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The incarnation of God requires our response. Just as the doctrine of the Trinity shapes our responsibilities and relationships, so also the enfleshing of the second Person of the Trinity defines glory and drives humility. God gives us much grace every twelve months as He brings around the opportunity to sing of our Savior’s birth. As we make much of Christ, God makes us more like Christ.

I’ll admit that I’m not much for holiday sermons. Mother’s Day and Memorial Day are fine but warrant mentions, not entire messages. Easter is different because it always falls on a Sunday, it is the reason why we meet every first day of the week in the first place. Christ’s resurrection created an army of immortal worshippers who cannot be defeated by sin or the ancient serpent.

Even when Christmas has fallen on a Sunday in the past (most recently 2011, and not again until 2016), it has seemed wise to me not to get “swept up” in the season. I mean, look how many people abuse and misuse their Christmas break. Better to keep our heads down and eyes closed, to act like we’re above the silliness and selfishness.

Of course, if God Himself had remained above the silliness and selfishness and sinfulness of men, then we wouldn’t have a Savior. We ought to celebrate His coming somehow and, though the Lord hasn’t ordered a Christmas sermon, He has ordained one for us today.

The Gospel of John depends on Christmas. True, John doesn’t retell the nativity story like Matthew and Luke, but he doesn’t even make it to Grandma’s house before the meat falls off the plate. The eternal was-God-and-was-with-God Word got a body (John 1:1, 14). The one who made all things (John 1:3) made Himself into a human baby. A few centuries later Athanasius marveled that Jesus held the universe together (Colossians 1:17) from His office in the womb of Mary.

Maybe the key to Jesus’ authority, at least from John’s perspective, is that He was sent by the Father. While we don’t have the minutes from their planning meetings, we know that the Trinity did not argue about how Jesus would enter the world. Their mind was made up long before the prophecies in the Old Testament. Yet it still seems like it would have been awkward when the day came for the Son to finally suit up. How many times had He and the Father talked about it? We know the Father wanted everything to be “just right” because He loved the world; that’s why He gave His Son for them. The Father must love Christmas.

The Spirit must love December, too. The inception of the incarnation idea was just as much His, and the conception in Mary’s uterus as well as the inspiration of the Bible foretellers and forth-tellers are His explicit work. It’s as if the Holy Spirit can’t get enough of telling the Son’s story: “Did you see that He was breastfed, burped, and put to bed? Then we had an angel squadron sing about it to some shepherds.” The Spirit makes a big deal about the Son’s birth because His birth is part of His glory.

So even though Christmas in our culture is broken in so many ways, how can a proper understanding of the Savior’s birth help us? How should we respond as Christians during this season?

Christmas Defines Glory

It’s at this point that the Spirit begins to fix our broken Christmas. Remember the well known announcement of the angels to the shepherds:

suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14)

The phrase “in the highest” contrasts God in heaven with peace on earth, but location isn’t as important as intensification. God deserves greatest props. Why? Because God sent God and the Lord of glory was born. Bethlehem was the first stage of His incarnational ministry.

In John 8 Jesus told men how they would recognize that He’d been sent by His heavenly Father; “he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him” (John 8:26). They’d grasp His divine nature when He was lifted up (see the entire paragraph, John 8:21-30).

“When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” (John 8:28–29, ESV)

The nature of sacrifice comes from the nature of God. Jesus’ sacrifice was divine; He gave Himself under divine authority and for divine pleasure. When Jesus talked about loving sacrifice, when He picked up the towel to wash His disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17), when He said a buried seed would grow into quite a harvest (John 12:23-26), He’d already been stooping the whole time. The stooping started under a star.

Jesus embodied glory. In other words, disembodied glory isn’t Christian, and a glorious Christmas for Christians has to get out of the idyllic Kinkade canvas and into the kitchen sink with some dish soap on the hands. It was part of His glory to take on skin, not to wish He was out of it.

How can so many Christians think that the best way to honor Jesus’ coming into the world is to act like we’re too important to be bothered by it? Do lots of people worship the gods of lots of stuff? Yes. But the true God joined Himself to to materialness, let alone promising good earthly blessings. Glory isn’t leaving the body, it’s living in one well. Our bodies are to be living sacrifices. Jesus’ was.

I’m not saying that it’s not hard. The noise is not always harmonious, let alone intelligible. The smells may be pleasant, and other times they are sickening. The company isn’t always who you’d choose if you could choose your family. But again, Christmas is the most anti heaven-as-a-monastery statement ever. Jesus came, He nursed, He cooed, He bled. It was different glory than He had before He came, but still glory critical for our redemption.

Christmas Drives Humility

Not only does the incarnation shape our understanding of glory, it also raises the standard for humility. Brian Regan has a bit about his social fantasy where he was one of the astronauts that walked on the moon. That story beats every other story at a dinner party. But if you were at a table and the object of the discussion was to tell how humble you were, no one beats Jesus’ story. It’s part of the reason that early church had so many difficulties explaining the nature of Jesus (the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed are two quick examples). If He really was God, He wouldn’t have done that. No way God would stoop so low.

Paul not only doesn’t run from this reality, He commends this mindset to the Philippians.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5–11, ESV)

We are to approach one another with the same thinking that Christ had on bodily entry. What we know about His mom (an unwed teenager), His first room (a barn or cave), His first clothes, was nothing impressive. In fact, most of it was contemptible. In a lot of ways, it got worse from there. Obscurity is better than informed objection. Being a helpless baby is better than being a full grown, adult martyr.

This is the Lord and Master serving. The Passover footwashing was nothing compared to the humility of His birth.

Christmas Demands Joy

What shall we then do? Obviously we ought to pursue glory through humility; “Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface, Stamp Thine image in it’s place.” And at Christmas, for Christians, our humility should sound like rejoicing. “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the new-born King! Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies.”

The real reason I spent so many Christmases not being glad is because I was too serious to rejoice, too self serious that is. Chesterton once talked about the heavy burden of pride, how laughter is truly light.

[P]ride cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness…solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. (Orthodoxy, 118)

When we truly know Christ we will be humbled and that will come out in believing laughter. Not only should we rejoice, but we should rejoice “out there,” rejoice in the world and expect that they will ask us to keep it down. They will want our happy holidays to be a little less happy and a lot less holy. They will stomach our “spiritual” celebrations as long as they are “spiritual.”

We started to read Beowulf this past week in Omnibus. During our discussion on Thursday Jonathan pointed out a similarity between Grendel—the man-eating monster of mead-hall, and the Grinch who stole Christmas. Both meanies couldn’t handle the party.

The poet of Beowulf put it:

Now a demon demented, in darkness a prowler,
Held a hard grudge when he heard with great pain
The great and good with glory were feasting.
The scop(1) sang their songs, and the strings were well played,
The harp filled the hall, a herald of joy.
So skilled in his singing, he sang the creation,
The Almighty had ordered the earth to be fashioned,
Shining, the single plain surrounded with waters.
He summoned the splendor of sun and of moon,
Lifting as lamps their lights for the earthwaru(2).
He filled all the fields with fruit for the tasting,
He gave us such greenery, good leaves and branches,
And made man and beast that all move in His quickening.
(1) a court singer/poet
(2) a back coinage from helwaru, meaning an inhabitant of Hell.
(Translated by Doug Wilson)

Grendel’s madness wasn’t aimed at Christmas specifically, but the point fits.

Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss), in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas had the Grinch looking down at Who-ville on the night before Christmas, :

If there is one thing I hate, it’s the noise, noise, noise!

These are consistent with the worldview of John. The world hates true love and true joy. It reminds them what they don’t have.

Conclusion

Christmas is awful. The “most wonderful time of the year” does not explain the increase in suicides and hangovers. Not just for those who are alone, but for those who are heart-dead. Sure, some people may only come to church on Christmas and Easter, but that’s a sign that God’s Spirit hasn’t let them go entirely. Something here can fix them, even if they don’t know exactly what it is. It’s Christ.

If Christmas is an idol, Christmas will be miserable. If Christ is Lord of it, Christmas will be merry.

If Christ is Lord everything can be used for His glory: food, gifts, decorations, family. If He is not served as Lord, commercialism nor asceticism can fill the heart. A full heart only comes from Christ no matter the season.

Good Christian men, rejoice! The Spirit convicts the world by our glad, loving sacrifices. The Spirit draws the world by our glad surrender and singing.