“The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
So it has always been. God hides
his majesty and glory. He always
has. “If
God is real and so powerful – if God wants us to know him so badly and insists
that everyone believe in him – why doesn’t he show himself and quit
hiding?” So says the fool. He is a fool, though, not because such a
request is necessarily unreasonable. If
aimed at our would-be rulers, this is a very legitimate question. But no, he is a fool because he assumes that
to know God is like knowing
details of a celebrity politician and to scrutinize his credentials. But God is not our equal. He does not exist on our plain of
existence. He is not beholden to time or
space, let alone scientific investigation.
And furthermore, he has no obligation to lay his cards on the
table. Nor does he want to be known by
such minds that would insist that he cater to human demands of proof. He wants to be known by faith alone. Faith exists in humility. To the proud he is terrifying. So he must remain. To the humble he is comforting. And so it shall ever be. God wants our knowledge of him to consist of
humble faith, not impudent demands for evidence. This is the whole point. God wills to remain hidden to those who put
God on trial. But he chooses to reveal
himself in kindness and love to those who know they’re on trial.
The word of the cross is of course the message of the atonement.
It is the good news that God was in Christ
reconciling the world to himself. But
the word of the cross is also shorthand for all the promises of God that are
met in Christ – including the promise of his birth. The Word was made flesh. Christ is the Word by whom all things were
made. He is the Word by which all divine
things have ever been made known through prophets and angels to the feeble
minds of men. God’s Word is not answerable
to sinful man. Therefore, “since,
in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God
through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe.” This foolishness culminates in the death of
Jesus. But it begins to shine forth for
us in cheering light on Christmas, when the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us. The incarnation of the Son of God is
not only intrinsic to and necessary for our salvation, it is equally offensive
to the wisdom of man. It is the
beginning of that foolishness that saves us.
Without the Word nothing was made that was made. And without this Light, all men with their
wisdom and strength and cleverness and virtue and goodness, were benighted in
darkness. This light shone in the
darkness. This morning we consider how
this Light, this eternal Word, was shining throughout the ages and how his
promises come to fulfillment only for those who received his Word as he in his
wisdom had chosen to deliver it. The
Word has been shining not to illuminate the obstinate mind of man who demanded
an answer. No, but the Word has been
shining on those who humbly acknowledge that without God’s gentle and
consistent instruction, we are lost.
As a child receives a piece of a puzzle with confident trust
that it will fit into the larger picture, so God sustained the faith and fed
the hope of his people by giving them clues to his grand plan of salvation one
piece at a time. But in childlike faith,
they received each piece as a piece and promise of the whole. On Christmas, we
celebrate the completion of the puzzle, the final connecting of the ancient
promise for God to become Man. We see
the Old Testament pieces – some on the edges, others in the middle – form the
New Testament image as the mystery is revealed concerning Jesus Christ and his
work of human salvation.
Our
Old Testament lesson from the prophet Micah is working with many different portions
of the puzzle. He takes us to the Judean
city of Bethlehem. Out of Bethlehem came
David, the ancestor of Jesus.
Now
David as a shepherd boy was chosen and appointed by God to be King of Israel. He stands in the middle of the Old
Testament. Under his reign, many
promises seemed to come to fulfillment, such as that Israel would become a
glorious and great kingdom. And it
did. Of course, even the seeming
fulfillments of these prophecies were themselves prophecies of something
greater than David and greater than David’s son. Jesus is both David’s Son and David’s
Lord. As Jesus himself said, “A
greater than Solomon is here.” His
kingdom is not of this world. Even
in Micah 5 we receive such clues. Micah
sets before our eyes first the double origin, second the double Office, and
third the double kingdom of the Child who was born in Bethlehem.
First,
therefore, it deals with the double origin of that Child. His origin is human as the first promise to
Adam and Even made plain. Micah refers
to a woman who gives birth to a Child. Other
messianic prophecies establish his origin from the house of David. Isaiah 9 speaks about a Son who is born and
who shall rule on the throne of David forever as God himself promised to David
earlier. Isaiah 7 speaks about a virgin
who will bear a Son. According to Isaiah
11, a new branch will come out of the stem of Jesse, upon whom the Holy Spirit
will rest. Jesse was the father of
David. The stem of Jesse is therefore
another expression for the royal house of David. Jeremiah says this man will be called, “The Lord our Righteousness.”
So
the biblical prophets give voice and chime together in their testimony of the
future Descendant of David, who after a long time would again reestablish the
lost kingdom. That is therefore the one,
the earthly side of the origin of the Christ Child.
The
other side is his heavenly, his divine origin.
Micah says, his goings forth are
from of old, from everlasting. From the
beginning of creation God intended to send his Son. Already Adam and Eve heard the promise of him
who would crush the serpent’s head. He
was the Seed, yes. But he was the Seed
of the woman who has no seed. His Father was not made from clay, therefore,
but is the eternal God.
Also
with the other prophets, the newborn Child obtains a name and a title of honor
that totally prove his divine origin, and that are given to no one else in the
Old Testament. In Isaiah 9, he’s called:
Wonderful, Councilor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Peace of Prince, so that his
dominion will be great and there will be no end of Peace upon the throne of
David and in his Kingdom, that he might strengthen and support it through
justice and righteousness from now on into eternity. And in Isaiah 7 we hear what the Virgin would
call her Son – Immanuel, which means God
with us. [i]
Second:
Just as the Son of David has a double origin, so he has a double Office. Just as David was both shepherd and king in
Israel, so also is his Son and Lord, Jesus Christ. Before David was anointed by Samuel to be
king, he was a shepherd. When Samuel was
supposed to choose the king from the sons of Jesse, by God’s command, David
wasn’t there, and had to be fetched from his pastoral service with the
flock.
Therefore
also, God sets a sign in the middle of the history of Israel. For the kings of Israel would indeed, on his
behalf, lead his chosen people to pasture.
Very few freely did it as faithfully and reliably as David. Most kings on his throne proved themselves
to be evil shepherds who led the people committed to them into error.
God
took this as an occasion to punish the false shepherds and to promise a good
shepherd in the distant future. And so
we see in the many Old Testament prophesies of the Good Shepherd the double
Goings forth of the Christ Child. This
Shepherd will be David’s Son – and he will be God himself, who now comes to
lead his sheep to pasture.
Just
consider what David himself wrote: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” And this should always call to mind the fact
that Jesus designates himself as the one good Shepherd who has come in order to
give his life for the salvation of his sheep.
And
now consider again what Micah wrote: “And He shall stand and feed His flock in the strength of the
Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God; and they shall safely
abide.”
Jesus
came as the good shepherd in order to mercifully receive the scattered flock,
in order to call to himself the weary and heavy-laden, in order to pursue those
lost in the desert of their lives and to lead them to his Father’s house. So he came also to confront the enemy of God
with authority, to conquer Satan, sin and death. [ii]
Through
Micah, God says, “Therefore He shall give them up, until the time that she who is in labor has given
birth.” By this we see that God
sent his Son to a people who were given over to their own foolish desires,
their own notions of wisdom. God himself
permitted them to be blinded in darkness.
This was the punishment they deserved for their sins. This darkness covered the whole world like a
veil when Jesus was born. It was the
darkness of unbelief – of trying to earn our way to God by fulfilling the law
and atoning for our own sins.
But
Jesus came as a Light – a Light hidden by the darkness that surrounded him –
the darkness of sin which he himself took into himself as he willingly suffered
the judgment of his own holy law in our place.
His entire mission consisted of this.
He is the center and purpose of the puzzle, which without the Light of
his grace cannot begin to be assembled.
And yet at the center of the puzzle is the Light who shines forth in the
dim beams of a lowly birth and a gruesome death. But dear Christians who hold the pieces of
the puzzle in your hands and who with Mary ponder them in your heart, you hear
and know that the darkness cannot overcome the Light. So from the complete puzzle we see how our
Shepherd King both leads and rules by taking all our sin away and granting us
the light of faith through the forgiveness of sins.
The
propitiation for the sin of the world, which the sacrifices in the temple in
Jerusalem could never finally accomplish –(these
were pieces on the edge)– God himself accomplished in his Son whom he sent
and gave up so that all who believe in him would not perish but gain eternal
life. And that, dear congregation, is
why this birth of Jesus is also for you and for me the most important birth in
the history of the world.
The
peace that the Christ Child brings is a peace of forgiveness, a peace of
reconciliation. In him God unilaterally
ends the war between himself and humanity.
God’s Son becomes one of us and establishes such a peace from above and
from below alike, by extending the forgiving hand of God from the manger and
from the cross. [iii]
The
kingdom of this Prince of Peace is no longer limited to the borders of
Israel. It still stands, as he says: “Salvation
is from the Jews.” The Savior
has not come to every people of the world, but solely and only to Israel, in
Bethlehem, when he became a man. But
from there he indeed draws all people to himself.
And
so the third double feature of our Christ also applies to his Kingly Reign: As
the King of Israel he is likewise the Lord of the whole world.
Therefore,
he is praised by his lost and found sheep alike for his service as a Shepherd
not only in Israel, but for the whole world.
That’s why Micah can say of him: “For now He shall be great to the ends of
the earth.” We find here another
piece of the puzzle.
The
Child born in Bethlehem is therefore always and ever at work as Shepherd and
King even for you and me. As the
resurrected, exalted Lord and King, he has authority over all the world. And so also, as the exalted Lamb of God, he
performs his service as Shepherd still today for all his lambs. He does so by sending out undershepherds who
lead his flock to pasture with his gospel and his sacraments.
The
same Spirit who once overshadowed the mother of God when she was to conceive
accomplishes to this very day a no less precious Wonder, that people from Judah
and heathen folk alike follow suit with the shepherds of Bethlehem and receive
with the Child in the manger their Savior and Lord.
Where
this happens, there we become a piece of that great puzzle that is set before
our eyes in the lively and multifaceted biblical message. We don’t figure it out. It remains a mystery. But we are invited into it – to know and
believe when, where, and to what end God became one of us. We therefore belong in the great picture of
God’s salvation history. What shone
forth in the City of David to make it not
the least of the cities of Judah, as St. Matthew takes divinely sanctioned
liberty to translate it, still shines forth for us. And here we find the significance our place
too. Though Gentiles so far on the edges
of this prophecy, we are precious pieces of God’s scope of love and
kindness. For here the incarnate God
abides with us. His glory does not stop illuminating
our hearts until we are finally there where so many elect have gone: to the
place of his heavenly origin, where we see the Son of the Virgin and Son of God
as our eternal Shepherd and King, and will rest secure in his peace. Amen.
[i] Our hymns
also fix the individual pieces together into a complete image when they clearly
paint before our eyes the double divine and human origin of Christ according to
the promises of the Old Testament.
During Advent we sang:
Let
the earth now praise the Lord. / Who has truly kept His word
And at last to us did send / Christ, the sinners’ Help and Friend.
And at last to us did send / Christ, the sinners’ Help and Friend.
What
the fathers most desired, / What the prophets’ heart inspired,
What they longed for many a year, / Stands fulfilled in glory here.
What they longed for many a year, / Stands fulfilled in glory here.
Abram’s
promised great Reward, / Zion’s Helper, Jacob’s Lord,
Him of twofold race behold, / Truly came, as long foretold.
Him of twofold race behold, / Truly came, as long foretold.
[iii] Softly from
his lowly manger, / Jesus calls / One and all, / “You are safe from danger.
Children, from the sins that grieve you / You are feed; All you need / I will surely give you.”
Children, from the sins that grieve you / You are feed; All you need / I will surely give you.”
No comments:
Post a Comment