New Creation at Christmas December 16, 2007
Luke 1:26-38
I was talking with a friend this week about all the accesses that happen at Christmas, and how the retail ales system has taken over this celebration of Christ’s birth. We can respond to it in two different ways – at worst, we can just buy in (literally) and join the frenzy, or we could go the exact opposite and reject everything secular about Christmas, but then we are at risk of forgetting that it is a celebration. The fact that the outside world makes such a big deal out of Christmas without paying much attention to Christ, gives Christians the opportunity to think about what we are really celebrating.
Read the passage from “the voice”
I want to go back to the beginning of the story, when Gabriel shows up to Mary, and she’s trying to figure out how she can get Pregnant without a man. Gabriel explains that "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”
The picture that is given is the same picture that we have of the Holy Spirit’s work at Creation in the Book of Genesis where the Holy Spirit is hovering over the Chaos like a mother hen hovers over her eggs to hatch them to life. The Holy Spirit broods over the chaos and hatches creation, and she broods over Mary and hatches the new creation that is Jesus!
We actually don’t know the date when Jesus was born – the reason that we celebrate his birth at this time of year is that, in the northern hemisphere, the nights have stopped getting longer, and they are getting shorter: the days have stopped getting shorter, and they are getting longer. The light is coming, the old is passing away, the new is coming.
In Jesus, we are celebrating a new creation – a seed planted in the old creation that will one day come to complete fullness and we will live in the new creation.
The good creation gone bad…
Renewing creation through the flood – bringing back the waters of chaos. In the end the new start did not work.
But this time God brings back the Spirit, to hover over the chaos that we’ve created out of his good creation, and he has birthed new creation!
Paul talks about how just as the first Adam brought about the fall of creation and death, how the last Adam, Jesus, brings about the rising of new creation and life!
This is how Isaiah describes this new creation:
Isaiah 42
The Servant of the LORD
1 "Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.
2 He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
3 A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
4 he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his teaching the islands will put their hope."
5 This is what God the LORD says—
he who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth with all that springs from it,
who gives breath to its people,
and life to those who walk on it:
6 "I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
7 to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
8 "I am the LORD; that is my name!
I will not yield my glory to another
or my praise to idols.
9 See, the former things have taken place,
and new things I declare;
before they spring into being
I announce them to you."
God doesn’t start this new creation by sending a flood, or an army, or a lightning bolt, but by sending a child – a helpless baby born to a homeless family in a backwater province of the Roman Empire.
This is how Robert Southwell describes this new thing that God is doing in military language: (Robert Southwell was a Jesuit Priest who was martyred by the protestants at the age of 34 in the 1500s) New Heaven, New War, p. 116 in The Roads from Bethlehem
“if thou wilt foil thy foes with joy
then flit not from this heavenly boy”
We celebrate Christmas because God has begun a new thing!
If we “flit not from this heavenly boy:” if we give our lives to Jesus, we join him in this new creation. And he begins with us:
When we give our lives to Jesus, he gives us his Holy Spirit to live with in us. Just as the Spirit gave life to Jesus in his mother’s womb, he gives new life to us as well. It is a new life of right relationships with God, with people, and with the created order…
2 Corinthians 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Other translations say “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation – which is true, but I like this translation that says that if we are in Christ, it’s a whole new world opened to us. Not only are we made new, but we see the world so differently, we regard others so differently, that it is a new creation from our point of view. And it is a world of reconciled relationships, of new life, and a new way of living.
Embrace the new creation!
Just as the Spirit brooded over the chaos and hatched creation, and just as the Spirit brood over Mary and hatched New Creation, the spirit broods over us and brings about the fruit of the New Creation: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. - Galatians 5:22-23 That is what the Spirit is hatching in you!
But, like Mary, you need to respond – you don’t get the new creation unless you respond, “Here I am, the Lord’s humble servant. As you have said, let it be done to me.”
But it is not just about us as individuals, Just as God started the New Creation through this little mustard seed of a baby, 2,000 years ago; we continue to see the New Creation grow until He comes and brings it to fruition miraculously in the resurrection.
It is not just about the Fruit of the spirit that he wants to birth in you, it is also about the Fruit of the spirit that he wants to birth in the world through you. Just as he brings forth love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in you by his Spirit, he wants you to bring forth love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in the world by his Spirit!
Will you join him in the New Creation?
Will you say, “Here I am, the Lord’s humble servant. As you have said, let it be done to me.”
