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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, on this glorious celebration of the birth of our Lord and God, the text comes from Luke’s Gospel. You may be seated. Merry Christmas and welcome home. Your Christmas celebration has many obvious things that make it your Christmas celebration. And each of you families have unique traditions that you stick to very, very religiously. Certain foods and certain things that you do and gather with and certain houses that you gather. These are very obvious to you.
But if you were to enter my house or I yours, you would be going, “Why do you all do it this way?” We do it this way. We open our presents on Christmas Eve. Well, we open our presents on Christmas Day. We open them the day before Christmas Eve because we’re going here and there for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Some things are very obvious to you. But to some of us, they’re not so obvious because we’re not a part of your family.
But this, everything here tonight is obvious. You have heard it. You have been raised with it. You have sung it. It has been planted deep within your bosom, and it gives meaning to your life more than anything else in this world. Regardless of how you celebrate it, there was no room for Jesus in the end. You are exhorted by your family to always make room for Him in your heart. But there really is only one place in all the earth where there was always room for Jesus. And it wasn’t your heart, and it wasn’t my heart. The only place where there was room for Jesus was on the cross. No one else wanted to claim that place. No one else wanted to vie for that position. Only your Lord and God.
That’s not obvious, but it is to you. Consider the angel’s message full of proclamations that were not obvious to them. They’re hearing it for the very first time. And yet, because we’ve heard it so regularly, it’s such a part of our fiber that it’s very familiar to us, but it does not mean that you and I don’t miss the obvious, or better to say, the not-so-obvious of what the angels proclaimed. They come and they frighten these men out in the field, telling them of great news, of great joy. For them, it was not obvious. They sat and looked at their place and nothing had changed. They didn’t feel any different. Their pockets weren’t filled with gold and their sheep hadn’t all multiplied to be dozens more. Everything looked the same to them.
And yet they were told to look for something outside of this ordinariness of their life. Something that was not obvious. Then they’re surrounded. Surrounded. Not just by the one angel, but by hordes of angels. All crying out in unison, “Glory to God in the highest.” They saw and they heard glory, to be sure. But when the angels left them, it was still dark. As they walked to the city, there was no light leading them. As they went looking in the city for this angel baby wrapped in swaddling claws and lying in a manger, there was no heavenly brightness to guide them.
And that glory that they didn’t really see, the obvious, was what Adam and Eve had robbed God of in the garden when they thought themselves to be wise and did not listen to what God had asked of them: do not eat the fruit of the tree. We too, the obvious things… Sin can become very unobvious, just like it did to the shepherds, who were not the pinnacle of the social ladder. Shepherds were considered to be the lowest on the social ladder. So how could God’s glory shine upon us, and we’re supposed to be the ones to go and see this great thing that the Lord has done?
Because one of the things that the shepherds were told is that this one that they’re going to find wrapped in swaddling claws and lying in a manger, weak, humble, and incapable of caring for himself and yet controlling the universe, is supposed to be the Prince of Peace. For most of you, this time of the year is a special, special time for you. But there are many people that this time of the year brings a pain in their gut that they cannot get over. And every year it comes. Someone they love is no longer with them. The marriage they had is no longer together. The children who used to come no longer come. The retirement that they had hoped for is not there.
How can He be a Prince of Peace? For the Christians who are still grieving over their loved ones who were killed by a radical man in their church all over the world, from Egypt to Pakistan and other points in between. How can He be the Prince of Peace to a church at which they gather that doesn’t look anything like it did before the bomber’s bomb went off? How? That’s why Jesus has to be and must always be the reason that we gather. Jesus said, “In the world, you will have trials and tribulation, but take heart. I have said these things to you that you may have peace.”
The peace of which He speaks is not obvious. It is only believed and trusted in, that in the midst of chaos, and in the midst of things turned upside down, and upon its head, there is rightness and love and forgiveness. And one of the last things that was still ringing in the shepherd’s ear as they walked to Bethlehem was, “Peace to those with whom He is pleased.” With whom He is pleased. You notice at the end of the text, the shepherds didn’t change their job. They didn’t go out and sell the sheep and become stockbrokers. They didn’t sell the sheep and become televangelists. They went back to tending sheep.
And yet they knew and believed that God was pleased with them, not because it looked like it, or because it sounded like it, or because it even felt like it, but because God’s truth told them that because of this child, you are pleasing to me. And in fact, He is most pleased when you sit there and receive Him in His proclamation to you and believe it and trust in it. Just as those shepherds did. That’s what pleases Him the most. That’s the best work you could ever do for your God: to hear it and believe it, just as those shepherds did. Yes, He will move you out. Absolutely. But first, you must hear it and believe it.
We are like the shepherds. Christians are not at the top of the social ladder in this country and in any first-world country. You have seen, you have read, and you have heard. We are laughed at, we are scoffed at, we are written about and mocked as fools for Christ’s sake to believe this tripe from the world’s perspective. And isn’t it interesting that of any time of the day when God could have announced the birth of His Son, it was at night? Because He is the light of the world that gives light to those who are blind, making our blind eyes see the peace and the pleasingness of this One born for you.
When the shepherds left, they staked everything upon this revelation, not caring how they would sound. And you know there were people who heard and said, “There’s those crazy shepherds again. Too many nights out in the wilderness with those sheep.” But they proclaimed what God had told them. And God used it. Just like those shepherds, we remain students or learners of what God can proclaim to us.
So even though those are very familiar, let them not ever cease to continue to water the dry ground of your ears and give life, to take the dry soil of your heart and make it bear forth fruit of faith. Gladly we come to that manger, just as those shepherds did, and gladly do we fall down in worship and feed upon by faith on the one lying there wrapped in swaddling clothes. The same one who someday will leave his swaddling death clothes behind in the tomb, proclaiming himself the victor of that which binds us and holds us. Death.
Joyfully, we come and eat and drink. He who fulfills all that the prophets have spoken in that dirty little manger. And in that dirty little manger did He… allow Himself to be dirtied with your and my sin. That’s why He chooses to give us His swaddling cloth of righteousness, swaddling us, quieting us, calling us His beloved children, declaring us His righteous ones. And being well pleased with us, He does not gamble away our souls.
Because the other thing, remember what happened to the cloth around Jesus at the cross? The soldiers gambled away to see who could earn it when you’ve been given it at no cost to you, but to Him, the infant born for you, the greatest cost He could pay. The obvious is Christ has been born. The less than obvious is Christ has been born for you this day. That you may go home in peace and in joy, regardless of what your life or what the year has brought or what the year will bring because of His promise proclaimed to you through the mouths of lowly, humble, fools-for-Christ shepherds.
Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth with whom He is well pleased. And He gives you that swaddling cloth of righteousness to cover you. No longer are you naked. But the unobvious gift that you have is, this now becomes the most important gift you can give to your husband or to your wife. This becomes the most important unobvious gift you can give to your son or daughter, to your grandson or granddaughter, to even your grandparents, aunts, and uncles. To give it to them that they may have this peace, that they may have this glory of God that is unobvious to the world, but to you, it is all that this season is about because it is all about the infant who was wrapped in cloths in that dirty little manger for you, in the name of Jesus.
Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
