hs3rd

RCL Christmas 3
Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 98, Hebrews 1:1-4, Saint John 1:1-4

The Christmas Eve crowd is gone, with the children so excited and so eager for their presents, and I daresay that in many places the wrapping paper already has been consumed in the fire or is awaiting a similar end in the garbage.

But this morning’s reality remains the same as it was last night. God gives himself for us and for our salvation. But our perspective has changed overnight. Last night the Gospel had us look through a telescope and perceive a tiny baby up close as the Savior and Redeemer of the world. We saw the very big in the very little. This morning the Gospel gives us the other end of the telescope to perceive the Word of God, life itself, through whom the worlds were made, as a tiny baby not two feet long. We see the very little in the very big.

The perspective is different, but the reality is the same. The Gospel today tells us that God, that the life-principle, the power of God to be life itself, was born in our flesh, in the form of a tiny baby. The Gospel tells us that the baby, being God’s Word, will, like light, never be overcome, never be extinguished, and never be redirected. As you heard in the Epistle, that baby is “heir of all things” and that baby “created the worlds.”[1]

The gift this Christmas God gives to us is God’s promise that our flesh and our souls, the worlds made through God’s Word, and everything that is are supported and everlastingly sustained by God. God’s purpose and God’s life will never be deterred and will never be taken off their tracks.

The only response, the only way to live, that makes any sense in the face of God’s Word is to be hopeful. It only makes sense to live with confidence in the newness and fullness of life and to await the completion of God’s purpose for all the worlds and all the creatures created by God’s Word. For our end is none other than Jesus Christ, God’s Word, the baby of Bethlehem, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, and the one through whom the worlds were made.

The distractions have been swept away. Now the crowd is gone, and the gifts are all unwrapped. We can well and wisely rejoice in the goodness of God and the victory the birth of his Son promises and foretells. Our lives are not our own; they are God’s. And we can again rejoice that we have so great a God who gives us so great a promise.

[1] Saint John 1:2-3.