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“And it came to pass” writes the blessed physician. Yes, but not because it just sort of happened sooner or later. No, “it came to pass” because now in the fullness of time God took flesh and blood, bone and tissue and manifested the fullness of His glory. Because your first parents failed the “test” and were exiled from the garden and the Tree of Life, God would send the better Adam Who lead them back by His better Tree of eternal Life—the Cross. “Those days” are these days. For all the days from then till now are the last days of the New Testament era.

The Virgin and the Carpenter, instead of the mud-man and the rib from his side, are the primary human characters in this new narrative. They were obligated to make the long arduous trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem because a man of power issued a “decree” that commanded them to. Because Adam and Eve, and all you “sons of Adam” refuse to serve God in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, all mankind must end up being oppressed by one Caesar or another. Sometimes the strongman is, well a strongman, sometimes, usually, we are enslaved by our own lusts, addictions, self-mad wills, and blackened hearts. Because you are sinners, you will be forced to make many trips to be enrolled and registered.

Because of covetous and riotous hearts, Samuel, the Lord’s prophet would no longer govern His people but it would rather be the deathly tragic King Saul. Because of sin and apostasy it wouldn’t be Isaiah and Jeremiah who would instruct God’s people but it would rather be King Nebuchadnezzar. When God and His angels are rejected, you end up being brutalized by wild apes in trousers pretending to be men.

But God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The Father sent the Second Person of the Holy Trinity—His eternally begotten Son. The relationship of eternally loving, and eternally being loved, is part of the mystery of the Trinity. The Son came as the true Light of the World because a foul “blackness” had descended upon Galilee, that is, upon Ephraim, Manasseh and Naphtali, the land of the Gentiles. Indeed this burial cloak had been cast over all the earth. But it was this northern entry-way into the “Promised Land,” the land which had been once given to Abraham, which was now as benighted, diseased, corrupt and rotting as Jerusalem itself. But, it would be the place where God would “grow up” and mature as a man. It is in Galilee that your Savior would begin His 33 years of saving you by His perfect obedience, not only to Augustus and Tiberias but to Mary and His guardian Saint Joseph.

God so loved the world; God so loved everyone in this room, that He did not send an e-mail, a cardboard cutout, a ghost, a DVD image, or a mountain top shrouded with lightning; He sent His Son. And this Messiah had a real and genuine historical lineage. The Babe in the manger was a biological descendent of Father Abraham himself. Jesus was directly related to His Great-Great-Great…..Grandfathers Jacob, Isaac, Judah, and King David. What a wonderful miracle to behold; not that God can create stars and planets and universes, but that He can be carried in the womb of woman and be born with the same genetic stuff as Israel and his sons.

Next to Moses there is no other man who so “typified” and “represented” the coming Deliverer as David. David was the Lord’s anointed, the “apple of His eye,” and His beloved son. But whereas David was a sinner, a man of war, an adulterer and a murderer; i.e. a man just like all of you, His greater Son was not Solomon but Jesus. Jesus was the sinless spotless final sacrificial Lamb. Jesus was pure and chaste and totally committed to His Bride – all of you. Jesus was a man of life, healing and restoration; He was the “Prince of Peace.”

God so loved the world; God so loved you, and you, and you, and you that He, the Creator of the universe, the maker of and feeder of all, including all mammals, willingly let Himself be nurtured in Mary’s womb and then nurtured outside of her womb at her breasts where He sucked her milk. This is the God who would later give you to eat of His Body and drink of His Blood; to drink the milk of His Word, eat the meat of His doctrine, and taste how good the Lord is! Oh, Glory be to God on high!!!

You lost the garden by original sin. You daily leave your Father’s house as a wastrel prodigal by actual sin. He came to fix all that. He was born in stable so that you might inherit the Family Mansion. He was born of a virgin to grow up and suffer and die as the bearer of all of your spiritual whoring, though He remained a virgin in pure Righteousness. He was resurrected, that is born again, from a virgin tomb so that you will never face the blackness of ever-death. Mary’s firstborn Son makes you firstborn brothers and sisters of the Father; not Father Christmas; not Santa, not a permissive Americanized Grandfatherly “Big Man in the Sky,” but of “Our Father Who art in Heaven…maker of all things visible and invisible.”

The Christmas message, the Gospel of the Incarnation, is that you prodigals have been brought back to the family table; you enemies have been pardoned and repatriated. All has been forgiven and forgotten. The God Who as a Babe was laid in a feed trough Has now, as the Crucified and Resurrected One, become your feed through His Holy Supper.

What makes this day so Holy, so special, so blessed is that the Babe Who is your God in the flesh has wrapped you up in the swaddling cloths of His flesh; His love. You are not only granted permission to sing with Angels and all the host of Sabaoth, you are constrained by the Holy Ghost Himself to raise you voices high and holy at the Paschal Feast itself.

Christ: Jesus born two-thousand years ago is God; is Man. Christ kept the Law for you and paid the penalty of your lawbreaking at Calvary.

Mass: Jesus, God and Man, is here with you today, for you this morning, giving you all that His Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection hold.

CHRIST-MASS

“Glory to God in the highest,” yes… but here at Augsburg’s altar, here at the Supper, the Mass, here on earth, you have “Peace, goodwill toward men.”

In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost