Christmas Eve (24 December 2006)

Luke 2:1-14

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron, Ohio

UNTO YOU A SAVIOR

“Peace on earth, good will to all” is the popular Christmas message, seen on the cards you get and heard on the radio. Even people who have only a hazy idea where those words come from – the Gospel text that we just heard – can think of them as summing up the spirit of the season. We do make an effort to be nice to other people at Christmas time if our nerves haven’t gotten too frazzled by all the preparations. And you’ve heard about that time when German and British soldiers came out of their trenches to celebrate the first Christmas Eve of World War I together. The last surviving British soldier who participated in that informal truce died just last month.

But we also know that those episodes of peace are temporary. In a couple of days the world will be back to business as usual. Is that because the Christmas message is an unrealistic hope - or have we perhaps not heard the message correctly?

When the angelic hosts in Luke’s gospel burst into that hymn of “Glory to God” and “peace on earth,” it was actually a kind of choral response to the message that the angel had announced to the shepherds: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.” It’s the news of a savior which is the heart of the Christmas message, news that glorifies God and brings the hope of peace. That is why the message is “good tidings of great joy for all people.” The birth of Jesus is good news because Jesus saves.

“Jesus saves!” – it’s one of those phrases that has become a piece of religious jargon. Driving along a two lane highway in some parts of the country you might see that sign erected by a pious soul – “Jesus saves!” Or the words can be written on a wall, a bit of theological graffiti. Some Christians may be encouraged to see such low budget evangelism. But I recall one of those signs to which some cynic had added his own touch: “Jesus saves green stamps.” He probably wasn’t suggesting that Jesus actually collected those “trading stamps” you used to get when you bought things at certain stores so that you could get enough to turn them in eventually to get a toaster or a set of socket wrenches. The point was just that “Jesus saves” was just a an empty religious slogan, like “Smile, God loves you.”

We’ve heard enough slogans in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Let’s have something a bit more substantial tonight.

The message of a savior is good news only if you realize that you need a savior.

As we look around our communities and our planet it’s pretty clear that we need something: War, terrorism, global warming, and problems with our educational and healthcare systems don’t take a Christmas vacation. We need help, and we hope for new ideas, new leadership, new technology or all of the above. But then we realize that we’ve tried those things before and the basic problems are still with us. They are rooted inside us, in the human heart. We need more than help. We need to be saved – and first of all, saved from ourselves.

The problem is, to use an old-fashioned religious word, sin. And sin is something deeper than the individual bad things we do or failures to do good things. It is a condition. Sin is alienation from God, and is the cause of the emptiness that we try to fill with power and wealth, the guilt that makes us fear exposure, the dread of an end to our lives. If we’re honest about our condition we have to confess that that is our situation.

And there is only one who can save us. Oh, a doctor might save you from a serious illness and a wise leader can save a nation from some crisis, but they can’t heal our basic sickness or rescue us from final judgment. Only one can do that. “I, I am the LORD,” says God to the prophet, “And besides me there is no savior.” Only God can save in the fullest way, in the way we need. If something has gone wrong with us as God’s creatures have gone wrong, then only our creator can set us right.

So when word comes that “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,” something more is being offered to us than a wise teacher or heroic leader. “It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them.” God has not sent us some assistant from celestial middle management but has come in person to free us from sin and put us on the path to the type of life meant for the daughters and sons of God. What God has given to us, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” is – God’s own self.

But it’s a baby! The story in Luke’s gospel is about the birth of a human child who, for all we can tell, looked like any other boy baby born to a Jewish peasant girl in an occupied territory on the outskirts of empire. That’s why we need the angels to tell us that there’s something remarkable about him. God has become one of us, identifying completely with our human condition.

God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin” is the way St. Paul put it. The Son of God became part of the human race with its sordid history - that’s the point of those boring genealogies in the Gospels. He lived a human life as it’s supposed to be lived, and died a kind of death that even criminals don’t deserve. That is how he saves us.

Some of you may be familiar with a television series that’s been on for the past couple of years called “Prison Break.” I’m not a regular watcher of the program and it’s gotten off into various plot developments that I’m not interested in now but the original idea is intriguing. A man is in prison under sentence of death. And to save him, his brother gets himself convicted of a crime so he can become a prisoner too and lead a break to get his brother out of the prison. It’s a break-in in order to break out.

“We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Much of the time we’re not even sure we want to be free. So the Son of God breaks into our human situation, into “the likeness of sinful flesh,” in order to save us. He identifies with us all the way to dying our death – and by his resurrection shows us the way to freedom. Leads us to freedom. Gives us the power to be free. God goes down to the depths of creation in order to save it

This is the “good tidings of great joy” which the angel announced to the shepherds - but notice that it wasn’t just for them. It was “for all people.” There is hope for peace on earth because there is first of all peace with God. Today that same message is to be proclaimed by the church. It can be a Christmas gift that you and I help to bring to the world.