Christmas I – 2023: Isaiah 61:10--62:3, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:22-40

Happy New Year! It is a happy new year every Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection. This day marks the passing of the old aeon and the dawning of the new time of God’s grace. Happy New Year! It is a happy new year because when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption. Just because Jesus was born into solidarity with us in the old and perishing age –born of a woman and born under the Law-- the happy new year of God’s grace, set in motion by his coming to us in the old, means that, you, newly adopted children of God…You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. Happy New Year!

It helps us to appreciate and reverently to celebrate God’s happy New Year when we understand how it came to pass that God’s Son, born of a woman, born under the law, just so worked our redemption and adoption as children of God. Understanding this requires us to think in a twofold way about what it means to be “under the law” – namely, as those instructed by the law, the Torah of God, and as those criticized by it.

On the one hand, being “under the law” means that Jesus grew up under the Torah’s instruction in order that he fulfill of Israel’s ancient hope for righteousness on the earth. If, as we have heard in Advent-tide, that we are with Israel to hope in, and fervently pray for, and so live in anticipation of a world in which righteousness is at home, we see in the coming of God’s Son into solidarity with us his life-deed of righteousness in our world, sign and seal of all God’s promises. This is the primary meaning of being born under the law, the meaning particular to ancient Israel and its hope for a Messiah, a true son of David who would bring about righteousness on the earth. We especially see this in Luke’s stories of the infant Jesus, brought to the Temple in Jerusalem, where the aged saints Simeon and Anna rejoice in the fulfillment of God’s ancient law taking shape in the child Jesus, just as Luke concludes today: And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

So Jesus grew to live out a whole life of obedience to the double love commandment, namely, that we should love God above all and all creatures in and under God.

This life of righteousness is what marks Jesus out as the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, and teaches us how to think about the salvation that He brings, which is not any old thing we might want. I might want a Lexus convertible in 2024, but that is not the salvation of righteousness that Jesus brings as the Messiah of Israel. I might want personal power such that the Boss fears me, the spouse is wrapped around my little finger, and my kids are living duplicates of good ol’ me. But that’s not the salvation of righteousness that Jesus brings as the Messiah of Israel.  Rather, let us learn what the salvation of righteousness is from Simeon today (in the elegant old language of the King James version): Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. Such is the salvation of righteousness that Jesus brings about, the glory of Israel whose law, now fulfilled and so illuminated in the life of love that Jesus led, enlightens all the peoples of the earth, showing them love of God above all and all creatures in and under God. We need to be under the law, then, in the sense of being taught this righteousness as our truly human vocation.

There is, however, a second meaning of being born under the law, namely this, that as the law of God speaks a commandment of righteousness as love, it speaks against us who are not so loving. You see, love, if it is not sheer sentimentality, must be against what is against love. “Love what is good, hate what is evil,” thunders Israel’s great prophet Amos. “Let love be sincere,” Paul admonishes the Romans, “hate what is evil.” God’s love is zealous and holy, active in all things like a prosecuting attorney. In righteous indignation, according to the testimony of Scripture, God judges what is against love, to cast down the mighty from their thrones but exalt them of low degree. And that is why in another place Paul the apostle says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that there is none, no not one, who is righteous, no one who actually loves God above all and all creatures in and under God —until God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.

So this is a second meaning of “under the law,” which is not exclusive to ancient Israel, but in fact is the experience of all creatures under the sovereignty of the one who is truly God. Under the law here means that in our historical experience, in all the mysterious and often dark twists and turns of our journey, we meet God, our Creator as critic. In this part of the letter to the Galatians, Paul names the Law, with a Greek word that comes into English, as pedagogue, literally a servant who guides the footpaths of a schoolchild. In Paul’s Greek world, however, this was not a happy role. The pedagogue was not simply an instructor but a taskmaster who harshly forced the children to study and behave. Paul compares God’s governance of a fallen and wayward humanity through the Law to such a pedagogue. That is why our Lutheran Confessions remind us lex semper accusat: the Law always accuses. Because in this second sense the Law works on us as a pedagogue, chastising us to love and disciplining what is against love. In this sense, we need to be freed from being under the law, to pass from the old life of slavish fear of threats and proud claims to merit deserving of reward to the glorious liberty of new-born children of God – those who now freely and willingly love God above all and all creatures in and under God. How does this wondrous passage to the happy new year of life under grace transpire?

The deepest mystery of the Christian faith tells how Jesus, who purely proclaimed Israel’s Torah as the great double love commandment, fell under the Law’s accusation of those who are not so loving or righteous. How so? On account of his solidarity with us. For, born of a woman, born under the Law, He loved us children of earth who fall short of the glory of God. Indeed, He was notoriously the friend of sinners, even scandalously of tax collectors, hated collaborators with the Roman occupiers. Likewise, scandalously he proclaimed the forgiveness of their sins in the name of God. This forgiveness was not a magic trick. He did not wave of a magic wand and disappear the sins he forgave into thin air. But he took responsibility for us; he took on himself the sin he took away from others. And thus at the culmination of His life He had to drink the bitter cup, the consequences of His life of love in God’s name for those not so loving or righteous. Martin Luther called this culmination of Christ’s life, born of a woman, born under the law, “a strange marvelous duel…the Law battling the Law in order to become liberty for me.”

You see, the mystery of the cross as the culmination of the righteous life deed of Christ is that the Law as God’s own will to love came into conflict with the Law as God’s own conflict with us not so loving nor righteous. And God’s will to love prevailed in this marvelous duel, finding a new way forward of mercy. Mercy that redeems those under the Law and effects their adoption as beloved children of God so that it is really true to say of those whose being in Christ is now under grace,  “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”

Just as the birth of God’s Son of a woman under the Law was an event in history, then, so also it is an event—let’s call it God’s ever-ready New Year celebration of grace—when by the proclamation of this the Holy Spirit makes it an event in your history, too. God’s love is not a lifeless idea or timeless principle, but God seeking, finding and delighting in those sought and found. Behold, if anyone is in Christ new creation! The old has passed away – happy New Year!