It is in the gritty that the Lord Jesus reveals Himself; always in the low, the palpable, the material, the immanent, inviting you to guide your own sermon for this Sunday after Christmas in the direction of delivering the grit.
Born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law. Childbirth, adoption, and inheritance are the name of the game in this very brief Christmas 1 epistle pericope. The Jesus who was born into the world is overtly delivered in this incarnation and redemption text, and He is the Jesus who was born. Born of a woman. Born under the Law. The Apostle ensures the grittiness of the reality of the situation with these prepositional phrases. It is in the gritty that the Lord Jesus reveals Himself; always in the low, the palpable, the material, the immanent, inviting you to guide your own sermon for this Sunday after Christmas in the direction of delivering the grit. How to get your people face to face with a gritty God? Underscore the “birthiness” of our Lord’s birth. Blood, sweat, tears, labor, stress, the stuff childbirth is still made up of. Getting it in the face up front paves the way for seeing and trusting not only Jesus’ birth in real solidarity with you and your hearer, but also Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection for their redemption.
This season, unless I take a festival field trip to preach Matthew 2 for Innocents and Martyrs instead, I plan to focus on the tears side of that gritty birth under the Law. My hook will be the silly line from the late nineteenth century carol, Away in a Manger: “Little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.” This, brothers and sisters, is a Christmas lie. Jesus is well acquainted with tears. We have to continue singing the line of course, in deference to tradition and sentiment (and the line is, of course, a well-meaning and pious artistic move), but we forget at the risk of our soul that this same Jesus is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3), that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35), the anguish of His soul in Gethsemane, and His sorrow expressed at other times throughout the gospels.
Childbirth is harrowing for everyone, moms, dads, and let us not forget the baby, who has to be coerced, pushed, forced, squeezed out into the cold, hard reality outside the incubating gestational embrace of its first neighbor. That is the opposite of the cozy comfort of the womb. When the cold, hard, real-world hits, babies cry. They have a reason to. The analogy for your hearers is coming face to face with the cold, hard realities of life in any season. The contrast of the coziness of Christmas morning to the cleanup, deconstruction of decorations, and the credit card bill in the wings may be apt. Certainly you have hearers who have lost carers, loved ones, and can relate to the shock of a hard wake up to reality in the wake of loss. Even just describing the world as an enemy of the Christian on any level is sufficient to underscore the reasons why, in the cold, hard, real world, your hearers have a reason to cry as well!
Even just describing the world as an enemy of the Christian on any level is sufficient to underscore the reasons why, in the cold, hard, real world, your hearers have a reason to cry as well!
Getting these themes at the front of your hearer’s attention sets the stage to deliver the Christ who also faces the gritty, dicey prospect of being born into the world when the time had fully come. The incarnation miracle occurs in the backwaters, at the margins of an empire where all roads lead to Rome. This is some of what is interesting about the Apostle’s time marker here at Galatians 4, “In the fullness of time.” Yet, for as civilized as the world truly was, enjoying the pax Romana under the early principate, the world was violent as well, brutal, sparing in its luxuries for the vast majority.
This is the harrowing world into which Jesus was born of woman, born under Law: Nine months of reflection in a young girl’s heart. A cold, discouraging night of no room in the inn, a bare bed in a Bethlehem barn. A stressed-out spouse-to-be dreaming of angels and driving his betrothed to be registered in his family’s city; anything but cozy. And then, the actual childbirth of Christ, harrowing as it is for all newborns, harrowing and hard as it is for your hearer.
This is a good time to remind your listener’s that Jesus cries too. He has a reason to. Not only because babies cry, but because the Savior faces what you face in solidarity. The world and our other enemies are His enemies too. The “fullness of time” is also the time when He would take this relatively civilized, but brutal, cold, hard world’s ultimate punishment, the death of a cross, in order to redeem slaves and make them sons, in order to deliver the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. The crucifixion of Christ is where Jesus’ final cries are heard, all the way to the end of John 19: “It is finished!” Overhear the temporal in that statement too, on the level of completeness, perfection, done, the fullness of time, the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption. The baby in the manger fully redeems you and your hearers in His death and resurrection. This is what is finished. Our salvation is complete!
For any preacher willing to follow this “crying” hook, you will notice that the krazō verb in Galatians 4:6 is translated “cry” as well. Here, it is not crying as in “weeping” but, rather, cry as in “shouting,” more like the final cry from the cross. From babies who cry, through those beset by the world who have a reason to cry, through the crying of our savior in His infancy and adulthood, the stage is set to treat this cry as well. My observation here is how the theme has come full circle: Abba, Father is the cry of a dependent child, rather more familiar and familial than cold, hard, and descriptive. These words resonate with the image of the holy family, with the economy of the Trinity, and best news of all, with the relationship you and your hearer have with God Himself, because of what God’s Son did in redeeming you. His status is now your status, His relationship with the Father, your relationship with the Father, His inheritance, your inheritance, and His address to the Father is your own.
One final point on this: Abba does not, in general, render well as “Daddy.” There is a lot of silly out there, and this is one which continues to pop-up every so often. I am not saying you should kibosh and correct every time you hear it happen, folks generally mean well. But I would plead with you, personally, to not actively contribute to a poor translation. It may seem cute, of course, but it does not deliver the goods that just leaving it in Aramaic will do.
God bless you in your sermon craft this week!
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Galatians 4:4–7.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Galatians 4:4–7.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
