Christmas Eve 2006
The miracle of the Incarnation
It is hard to come up with something new to say about the Christmas story – that we all know so well.
So I’d like to take a different tack this year and consider what would we be left with if we took the miraculous out of the Gospels.
So what then is a miracle?
The Scottish atheistic philosopher David Hulme defined a miracle as
“a violation of the laws of nature.”
But that supposes the Laws of nature are inviolate.
I think a better definition of a miracle is the direct intervention of God into the affairs of men.
That would cover events that we cannot explain and unexplained beings such as Angels
Now what would happen if we took the miraculous events and persons out of the Biblical account of Christmas?
1. The Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus birth
First of all, we would have to drop the Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus’ birth, his life and his death from the Christmas story.
2. The New Testament Prophecies recorded in Luke 1
Then we would have to drop the prophecies recorded in Luke 1
Firstly, the story of the foretelling of the birth of John the Baptist
You may recall the story of John’s father Zechariah the priest meeting the angel Gabriel.
Gabriel prophesied that Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were going to have a child.
But as Elizabeth was past the age of child bearing, Zechariah just couldn’t believe it possible.
As a result he was struck dumb until the actual birth of John occurred.
But if we decided to take out the miraculous then this story is out.
Then the story of the foretelling of the birth of Jesus would have to go
You may recall the story of the angel coming to Mary and foretelling the birth of Jesus.
If we take the miraculous away, this all falls away
Next if we take the miraculous out of the Christmas story we lose
The story of the Shepherds and the Angels in Luke 2:8-20
After all, it was the angels – God’s messengers – who told the Shepherds about the birth of Christ. And angels as unexplainable persons are out!
Then we would follow that by removing the Story of the Wise men
No special star moving from the East (the wise men probably came from Babylon about 1000 miles from Jerusalem) to herald the birth of Christ.
So that’s out
And so all we are left with is the story in Luke 2:1-7 of an ordinary pregnant peasant girl Mary giving an ordinary birth to an ordinary baby in an
ordinary stable of an ordinary Inn in an ordinary village called Bethlehem.
And who would care – what’s important about that baby then? There have been thousands like him before and after
But the most important part of the Christmas story that we would lose - if we demythologise the Christmas story - would be that we would lose the story of the Incarnation.
That is God becoming a man.
2.3 The Incarnation
Because the biggest miracle of the Christmas story is the fact that GOD himself came and lived among us.
In his best-selling book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey wrote this:
“I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task.
I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content.
I pumped in vitamins and antibiotics and sulpha drugs and enough enzymes to make a rock grow.
I filtered the water through glass fibres and charcoal, and exposed it to ultraviolet light.
You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful.
Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dived for cover into the nearest shell.
They showed one ‘emotion’ only: fear.
Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them.
I could not convince them of my true concern.
“To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction.
To change their perceptions, I began to see, would require a form of incarnation.
I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
And I would suggest we would have a similar relationship to God without the incarnation of God in Jesus.
Take Islam for example that denies the deity of Christ. Islam is ruled by fear not by love.
They are ruled by the fear of displeasing God.
As a young refugee, Mustapha said to us in the Swiss church I grounded in Basle.
“In Islam, there is no love “
Now if you believe that God came to live among us, then the prophecies of the Old and New Testament foretelling the birth of Jesus make sense
The fact that God announced the birth of his son to
1. the Shepherds – the lower classes of Jewish society – equivalent to how we view gypsies today form of life and
2. to the Wise Men - the upper class of society
shows us that Jesus is relevant to both rich and poor , to both Jew and Gentile (the Magi were non-Jews)
The whole of the story of the birth of Christ showed that Jesus was going to be someone special
Why - because God so pre-ordained it from the beginning.
The miraculous associated with Jesus birth wasn’t an afterthought of the Gospel writers.
It is there in the story because God intervened in our world.
In Jesus God became man.
For by coming to the world as a man, Jesus showed us the love of God.
Jesus came to live among us because of what John Stott calls “Holy Love”
He did it to provide salvation for the human race.
Our need for salvation is rooted in the character of God.
God is totally righteous. He is morally perfect and he is totally just.
Because we fall short of his perfect standard, we have true moral guilt and deserve his condemnation.
But God is also loving. This doesn’t mean that his love simply ignores his righteousness and justice
Rather it shows that he cares about us so much that he provides a way to pay for our guilt so that he can accept us without compromising his moral character.
But does this then mean that it doesn’t then matter what we do?
Quite the contrary – God calls us to live a Holy Life – to become followers of Jesus .
Not just followers on Sunday – but followers 24/7.
My son Chris sent me an e-mail recently which read:
“A friend was in front of me coming out of church one day, and the vicar was standing at the door as he always is ready to shake hands.
The Vicar grabbed my friend by the hand and pulled him aside and said to him, "You need to join the Army of the Lord!"
My friend replied, "I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Vicar."
The Vicar replied: "How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?"
He whispered back, "I’m in the secret service. "
We are not called to be secret followers but actively proclaiming the Good News of God coming to earth to dwell among us.
Not just followers on Sunday – but followers 24/7.
Not secret followers but actively proclaiming the Good News of God coming to earth to dwell among us.
The message of Christmas is that God does intervene in the affairs of man.
Jesus has given us the possibility to know God in a personal way. Indeed he invites us to know our loving heavenly Father
Not to fear him but to love him. For that is the true meaning of the Christmas story.
