoming a god. But the Christmas gospel declares the opposite - God became man. The Word became Flesh, and in the flesh, He dwells among us full of grace and truth.
God came to us. A God we do not love, a Savior we do not want, the Lord we do not listen to – He is the One who came into the world of sinful flesh and blood, as sinless flesh and blood. Because we could not come to Him,
He came to us. Because we could not become like Him, He became like us.
Because we find three days of worshiping God in a row – Christmas Eve, Day and the first Sunday after Christmas, as just too much time with God – He came to spend time with us. Because we are hard-pressed to give worthy and expensive gifts to our God – God gave us the greatest Gift of His Son wrapped in human flesh. We like committing our best and favorite sins in the darkness, so the Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness refuses to understand it (John 1:5). We enjoy being in the world and of the world, so that when the Creator of the world came, the world did not recognize Him (John 1:10). He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him (John 1:11).
He is the angel of the Lord visiting His Old Testament people. He is the One who hears and shares our misery. He is the God who sees us (Genesis 16:1-16). He is the Word become Flesh. Humanity is honored by God. God tabernacles (tents) here. He dwells among us in the flesh. He is the image of the invisible God, and He restores the image of God to fallen humanity. This little Child, sleeping in a manger, cooing in His Virgin mother’s lap, nursing at her breast, is perfected humanity come to save sinful humanity. He is the new head of the human race, the second Adam come to trump Adam’s death with His own death and life.
That’s why I don’t get upset when the stores mandate to stop wishing me a “merry Christmas.” Instead I want to thank them for not trivializing the holy Mystery of Christmas. For how can you have a “merry Christmas” if you do not first believe in the mystery of Christmas – of “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The mystery that “today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Mystery that “the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”--which means, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Instead of wishing everyone a “merry Christmas,” we can wish upon them the mystery of Christmas. The mystery that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary so that you might be born again of Water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism – born of holy mother Church, with God as your Father, Jesus as your Brother, and the Holy Spirit as your Friend and Counselor. The mystery that Jesus was born in flesh and blood so you might receive His sacrificial flesh and blood as your food and drink to keep you strong and steadfast to your death. The mystery that in Jesus – whether in the manger, in the desert, in the upper room, in the Garden, on the cross or out of the grave – “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Jesus came once and was laid in a manger. He continues to come to us every worship service. His humble manger is the Word of Scripture, the words of absolution, the waters of Baptism, and the bread and wine of His Supper.
Had Irving Berlin believed in the mystery of Christmas, he would not have had a hollow White Christmas. His Christmas would have been blessed and truly merry knowing his little son was safe in God’s Son born for him.
Let the world have its “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” and even “Merry Christmas.” For we have back our Christian Christmas holy days. For while wishing people a “Merry Christmas” now is odd since their Christmas is over, the mystery of Christmas continues for us. I wish you a mystery Christmas. Amen.
2nd Sunday after Christmas at Epiphany on January 2, 2011
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