Sermon Tone Analysis
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Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street is a masterpiece, by far my favorite Christmas-themed movie.
Oddly enough, it’s also a strictly secular movie: Everyone talks about the “true meaning of Christmas” in the movie, but no one mentions—you know—the true meaning, as in the Jesus-lying-in-a-manger meaning.
That’s O.K., though, because the movie is practically an allegory for Christian faith.
This sermon explores many Christian themes just below the film’s surface, including doubt and skepticism, the nature of faith, and Christ-like love.
Miracle on 34th Street is a masterpiece, by far my favorite Christmas-themed movie.
Oddly enough, it’s also a strictly secular movie: Everyone talks about the “true meaning of Christmas” in the movie, but no one mentions—you know—the true meaning, as in the Jesus-lying-in-a-manger meaning.
That’s O.K., though, because the movie is practically an allegory for Christian faith.
This sermon explores many Christian themes just below the film’s surface, including doubt and skepticism, the nature of faith, and Christ-like love.
We live in a skeptical age—witness 2012 Newsweek cover story, for instance.
As they do every Christmas, they have a cover story on Jesus and the first Christmas.
In this article, the author suggests that the virgin birth is merely a pious legend.
According to this theory, Matthew and Luke added the Christmas story to their gospels, not because it was historically true, but because they wanted to communicate the theological truth that Jesus was God’s Son.
Incarnation: the doctrine that the second person of the Trinity assumed human form in the person of Jesus Christ and is completely both God and man.
The incarnation represents a new way of God relating to his broken creation and caring intimately about them.
It’s important we recognize the way our presence and care for people’s physical needs impacts them and teaches them about the way God relates to his people.
1.
The concept of the incarnation—that “the Word became flesh” (v.
14)—is such a strange and radical idea that it’s no wonder how contested the idea has been across history.
The Jewish people were constituted as a people by being “set apart” from the nations.
They understood God’s holiness because they were constantly practicing what holiness looked like, and it looked like separation from unholiness.
The idea that God would come to earth as a human child and take on the plights and sufferings of his broken world was a difficult concept to swallow.
The Christmas season is an important time to teach this doctrine and its implications, especially to a world that is weary of Christians ignoring the physical world.
2. The classic Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street paints a picture of just how significant incarnation is.
When the real Santa Claus ends up getting a job working as a Santa in a department store, he inspires belief all across the country, even inciting a court case that seeks to rule on his validity as Santa Claus.
More than any kind of “magic,” it’s his interactions with children and his care for their real needs that inspires belief.
He signs for a deaf girl, he listens to the earnest needs of a child wanting a father, he is simply with children in a time of year when they are often ignored in the busyness.
doesn’t give us any of the stories in the rest of the Gospels about how Jesus treats people with such care and attention, but it focuses on the theological backing we have for understanding the incarnation.
He “made his dwelling among us” (v.
14) and came as the “true light that gives light to everyone” (v.
9).
3. Just as Kris Kringle burst into the lives of everyone he encountered at the department store, Jesus came bursting into the world as life and light like we had never experienced before.
“As light ‘shines’ (present tense for the first time) in the darkness, so Jesus brought the revelation and salvation of God to humanity in its fallen and lost condition.
He did this in the Incarnation.
As the word of God brought light to the chaos before Creation, so Jesus brought light to fallen humankind when He became a man.
Furthermore, the light that Jesus brought was superior to and stronger than the darkness that existed—both physically and spiritually” (Thomas Constable, Notes on John [Sonic Light, 2017], 19).
4.
This passage also reminds us that this season is not just a celebration of Christ’s coming but an opportunity for the world to believe the truth and trust in Jesus.
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (v.
17).
Jesus came and offered a new means of relating to the God of the universe, one determined by faith we couldn’t muster on our own and grace we don’t deserve.
Like Kris Kringle said in defense of his inability to prove himself, “If you can’t accept anything on faith, then you are doomed for a life dominated by doubt.”
In the midst of a broken world dominated by doubt, Jesus came to earth to offer faith to people desperate for it.
5.
The glorious message of Christmas and the incarnation is this: God has been working behind the scenes in ways you didn’t expect.
The incarnation is not about degrading the way God related to his people before Jesus’s birth but about celebrating God’s perfect plan across history.
“What God showed Himself to be through His revelation in the Torah, so now Jesus shows Himself to be through the Incarnation.
And what was the Torah?
It was not handcuffs, but Yahweh's pointed finger, graciously marking out to the redeemed the path of life and fellowship with Him [cf.
].
The point of is not 'Then bad, now good'; the point is rather, 'Then, wonderful!
And now, better than ever!'” (Ronald B. Allen, “Affirming Right-of-Way on Ancient Paths,” Bibliotheca Sacra 153, no.
609 [January-March 1996]: 10).
The point of is not 'Then bad, now good'; the point is rather, 'Then, wonderful!
And now, better than ever!'” (Ronald B. Allen, “Affirming Right-of-Way on Ancient Paths,” Bibliotheca Sacra 153, no.
609 [January-March 1996]: 10).
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