Luke 2, Hebrews 1
December 25, 2018
Christmas Day
In many and various ways, God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, but now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.
Dear Saints of Our Savior,
In the world of music, classical compositions sometimes contain movements called “arias.” An aria often indicates a pause in the action—a chance for the listeners to catch their breath and reflect on the deeper meaning of what’s going on. For this important task, arias are usually composed for just a solo voice. There may be tenors and basses and sopranos and altos available, but in an aria most of the chorus goes mute. In the aria, one voice tells it like it is. One voice invites us to be like Mary—treasuring up all these things and pondering them in our hearts.
Christmas Day is the perfect day for an aria. If there’s ever a morning where we need to pause and ponder and reflect, this is it. Because this morning we celebrate and confess a deep, profound, and thrilling mystery: The Word became flesh and dwelt among
This is the breath-taking delight of Christmas. In the baby Jesus, heaven has come to earth. Time and eternity embrace. God and man are reconciled. The eternal deity is wearing diapers as He nurses at His mother’s breast. He is both infant holy, and infant lowly. It’s going to take an aria to help this sink in for us.
The aria was a relatively new musical form back in the days of Johann Sebastian Bach. But it was part of Bach’s musical genius that he was able to synthesize both the old forms and the new musical forms to create music that was (and remains) unique and unparalleled. And it needs to be said that Bach’s musical genius was closely intertwined with his Lutheran faith. He was nearly forty when he moved his family to Leipzig, where he would serve for the rest of his life. Leipzig during Bach’s tenure was a bastion of Lutheran piety and faith.
Within his first five years at Leipzig, Bach crafted, composed, and directed a monumental volume of church music—and by church music I don’t mean preludes and postludes. Sunday after Sunday, week after week, year after year, he composed Cantatas for every Sunday in the church year—large-scale liturgical works for instruments, chorus, and congregation—an effort Bach described as a “well-regulated church music,” all of it executed in a time without the convenience of copy machines and computers and e-mail. But little of Bach’s musical genius was fully appreciated until a century after his death.
By the time Bach’s fiftieth birthday was on the horizon, it was probably time for an aria—a time for Bach to pause, ponder, and reflect—to organize and catalogue what he had accomplished over five decades—and a time to ask what more remained to be done? What was left to do? How could he continue to glorify God through his musical gifts?
One stellar result of Bach’s middle-age aria is the grand work known as the Christmas Oratorio. It was first performed in Leipzig on Christmas Day of 1734. But this morning we get to hear only a tiny sliver—a single, solitary aria—from that monumental composition. The text is printed on the back of your bulletin, and you’ll want to keep that handy.
In this little aria heaven comes to earth. Royalty and deity draw near. Ponder the paradox in this aria: A great Lord, a mighty King, a Savior is coming! And not just any King, but the One who upholds and maintains the whole world—who created all its glory and adornment. But this mighty King is also the tiny baby who sleeps on a hard crib—who cries and wears diapers—whose only protection comes from swaddling clothes. As we heard from Hebrews chapter one: He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
Bach’s aria announces the arrival of this baby-king with regal majesty. The original score features a trumpet part that’s so heavenly that no trumpeter in Milwaukee could be found to play it for us this morning. But the message of the aria is that heaven comes to earth in the baby who is a mighty King.
Heaven had to come to earth. It was the only way. You see, heaven and earth have been out of sync—and out of tune—for a long time now. A deadly dissonance developed between heaven and earth at the time when our first parents disobeyed God in paradise. Ever since then, earth has tended to go its own way, and march to the percussive beat of her own drummer—with very little thought given to the God of heaven.
As sons and daughters of Adam, we’ve each chosen our rebellious pathways too. God’s ways and our ways do not harmonize. Like our first parents, we tend to spend our days fleeing from God to hide our sin, or else pointing the finger of blame at everybody else around us. Our sin has dropped us all on a slippery slope—a descent that will eventually deposit each one of us six feet under.
What you need is a Redeemer who can reverse that downward, deathward slide. You don’t need a god who strokes your ego with applause from heaven every time you do something good. Nor do you need a deadbeat deity who’s so busy upholding the universe that you’re just an insignificant, unimportant speck of carbon. No, you need a Savior—One who can reunite heaven and earth—One who can reconcile God and man—One who is like you in every way, except without sin—one who knows what it is to sleep in a hard crib.
The cold, hard wood of the Savior’s crib would one day give way to the cold, hard wood of the cross. No trumpets would sound on that dark afternoon. The tempo would be simply set to the percussive sound of pounding nails. Our great Lord, our mighty King, our dearest Savior’s only crown would be of thorns. His throne a cross. And this is why heaven comes to earth—this is why Christ is born of Mary: to bear our sins and be our Savior. This is God’s greatest glory. This is what secures peace on earth, goodwill to men—as angels once declared to shepherds.
The angels aren’t just the supporting cast at Christmas. The angels—they also give us an aria. When we hear those angels singing, that music tells us that, in Jesus, God is restoring harmony between earth and heaven. The author of Hebrews makes a big point in this morning’s reading that Jesus is higher than the angels. But the enduring result of Christmas is that you are higher than the angels too. At Christmas God lowers Himself to raise you up. Christmas is both God-made-small and man-made-big. Jesus becomes what you are—a woman’s child—that He might make you what He is—a child of God. The Son of God becomes no less when He takes on our human flesh; but we—we become infinitely more in Him. Christmas is one small step for God, but one giant leap for mankind. Jesus comes down low to lift us on high with Him—to give us resurrection life that we might live forever as heaven’s most honored guests. Sinful sons and daughters of Adam are now superior to the angels.
I know, I know. That’s profound. It’s deep. It’s a lot to wrap your head around on this Christmas morning. Perhaps we should simply pause. Perhaps we should ponder along with Mary. What we need, I think, is an aria—an aria from the “Fifth Evangelist” to help it all sink in. Pause, ponder, reflect, celebrate: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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