4th
Sunday in Advent at Epiphany on
Luke 1:26 In the sixth month, God
sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin
pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's
name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who
are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29 Mary was greatly
troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30
But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with
God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are
to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called
the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father
David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his
kingdom will never end." 34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel,
"since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will
come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy
one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your
relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be
barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God."
38 "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have
said." Then the angel left her.
The Perfect Christmas
How do you build your perfect Christmas? The
materials for construction are different for each of us. Still, most of us have,
in the back of our brains, a Norman Rockwellian image of how our perfect
Christmas would look.
Maybe it would begin with you driving up a long
lane to the family farmhouse. The big, white, two-story homestead which has a
rocker on the front porch, white lace curtains in all the windows, and has been
in the family for generations. The snow is gently falling, perfect for building
a snowman with the kids. You are warmly greeted by silver-haired, but perfectly
healthy parents.
Everyone is there – no loved one has been kept
away by work or war, difficulty or distance. Gladness and goodwill are almost
tangible. Although nobody has been stuck in the kitchen, somehow a great feast
materializes on the dining room table. Some of the older children,
good-naturedly inquire when they will be old enough to leave the kids’ table and
sit with the grown-ups.
At your perfect Christmas, the food is wonderful.
The children are well behaved – they don't play with their food, no one spills
cranberries on the carpet. Even the adults are well-behaved – there are no
insults or harsh words or hurt feelings. After the meal, when all are
comfortably full, everyone pitches in to clear the table and do the dishes.
Nobody asks to turn on the TV so they can check the football scores. In the
perfect Christmas, watching television is unthinkable. Everyone eventually
migrates to the living room for the opening of presents. But present opening
comes only after everyone has sung a few familiar Christmas carols.
And when, in the perfect Christmas, the time
comes for opening the small mountain of perfectly wrapped presents, each with
its perfectly matching bow, everyone waits their turn. No one is impatient
because everyone is genuinely interested to see what the others are getting. In
this perfect Christmas, it's not surprising to find every gift is perfect. All
the gifts are just the right size, the right color, the right style. Not a
single one is going to be returned.
After the presents are opened, the well-behaved
children pick up the wrapping paper, all of which is untorn and can be used
again next year. Everyone moves to sit by the fire, and all listen to the
stories of grandma and grandpa who reminisce about what Christmas was like when
they were young. Some of the children wander off to play with their new toys.
But in this perfect Christmas, none of the toys are broken in the first five
minutes. All of them came with batteries and none of them have missing parts, or
need to be assembled following directions that are written only in Chinese.
That, with a few minor modifications is probably
the perfect Christmas for which many people long. It is the perfect Christmas
that we would like to build for ourselves. It is the perfect Christmas for which
many of us continue to search, strive, and struggle. It's not that they've ever
seen or experienced a perfect Christmas, but they're convinced ... if they look
hard enough, work hard enough, are patient enough, they will eventually, some
year, be able to make their very own perfect Christmas.
I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you have
as much chance of finding the perfect “man-made” Christmas, as you have of
celebrating Christmas this year with Bigfoot, Rudolph and Elvis.
There is a reason why we can't build a perfect
Christmas for ourselves. In this world the materials we are given are always
imperfect, inadequate, and insufficient. The components we are compelled to
employ in building our perfect Christmases are defective, deficient, and
damaged. Death, Satan, and the world have managed to mess things up. Plus, we
are hampered and handicapped by our own sinful shortcomings. We are incompetent
craftsmen whose every attempt at building a perfect Christmas, or a perfect
anything, will always be flawed by our own faults and failings. That's why the
struggle to build the perfect Christmas is so exhausting. That's why, the day
after Christmas, most people collapse into their easy chairs and promise, "I'm
not going to do that again."
If you're among the millions who have tried to
build a perfect man-made Christmas but still have felt that the finished product
was unsatisfactory, might I suggest that you consult with a real Christmas
expert? No, I'm not suggesting you turn to those magazines which publish 101
recipes for holiday cookies; nor am I thinking about the television talk hosts
who hawk the latest gizmo you have to buy for those who are near and dear to
you. No, I'm talking about a real Christmas expert here. I'm talking about God.
After all, who should know more about Christmas than Him? He started planning
the first Christmas when He made a promise to Adam and Eve in
The planning of God's perfect Christmas took time
- thousands of years, actually. During those centuries, God kept telling His
people: "Christmas is coming." He had to keep reminding them because they kept
forgetting. They, like us, became distracted as they chased after the world's
glitter and glitz, its tinsel and toys. They, like us, kept pursuing a multitude
of things which never kept the promises they had made. And, as a result, they,
like us, kept forgetting God's promise that Christmas was coming.
You can't blame the Lord for humanity's
forgetfulness. During those years that God was preparing and planning, He kept
dropping hints to His people that the perfect Christmas was coming. He said
where Christmas would begin: in
And yet, God's perfect Christmas happened without
so many of the things we feel are necessary for a successful festive season.
There were no Christmas cards. There were no trees, lights, tinsel, ribbons,
packages, or parties, shopping or stockings. There wasn’t a Red Ryder bb-gun or
Who Roast Beast or an aluminum Christmas tree. What there was, was a barn with
all of the sights, smells, and sanitation problems that go with a barn. There
was no spray disinfectant, there was no pain medication, there were no helping
hands, there wasn't even a bed. God's perfect Christmas had come and Mary's baby
was placed into the prickly and itchy hay that filled the animals' feeding
trough. The Lord of life entered this world as He would leave it, unwanted and
rejected by the very people He had come to save.
No one could blame you if you were to think that
God's perfect Christmas seems to have had some serious shortcomings. Nobody
would be surprised if you commented: "It took thousands of years to prepare for
this? Where are the presents? Where's the music? Where's the party?" At first
glance, God's perfect Christmas could easily appear to be a mixture of terrible
timing, terrible traveling, terrible circumstances, and a terrible situation. At
first glance. But I encourage you to take another look. Not everything is as it
seems.
You asked, "Where is the music?" God's perfect
Christmas did have music. Just a short distance away, in some shepherd's fields
there was music. There was a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and
announcing in tones never before heard on earth: "Glory to God in the highest."
You asked, "Where was the party?" There was one. The invitation to that party
was powerful enough to take faithful men away from their work and leave their
livelihood unattended. The shepherds who had heard the angelic choir said to
themselves, "Let's go to
Yes, there was an earthly party at God's perfect
Christmas. And there was, I imagine, a heavenly party as well. If God's people
had forgotten God's promise to send the world a perfect Christmas, the angels of
heaven had not. They knew what had happened in that stable was going to
transform the world and the eternity of millions. They knew that the birth of
the baby in
You also asked, "Where's the present?" Well at
God's perfect Christmas there was a present. Yes, that's right, only one present
... but what a present! Look into the manger. See that baby? He is God's
present. That little baby is what makes God's Christmas perfect. If you have
this baby in your heart, even though all the other trappings of Christmas might
be missing, you will have that one thing which is needful. Without this baby,
nothing you can do, nothing you can buy or bake will make your Christmas more
than second rate. Why? Because this baby is God's Son. This baby, as Gabriel
instructed months before, has been named Jesus. The name means Savior. That's a
pretty big name to live up to, but He will. He will, through His life, His
death, His resurrection, save His people from their sins.
Just spend a moment and look at your Savior,
God's perfect Christmas present. Yes, I know He looks like a baby. He is. He was
born a human baby like each of us. But He is also the Son of God, a divine
present from the Lord, wrapped in human flesh. In this baby, God is keeping His
ancient promise to save us from ourselves, from sin, from death and devil. Paul
writes, “the mystery of godliness is great: God appeared in a body.” (1 Tim
3:16) Sages and scholars couldn’t have imagined it. Even to us who believe, who
have celebrated Christmas for generations, it remains a deep mystery, beyond our
reason’s ability to search out. We only know it because the angel announced it
and the holy writers affirmed it.
God appeared in a body. That means our God is not
aloof, hidden behind a thousand stars. He has come down to earth to become one
of us, in Christ Jesus. As one writer put it, “We are a visited planet!”
We share the same wonder of Gabriel, Mary, and
Paul as we once again meditate on Christ’s birth. To think that He who calls the
stars by name, once became a little baby to give us the perfect Christmas.
Jesus is God's perfect present who brings
forgiveness and life, and peace to all who believe on Him. How will that happen?
It will happen because He will take your place, and suffer the punishment that
you have coming. Look at Baby Jesus as He sleeps. See those little hands curling
and uncurling? Those hands, years from now, will be clenching in pain, pierced
with nails holding him to a cross. Those nails should have been yours; they are
His now. See His face, that beautiful baby face crowned with a tuft of hair;
that face will be beaten and spit upon and crowned with thorns. Those torments
should have been yours; but they are His now. Watch His chest rising and falling
in peaceful rhythm. The day will come when that heart will stop beating; when it
will be pierced with a spear. He will do that for you. Not because you've earned
it, not because you deserve it. No, He will die because God wants you to live.
He will rise again to show you that everything that Gabriel announced, that I
have preached, that the Bible has said, is true.
Even if there is crying and crabbing, broken toys
and broken hearts, poor weather and poor taste in presents this year, you can
still have a perfect Christmas. Even if your Christmas looks less like a Norman
Rockwell painting and more like your two-year-old’s wall scribblings, you can
still have a perfect Christmas. Look at the baby. Look at Jesus who will save
you from your sins. Look at Jesus, God's perfect present to you. And have a
perfect Christmas. Amen.