[Above: Ecce Homo, Antonio Ceseri, c. 1880]
Year B, Holy Name, Galatians 4:4-7
January 1, 2012
UNEDITED
As we begin the New Year, we do well to reflect once again on the old, old story, the Good News of Great Joy so new and strange and wonderful to the shepherds in Luke’s Gospel, news delivered by the angel of the Lord that set these shepherds on fire; the Christmas news that sent these otherwise hardened men running through the dark of night to find a sweet baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger, and to tell all who would listen; News so Good and so true and so important that it still lights hearts on fire today, no matter how many times we’ve heard it.
The Christmas story has just as much power today because it’s not just a sweet story of God giving the world a gift that we pull out and dust off at Christmas time. It is a story of seismic truth that changes everything about our lives every day of the year! Now, we’re leaving the holidays behind; within a couple of days most of us will return to work and school and our daily routines. And let’s be honest: many of us have Alabama’s national championship game looming at the very front of our minds. With all of that rushing into our lives, it’s easy to leave Christmas behind. But if we, like the shepherds, dare to approach the swaddled baby in the hay, what exactly will we find? And will it truly make a difference in our lives the rest of the year? For that matter, will it make a difference in us for eternity?
St. Paul tells us in our passage from Galatians (and this is where we’ll spend most of our time this morning) that “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as sons.”
Now that sounds sort of academic and churchy, and not like a typically good way to describe a baby. A year or so ago, lots of people asked about our newborn son, Luke. If I’d said, ‘well he was born of a woman, and born under the law’ you’d have ushered your own children quickly out of my presence.
But it’s actually a very valuable description in helping us to understand the nature and the mission of the baby the shepherds found.
God sent forth his Son – the Son, Jesus, was with the Father in the beginning, and was sent to us in this way by the Father. He didn’t become the Son of God after being born to Mary. The preexistent Son of God, who was himself fully God, was sent by the Father, to us, on a mission.
And yet, he didn’t just appear; he was born of a woman, the Virgin Mary. There’s no reason to believe that it was anything than a regular, natural childbirth, in all its painful messiness. He grew up, had to learn to walk and talk, and he bled when he skinned his knee.
This baby – He was fully God, but he was also fully human. Now that’s probably more than the shepherds could have comprehended that night, but it’s very important – that he was both fully God, and fully human. And we’ll get to why that’s important in a minute.
But first let’s think about why the Father sent the Son. Paul says Jesus was ‘born under the law, to redeem those under the law’. In ancient times, when one country’s army fought another country’s army, those soldiers on the losing side who hadn’t been killed were generally captured by the victors and taken in as slaves. And so as a result of a war much larger than themselves, they found themselves bound under the rule of a powerful enemy. They belonged in their own country, alongside their brothers and sisters, where they were loved and valued, but on their own they were powerless to escape their imprisonment. But occasionally the victors would send word to the homeland of their captives with the news that they would release the prisoner for some considerable price; and once that price had been paid, the slave was bought back, declared to be free, and restored to his true home. That economic process was called ‘redemption’ and the one who paid the price was the ‘redeemer’.
Paul is saying that Jesus came for the purpose of paying the price to set the captives free, to buy back those under the law. Now you might ask, “are we really captives to the law of God? Isn’t that a little extreme? Maybe a little bit Old Testament?” But Paul often uses language of imprisonment to describe our relationship to the law of God. Now, The law of God is good; it reveals and expresses the holiness of God’s character. But it also exposes our inability to match that holiness. The law demands that we love the Lord with every ounce of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that we love our neighbor, at least as much as we love ourselves; yet the law is itself powerless to enable us to do the things it demands. In our honest moments we know that deep down, intuitive restlessness under the pressure-cooker of obedience, and the sly, unspoken, knee-jerk thrill of not loving God or our neighbor. And so we, all of humanity, stand condemned by the goodness of God’s law, powerless to escape our imprisonment to our own self-serving devices.
Now remember I said it was important that Jesus was fully God and fully man. Fully God, fully human, Jesus was born under the same demands of the law for the purpose of redeeming us, rescuing us, from the law’s condemnation. He loved the Father perfectly; He loved others selflessly. And this qualified him to bear the full curse and condemnation of the law, on our behalf, with His death on the Cross. His life was the price of our redemption, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Only in being fully God was he a sufficient sacrifice to atone for the world’s sin; only in being fully man could he fully redeem human life. Only in being both could Jesus span the un-spanable the gap between God and humanity, and offer each of us the robe of his own righteousness to wear as our own.
And yet, amazingly, Paul doesn’t stop there. Redemption isn’t the point, it’s just the means to the point. Jesus was born under the law to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. An adopted child isn’t second class, or a child on probation, but has legally and permanently been given a change of status. The child who formerly had no right or relationship to the family whatsoever, now has full membership in the family and is heir to the parents’ estate. God sent his Son to redeem us so that we could be his children and He would be our Father in Heaven! That’s the point! He loves us and rescues us in his Son, to make us sons and daughters.
Now that’s more than the shepherds could have known as they gazed upon the baby in the manger, but they knew there was a wonderment about this child, and they knew what the angels had told them, that this child would be the Savior; in fact his very name, Jesus, means ‘God saves’; that in some way this child would be the eternal solution to their own sinfulness before a holy God.
That won’t change for you and me as the holiday decorations go back in the box for another year, as we return to the daily routines. Behold is born to you a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord, sent by God, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Amen.
