The Great Miracle on the Night of Christmas.
(By Ps. S. Bergman, 1937-2015- Pastor for Lutherska Konkordiekyrkan – Concordia Lutheran Church, Sweden)
Text: Luke 2:1-20
The Christmas gospel reading we have heard from the pulpit has three parts. The first is about the birth of Jesus, the second about the angel’s short and glorious message regarding this birth and the third about the impact it had on those who heard it. What the first part says is this-
1. It has indeed happened that God became man and was born in Bethlehem.
Luke, who wrote the gospel about Christmas, emphasises that what he tells is not a fairy tale or legend but an event in the history of the world. He does not start the Christmas gospel with the words: “Once upon a time there was a young woman”, as you do when you tell a story. He says, “It happened at that time.” And he begins writing his Gospel by pointing out that it is based on serious historical research. He has “carefully investigated everything from the beginning”, carefully checked what those who were eyewitnesses said about the events he writes about. What he writes is thus reliable (Luke 1:2-3).
Luke dates Jesus’ birth to a specific time, referring to emperors and other great men who lived then. The birth of Jesus took place during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus and Quirinius, the emperor’s chief governor in the eastern part of the empire, to which Syria and Israel belonged.
The emperor had decided “that the whole world” would be taxed. The whole world is referring here to the great Roman world empire. Bible critics, who assume that the Bible is just an ordinary book containing inaccuracies, claim that no such census took place at the time of Jesus’ birth. But they are not as good as historians as Luke. He is not mistaken. We now know that Roman emperors loved keeping tax records and especially the censuses that took place in connection with them. It showed them how many people they ruled over. Such censuses occurred quite frequently, and Israel was required to participate in another one more than 30 years later (Acts 5:37). The tax records that Luke talks about are mentioned in the so-called memoirs of Augustus, partly reproduced in Latin and Greek in inscriptions on pillars in a temple ruin discovered in Turkey. So Luke did not record a fiction.
It is amazing how God allows a pagan emperor’s injunction to bring Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. It was there that what was foretold through the prophet Micah would happen: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”(5: 2).
Every person would travel to his family’s hometown. Joseph was of the family of King David, therefore he went with Mary to Bethlehem, for there is where David was born (1 Sam. 16). Mary was pregnant and at a very advanced stage. Nine months earlier she had become pregnant, not in the usual way through the participation of a man, but exactly as the angel Gabriel told her, and later it was told to poor Joseph, who believed that his wife had been unfaithful, that she had become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and that the child who she would give birth to would be called the Son of God (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:35).
Many were on their way to Bethlehem. The guest rooms of relatives or in the boarding houses were soon filled. When Joseph and Mary arrived, things started to go awry. She already felt the pains of labour. You can almost see in front of you Joseph hurrying from house to house and knocking to find out if any room was vacant. But all the rooms were occupied. Joseph finally found a place for Mary in a simple stable. A stable for animals is not as clean and nice as a guest room. Anyone who has been to a barn knows how it smells and stinks of livestock and their droppings. A stable was often found on the ground floor of houses. But Bethlehem was located in a mountainous area where there were natural caves which could also be used as stables. There is an old tradition dating back to the 100s that says that Jesus was born in such a cave. The Emperor Constantine in the 3rd century had the Church of the Nativity built, which still stands today, over the cave in which Jesus was believed to have been born. But Luke does not say that it was a cave, not even that it was a stable. He just mentions a manger. From this it has been concluded that it was a stable.
In this meagre environment Mary gave birth to her child, wrapped him up and put him in a manger. An animal feeding trough became the Son of God’s first bed in this world. It is a marvel that he who was the King of kings allowed himself to be born under such simple and primitive circumstances.
Luke gives no further details about the birth itself. He merely states that Mary gave birth to her child, birthing as women have always done. Yet it was a unique birth. Her child was not only her child but also the Son of God. The Son of God was not created at any particular time, for he, like the Father and the Spirit, is the God of eternity. But at a certain time it happened that the divine nature of the Son united with the human flesh and blood of Mary. A true God-man took shape and began to grow in her womb. And when the time came, she gave birth to both her and God’s son.
This birth was considered by some pious-minded church fathers, such as Ambrose in the 300s, be a miraculous painless birth, so that Mary gave birth to the baby Jesus “with a closed womb”, ie. that Jesus by virtue of his divinity passed her womb, much as he did after the resurrection through closed doors, without harming her in the slightest way. Luther and many Lutherans of his day believed that he was born that way. And of course, it is quite possible that it happened that way. But the question must still be left open and unanswered. For the Bible gives no answer on this matter and we can therefore not make it a doctrinal position that must be believed. Luke only says: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son…”. Not a word that this birth from the outside differed from other births.
For the other great world religions, the fact that God became a man by being born of a woman is a completely unreasonable and blasphemous thought. It has been thought that God could never humble himself so that he became a pitiful little human child of flesh and blood born in a stinking stable. They think that is absolutely horrible! But Christians celebrate Christmas precisely because this has actually happened.
The whole of Christianity stands and falls with this miracle above all miracles. Either it is true, or Christianity is just legends or fantasies – a beautiful night-time Christmas dream and nothing else. The New Testament is full of testimony that the baby in the manger was not only sent by God but truly had a divine nature. With his deeds and great miracles – that no one who is only a mere man could do- he showed that he really was the one Isaiah prophesied about: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given… and his name will be called “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isa. 9: 6).
Christianity is not a religion that arose from secret rites and mystical seances. It is based on things that really happened in time, on things that people have seen and heard, on information that could be checked and verified. When the Apostle Paul tells the story of Jesus to King Agrippa, he reminds him that these are well-known facts: “…for I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner.”(Acts 26:26). It was not from the world of myths and legends that the evangelists and apostles drew their message. Few events in history are as well confirmed by early testimony as the stories of Jesus’ life. With the psalmist we can boldly cry out to all in the world: “Come and see the work of the LORD! He works wonders on the earth ”(Ps. 46: 8).
Let us now move on to the second and heavenly part of Luke’s Christmas gospel.
2. The angel’s message to the shepherds tells us why the great miracle of Christmas has taken place
When God was to proclaim the great significance of Christmas to the world, He chose not to do so for the rich and noble lords of Jerusalem but for some poor shepherds out in the fields. These shepherds had the hardest and lowest paid job in the country. They were poor and had to take the job that others did not want: guarding sheep at night. They sat outside shivering in the biting cold of the night, while the others inside the city slept warmly and well in their beds. It was these poor shepherds who first heard the glorious message on Christmas Eve: “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people, for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10,11).
There are a number of people who have been saviours, brave heroes who have saved people from dangers and oppression of various kinds. When the children of Israel were threatened by enemies during their early days in the land of Canaan, they cried out to God- “But when the people of Israel cried to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel” (Judges 3: 9). He sent Othniel, Ehud, Samson, Gideon, and others who saved the people from the attacks of their enemies. But none of those who were called saviours were said to be the Lord. They were just mere men.
The Saviour who was born to us is called by the angel “the Lord”. That name is used in Scripture exclusively referring to God, the creator of heaven and earth. The little weak and fragile child in the manger is the Lord. It is a dizzying thought that in this child was hidden the Son of God who helped create the world with divine omnipotence. But so it is: “Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that is made,” says the apostle John about Jesus, about the Word who became flesh (John 1: 3). He is completely and fully both God and man, but without sin. Two natures inseparably united in one person.
He must be such a person to become the Saviour that God’s messenger spoke of. This is not about saving the people from the oppression of the Romans, as many hoped the Messiah would do. This is about worse enemies and far worse oppression. The Son of God became man to save us from the violence of sin, death, and the devil, from all the evil that we have been enslaved to since the Fall.
He was born to open heaven to sinners, to remove the enmity between God and man. On one side stands a holy and just God with his holy wrath over a sinful and rebellious human race, on the other side stands this race with hatred of God and his word. The child who is both God and man is the mediator standing in between.
He is the path of divine love to peace between heaven and earth. He removed the enmity in a strange way. The road to peace traversed over a cross. He was born for the cross, to suffer and die as the atonement for the evils and sins of the world. God became man in order to suffer and die for our sins, but in order to atone for the sins of the whole world and gain victory over death and the devil, he must be God.
The angel’s message about the Saviour is short and sweet. The Saviour who is born is the Lord. It is the foundation of Christianity in its simplest form. It says with all the desired clarity that peace and tranquillity with God do not come from what we ourselves do. We cannot appease God with our deeds and with our obedience to God’s commandments. How can we do that, when we are constantly breaking them? The only one who can do that is Jesus. In the angel’s Christmas message, all works are concentrated on the Saviour, on what he does. In our place he does everything that the law requires, that in which we never could succeed. The apostle Paul says, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering” (Rom. 8: 3).
You must throw all your own thoughts overboard and cease trying to create a way to find peace with God and instead only hear the message of the angel about the Saviour born to us. But first you must accept what you are, a child of wrath, a sinner through and through. You must humble yourself and acknowledge God to be right in what He says about you. When you do that, you will be poor in spirit, so broken that you need the Saviour who is the Lord. Then the angel’s words about “a message of great joy” becomes something great, glorious and liberating. Then you are surrounded by “songs of deliverance” (Ps. 32: 7).
The three-line hymn of the great angelic choir after the angel’s short message underlines what he said: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
“Glory be to God on high” – it is a completely different song than the people of the world sing today. Their song is “Glory be to man on earth, glory be to his fight for human rights and the equal value of all human beings!” Certainly man has a great value as created by God. But it is also true that God became man because we humans destroyed our good relationship with God and life on earth in a horrible and abominable way. There is another aspect of the equal value of all human beings that one does not want to hear, and that is that we are all equally worthy to be forever rejected by God for our self-absorbed, evil, and godless lives. “There is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ”(Rom. 3: 22-23). If God would judge us as our sins deserved, we would all be worthy of hell and eternal damnation. But the Bible says that God did not send his Son “to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
The last stanza of the angelic choir’s song, “good will toward men,” sings of the great love of God, that he wills to all men good tidings through the birth of the Savior. We no longer need to be children of wrath, afraid of punishment and judgement, of being at the mercy of death. God has made Jesus a Saviour for all without exception. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
The last part of the Gospel of Christmas talks about the effect the heavenly message had on the shepherds. This begs the question:
3. How do we receive the great miracle of that Christmas night?
The angel’s message about the Savior caused the shepherds to hurry to Bethlehem to look for a child in a manger. Bethlehem was a small town and it was not difficult to find out where there was something as unusual as a newborn baby in a crib. They found it and it was confirmed that they were not dreaming but that the angel was telling the truth.
Everyone was was filled with wonder by the shepherds’ story. Wonder is being astonished at something strange. Does it surprise you that God became man for you, that you might have peace and new life? Or are you completely cold and indifferent to it? There was no room for Joseph and Mary and the baby she was to give birth to in Bethlehem. So it is in the spiritual realm for many. The heart is filled with so many earthly desires that there is no room for Jesus. But remember that he is the only one who can save you. Can you, do you, really want to live without him?
It is said of Mary that she “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart“. She hid and preserved them, thought about them a lot and was constantly amazed at the great things that had happened. Do as Mary! Let the holy gospel of Christmas prepare a place in your heart for Jesus. Receive him and keep him as God’s great Christmas gift to you. Then you too may go home today with the joy of Christmas in your heart and with the shepherds praising and exalting God “for all that they had heard and seen, just as it has been said to them.” Amen.
S Bergman
(Translation by Rev. T Harris, 2021)