Naming of Jesus, 01/01/2008

Sermon on Luke 2:19, 21, by Hubert Beck

ary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. . . . And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. (ESV)

THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

What Is "The True Meaning of Christmas?"

"I get more upset every year with this commercialization of Christmas," the parishioner said, quite obviously exasperated at the very thought of having to shop for Christmas presents. "Christmas should be simple and unvarnished, just like the little stable in Bethlehem was plain and unadorned - not at all decorated with the foo-foo-rah that you see in all the department stores. Even the churches are getting more and more ornamented and embellished with unnecessary glitter. I just wish we could come together quietly, sing some carols and hymns, read the Christmas lessons, have a quiet prayer time and go home.

"And that doesn't take into account all the money that we are supposed to spend on unnecessary gifts for people who neither need nor want most of what we buy for them - unless, of course, they have been very specific about what we are supposed to buy - which certainly seems to take the spontaneity out of any of our gift-buying to begin with."

It was clear that unless I stopped her in mid-tantrum she was ready to continue for a good long time in declaring how much the commercialization and business-related dimensions combined with the progressively more elaborate decorations and ornamentation of the season were replacing "the true meaning of Christmas." So I did it! I stopped her in mid-steam - a rather dangerous thing to do, considering the head of steam she had worked up.

"I do not deny that commercialism has altered ‘the true meaning of Christmas,'" I said, not wishing to contradict her too severely nor too swiftly lest she turn the full fury of her wrath on me. "But I suspect there is a much deeper problem beneath this altering of ‘the true meaning of Christmas.' For beneath it all is a ‘spiritualization' of Christmas that undermines its meaning far more than the commercial aspects that are so obvious on the surface."

"Young man," she said (obviously thinking that my being four years her junior gave her a superior position from which to lecture me), "how can you say such a thing? It is a ‘spiritualization' of Christmas that we need - the loss of which I decry! ‘The true meaning of Christmas' is all covered up with things and gifts and glitter. We need all that stuff either taken away or made such a small part of Christmas that ‘the true meaning of Christmas' can be recaptured. We need the spirit of Christ put back into Christmas, not taken out of Christmas. He is the true ‘spirit of Christmas,' the only gift that we need and only gift that I want."

There is no need to either regale you or to bore you with our continued conversation, but you get the jist of the problem she posed - and you undoubtedly recognize it as a commonly voiced impediment to the proper celebration Christmas by many Christians of our day.

But what is this "objection" I raised to her tirade against the Merchants of Holiday Cheer? And why bring it up again now that Christmas is "over"? (Which brings up the "side-note" that Christmas is not "over," for it is only eight days into "the twelve days of Christmas" which is the real Christmas season following the Advent season!) To what sort of problem do I refer when I object to the "spiritualization" of Christmas?

Well, I refer to such things as one regularly hears suggesting that "love and charity toward others is what Christmas is all about."

Or, to press the difficulty still further, note a highly common content of Christmas cards: "May Your Christmas Celebration be One of Peace and Good Will." "We Wish You All the Love and Joy of the Season." "May the Wonder of the Season Be Yours." "May the Season Bring You Every Happiness." "Hope Your Holidays are Happy Days." "When this season comes, it brings to mind friendships tried and true and mixed in with those fond memories are many happy thoughts of you." "Wishing You Joy at Christmas and Every Happiness in the New Year." "May Joy, Love, Hope, and Peace like candles light your holidays and every day of the New Year." I did not receive any of these cards quoted here, lest it be taken that I am berating friends who sent sentiments such as these. They are cards on the market to send to people as your way of wishing them a Merry Christmas.

Now I would not want anyone to think for even a moment that I am opposed to peace, love, joy, hope, happiness and the myriad of other "well wishes" represented in cards like these. They are all kind thoughts and well-meant aspirations born of our highest human desires. I would, in fact, be quite appalled at seeing or receiving cards hoping that my Christmas celebration would be a bummer, that the new year would bring much distress, or that my life would be snagged on a disaster of some kind in months to come. Far better to receive the kinds of cards mentioned earlier than to hear depressing messages such as these, of course.

The question is not whether we should be positive, uplifting, hopeful, peace-filled, loving, joy-filled people, but it is rather what the foundation of such positive, uplifting, hopeful, peace-filled, loving and joy-filled people should be. After all, if you talk to the average Joe on the street on the third of May will he not tell you at that time the same thing he will tell you at Christmas -- that he really wants to be a positive, uplifting, hopeful and peaceful person just like he does at Christmas - and that he wants you to be that also? If you talk to the average Jane on the street on the fourteenth of August, will she not tell you at that time the same thing she will tell you at Christmas that she really wants to be a peace-filled, loving and joy-filled person as much then as she does at Christmas - and that she wants you to be that also? Why pick on Christmas as the day to hold up the highest of our human virtues as those that we want to spread around - as though on other days they are either not quite so important or perhaps not quite as available? This is the "spiritualization" to which I refer - the kind of hope that somehow one can find it within one's self to rise above the smallness of our every-day existence in order for peace and love and joy to bubble up and overflow into everyday living. In short, it is the grand optimism that we humans are not really so mean-spirited as we usually seem to be or what we encounter in others on a daily basis, but that, with a little extra effort spurred on by a "Christmas spirit" we can be quite another kind of person and this world can be quite another kind of world.

The point is, to put it all quite bluntly, that Christmas has all too frequently been reduced to a day of sentimental well-wishing, a day of pious mouthing of things to which we all aspire virtually all the time, a day of emotional out-pouring of all the best instincts we can drum up from within ourselves and expressing them in the finest, heartfelt fashion we can imagine to anyone around us. Practically everyone (there are exceptions, one must admit!) - whether Christian or not - wants to be heard and seen as a person from whom good "vibes" emanate and who wants to extend those "vibes" everywhere and to everyone. One need not have Christmas to do that, but it is a most convenient time to do it . . . so the cards we send, the words we use to express our understanding of "the true meaning of Christmas," the very gifts we exchange (is not their value in direct proportion to how serious we are about these well-wishes?) are all attempts at "spiritualizing" Christmas - at making it a day of peace and goodwill reflecting the highest of human aspirations.

One would, on the one hand, not want it otherwise.

Yet, on the other hand, that misses the whole point of "the true meaning of Christmas."

Here we are, on the eighth day of Christmas - and already those warm feelings we expressed and received, those peaceful exchanges of goodwill, have begun to dissolve and disappear back into the humdrum of life. The main thing that keeps our spirit somewhat alive after Christmas is "over" according to the secular calendar we use is the thought ( 1 ) that not much work gets done between Christmas and New Year's Day anyway, causing the "holidays" to turn into one weeklong (plus a couple days) of vacation or near-vacation time and ( 2 ) the New Year's celebration will at least keep our spirits up for a while, perhaps with the help of many spirits, before the drudgery of every-dayness sets in once again with all the usual stress, distress, poison, weariness, etc. that were there before the holidays gave them brief respite. Then those wonderful sentiments expressed in those Christmas cards we sent and received will retreat again into the backwaters as lives are really lived in the waterless desert of everyday dreariness.

Let God's New Year's Day Define "The True Meaning of Christmas"

Not every Christmas card I received had greetings like those cited earlier, of course. One had on its front "Because Jesus Came We Can . . . have peace with God, be filled with all joy, abound in hope, be justified freely, be alive toward God, have the spirit of wisdom, be under grace, know the hope of His calling, be conformed to His image, be a child of God, be His heir, have victory, know the riches of the glory of His inheritance." And the message inside read, "Because of Jesus we have so many reasons to rejoice," making reference to Luke 1:49.

A couple had the quote from Holley Gerth reading: "Jesus: He came not to a throne, but to a manger. He lived not as a king, but as a servant. He chose not a kingdom, but a cross. He gave not just a little, but everything." The message inside read, "May the Lord's Great Love Bless You This Christmas."

Yet another, written in poetic fashion, read, "Long ago, one silent night, God revealed His glory bright; His own image came to man For salvation's matchless plan. Jesus, Saviour, Shepherd, King - Lord of all to you we bring Praises, wonder, thanks, and love for this gift from God above." Inside it said, "Remembering you this Christmas and praying your celebration brings a heart full of joy as you remember God's amazing love shown through His Son, Jesus."

I do not hold them before you or quote them as though I have not appreciated other cards, but as examples of how "the true meaning of Christmas" shines through some cards that are far less emotional, sentimental, even piously wishing us well - less "spiritual" in the sense I spoke of earlier - than those expressing a "Christmas spirit" without the foundation of the One who, himself, gives the peace the well-wisher extends, the One whose love makes possible the love we express to all those around us, the One in whose wounded hand all our future lies with all our hopes.

This is what I was trying to convey to the parishioner who complained about the commercialism of Christmas as being the root of stamping out "the true meaning of Christmas." Beyond that commercialism and underneath all the tinsel and glitter of the season there is little foundation for "the spirit of Christmas" to be found beyond whatever love, whatever sort of kindness, whatever glimmer of hope that we might drum up from within ourselves. It is a "new age" kind of spirituality that plays off of the highest hopes that we humans might be able to find our way through the darkness of sin into the light of salvation on the basis of our own deepest intuitions, our own best efforts, our own highest aspirations. By all means have peace, have hope, express love, spread joy everywhere! "What the world needs now is love, sweet love," we sang decades ago with all the hippie optimism at our disposal.

But where is this love after all this time? It is a hope against hope, an expectation that we are able to rise above ourselves and express ourselves in other-than-human terms and actions.

None of this kind of "spirituality" takes the subject of sin, the broken cord between us and God, seriously. None of this is receptive to our human bondage to self-serving ends. None of this is willing to recognize that which we confess weekly as we gather in worship: "We confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone." While we go on to confess that we have sinned against our neighbor, we first and above all confess that we have sinned against God - and it is this sin that is at the root of all our sinning against and among one another. It is hard for us to recognize, as David did after he had ( 1 ) sinned against Uriah by having him positioned in a deadly place and ( 2 ) against Bathsheba by taking her in an adulterous fit of lust and ( 3 ) against his nation by having neglected and even abandoned the place he should have taken as its king, that it was "against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." (Psalm 51:4 ESV) When all is said and done, all that we either neglect to do or that we actually do towards our neighbor is to neglect or do those very things over against God.

And what, pray tell, does all this have to do with "the true meaning of Christmas"? Or, even and especially, what does it have to do with today, New Year's Day?

On the very day the world around us celebrates the arrival of a new year, the church celebrates an entirely new age - not like the "new age" spoken of so frequently in our day, but a whole new era in which God's love, spoken of so vibrantly and joyfully throughout the prophetic ages, "becomes visibly present" in the bodily form of Jesus. It is the "Day of the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus"! Here is where true "spirituality" lies - in the very earthly body of the child being circumcised and named - and in the very earthly crib of our heart in which the child lies. True "spirituality" doesn't ask how far "out there away from the daily drabness" one can remove one's self from, but rather in how closely one can come to the body and blood of a Savior who changes the way we understand our own bodily existence and how we live out that bodily existence in its "everyday drabness."

"He was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb," we read in today's text. THAT is what all this has to do with "the true meaning of Christmas." For Christmas is about much more than the sweet serenity surrounding a tiny newborn child, wonderful and awe-filled as that may be. Christmas is about much more than good feelings generated about an inn-keeper who found a place, humble though it was, in which a couple about to have a child could find rest. Christmas is about much more than shepherds who were awe-struck at the angelic band who brightened their evening sky before they came to see this newborn child. Christmas is about much more even than heavenly angels themselves breaking that evening air with their message, significant though it was. Christmas is about much more, in fact, than a young virgin who submitted to the angel's announcement that she had found favor with God and was to be the vessel of a Spirit-given Son. All of those things are part of and even important to "the true meaning of Christmas."

But "the true meaning of Christmas" has to do with the child himself! Matthew tells us that this child was to be called, in accord with Isaiah's words centuries earlier, "Immanuel," which means "God with us." (Matthew 1:23) "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" the angel said to Joseph (Matthew 1:21 ESV) "You shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High," the angel had said to Mary. (Luke 1:31, 32 ESV) The angel had then gone on to say, "The child to be born will be called holy - the Son of God." (Luke 1:35b ESV) It is in him that "the true meaning of Christmas" is to be found. It will never be found within us until he lives within us, cradled in our hearts by faith, giving to our lives in turn "the true meaning of Christmas."

He it is who is formally named, so far as earthly affairs go, "Jesus," at the time of his circumcision eight days after his birth. Today is the eighth day - New Year's Day by the calendar of this world, but the day of Jesus' circumcision and naming by the calendar of the church. The Son of God, born into the human family through the very earthly birth-pangs of a virgin named Mary, sheds his first blood as his parents take him to be circumcised by the appointed rabbi in Bethlehem. There he is incorporated by name into the family of Israel, joined to the long line of God's people who sprang from the loins of Abraham two thousand years earlier. He was laid in the shadows of that two thousand years' history, spoken of and longed for through the hopes and visions of prophets and priests and all those many circumcised before him. Here, coming out of the shadows of a history including Moses and David and Elijah and Isaiah and all those people through whom God had maintained a hope and a vision that would not go away, "all was fulfilled."

Now here he lay, the Promised One, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. In slightly more than another month his mother would go through the rite of purification and Simeon, that righteous and devout man in the temple, would look upon this child in awe and wonder, saying, "My eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." (Luke 2:30-32 ESV) But Simeon would also see something else - something that up to now neither Mary nor Joseph nor the shepherds had seen. He saw the dark cloud of the cross looming over the child. "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed," he said. (Luke 2:34, 35 ESV)

Ah, Mary, could you imagine that sword hanging over the child? Could you see the sorrow that would wrap itself around your own heart when you saw your Son suspended between heaven and earth as the re-connecting link between God and his straying people? It would not take long for that sword to hang heavy over their heads when Herod's wrath fell on the children of Bethlehem, forcing Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt for protection. (Matthew 2:13-18) The first blood of Jesus fell from the tiny wound of his circumcision in behalf of the world - and then of a sudden the blood of many innocent children would fall to the earth of Bethlehem in behalf of this child. The quiet serenity of the Christmas story is all too seldom interrupted by this less than happy moment of the Christmas story - although it, too, is on the calendar of the church!

All these moments must be included when we speak of "the spirit of Christmas." For this "spirit of Christmas" is far more than merely a momentary outpouring of hopes that we humans will rise above our limitations and bring peace on this earth. We are filled with far more violence than we are willing to admit or recognize, and when this child of Bethlehem grows up he is destined to feel that violence fall upon him with cruel blows of hammers pounding nails into his hands and feet before the cross thuds into the hole in the ground securing it for all passing by to see the scorn and shame heaped upon the once serenely sleeping child in the manger. Then it will become apparent why he is to be called "Jesus," for he will, indeed, "save his people from their sins."

Could anybody there have understood that this ignominious death would have such a glorious purpose? It would take at least three days for the slightest hint of what had transpired in the misery of that cross. But they began to get a glimpse of what would be still more fully revealed a little less than two months later when the Holy Spirit would come with his enlightening presence to set loose across the face of the earth the great good news that a "Savior" had come for all people everywhere - and his name was "Jesus," "Immanuel - God with us."

A New Year for "The True Spirit of Christmas" to Be Seen

So a "new year" has arrived - a time to put aside that which we were not happy about with the old year and to take up new resolutions, new hopes, new aspirations for the year before us. When we make a realistic appraisal of the situation, however, we know that the new year on the human plain will not be too much different from the past year. As is well said, "If I could live the past year over I would not make the same mistakes again. I would just make new ones." So the calendar years go.

But the Spirit by whom this one named "Jesus" was first conceived in the womb of Mary spans not just the years but even the centuries with his grace and mercy. Every day is a new day with him, for in Christ that cord between the Father and us humans once broken by sin has been repaired and we live by the life communicated to us in the womb of God's word with our lives still immersed, as it were, in the waters of our baptism and fed on the body and blood of Christ. Our Lord holds us securely in his wounded hands through the midst of the many perils of this life until we are borne fully into that eternity to which this little circumcised body named Jesus, grown, suffering, dying, rising again, has ascended and where he lives and reigns at the right hand of the Father now and forevermore.

Who among humans at the time - save, perhaps, Simeon in some vague way - would ever have imagined all this as a series of events beginning "at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb"?

Although we, today, know "the rest of the story," we still can only, with Mary, "treasure up all these things, pondering them in our hearts." But little as we can "understand" all this while we "ponder all these things in our hearts," one thing we do know -- our lives can never be the same again once "the true meaning of Christmas" captures us!

Retired Lutheran Pastor Hubert Beck

E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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