I’m writing this in the first week of January, after all of the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season. (It’s actually Epiphany, which is the end of the 12 Days of Christmas in the traditional church calendar. So this is a post for the end of Christmas!) All of the returns have been made, families are back home, and we’re settling into the grind of a new year. The American commercial Christmas season is an orgy of materialism, sugar-coated with cultural mythos and vague feelings of goodwill. But now we can go back to partisan bickering and tearing our nation apart. Sorry to be so cynical. A humanistic and man-centered Christmas will never last, despite all Hallmark movies and platitudes about the “Christmas spirit.”
Martin Luther shows us a more excellent way. In a sermon for Christmas Day, published in the 1500s, this former monk reminds us that the true “Christmas spirit” should last all year long. Jesus was the second person of the Trinity. As the Son of God, he became man, and was born into human history, to inject the life-giving Spirit (the third person of the Trinity) into all of humanity, as the Holy Spirit works through every Christian. The birth of Jesus Christ was the beginning of a series of events that would transform the world, and would bring the Kingdom of God. We have the privilege to participate in this process. For Luther, we don’t really understand Christmas if we don’t care for the poor, and love our neighbor as ourselves–all year long!
Here’s part of Luther’s Christmas Day sermon:
“Now let every one examine himself in the light of the Gospel and see how far he is from Christ, what is the character of his faith and love. There are many who are enkindled with dreamy devotion, when they hear of such poverty of Christ, are almost angry with the citizens of Bethlehem, denounce their blindness and ingratitude, and think, if they had been there, they would have shown the Lord and his mother a more becoming service, and would not have permitted them to be treated so miserably. But they do not look by their side to see how many of their fellow men need their help, and which they let go on in their misery unaided. Who is there upon earth that has no poor, miserable, sick, erring ones, or sinful people around him? Why does he not exercise his love to those? Why does he not do to them as Christ has done to him?”
Before we condemn the people of Bethlehem, let’s examine our own hearts. Luther says that we would treat Christ the same way that we treat the poor right now.
He continues:
“It is altogether false to think that you have done much for Christ, if you do nothing for those needy ones. Had you been at Bethlehem you would have paid as little attention to Christ as they did; but since is now made known who Christ is, you profess to serve him. Should he come now and lay himself in a manger, and would send you word that it was he, of whom you now know so much, you might do something for him, but you would not have done it before. Had it been positively made known to the rich man
in the Gospel, to what high position Lazarus would be exalted, and he would have been convinced of the fact, he would not have left him lie and perish as he did.”
It’s easy to judge people in the past, or the characters in Biblical narratives. We wouldn’t reject Christ! We would take care of homeless Lazarus, stinking up the side of road, begging for food. But Luther won’t let us get away with that self-righteous attitude:
“Therefore, if your neighbor were now what he shall be in the future, and lay before you, you would surely give him attention. But now, since it is not so, you beat the air and do not recognize the Lord in your neighbor, you do taut do to him as he has done to you. Therefore God permits you to be blinded, and deceived by the pope and false preachers, so that you squander on wood, stone, paper, and wax that with which you might help your fellow man” (Collected Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 1, p. 155; online edition, pp. 149-150).
Luther reminds us that the “Christmas spirit” should animate and motivate us all year long. Christ came as the Light into a world of darkness. Through our love, care, and preaching the Word of Truth, we can–and must–carry that light into every dark corner of this world.