Various Texts
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
What Adam and Eve desired and Abel’s blood foretold. What Abraham longed for and the near sacrifice of Isaac prefigured. What Isaiah prophesied and King Ahaz refused. What seers in old time chanted of with one accord. He whom voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word. Is now fully realized in the Virgin’s Son. What you seek but cannot find. What you hope for yet never realize. What you most desperately need - Life itself - comes among you and is offered to you in the person and work of Jesus Christ, Mary’s Son, David’s Lord, your Messiah and Redeemer.
He is the full and complete consummation of all the Law and the Prophets. Though we are gathered here to celebrate this night our Lord’s Incarnation and Nativity, skip ahead just a moment, to after His death and resurrection, when our Lord Christ appeared to the disciples on the Emmaus Road. He catechized them beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Lk 24:27). All of sacred Scripture points to Him, leads to Him, is fulfilled and consummated in His incarnation, death, and resurrection.
St Augustine said it this way: “In the Old Testament the New Testament is concealed. In the New Testament the Old Testament is revealed.” Quite pithy and deeply profound. What he means is this: that which we proclaim today is what the Church, her prophets and apostles, have always proclaimed. What Adam catechized in Seth. What Abraham taught Isaac. What Isaiah instructed Israel. What Micah prophesied. What David sang in the Psalter and Jonah preached at Nineveh. What every Israelite mother hoped with every Israelite boy. For thousands of years, what God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, has now been fulfilled and instantiated and revealed to you in Jesus the Christ, the Virgin’s Son, Immanuel.
The readings this evening are chronological. Yet to hear them correctly, which is to say, in order to understand them theologically, you need to begin at the end. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. In other words, Christ Jesus is the Skull Crusher who undoes the power of death and the devil. His infant heal will be pierced through with the nail even as it comes down upon the head of the wicked one! He covers your shame and nakedness with His righteousness and beckons you to take and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, even His Cross.
Or again, Christ Jesus is the promised, beloved Son of the Father who has come to be the once for all sacrifice that Isaac’s sacrifice foreshadowed. He bears not only the wood for the offering, but He is the Offering! He bears the sin of the whole world and is offered up on the Altar of the Cross in the place of all you Isaacs. Even more, He is the Angel of the Lord who stays the hand of the Law that would rightly slay you. And He is your Ram, caught in the thorny thicket of your sin, offered as Substitute that you may become beloved children of your Father who is in heaven.
He is the Child born, the Son given to you, who bears the very Name and Reign of His Father who is in heaven, in order that He might enact peace between you and the Father, reconciling you by His death. Though you once walked in darkness, Christ who is the Light of the world has shines upon you, scattering the darkness of your sin and dispelling the cloud of death.
For the Spirit of the Lord rests upon Him, as Isaiah prophesied, for as He comes as the Nazer, the Branch and the Righteous One, who in blessed exchange takes your sin and unrighteousness and bestows upon you His own perfect righteousness and faithfulness. He is the true Shepherd and Ruler of Israel who tends you, His flock in compassion and love. He is your Peace.
All of this foretold in many and various ways by the prophets of old is revealed to St Mary by the angel Gabriel. In her womb the truth of God’s promise to Adam and Eve is brought to fruition: she shall conceive and give birth to the Son of the Most High God and is to give Him the Name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. To put is simply, there is no other God than the Babe in the manger, who is the Man upon the Cross, YHWH enfleshed to ransom you by His blood.
Beloved, this is the holy feast upon which all the angel choirs of heaven rejoice; the cherubim hymn their joyful praise, the seraphim exalt His glory. For in the Babe born of Mary, the One laid in the manger, is the Godhead of heaven here upon earth, dwelling in man. The angel chorus spills over the boundaries of the heavens. Shepherds go with haste. Ox and donkey greet their Maker. The Magi shall travel from afar. He comes for you. By His birth and death, resurrection and ascension, He bestows upon you the right to become children of God - to be by adoption and grace what He is by nature! - begotten from above by water and Spirit by God His Father and your Father in heaven.
Find Him there, dear Christians, in the manger, a feed trough for beasts! For we who are deformed and beastly by our sin are given to feast on He who is the Bread of Life. You do not eat it by the sweat of your face, but by the work of His hand, stretched forth in mercy and love upon the Cross to save you. He stooped into the dust, in His person, as a Man, to raise you from from the dust from which you were once taken. And He shares with you His Life; you are called Christian, for you have been taken from Christ.
At the Last He shall return to you and take you to Himself to dwell with Him in His kingdom - the new heavens and the new earth, as Isaiah described - which shall have no end, established and upheld with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. Merry Christmas!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
What Adam and Eve desired and Abel’s blood foretold. What Abraham longed for and the near sacrifice of Isaac prefigured. What Isaiah prophesied and King Ahaz refused. What seers in old time chanted of with one accord. He whom voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word. Is now fully realized in the Virgin’s Son. What you seek but cannot find. What you hope for yet never realize. What you most desperately need - Life itself - comes among you and is offered to you in the person and work of Jesus Christ, Mary’s Son, David’s Lord, your Messiah and Redeemer.
He is the full and complete consummation of all the Law and the Prophets. Though we are gathered here to celebrate this night our Lord’s Incarnation and Nativity, skip ahead just a moment, to after His death and resurrection, when our Lord Christ appeared to the disciples on the Emmaus Road. He catechized them beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Lk 24:27). All of sacred Scripture points to Him, leads to Him, is fulfilled and consummated in His incarnation, death, and resurrection.
St Augustine said it this way: “In the Old Testament the New Testament is concealed. In the New Testament the Old Testament is revealed.” Quite pithy and deeply profound. What he means is this: that which we proclaim today is what the Church, her prophets and apostles, have always proclaimed. What Adam catechized in Seth. What Abraham taught Isaac. What Isaiah instructed Israel. What Micah prophesied. What David sang in the Psalter and Jonah preached at Nineveh. What every Israelite mother hoped with every Israelite boy. For thousands of years, what God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, has now been fulfilled and instantiated and revealed to you in Jesus the Christ, the Virgin’s Son, Immanuel.
The readings this evening are chronological. Yet to hear them correctly, which is to say, in order to understand them theologically, you need to begin at the end. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. In other words, Christ Jesus is the Skull Crusher who undoes the power of death and the devil. His infant heal will be pierced through with the nail even as it comes down upon the head of the wicked one! He covers your shame and nakedness with His righteousness and beckons you to take and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life, even His Cross.
Or again, Christ Jesus is the promised, beloved Son of the Father who has come to be the once for all sacrifice that Isaac’s sacrifice foreshadowed. He bears not only the wood for the offering, but He is the Offering! He bears the sin of the whole world and is offered up on the Altar of the Cross in the place of all you Isaacs. Even more, He is the Angel of the Lord who stays the hand of the Law that would rightly slay you. And He is your Ram, caught in the thorny thicket of your sin, offered as Substitute that you may become beloved children of your Father who is in heaven.
He is the Child born, the Son given to you, who bears the very Name and Reign of His Father who is in heaven, in order that He might enact peace between you and the Father, reconciling you by His death. Though you once walked in darkness, Christ who is the Light of the world has shines upon you, scattering the darkness of your sin and dispelling the cloud of death.
For the Spirit of the Lord rests upon Him, as Isaiah prophesied, for as He comes as the Nazer, the Branch and the Righteous One, who in blessed exchange takes your sin and unrighteousness and bestows upon you His own perfect righteousness and faithfulness. He is the true Shepherd and Ruler of Israel who tends you, His flock in compassion and love. He is your Peace.
All of this foretold in many and various ways by the prophets of old is revealed to St Mary by the angel Gabriel. In her womb the truth of God’s promise to Adam and Eve is brought to fruition: she shall conceive and give birth to the Son of the Most High God and is to give Him the Name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. To put is simply, there is no other God than the Babe in the manger, who is the Man upon the Cross, YHWH enfleshed to ransom you by His blood.
Beloved, this is the holy feast upon which all the angel choirs of heaven rejoice; the cherubim hymn their joyful praise, the seraphim exalt His glory. For in the Babe born of Mary, the One laid in the manger, is the Godhead of heaven here upon earth, dwelling in man. The angel chorus spills over the boundaries of the heavens. Shepherds go with haste. Ox and donkey greet their Maker. The Magi shall travel from afar. He comes for you. By His birth and death, resurrection and ascension, He bestows upon you the right to become children of God - to be by adoption and grace what He is by nature! - begotten from above by water and Spirit by God His Father and your Father in heaven.
Find Him there, dear Christians, in the manger, a feed trough for beasts! For we who are deformed and beastly by our sin are given to feast on He who is the Bread of Life. You do not eat it by the sweat of your face, but by the work of His hand, stretched forth in mercy and love upon the Cross to save you. He stooped into the dust, in His person, as a Man, to raise you from from the dust from which you were once taken. And He shares with you His Life; you are called Christian, for you have been taken from Christ.
At the Last He shall return to you and take you to Himself to dwell with Him in His kingdom - the new heavens and the new earth, as Isaiah described - which shall have no end, established and upheld with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. Merry Christmas!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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