A Perfect Christmas

Titus 2:11-14

December 24, 1999

What makes Christmas perfect? Is it a Perfect Christmas tree, perfect decorations, perfect gifts, perfect Christmas dinner, perfect family get-to-gathers, perfect Christmas service, or perfect worship attendance. What makes Christmas perfect?

Actually, the thing that makes Christmas perfect is revealed to us in this text of Titus: “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” Think about this. What is this grace of God that brings salvation? Have any of you seen it? Spoken to it? Heard it? Or, touched it? If not, how can we say that this is what makes Christmas perfect?

In truth, we have all seen, and spoken, and heard, and touched this grace of God. In fact, it is grace itself that comes to us in the most unexpected ways.

Consider the announcement of the prophet Isaiah who prophesied of the Christ child some 700 years before His birth. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” This pronouncement put many people in touch with the reality of God’s salvation and grace. It still does today. That reality informs us that this child is none other than the Christ who was born according to the angel’s pronouncement, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

In the humblest of settings, the Lord of the universe, now lay wrapped in what is called swaddling clothes, paupers garments, and was nourished at the breast of a human mother. Every Christmas season the story gets told, sometimes with the favorite characters of Mary and Joseph, sometimes with the splendor of the stars. And every Christmas season the opportunity to see, speak, hear, and touch the most perfect Christmas comes and goes without evident notice. Why? Because we do not expect anything else than a story of a time already passed.

But the time has not actually passed at all. It is here right now today, and it will be here tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. And it will stay until it touches all who will be touched by it, and saved. It is “the grace of God that brings salvation … to all men.”

What does this grace of God do? Again the answer comes from God’s Word. It redeems and purifies and makes us eager to do what is good.

To be redeemed probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to us in our day. But consider the slave who is bound to his master and subject to whatever that master wants to do with him. He has no freedom. He has no life of his own. His master abuses and mistreats him at will.

My friends, you and I are that slave. We are bound by nature to sin and all the things that angers our God. And there is only one way out. That way is if someone comes and pays the owner’s price to set us free. But there is no one to come forward to purchase us because the price is so high. Then the grace of God appears, seemingly out of nowhere. He walks right up to the owner of the slave and says, “What is the purchase price for this one, that I may set him free from his bondage to such cruelty?” The owner says, “Your life for his. Let your blood be spilled in place of his. Let your flesh be torn in place of his. Let the suffering of his entire life be upon you.” Without hesitation or thought, as if somehow predetermined, he says to the wicked master, “Let it be just as you have said.” And it was so. The one whose birth we celebrate this night is the one who has come to our eternal rescue. He has paid the price in full.

But the stench of our enslavement still resides and tries to strip our memory of grace. The stench triggers in our brain an old recording that says, “You must get out of your mess yourself. You are not worthy of love and its grace.” You are ungodly, full of worldly passions, and degenerate for as long as you live. Sometimes we even catch ourselves believing this awful lie.

But wonder of all wonders, something miraculous is happening. The very blood that was taken from his side, the very flesh that was torn from his brow, is removing the stench, and purifying our life right to the core of our being. And the grace goes on in its eternal work until all is complete, and we are finally identified as the very children of the most high God. This is A Perfect Christmas! No one can take it away from us. Why? Because grace is not dead, but alive, forever!

It comes to do its work in the water and word of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of the Blessed Supper. Grace touches us right where we live and continues to bless us day by day so that we begin to recognize ourselves, not according to our sin, but according to His everlasting Grace which God has given us to live in our own flesh. This is A Perfect Christmas because of Him who came in humbleness to do what none other could. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty, God, Everlasting, Father, Prince of Peace.” The perfect Christmas. We have seen it; spoken to it; heard it; and touched it in Word and Sacrament. Amen.