ADVENT 4, B – December 18, 2011

SCRIPTURES – Psalm 19; 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Last Thursday evening I was really down. Just before dinner I had read a story in the paper of a man who had been doing things that were so utterly wicked and evil that they were inconceivable to me. I won’t even mention them here. What was particularly troubling was that the man was not some vicious criminal or gang member but a highly trained professional who worked in an honorable profession. He had corrupted his work, however, and used his skills to do things which are utterly evil and make a lot of money in the process. It was depressing to read, and it made me wonder: How bad can our society get? How evil can things become? When will God have enough with this world? 

At 8:00 I flipped the TV on – not always a wise thing to do, by the way, if you are discouraged by the state of our society. Lo and behold, what was just coming on? A Charlie Brown Christmas. How wonderful it was to see and hear the Peanuts gang again: Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy and Schroeder and Pig-Pen, and Snoopy, my favorite character. Most wonderful of all was the climax of the show, when Linus lifted Charlie Brown from his Christmas-time blues by saying to him, “I know what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” and then reciting from Luke 2 the account of the birth of Jesus. Moved by this good news, the children decorated Charlie Brown’s pitiful little Christmas Tree with ornaments from Snoopy’s dog house, and then they all gathered around the tree and sang, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” I was singing with them. 

How children can lift our spirits! It will be wonderful to hear our children singing God’s praises in the 2^nd Service today. But, most wonderful of all is to hear again the joyous news the angel Gabriel brought to Mary: “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” Yes, we rejoice to hear of His birth. As Linus rightly says, the birth of Jesus is what Christmas is all about! But we need also to hear of and rejoice in His miraculous conception of a virgin and His nine months of growing and residing in her womb. For, we came forth from the womb already sinful and broken, filled with selfish desires and inclinations to all kinds of evil. In our conceptions our parents not only passed down to us personal and family traits like height and hair color and facial features; they also passed down to us their sinful natures. As we grew we were taught and learned to curb our selfish desires and not follow our inclinations to evil. Still, the power of sin remains strong within each of us until we die, and it continues to burst forth in many ways: in disobedience and evil actions; in wicked thoughts; in selfish and even hateful desires. How we need to hear the news of the One among us who was conceived of a virgin!  

Jesus came forth from the womb like every one of us, fully and completely human. And yet, He also came forth without the sinful nature that afflicts and burdens us all. This is made very clear in the Bible, no matter how greatly many modern people protest against it and reject it as nothing more than a myth. The Bible uses no mythological language here, but speaks in very plain and straightforward words. When Mary is told that she will conceive and bear a son, she asks: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel tells her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” She will remain a virgin and yet still conceive a child. God the Holy Spirit will bring this miracle about. The very Son of God becomes just like us, fully human from the womb, a growing and developing fetus; and yet He is a new creation, a new human, holy and sinless. His flesh and nature is holy, for it is the product of the Holy Spirit and not the union of a sinful man and woman. From His conception Jesus is great, the Holy One of God and the opponent of all sin and evil. At the end of His time on earth they seemed to conquer Him and have the last word, as He bore the sins of all people on the cross and died because of them. Our sins were too much for the Holy Son of God, it seemed! But, Jesus has had the last word. As He triumphed over all sin and evil at His conception, taking human flesh and nature upon Himself and yet remaining holy, so He triumphed over them at the end of His earthly life. By His death in the flesh He swallowed up and put to death all the sin of our flesh and the punishment we deserve, and by His resurrection in the flesh He has brought forth for us a new and holy body and life.  

God is alive as Man, with a human flesh and nature that is pure and holy! This is the simple, yet profound, message our Lord brings to us on this 4^th Sunday of Advent. The holy and almighty God is among us in pure and holy flesh to, as we sang in our hymn, in His flesh “make whole all our ills of flesh and soul.” (Savior of the Nations, Come, #332) We no longer need ever be utterly depressed and overcome with sorrow because of the evils of our society, or because of our own sins that we see and feel so deeply. In His Son and in His flesh, beginning from the womb of Mary, God makes us whole! Joined to His holy flesh in our baptisms, receiving His holy flesh and blood in Holy Communion, and living in Him by faith, we are healed and are whole, flesh and soul. With joyful hearts, we sing with the Peanuts gang and with our own children:

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the sun of righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings.

Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die,

Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give us second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!”