Martin Luther characteristically preached on this festival: “It does you no good that Christ was born in Bethlehem if Christ is not also born in you.” Have we, however, in our post-Christendom culture converted Christmas into something else? Is the meaning of our Christmas feast being hijacked and turned on its head in this consumer culture of malice and envy, this entertainment culture of wayward passions and false pleasures, swallowed up by the miserable, scarcely veiled secret of too many contemporary lives: hating and being hated. All the more so it bears repetition for emphasis: Christmas is about our conversion, the Holy Spirit’s change of the very loves of our hearts: “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray,” we sing in one of our beloved carols. “Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!” Have we converted Christmas into something else, or does Christmas convert us?
“Be born in us today!” -- this is the earnest prayer of every Christian, who knows Christmas, not as indulgence in physical gluttony or spiritual sentimentality, but as our holy day remembering when first the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared in this dark, dark world of wars and rumors of wars, of refugees and persecutions, so that we too would have this mind that was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God did not consider his equality with God something to take advantage of, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant The message is that God turns to us all in unfathomable mercy in the Babe of Bethlehem – this is the first and literal Christmas. Our hearts in reply are reborn in Christ by the Spirit to God – this is the second and spiritual Christmas, since it does you no good that Christ was born in Bethlehem if Christ is not also born in you this night!
Maybe, just maybe this year of an ever darkening world situation, amid all the words, words, words of foolish advertisements from the mouths of disobedient hucksters, deceiving us and enslaving us by all kinds of passions and false pleasures, maybe just maybe we will take to heart the one Word which are to hear and obey in life and in death with new hearts to trust the message of Christmas which is truly trustworthy: [God the Father] saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having hope of eternal life. This is the word from God concerning our conversion, our own spiritual Christmas, which does not trick us into buying yet another toy we don’t truly need, but rather works in us new devotion to doing what is good, excellent and profitable for all.
So we are here tonight to proclaim that Word of the first and literal Christmas: Unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The kindness and love of God our Savior appeared not wrapped in bows, as we have heard, but in swaddling clothes, strips of rag that a poor woman used to warm her newborn; not fulfilling false expectations of greed and malice, but rather laid in a lowly animal trough, since there was no human place available – all this, to fulfill God’s purpose that this little Child save us. From what? From this very culture of greed and malice which has no room in the inn the poor, the homeless, the refugee! On what grounds does God purpose to save us through this child? Not because of righteous things we had done, since we were rather all caught up in unrighteousness, but because of his mercy – mercy which melts ice-cold hearts, mercy which convicts in order to convert and so opens our small, closed minds to the Father’s wide open arms and all-embracing purposes. To what end? To reign over us in peace and justice, that means, by our own conversion from the false loves of greedy beings enslaved to sin, our conversion as those devoted to doing what is good, excellent and profitable for all. This is the second, spiritual Christmas, that we be changed through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit
We need this spiritual Christmas, for the loves or desires of the human heart motivate us in everything we do. We do what we do because of something we want, in order to get it. This is the law of our nature. We are creatures, not creators. We do not have life of ourselves, but must constantly seek life. But what do we want? Alas, we seek false goods, eating food that does not satisfy, drink that does not quench. So endlessly unsatisfied we become ever more greedy: our desires turn into envy of those who have more, jealously over what little we have, malice lashing out at others as competitors against us. Love we must, but humab loves are false, until our hearts are made new through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, persuading us that we are indeed beloved children of God for Jesus’ sake, working in our hearts in reply the new, true love for God with all his people. Such rebirth and renewal is our own spiritual Christmas!
See how the whole Trinity appears in our text to accomplish it: God [the Father] saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having hope of eternal life. When we were baptized in the name of the Triune God, that washing of rebirth and renewal signed the in-pouring of the Spirit into our hearts bearing witness that we are indeed the beloved children of God, the very same Spirit who first brought Jesus Christ our Savior to birth in Betlehem and thence led him through life and death to resurrection. And we needed this rebirth and renewal, just as much as we did not deserve it, because we were caught up in false loves and unworthy desires of wayward hearts of creatures lost in darkness. But our heavenly Father, rich in mercy, determined to straighten us out, leveling the mountains of vain pride, lifting up the valleys of faithless despair, by his grace, that means, by his own free and awesome decision to love us notwithstanding, to stick with us in spite of everything, to regain us for himself no matter what the cost. Cost God it did, in the fullness of time: the birth in the manger anticipating burial in the tomb, swaddling clothes foreshadowing burial linens, the homeless Child’s holy body grown up to be pierced and broken – all this to seek and find us who were dead to God.
That is God’s costly grace which justifies us, regarding us and making us beloved children and heirs of God, having hope of eternal life. For nothing less than the eternal life of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, our blessed holy Trinity, will still restless hearts, grant true peace that this world can neither give nor take away, and so at last deliver our wayward desires from false and deathly loves. This is the hope of the heart converted! Nothing less! Renewed by the Spirit, united with the Son, to live to God our heavenly Father, now and forever! So it is Christmas that converts you, not you who convert Christmas into something less, something cheap, something false and ruinous. But by the Father’s grace Christ would be born in us this day that we too may sing in the Spirit with the choirs of heaven: Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth to those with whom He is pleased.