The Feast of the Holy Nativity of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad exordium & sermon

Festival exordium:

If you set two Christmas presents next to each other, all wrapped up, and one of them is really big while the other is quite small, which one would a child choose? Which one would any of us choose? The possibilities seem so much greater in something big.

The emphasis at Christmas is often on the big things—a house covered with lights on the outside and filled with decorations on the inside, gifts piled up around the tree, great feasts shared with family and friends, grand gestures of charity. All of these are wonderful things, and all of them are tied to Christmas. But none of these big Christmas things is the main thing.

The main thing appears much smaller, hardly significant, easily missed. To find Christmas, you have to look past the lights and decorations and presents and food, and even past friends and family. You have to look back to a humble place in a little town where a poor man and woman welcomed a tiny Baby into the world.

That Baby, wrapped up in swaddling clothes, surrounded with straw like gift bag tissue paper, and placed in the box of a manger, is the greatest gift that has ever been given. That Baby was a gift from the God who made all things on earth and in heaven. That Baby was a gift for you.

But what could this Baby do for you? If He were just a regular baby, He could do nothing for you. If He were just a regular baby, we certainly wouldn’t be gathered here today. But He was no regular baby.

He appeared so small, and yet He was exceedingly great. He appeared so weak, and yet His power was immeasurable. He appeared so helpless, and yet He was the One who would conquer death itself.

That Baby who looked like nothing special was the Son of God incarnate, the Son of God in the flesh—your flesh. He came to be your Brother, to exchange His perfect life for your sinful one, to exchange His joy for your sorrow, to exchange His life for your death.

He is the greatest gift ever given, and He was given for you. Let us rise and sing our festival hymn, #142:

Rejoice, rejoice this happy morn!
A Savior unto us is born,
The Christ, the Lord of glory.
His lowly birth in Bethlehem
The angels from on high proclaim
And sing redemption’s story.
My soul,
Extol
God’s great favor;
Bless Him ever
For salvation.
Give Him praise and adoration!

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Sermon text: St. Luke 2:1-7

In Christ Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2), “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13), dear fellow redeemed:

We hear stories from time to time about people who rose up from difficult circumstances to become very successful. They started with nothing and now have great wealth and power. But that doesn’t change the fact that who they are in their genetic make-up had nothing to do with them. We came from our parents, who came from their parents, who came from their parents, and so on.

In that way, we are all inheritors; we inherit both what is good and what is bad from those who came before us. For the good things we inherit, we see the great privilege and the great responsibility that is handed to us. If a good name has been handed down to us, we want to live up to the name. If wealth has been handed to us, we want to use our inheritance wisely.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, it was especially the firstborn son who felt this privilege and responsibility. He received the greatest portion of the family inheritance. The honor and influence that his ancestors had gained were passed on to him. The firstborn son had a lot to live up to and a lot to lose!

The Holy Gospel for today identifies Jesus as the “firstborn son” of Mary. The original Greek states it even more emphatically, “And she gave birth to her son, the firstborn.” This is a way of emphasizing that Mary had no children prior to Jesus. In fact it was impossible for her to have children before Jesus, because she was a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Luk. 1:34).

As the “firstborn son” of Mary, Jesus was descended from the line of King David, who in turn had descended from the great patriarchs Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham who could draw their line back through Noah to the first man Adam. So Jesus had a tremendous inheritance of family, faithfulness, and history funneling down to Him. But there was one thing—one very important thing—He did not inherit. He did not inherit His forefathers’ sin.

All the rest of us do. We were all conceived in the natural way, which means the sin of Adam has come down through the generations all the way to us. The apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). And, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (v. 19). Adam’s sin is ours, as though we were right with him reaching out and taking a bite from the fruit in disobedience to God.

But Adam’s sin did not reach Jesus, because He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit. The angel Gabriel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luk. 1:35). So Jesus was the firstborn son of Mary, but He was also the first child to be born without sin. He represented the human line He came from, but His birth was also the start of something new, something the world of men had never seen before.

Jesus was not just the firstborn Son of Mary; He is the only-begotten Son of God. There was never a time when the Son of God was not. He is begotten of God the Father from eternity. And “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). He sent Him to take on flesh in Mary’s womb by the power of God the Holy Spirit, so He could be the Redeemer of all sinners.

Once this happened, once God entered our world and took on our flesh, our future became very clear and very bright. What we see Him doing was all done for us. His perfect love for God and neighbor was to fulfill God’s holy Law for us. His innocent suffering and death was to atone for our sins. And His resurrection on the third day was to conquer and cancel our death.

The Bible wraps up all His work for us in the term “firstborn.” St. Paul describes the Christ as “the firstborn of all creation… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:15,16-17). This tells us that we have nothing apart from Him, and we are nothing apart from Him. “[A]ll things were created through him and for him… in him all things hold together”—and especially His holy Church of all believers.

The Son of God came down to earth and clothed Himself in our flesh, so He could clothe us in His righteousness and take us with Him to heaven. The way that He causes us to be spiritually reborn and connected to Him is through His Sacrament of Baptism. He joins us to His holy body and therefore makes us inheritors, heirs, of all that He has fulfilled and done according to the will of His Father.

By the faith given to us at our Baptism, we inherit what is His. Galatians 3:26-27 says, “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Whatever the only-begotten Son of God and firstborn Son of Mary has, we have. This was God’s intention all along, even before the beginning of time. Romans 8:29 tells us that we whom God the Father has elected to salvation are “conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29).

So we keep a close eye on the events of Jesus’ life, because in His life, we see our future unfolding. How can I hope to escape God’s wrath and enter into heaven? Because Jesus lived a perfect life of love for me and paid for all my sins through His death on the cross. How can I hope to live when death will one day take me as it has taken so many others? Because Jesus rose from the dead in triumph over death, so that all who trust in Him share in this victory.

In fact, this is another way that Jesus is referred to as “firstborn.” The same Colossians passage that calls Him “the firstborn of all creation,” later says, “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Col. 1:15,18). He was the first to be born in holiness, so that we could enter that holiness through our Baptism into Him. He was the first to rise from the dead, so that we could be assured of our resurrection on the last day.

Apart from Jesus, there is no clear way forward, no real hope for the future. Apart from Jesus, all we have to look forward to is getting older and dying. But because “the firstborn of all creation,” entered our world and destroyed sin and death, rising as “the firstborn from the dead,” we know what our future holds. It is a future in Him, covered in His righteousness, filled with His life, going on where He has gone. Jesus First—We Follow.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2Co. 5:17). We have nothing to add to His redemptive work. All of it is done for us. This is why the Christ came. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. With the angels, we worship this holy Firstborn, our Savior, and glorify His name (Heb. 1:6).

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.

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(picture from “Adoration of the Shepherds” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1592-1656)