The Purpose of the Incarnation

Introductory Matter

English Standard Version (Titus 2:11-14)

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition (Psalm 19. Caeli enarrant)

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in thy sight,

O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

What is the Purpose of Christmas?

First thing today, I want to welcome you to the season of Christmastide! Merry Christmas!

My son, James, has been extra excited for Christmas this year. This is, after all, I believe the first Christmas he will likely fully remember. Foremost on his mind is the expectation of presents and having “birthday parties” for Christmas. I briefly tried to correct this confusion of party purposes, but then realized that, no, James was exactly right.

James’s “confusion” over the holiday is therefore closer to the mark than the “wisdom” of the prevailing culture.

I’ve had multiple encounters this season that follow the template of a shop worker wishing me a “Happy Holidays!” to which I politely reply “Merry Christmas!” which then often elicits a relieved softening of a forced buoyant expression after which they feel free to also reply “Merry Christmas!” The director at James’s daycare told me directly that she always starts with the generic greeting and waits to see what response she gets so that she doesn’t cause a problem. The only times that I have been greeted first with an enthusiastic and exuberant “Merry Christmas!” were when I wore my cassock into a store. I hope that means that I represented at least one person they felt safe wishing a Merry Christmas to. For too many, the Christmas season has become a minefield which puts them in fear of being on the losing end of any exchanging of pleasantries.

It is a shame that Christmas has become a battlefield in the ongoing and never-ending culture war.

I think all of us are well acquainted with the continual encroachment of market capitalism on the holiday season. Consumerism and greed have been the evil spirits behind Christmas movie villains for decades: my personal favorite is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where the central conflict in the movie can be summed up as Clark Griswold’s misplaced hope in the saving power of his Christmas bonus to pay for his extravagant holiday. You would think that such open mockery of these societal ills would be sufficient inoculation against their power in the real world, but we all know this is wishful thinking. The lines at the stores on the days before and after Christmas each year are testament that the universal tradition of all Americans during the holiday season is buying presents and returning them for what we actually want.

But Christmas is not about upbuilding the culture of Mammon.

For myself, I have the most difficulty with self-control around this time of the year. The one-two punch of Thanksgiving feasting and the cultural determination to extend that into Christmas feasting is a strong argument from my self-indulgent side. And my favorite treats come out this time of year! Peppermint bark everything! Shortbread cookies! Gingerbread! In recent years especially I have had trouble putting off my desire to indulge in these things until Christmastide, and once in the season I have double the trouble of finding the bottom of “enough.”

And yet, Christmas is not a means to baptize my intemperance and gluttony.

What, then, is the purpose of Christmas?

The Grace of God has Appeared

For us as Christians, the answer is straightforward - Christmas is when we celebrate the Incarnation of God the Son as the man Jesus Christ. And yet, I find that my inclination is to lean on this “celebration” to fuel my intemperance, to chase after the things I don’t have, and, yes, to feel superior in my knowledge that I “keep the Christ in Christmas” even as I utterly fail in exactly that. There is a part of me that wants to blame this on our Western culture and the decadence that is emblematic of the last half-century or so, but this is reductionist - these sins and vices are not unique to our time and place, they have been with humankind since the first days after the Fall. This is evident in St Paul’s letter to Titus.

Titus, a gentile convert who became a traveling companion with Paul and Barnabas, was tasked with appointing leaders in the church and “put what remained into order” (Titus 1:5). He had run into similar difficulties as Timothy and others in the early Church: false teachers, legalists, and those who are insubordinate and deceptive. The letter to Titus is St Paul’s counsel and instruction for overcoming these obstacles. The core of Paul’s instruction is to “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1), the root of which is given in the section we read today.

We know that when St Paul says “…the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people” he is speaking of Jesus Christ, born on this day in the town of Bethlehem as St Luke attests in the Gospel we heard a few moments ago. The underpinning of the “sound doctrine” that Titus is to teach is the Incarnation, the appearance of God in the man Jesus Christ. Christmas, therefore, is likewise rooted in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Son of God. We rightly celebrate his appearing, but sometimes our celebration is not right.

Trained to Renounce the World

After St Paul reminds Titus about the grace of God appearing in the world to save God’s very good creation, he tells Titus, and us, that through this salvation we receive “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12). What is the importance behind this verse?

There are many people in the world who put Christ on their lips and live as if it is the mere fact of his appearing that saves us. In a sense, they are correct, but in the witness they give in their lives 363 days out of the year (subtracting for Christmas and Easter) they show that it is not this sense they are thinking of. It is true that God ordained that we would be saved through believing in the Incarnation of the Word made Flesh who gave himself up to die for our sins. And yet, the Gospels tell us that the miracle of the Incarnation was only the start of the work the Son was given to do on earth.

Likewise, our celebration of Christmas and knowledge of the Incarnation is but the start of our discipleship. Along with the Resurrection, it is one of two central miracles of Christian faith which are effective for bringing us to belief in the love and power of God Almighty. Paul tells Titus therefore that the grace of God appeared so that we could be trained. Trained for what? Trained to renounce ungodliness - living in impurity - and worldly passions, the pursuit of things which bring security, advantage, and happiness in this life but can be disqualifying for participating in God’s eternal life if a person is ruled by them.

Why do we need “training” to renounce these things? Here, St Paul reminds Titus that all humans are steeped in the patterns of a broken, dying, sinful world. All around Titus were people who were used to running the rat race of Roman civilization on the island of Crete, a race not very much unlike what a lot of people we encounter are running. It can be boiled down to the pursuit of power and influence, wealth and security, as well as pleasure and happiness. We require training to be able to break out of these patterns. Such patterns are all many of those around us know, after all, and many of us today still fight them in our lives in some capacity.

St Paul tells Titus that in training humanity to renounce these things, the grace of God prepares us and makes us able to live “self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age...” These three things sum up for Titus what St Paul means when he says that we are trained to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.”

It isn’t enough to reject impurity and idolatry - the rotten food and poisoned drink must be replaced with good food and clean, pure drink. Otherwise, it’s like someone who starves themselves to lose weight - they either become so malnourished that they endanger their life, or they turn back with a vengeance to the things they gave up and any progress they made is wiped away.

Therefore, we are trained to live lives that are not ruled by momentary cravings of food, drink, power, sex, or anything else the world calls us to indulge in. We are trained to be honest and open, not concealing truth but illuminating and revealing hidden things so that Satan and the demons have nowhere to hide and no base to operate out of. We are trained to glorify God by the way we speak, the way we interact with fellow image bearers, and in our worship of the Lord with every breath and action we take.

Waiting for Our Blessed Hope

This training to live “self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,” is also done so that we can wait “for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Our restraint, honesty, and holiness are not simply for contrariness to the world, though that is part of it. Instead, living in this way helps us focus our waiting souls, minds, and bodies on the hope of Christ’s return. This is not “hope” the way we tend to use it today, as a strong and fervent wish, but as a certain promise that has only to be fulfilled.

Our world is hopeless. I am convinced that is behind many of the crises facing our neighbors today. Mental health struggles such as anxiety and depression are born out of a world that has lost its hope. That isn’t to say that Christians who do have the hope St Paul is talking about will not struggle with these diseases - as many of you know, I myself battle anxiety. What I mean is that one of the symptoms of the dying and hopeless world is the increase of these ailments in our neighbors and friends who do not know the Gospel. The antidote is sharing the hope we have with whoever is seeking and willing to listen.

The world’s view of Christmas is as a bright spot in the winter months, an excuse for feasting and coming together as family. This sounds sweet and positive on the surface, but it is inevitably devoid of hope. As long years and decades pass, the number of empty chairs where loved ones once sat grows. Memories of Christmas traditions fade as generations change. The brightness the world calls to mind in the Christmas season is most often the reflected fire of the flame that consumes and does not give life.

But our hope is not in a season, not in the feasting, not even in the gathering of family together - it is in the great God and Savior Jesus Christ who rescues us from decay and emptiness. His brightness is the radiant glory of the Godhead, that makes the dead to live and calls something out of nothing.

A People for his Own Possession

Finally, St Paul reminds Titus of the Gospel truth - that the work of God in Jesus Christ was to rescue his creation from wickedness and the domination of the adversary. In rescuing us, he has purified us so that we belong to him. In belonging to him, we love him and want to participate in the works that he does.

This is the purpose of Christmas - that God the Son was born a human baby boy named Jesus of Nazareth. He grew under the care and teaching of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his mother, and St Joseph his father by human reckoning. He came to his people Israel, and those who recognized him as their Lord and King followed him and followed his commandments. But rebels among the people, who loved power and their earthly security more than the God they proclaimed with their lips, rejected him and handed him over to the enemies of all the people so that he would be executed unjustly and shamefully. He died on a tree, was buried and lay in the earth three days, but then he rose again from the dead so that death and Satan were shown to be defeated.

We are now his possession, a people rescued from the world and cleansed from unrighteousness. If you have been baptized, you have received this cleansing and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. When we take of the sacrament of communion, we recognize that we are God’s just as much as we recognize that the Son of God gave himself to us. When we faithfully receive the ministrations of the church - in confirmation, in reconciliation, in healing, or in any other corporate work of the Church towards her people, we testify that we are the “people for his own possession.”

Conclusion

Over these next twelve days of Christmas, I ask you to remember your training. I ask also that you would pray for me and for one another, that we would celebrate the Incarnation of Our Lord rightly - neither in a way that removes joy from the celebration, nor in a way that dishonors the celebration by turning it to indulgence and unfaithful license. May we always be a witness to a hopeless world, eager to do good works on behalf of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.