December 7

December 7, 2008

God in the Manger
a sermon on John 1.1-18
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

There are three great mysteries in the Christian faith. One is, of course, the Trinity. We believe in One God who exists in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s not a math puzzle. It is just an honest attempt to explain the data. Another mystery is the atonement. We believe Jesus’ death on the cross saves us from our sin. How does that work exactly? Scripture actually offers several complimentary ways to think about it. The church has never settled on just one way.

The third mystery is the Incarnation. Incarnation means “in the flesh.” God came to us in the flesh. He became one of us. This is the mystery we celebrate at Christmas.

Mystery, by the way, does not mean “something that doesn’t make sense.” It is not a logical contradiction, like a square circle. Mystery in this case means something we know to be true, even though we do not fully understand it. Or, as Peter Kreeft puts it: “a mystery is not something we cannot understand at all, but something we cannot understand by our own reason, without God’s revelation. It is also something we cannot understand wholly, but something we can understand partly. Partial understanding is not total darkness. ‘We see through a glass, darkly.’”

Some people don’t like much mystery in their religion. “Just lay it out clean and simple, if you please.” I, on the other hand, get suspicious of religion without mystery. If I can understand everything about it, my gut tells me some human being made it up. If a God anything like the one described in the Bible really exists, and I believe he does, then we ought to expect to run into truths too big for us. I take comfort in finding the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith right at the center of God’s work. Jesus is the center of everything, and here is where we find the mystery.

Now, I probably ought to tell a joke or something to regain your interest. I am well aware that sermons about the mysteries of the faith are not popular. Theological words of more than three syllables are like a snooze button for the wandering mind. “What, he’s still talking about that? OK brain, let’s run through last night’s game one more time.” This is sad, but true. More blame rests with the preacher than the congregation. Sermons about the mysteries of the faith tend to be boring because they are too dry, academic, and impractical. They are too hard to understand. I’ll try to do better if you try to pay attention.

This sermon aims to celebrate this wonderful, beautiful, amazing thing God has done. “The Word became flesh!” Even veterans of thousands of sermons ought to marvel at that. It’s worth a holiday! Almighty God became one of us. The infinite became finite. The eternal entered time. And he did it out of love for you and me. That’s what this sermon is about. The main idea is easy to understand and easy to remember—just four little words. Remember these and you will go a long way toward understanding God and the Christian faith. Here it is—the main idea of this sermon—write it down: Jesus is one person.

How’s that for cutting edge theology? Only the most brilliant observations make it into my sermons. Jesus is one person. That is either the simplest of Preschool counting exercises or the deepest of theological mysteries. It is important to say it and believe it because people are always trying to chop Jesus into two. We Christians believe that Jesus is fully human—a human being just like you or me, but without sin. And we believe he is fully divine. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He is both these things. He has two natures: a divine nature and a human nature. And, he is one person. He is not two people. He is not one person kind of inside anther. He is one person, divine and human. That’s the mystery of the Incarnation. People, however, are always trying to chop Jesus into two. Some because of mental laziness, some for good but misguided reasons.

I’ll give you an example. When people talk about “the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith” as if these were two separate people, I cringe. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. Some people think Jesus was a man who lived a long time ago, and we really can’t know much about him, because for some reason they think the gospels are not very trustworthy (probably because they contain miracles). So Jesus is not much more than an interesting historical footnote while the Christ of faith, in contrast, is very important. The Christ of faith is the divine person we meet in the church’s creeds and confessions. We can believe in him, even if we don’t buy much that the gospels say about that man Jesus from Nazareth. That’s what I have been told anyway. I think it is an insidious error.

For two reasons. First, because it robs the gospel of meaning. Proponents of this view have told me they don’t believe Jesus actually rose bodily from the dead, but his Spirit lived on in the faith of his disciples. I wonder, what’s the point? If Jesus was not raised, then you have a God who apparently can’t do anything meaningful in this world, so why bother? Second, if you chop Jesus in half and keep the Christ of faith while dismissing the Jesus of history, you can turn your new Messiah into anything you want him to be. The real Jesus, the Jesus we meet in the gospels, has an annoying way of reminding us of uncomfortable truths. He calls us to a hard road of sacrifice. You can’t bend the real Jesus to match your desires. He is who he is, and he aims to bend you! If, however, you ignore this Jesus in favor of a supposed Christ of faith who is different, then you can make him whatever you want him to be. He is, after all, the product of the church’s pious imagination.

The point of all this is a warning: Take Jesus as he is or don’t take him at all. If you want to be a Christian, believe the truths Christianity teaches. Don’t mix and match and water down and change things to suit your tastes. Jesus doesn’t give you that choice. Take him or leave him, but don’t try to make him something he is not.

I was having breakfast with a friend many years ago, and we were discussing a passage of scripture we were both preaching on. He jumped at something I said and told me, “You’ve got to remember the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.” That started a debate, and before it was over I called him a Nestorian heretic.

Nestorius was a powerful bishop in the fourth century who tried to chop Jesus into two. He said you had to be careful not to get the divine mixed up with the human. When you read the gospels and it says Jesus performed miracles, that was the divine part. When you read that Jesus was tired, that was the human part. Some people read the gospels that way today. Not consciously the way Nestorius did, but just because they never really thought about it.

Nestorius had what he thought was a good reason teaching this way. He believed that God could not suffer. God is God, after all. What sense does it make for God to be thirsty? This is a problem many ancient theologians stumbled over because they started with Greek philosophy instead of scripture. God is perfect, right. Well, if something is perfect, it cannot change. If it did change, then either it would cease to be perfect, or it wasn’t already perfect before the change. Logically that makes sense, but it cannot be true of God. God is perfect, but his perfection is not a cage that limits his freedom. In the Bible, God does things, chief among them he takes on flesh and dies on a cross.

Nestorius thought he was honoring God. He thought he was protecting God, as if God is this beautiful white suit you don’t dare wear because you might get it dirty. That’s what Nestorius was trying to do, keep God clean. Keep God out of the mud and muck and human existence. He meant well, but he could not have been more wrong. God didn’t want to stay out of the muck. God said, “I don’t mind being thirsty, hungry, and tired. I don’t mind humiliation, suffering, and death. This is what I want to do because I love these people I have created. The only way I can redeem them is to become one of them. I’m going to do that.”

While Nestorius was trying to keep Jesus’ divinity as far away as possible from his humanity, his chief opponent was reveling in the paradox of the Word made flesh. Cyril of Alexandria stood against the errors of Nestorius and for orthodox Christian faith. He started from a basic fact: Jesus Christ is one person. And he found this very exciting, because it means Jesus shows us who God really is. Cyril loved to talk about the paradox of the Incarnation. The voice of a man called Lazarus from his grave. Can a mere man do that? Of course, because Jesus was a man and he did it. He loved to talk about God being laid in a manger. To Nestorius, this was crazy talk. You can’t lay God in a manger. But Cyril said, Jesus is God, and he was laid in a manger.

Cyril didn’t mind if God got a little dirty. God can take care of himself, and if it pleased God to become a human being, we ought to celebrate that, because it means salvation for us. Did God get thirsty? Halleluiah, he did! Did God really come among us as a tiny baby, born not in a palace, but in a barn? Praise God, he did! Did God suffer and die on the cross for me? Thanks be to God, he did!

How can these things be? Well, that’s the mystery. But it’s also the truth. And it is a truth that makes all the difference.

If Jesus is not one person, then why celebrate Christmas? A baby was born, a great man, an inspired teacher, what else? Say what you want to about Jesus, if he is not one person—divine and human—then whatever it was God gave us at his birth, it was not God himself. It was at most a vehicle or conduit for God. If you separate Jesus into two people, you take God right out of Christmas. But what happens when you see the truth? Jesus is one person. That makes all the difference! What did God give us at Christmas? He gave us himself! He came—in person! The Word became flesh, so we can bow at the manger with the shepherds and say, “My Lord and my God!” Because that’s who Jesus is.

And if this is the gift God gave us, his very self, then how much does he love us! He could have kept his distance. He could have stayed clean. But no. He loved you too much. So he came down. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Does his glory diminish because he humbled himself and took the form of a servant and was born to a poor family in a stable? No! Is he less beautiful because he allowed himself to be humiliated and crucified? No! He is more glorious and more beautiful. God can do these amazing things, even though he is Almighty God, and through them he saves us from sin and death. Through them he makes all things new. What kind of God is this anyway, who can do this, who would do this? A greater God than any dreamed of by the philosophers! As I said, any god who fits comfortably within your mind is probably a human invention, a mere idol. But the True God, the Living God—how wonderful he is! He is a God you can respect, worship, fear, and love—all at the same time. You can give yourself to him, because he has given himself to you.

“No one has ever seen God,” our scripture reading states, “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Jesus shows us God because he is God. And he shows God to us because he is one of us. He is fully divine and fully human—these two natures—and he is one person. This is a great mystery. You cannot fully understand it, but you can know it is true. And, because you know it is true, you can celebrate it. We call this celebration Christmas. God stooped down into the mud and muck of human existence, ready to suffer in order to save us. God gave himself to us. Christmas celebrates the mystery of the Incarnation. For on that holy night, Almighty God, the Creator of everything, was wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in a manger. Amen.

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