Bible Text: Luke 2:22-40 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Christmas 2020 | It is Christmastime, beloved. Let us be glad. Our Advent prayers have been heard. Our Lord has stirred up his power and come to save us. “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” How much nearer to God could we be than to be his sons through his Son? How much nearer to us could Christ be than to be our brother in the flesh?
As we continue to dwell on the Incarnation of our Lord, let us ponder today, dear saints: who would trade paradise for a life of suffering? Who would depart the courts of God and go forth into a wild and desolate world? Who would exchange blessing for curse, honor for shame, life for death?
Well, we did. In our forefather Adam we all made that devastating trade. The devil came calling and we listened to his slick words and lost paradise. We have inherited the original sin of the original man, and now commit our own sins that are not original at all. The sinful nature is predictable, but we are not thereby justified and sin is not thus excused. The fact is, we became less than we were, and we could not restore ourselves to our former glory. We threw ourselves into a pit, but we could not throw ourselves back up and out.
I suppose it is a somber question – who would trade paradise for a life of suffering? – and it may seem to put a damper on our Christmas merriment when we consider that’s exactly what we’ve done. We exchanged life for death. But our hearts gladden at the good news of great joy that we’re not the only answer to the question. Who would trade paradise for a life of suffering? Who would depart the courts of God and go forth into a wild and desolate world? Who would exchange blessing for curse, honor for shame, life for death? The Son of God would, for our salvation, to him be praise.
Now Christ’s advent was not like our expulsion from paradise. We departed because of our sin, but he departed because of his mercy, and knew nothing of sin, save for the fact that he would bear our sin. We had to dwell in a corrupted world, but it wouldn’t be right to say that the Son of God had to come dwell in the corrupted world. He redeemed us because of his love for us, not because of some external compulsion. And salvation is all the sweeter when we hear that the Son of God came willingly.
And see how low he has made himself! He has joined a human nature to his divine nature. Certainly the divine nature suffered no loss or change from this union. But when we consider the Son of God according to his whole person rather than according to his individual natures, we see that the Son of God willingly suffered great loss and underwent remarkable change. He whom heaven and earth cannot contain was held in the arms of Mary. He who nourishes all mankind required nourishment from his mother’s breast. He who sang the psalms through David and composed the most pleasant poetry took to himself the clumsy and incoherent tongue of an infant.
This lowliness of Christ comes into stark relief at the end of the Gospel reading, “And the child grew and became strong, becoming filled with wisdom.” What humiliation is this! The Son of God is the power of God, the almighty Word through whom the creation came into being and was formed. The Son of God spread out the heavens and gathered the seas, formed mountains and scooped out valleys and carved caves in solid rock. And now he must become strong. At birth, Jesus could not roll himself over, sit himself up, or even lift his own head. Mary and Joseph carried him, and then offered him their fingers so he could learn to walk, and picked him up when he fell.
And he was “becoming filled with wisdom,” he who is the wisdom of God. He who had instructed Mary and Joseph through his Scriptures now required their instruction. He who spoke the Law at Mount Sinai had to learn the Ten Commandments. He through whom all prayer is made to God had to learn how to pray. He to whom all the sacrifices pointed had to learn how to worship in the temple.
In Psalm 8 David stands in awe of the Lord’s works, and he wonders in advance at the humility of Christ in his Incarnation: “you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.” And Paul writes similarly in Philippians 2, “though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he made himself nothing,” or another way of putting it, “he emptied himself.”
Now we must rightly grasp in what sense Christ made himself nothing, or emptied himself. If we misunderstand, we might wrongly think that the Son of God was no longer God, or that he had been stripped of his divine power and no longer possessed it. But we can gain a proper understanding in the Garden of Gethsemane.
When the crowd came to arrest Jesus, Peter drew his sword and cut off a man’s ear. And, as we hear in Matthew 26, Jesus said, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” Jesus clearly still has the power and authority to command the heavenly armies. He is still God and still possesses his divine power. But he chooses not to use it, and that’s what it means that he emptied himself. He hid his glory and chose to be lowly. And why does he not summon the angel warriors? He could, but as he says, “But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?”
It was the Father’s will that his Son be arrested and killed, and so Jesus made himself nothing. He made himself as helpless as Adam, and, like him, left the garden. Jesus was dragged around Jerusalem, suffering mocking and blows. The Son of God had cheeks that could be struck and hands that could be tied and a face that could be spit on. He had a shoulder to bear a cross, a body to be crucified, blood to shed. The angel armies watched their commander dying in battle. They watched him choosing to be weak to the end. And mankind with them saw the one from whom we have life and breath breathe his last and lay down his life. Jesus chose to be lowly. He traded paradise for a life of suffering. He departed the courts of God. He exchanged blessing for curse, honor for shame, life for death. Why? Because he loves you and wanted to redeem you, forgive your sins, restore you to the former glory of paradise, and lift you out of the pit.
If Christ thus lowered himself to our depths and joined us in our misery, then what cause have we of despair? If your iniquities go over your head, Christ has plunged into that depth and borne your sins while remaining sinless, and to this day he draws you up and forgives your sins. If the world seems overwhelming, Jesus has not remained aloof, up in the heavens, but has descended to this world and come to your side and raised you up with himself above the fray. The world did not overwhelm Jesus in his lowliness. Rather, he says in John 16, “I have overcome the world.” There is no depth to which Christ has not sunk to rescue us.
And this combats in us a strange sort of pride. We usually think of pride as being stuck up and haughty and acting better than everyone else. But there’s a different kind of pride that appears very weak and humble. It’s the pride that says, “No one has ever committed sins as bad as I have. I’m the worst person ever. I know Christ came to forgive sinners, but I’m a special case.” Or, “No one has ever had it as rough in the world as I do. Everything is against me.” This is pride. It is rank arrogance, because it claims that we are somehow beyond the reach of Christ, as if we could sink so low into the earth that he loses the ability to bring us up. No. Jesus in his almighty power has seen the highest heights and the deepest depths. And so we must confess with the psalmist in Psalm 139, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”
So when the devil tempts and says, “You’re the worst; you’re beyond cure,” you say, “No, Jesus has stooped to my depths and given his life to redeem me and washed me with his blood in Holy Baptism and called me his own. My sins are forgiven. I don’t want to be proud. I’m content believing Jesus is greater than I am.” And when the devil says, “Wow, you’ve got it bad; this world has really trampled you down, down into darkness that not even the Son of God can penetrate,” you say, “No, Jesus has known darker darkness than I’ll ever know. He was forsaken on the cross and bore the entire wrath of God. The very sun did not shine on him in that hour. And he suffered all that to save me. No depth is too great for him. He showed that when he as God joined me in human flesh as a man. If he stoops that low, then I am always within his reach.”
In the coming weeks during the season of Epiphany we will see that the lowly child Jesus is indeed God. We will see Magi come and worship him, we will hear the Father’s voice identifying Jesus as his beloved Son. And we will see Jesus himself change water into wine. There are many proofs that Jesus is great. And we need those proofs, because as Jesus appears in today’s reading, so he appeared throughout his earthly ministry, and so he appears to us now. He appears to us lowly: lowly in the Word, lowly in the water of Baptism, lowly in the Supper of his body and blood.
In the coming weeks we will see this greatness of Jesus, and we must bear it in mind this week also, otherwise his lowliness would mean nothing. But this week our great joy is that our Lord and Savior pursued us on our downward path. When we had sunk low because of our sin, he lowered himself after us because of his mercy in order to save us. Glory be to him, who for a little while was made lower than the angels and is now crowned with glory and honor. Amen.