The sermon for December 29th was based on Luke 2:33-40.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We’re only a few days into the Christmas season but a lot of our neighbors are finished already. They’ve sped through their feasts and put away their dishes. They’re about to tear down their trees and dig out their dancing shoes. For them Christmas is over and now it’s time for the New Year. For us though there is a bit of a lull, a moment of awkward calm as if the wind driving the great nave of universal Christendom had suddenly died down and left it floating in the water with sagging sails. I want to take this moment of unaccustomed quiet to talk about the way we experience Christmas. I want us to consider Christmas from Mary and Joseph’s point of view.

I believe that Christmas should be a catalyst for beauty. It should move us to eat well and to celebrate heartily. It should impel us toward both elegance and sincerity. Christmas should also, and ever so much more so, be about the truth. Above all else, our celebrations should be honest.

I think we forget that as we rush around trying to create Norman Rockwell holidays. We get so caught up with the idea that we need to make Christmas as close to perfect as we can that we never stop to think about who’s telling us what the perfect Christmas should be like. Should it involve a trip to Mexico, without the kids? Should it be one that cost $1,000 of dollars? Should we try to recreate scenes from Dickens or Courier & Ives? Where ever we’re getting our ideas about the perfect Christmas, they sure aren’t coming from the Bible, and it shows.

According to the Bible, the perfect Christmas would be no Christmas at all. Ideally, Christ shouldn’t have had to be born as a man in the first place. There should have been no need to save us from sins we shouldn’t have ever committed. But let’s not even go there. Let’s just stick the one Christmas that the Bible does record for us, the first one. How perfect do you think it was for the people involved? What was it like for the shepherds who, while minding their own business, were scared out of their wits by the heavenly host? How was it for the Magi, lured out of their cozy observatories and onto the long road to the middle of nowhere by the Christmas Star? How was it for Joseph, embarrassed by his inability to provide a proper room for his expectant wife? How was it for Mary? What would it be like to have to lay even your own baby, let alone the only-begotten Son of God, in a hay trough; to have to wrap Him in rags and know for absolute certain that you could never care for Him as well as He deserved, no matter how determined you were? And how would it be to know that He would never belong to you in the way that other children belonged to other mothers, to say nothing of poor Joseph and his uniquely distant relationship with the boy? How would it be to be constantly reminded that you are not as important as your child? What would it be like to have people forever coming around and making grim prophesies about your baby; prophesies that include both great promise and terrible suffering? Simeon says to Mary: Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. No visions of sugar plums there for sure! It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Mary and Joseph themselves might not have preferred a Norman Rockwell Christmas to the one they spent in Bethlehem.

Our lives in this world, even at their best and most brilliant, are mixtures of joy and sorrow and there is no way that we can ever eliminate all the pain. There can be no painless Christmas, no painless Easter, no painless birthday or anniversary or wedding. The blesses Virgin, even while holding the newborn Savior was at least a little anxious. St. Luke says that the people of Bethlehem marveled at what the shepherds told them about Jesus but that Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Her anxiety and Jesus’ birth would become outright anguish at His crucifixion. There are two great Latin songs about Mary’s joy and suffering.

The Stabat Mater spechiosa describes Mary at the Manger. It begins this way: The beautiful Mother stood joyously at the crib in which her child lay. Through her exultant soul, dancing with joy, went a song of rejoicing. A little while later in the same song we hear this: For the sins of His people, amidst beasts of burden, she saw Jesus subjected to the cold. She saw her sweet offspring, that she adored, crying swathed in cheap bandages (wili diwersorio). The more famous and the more profound of the two songs is the Stabat Mater dolorosa. This one describes Mary at the foot of the cross. Stabat Mater dolorosa juxta cruchem lacrimosa dum pen-debat Filius. Cuius anim-am gementem contri-statem et dolentem per-transiwit gladius. (At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last. Through her soul, of joy bereaved, bowed with anguish, deeply grieved, now...at length...the sword hath passed.) That’s the sword of which Simeon spoke in his prophecy, which St. Luke pointedly calls a blessing. The Mater spechiosa and the Mater dolorosa are ever the same, as are we.

Where is all this going, here. Telling people to rejoice, demanding that their hearts be glad and sing is the business of the Law. The Law of God demands that we exult in His glory, that we burst forth in delight with all of His works and ways. The Law demands this glad response or else. There is a place for this particular bit of the Law. We need to be admonished for our failures to be glad with the gifts of God. But it is one of the sickest tricks of the devil to make us feel bad for feeling bad. And there are a lot of self-righteous people willing to help him to it do us.

For those of us who have some grief mixed in with our joy and know it and wish that it weren’t so, our Lord has something else to say. He doesn’t say, get happy right now you emotional weaklings! Instead, St. John (11:35) says simply this. Jesus wept. Sadness cannot always be wrong, cannot always be sinful, not if Jesus Himself is at least sometimes sorrowful. And with His tears He assures us that there will always be grief in this world even as He told His Disciples that there would always be poor people.

Some grief, in this world, is appropriate and we needn’t feel guilty about such sorrow, even when it mingles with our joys. Other griefs are unrighteous and for these we need to repent. But here there is Good Good News. Christ has forgiven us even for the tears we shouldn’t have shed. For whatever part of his mother’s anxiety in Bethlehem was unbecoming, for whatever part of her anguish at the cross was selfish, for whatever misery you have created for yourselves and for whatever tears I have wasted, our Lord has paid the price. We are forgiven for these failures and for every other sin we’ll ever commit. He has died in our stead and we will live because of it.

You Christmas celebrations may already be waning, or maybe this is one of those years where they never really caught on to begin with. Whatever the case, the News remains Good. You are baptized. You are bound to Jesus Christ in both body and soul. Your feelings, whether joyful or sorrowful have nothing whatsoever to do with your salvation. They loom large in your life and in your eyes but they matter not at all before the judgment seat of God. Neither do they indicate very much. The Blessed Virgin is surely in heaven despite her great and long sorrow. Your Baptism is a shining shield against anyone who questions your salvation simply because you don’t seem joyful enough. May all such accusations rebound against the one who makes them!

The Lord’s Supper forgives your sins and strengthens your faith regardless of how giddy or how glum you feel as your receive it. It remains the very Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for you no matter what. You feelings have no impact upon it whatsoever. You may get used to taking it every Sunday or even every day but you can never get so used to it that it will stop being what it is, God’s specially chosen means of grace. Weep at the rail or dance back to your pew, it is the truth that sets you free, not your feelings, never, ever, ever your feelings.

Jesus went ahead with His saving work even though He knew from all eternity that it would cause His mother pain. Some pain simply cannot be avoided. Jesus experienced that Himself in the garden, didn’t He? The Gospel doesn’t promise to erase pain and suffering, in fact, it brings its own special kind of temporal misery, sometimes ending in martyrdom. But the Gospel does promise to make us triumphant over our pain. This is exactly what St. Paul tells the Romans. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. What matters in both our joy and our sorrow is our connection to Christ, the Faith that has been give to us. For the faithful both grief and joy are sanctified.

This whole idea of joy mingled with sadness is encapsulated in the words Simeon says right before our text begins. They are the words of the Nunc Dimitis, which we sing every time we gather for the Lord’s Supper. Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel. There is unmistakable joy in these words, in this Christian canticle, and yet it remains his death song. He is singing of his own death which can never be a purely joyful thing. What there is for Simeon and for all such believers, is peace.

As you sit here this morning you may feel nothing more that the merest twinge of regret about some part of your Christmas celebrations so far, or the faintest flicker of sadness about having to eventually take down the tree, or you may not even feel that. But that hasn’t always been true nor will it always be. When grief comes to you I want you to know peace. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008