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Christmas is not for remembering, thinking, pondering, trying to make sure you are really celebrating it properly, or for wondering whether you truly have faith.
There is much to rejoice over at Christmas, with its many celebrations of food, song, and fellowship. Yet we want to think specifically about what to preach on Christmas, since it is God’s word that makes Christmas, Christmas. Some of Martin Luther’s most famous sermons were preached on Christmas Day. Perhaps his most renowned work used the text from Luke 2 on December 25, 1530, and began by reminding us what not to preach—and how difficult this text and the Christmas service are. Our preaching always starts by telling the story of Christmas, including who the people involved in Christ’s birth were and what unfolded with them. We can call that part of preaching the “history” of the thing. For Christmas, that part is easy, since we talk about the angel, Mary, and Christ—with some others thrown in occasionally, like Joseph and the Shepherds. But as Luther noted, it is “not enough to preach the works, life, and words of Christ as historical facts.” One doesn’t even have to go over the entire theological discussion of Christ, since on Christ even those basic Christological facts are clear: Christ, who was born of Mary, is true God and true man: “born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4:4). The fact that Jesus is God, born of the Virgin, is our basic Christology, just as we teach our children at the dinner table with the Small Catechism: “Jesus Christ is true God, Son of the Father from eternity, and true man, born of the Virgin Mary.”
So far, the Christmas story and service have been simple: Tell everyone what happened and that our God became a man so that he is truly one person with two natures—the incarnation. However, this should only be the beginning of your Christmas sermon. The problem is that everyone knows the facts of the case, but no one actually believes them. It is not as if anyone has trouble with the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union. That is, the history is believed by pretty much everyone—Jew, Turk, Greek, even American. God became a man. The one who created everything is a baby in diapers. But what Christ wants for us is not the facts but the faith. No one believes the final phrase of Luther’s Small Catechism (Second Article, Paragraph One): “True God…true Man…is my Lord.” No one believes this part: “my” and “Lord,” since, at Christmas, this Lord is specifically Savior, and Savior is not a universal epithet (title) but a specific identity as your own personal Savior. Christ must be rightly preached so that he is believed when he says to me, “I am your Lord, I have come to save you.”
Beware of falling into the rut of explaining how to do Christmas “right” by advising them to slow down and think about Jesus!
That is why it is not enough to preach the historical facts of the case, including the Virgin Birth and the swaddling cloths laid in a manger. Nor is it even enough to preach “sympathy” with Christ, so that we imagine what it was like to be God pooping his pants for the first time, or how tough it must have been for Joseph to be publicly humiliated, or for Mary to go through birth pangs in a manger. Consequently, a long series of failed Christmas sermons must be discarded:
- Christmas is not preaching about “our celebration” of the holiday. It is about what Christ is doing now.
- And what is it that Christ is doing this Christmas? The incarnation was not accomplished so that God could “experience” what we lowly humans experience, as if the hypostatic union were God’s way of dipping his toe into the cold water of humanity for a moment so that he could know what sin and suffering are like down here on earth.
- We preach Christ to give people faith, and that faith is not merely reflexive. We are not teaching people how to read the signs within themselves of their own belief (“Do I really believe in this Christ or not?”).
- Nor do we claim that their one-time appearance in church at Christmas is either a sign of despotism or evidence that they have the potential to believe—if they show up a little more often than once a year.
These false teachings often lead to a two-part sermon that turns Christ into a new Moses (as we have done with Santa Claus), with the first part describing what Christ has done and the second part explaining why your congregation must now do. Once you go down that road, you end up telling your congregation that they aren’t “doing” the celebration of Christmas properly—perhaps because they have gotten too busy to remember the “reason for the season,” or because they have been sucked into the capitalist world of spending money and accumulating worthless objects in vain, materialist hedonism. It would typically do your congregation some good if they actually engaged in capitalist accumulation of property and wealth, but that can be addressed another day. In any case, beware of falling into the rut of explaining how to do Christmas “right” by advising them to slow down and think about Jesus! Or suggesting they join the Salvation Army and collect money for the poor.
A faithful preacher will, instead, focus on the words of the angel that are most important at Christmas, since they give the gospel rather than merely the historical facts: “To you is born.” This is the famous part of Luther’s 1530 sermon (along with his sixty-some Christmas sermons over his lifetime). Even in the pagan world we live in, every Tom, Dick, and Harry believes that Jesus is God, born of a woman—but none believe it is “to you.” That is the Savior part rather than the “Hypostatic Union” part of the story.
Why don't we believe in these words, “to you is born”? Because a person either does not feel the need for a Savior (since you are working things out on your own) or because you imagine no one would bother saving you, you are not worth it. Because there is no belief in “to you is born”—this becomes the place and moment where a preacher is needed; the evangelical kind of preacher who stops talking about the promise and actually gives it. That means we do not say, “God came down. He barely made it through the night. Mary and Joseph had it rough, but came through the struggle of life, and so can you. Love was in the air that night – a spirit of giving suddenly spread over the land as shepherds came and then magi. And having been overwhelmed by the power of love, they all felt like spontaneously giving things away (serendipity).” Even saying something along the lines of: “Christ came to save the lost and redeem all the world” is just teasing—until you get specific.
Just think about what it means at your wedding when you are asked to make a promise to your bride, but you end up merely talking about love:
Pastor: “Fred, do you take Gladys as your lawfully wedded wife?”
Fred: “Well, pastor, such a promise is surely a high and mighty thing. Anyone who would make such a promise would be giving a real sign of love! They should be mindful, serious, and certain when they do it. So, in short, pastor, I think we should all celebrate the making of promises and consider them signs of real love—love, by the way, that in my opinion is far too infrequent in our materialistic America.”
Gladys: “Fred! Thanks for your little sermon, but do you love me or not?”
Christ knows that he is Christ, and he does not need you to recognize that or not. But what he wants is not only to “be Christ” but to be Christ for you.
Christmas is not for remembering, thinking, pondering, trying to make sure you are really celebrating it properly, or for wondering whether you truly have faith. It is not for getting into the spirit of spontaneous giving, nor is it about remembering the poor. Most especially, Christmas is not for talking about a gift, but for giving it. It is for saying to the sinners in front of you: “To you is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” When you do, Christ is not only talked about but given, so that, as Luther said, “faith springs up from you and me and is preserved.” That is, “that he may not only be Christ, but be Christ for you and me, and that what is said of him is denoted in his name may be effectual in us” (The Freedom of a Christian, LW 31:357). Christ knows that he is Christ, and he does not need you to recognize that or not. But what he wants is not only to “be Christ” but to be Christ for you. Then his incarnation is not only the amazing Hypostatic Union but actual salvation. Then he is not only a Savior in general but your Savior. He gives you faith now, when you had none before. The little baby Jesus doesn’t really care about your honor of him (do you really believe I am Messiah or not?), but he cares, as Luther put it in his Christmas sermon that he is: “for you and for your benefit, not for your honor.”
It is amazing to sing with the whole Church, as in the medieval hymn In Dulci Jubilo: “On his Mother’s lap is Alpha and Omega!” But even more amazing is to receive the fact that “he who lies on the Virgin’s lap is your Savior.” He came to save you, and he has done so by a preacher’s mouth, uttering the words as a promise to you. Nothing else is preached than that he is Alpha and Omega, has come down to us by the Virgin, and has come for the sole purpose of reaching you.
That is why you will never doubt that he saved you—because he has done it this day.
