“CHRISTMAS = CHRIST + MASS”
Saint Luke 2. 8-20
The Feast of The Nativity of Our Lord: 25 December Anno Domini 2008
Fr Watson SSP
A very joyous and blessed Christ-Mass to one and all gathered here today at this New Testament Bethlehem of Shawnee, Kansas-this "House of Bread" called Augsburg.
First the Law: Because your flesh, your bodies, your 'Old Adams'…along with your inner selves (thoughts, words,,, imaginations, dreams, heart's delights) are sinful and unclean…you should die forever and go to hell forever.
Now the Good News-the Christmas message: God has had an actual Nativity! The Lord has had a real live birth! God has come to be with you in the Flesh-REAL flesh & Blood just like you have. This God is none other than the "CHRIST," that is, the MESSIAH of God, Jesus. This "One Who Saves" is True God begotten of the Father from eternity, and True Man born of the Blessed Virgin. This God/Man is Jesus your Lord. But the Good News gets even better. Your Savior isn't a distant "hands off" kind of deity… "Look little children, but don't touch, you might muss things up." Your Christ lets men touch Him, and examine the wounds in His flesh. Your Christ lets men eat His Sacred Body and drink His Holy Blood.
That's the whole point of this marvelous FEAST which we celebrate today. Christmas is only Christmas because you receive CHRIST AND you receive His MASS.
Yes, Jesus is called by His exalted title: THE CHRIST. You can read the explanation to the Second Article of the Creed from the 1941 Catechism, that "He is called Christ…(as foretold in the Old Testament prophecy), that is, the Anointed, because He has been anointed with the Holy Ghost without measure." You learn from the Catechism, that is, by a systematic and organized exposition of Holy Scripture, that the Christ is BOTH total God, and total Man, in one person, one Nazarene. You are instructed by Luther (that is, by Paul) that Jesus is your eternal Prophet, Priest and King; that He has liberated you when you were lost and doomed sinful creatures; that He purchased you back from death and Satan not with money, but with His own Blood, Flesh, and innocent suffering and death; that you now live under Him in His New Testament Kingdom of Grace (the Church militant), serve Him in blessedness, and wait for His imminent return in Glory at the end of time-for He is risen from the dead. You believe "This is most certainly true."
What a wonderful reality these words are, for they actually bring to you the Word made Flesh. This Gospel Message preached orally, or read individually, is fortifying to your faith-a faith which you have by the Spirit-Worked conversion of your helper the Holy Spirit. The Words of Christ indeed produce a Baptismal status of regeneration and "son-ship," the Grace bestowing Word which does keep you unto life everlasting. But there's even more good news-there is the MASS.
It was a wonder indeed that the Angels told the Shepherds everything they really needed to believe. Those fiery "messengers of God" Gospelled, Evangelized, that is, gave the sheep-herders the Word! "Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy." The Holy Ghost works faith by this same word, this beautiful Nativity sermon. But God in his superabundance of overflowing love wanted these humble, dirty, sinful, smelly, little people of the Judean hills, of the sheep, to have MORE-to have God's very Flesh!! The angels told them WHERE to look for God Incarnate, God "for them." "Ye shall find the Babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."
They did!
They found God. They found God not only in Old Testament prophecy and Law; not only in black letters of ink scribbled onto white parchment, but in swaddling clothes-clothes that only a real person (a real baby) wears. They did not find God in warm & fuzzy "feelings." They did not find God in "footprints in sand" or with saccharine sentiments printed on bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets. They found God nursing at His mother's breasts. Those shepherds discovered the flesh of God…oh, maybe about 19 inches long and 7 pounds of flesh. Oh what a refreshing and life-giving present for those sore-afflicted outcasts on that first Christ Mass.
All of the pictures that have been drawn and painted of this first encounter between IMMANUEL and His people, have some of the shepherds adoring Him on bended knees, gathered together tightly around the crèche. Yes, a very fitting way to receive Him Who comes in the Flesh.
Ponder the real Christmas Gospel. Shepherds who watch, keep, and guard sheep, are kneeling in front of Him Who is their "Good Shepherd." In this role-reversal, the shepherds now become the "people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand." Did any of them pick up and hold baby Jesus? Simeon did 40 days later. Jesus allowed His own 12 to place their fingers in His wounds on Easter Eve. So, it is fitting to think that these "raggedy men," these outcasts who Christ had come to save, would have been permitted to touch Him, and to love Him-In The Flesh! And again, this brings us back to the Mass.
Would it not have been possible for one or more of those shepherds gathered in the stable to still have been living 33 years later? Yes, it would. Is it not wonderful to think that maybe one of them was a "parishioner" of the brand new fledgling Apostolic Church of the 12 and Saint Paul? It is possible that one of the shepherds, as an old man, may have actually attended a celebration of the "Lord's Day" on some first day of the week-to have been with the people of "The Way" as they celebrated Jesus' Life, Death, and Resurrection in the Holy Eucharist. How meet it would have been for one of those shepherds years later to again be permitted to meet his Savior again, on bended knee, as he received the SAME BODY and the SAME BLOOD that he had once been in the presence of all those years earlier? We will know all things in heaven.
For now, it is enough to know, that the Good News of IMMANUEL never stops, never ceases to be an ever present NOW! Christ and His Mass. Now, the term "Mass," despite what some may incorrectly think, is simply one of the more ancient and traditional terms for the Celebration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Altar-the Holy Communion. It was used correctly for hundreds of years-long before the corrupt medieval church of Trent began to misuse and pervert the free gifts given at the Lord's Table. In fact, our own revered Book of Concord, 1580, the compendium of all our Lutheran "Symbols," all that we "believe, teach, and confess," and that to which every Lutheran Pastor and every Lutheran congregation binds itself, freely and liberally uses the term "Mass." But, names are not as crucial as are realities: content! As the Bard spoke well, "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet."
This Lord's Day is NOT a mere remembrance of the first Christmas, of the Nativity of God. NO! THIS Lord's Day is rather a continuation of the Flesh of God being in your very midst! Christ without the Mass, that is, the Word without the Supper, though still efficacious, is as incomplete and, ultimately as joyless, as a cradle without a Bethlehem Baby Boy.
Brothers & Sisters of the Word made Flesh, come now on this happy morn, and join again in a mysterious, sacramental, celebration of His Love and Abiding Presence. Come forward and join yourselves to all of His other brothers and sisters, all of His other shepherds and lambs, and receive forgiveness, life, light, and peace. Come again and receive the Christ-in the Mass!!!
In the Name of the God Made Flesh: Christ + Jesus the Incarnate IMMANUEL