Audio only this week.

It had been a tough couple of months. Nehemiah had been serving as the cup-bearer of the king of Persia. It had not been too long since the Persians allowed the Jews to go back to Judea after their exile in Babylon.  When Jeremiah heard from some Jews who had recently come from Jerusalem that even though the temple had been rebuilt the walls of the city were still in disrepair he went to the Lord in prayer. He then went to the king and asked for a leave of absence to go to Jerusalem and oversee the rebuilding of the walls of the city.

When Jeremiah arrived he rallied the leaders and they got to work. But it was no easy task. There was rubble everywhere.  Jerusalem had been almost completely destroyed by the Babylonians and for over 70 years no one had really lived there.  Not to mention, the Arabs and Samaritans and other groups in the area didn’t want to see the city nor walls rebuilt. They kept threatening to attack. Men, women and children worked on the rebuilding project. An armed guard was posted behind the workers at all times. Sentries were posted at the low points in the wall during the night. Those carrying materials did so with a weapon in one hand at all times. But, in spite of the hard work and stress, the whole wall was completed in just 52 days.

Everyone, even their enemies, recognized that this was an amazing accomplishment. God’s people recognized that this was possible only by the power and blessing of the Lord. They wanted to give thanks and praise to God for this blessing. But, many of the people had grown up in Babylon. They had not had regular access to the Scriptures. They realized that if they were going to give God thanks and praise they needed to do it in a way that would be pleasing to the Lord. So they asked Ezra the priest and scribe to bring out the scroll of the Torah, the revelation that God had given them through Moses. They said, “Let us hear what the Lord says.”  So Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people sanctified the whole congregation by the reading and preaching of the Law (Neh. 8:8–9).

The project to build the wall, in fact to rebuild the city, was not merely motivated by some kind of nationalism or practicality.  It was bound up with faith and hope in God’s promise of the coming Messiah, since the prophets had predicted a rebuilt and prosperous Jerusalem as a necessary precursor to the coming of the Savior.

The holy city of Jerusalem was more than a temple and a city wall – it was the holy people inhabiting the city.  But not just any population would do.  Jerusalem’s population was to be a faithful remnant, they were to be the people of God who were faithful to Him in word and deed.   To accomplish this, the proclamation God’s Word as well as repentance and faith followed by sanctified living were essential for repopulating the city with holy people. The gathering to read the Teaching of Moses and the diligence of the priests to ensure the people understood it were part of preserving the hope of God’s people in the Messiah.  The history of God’s people proved that it was not so much the faithfulness of the people in serving God which God regarded, but their faith in the promise of a Redeemer who would save them in spite of their many acts of unfaithfulness.

The instruction in God’s Word had its intended effect, leading people to a joyful celebration and feast.  They affirm their faith in God’s Word with shouts of “amen”, gestures of prayer in worshipping God. As the people of Nehemiah’s day were urged to “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready” (Neh. 8:10), so are you anointed by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ to share in His feast and to serve the fellow members of His Body with His good gifts, “giving greater honor to the part that lacked it” (1 Cor. 12:12, 24).

But notice that the people were also moved to sadness over their sin.  They had brought their exile upon themselves by rejecting God. They had built up walls around their city, around their lives, around their hearts that were shattered by their sin.

We too hear the same Law of God today – that we have fallen short of God’s requirements to live as His people.  Our sinfulness has led to destruction, to exile from where God has promised to be for His people. We have not always gladly heard or learned God’s Word, but have despised it.  All too often we prefer our own temporary comfort in the form of sleeping in, or sports, or television over the protection and comfort that God provides.  We try to build walls around us for protection. Wall around our heart to protect it from getting hurt. Walls around our finances to protect against disaster. Walls of busyness so we don’t have time to think or worry or deal with deeper issues. Walls within our families, our schools, our coworkers, and even around our ears so as not to hear that our sins condemn us. 

But none of these walls can actually protect us. All they do is trap us inside of ourselves along with our sin, our own personal hell.  The only true protection comes to us by Jesus. The only true protection comes to us through the Word of God as it is spoken and proclaimed among us and applied to our lives.

Nehemiah’s solution to our grief over these sins is the Gospel: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”  In this world, God’s people remain sinners who struggle with the temptations of the flesh as well as saints justified before God by His grace through faith in Christ.  Because of our persistent sinfulness, there are times when we need to be reminded and sometimes prodded back to faithful lives. There’s a reason why God gave us the third commandment: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  He commands that we gladly hear and learn the Word of Christ, that we do not despise God nor His Word because Christ is revealed through the preaching of His Word – your sins are condemned and Christ’s forgiveness is given to you, today.

When Jesus opens His mouth to preach, gracious words flow from His lips. With the presence of Jesus, through His Word, the Scriptures are fulfilled in our hearing (Luke 4:21–22). For Christ was anointed by the Spirit of the Lord “to proclaim good news to the poor,” “to proclaim liberty to the captives” and “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19). By this proclamation, Christ releases His people from captivity and gathers them to Himself in His Church. So it was when the Lord released His people from Babylon and returned them to Jerusalem.

Baptized believers in Christ are citizens of the holy city Jerusalem that is above.  Because of our sinful nature and for the growth of God’s kingdom, the Church continues the ministry of proclaiming God’s Word of Law and Gospel to bring people to repentance and faith until Christ returns, and then the new Jerusalem will be populated with all believers, who will be free from sin forevermore.

Isaiah 62:1-5

God’s Word Is Not Silent

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

January 17, 2015

I had a professor once at Seminary, an old crotchety sort of man, who was fond of saying, “Our God is a chatty God. He likes to talk.”  In fact, if you haven’t noticed by now, speaking is pretty important to our God.  He speaks, and God’s Word bestows what He says. 

And what’s more, He tells in our Old Testament reading today that He just won’t shut His mouth.  “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet.” For our sake, God speaks.

What word does He speak? What is so important that He can’t keep His mouth shut?  A salvation that is to be proclaimed to the end of the world.  A salvation that comes with His promised Messiah.  A salvation that comes by being united with our God as a loved and faithful spouse.

The language that He uses here is that of a marriage.  “As a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”  God rejoices over you.  He shouts out with joy so that all of creation can hear.  So great is the love of Christ that He leaves His Father in heavenly splendor and takes on flesh.  At the wedding of Cana, in the first of Jesus’ signs, He not only manifests His glory by showing Himself to be the Son of God and Creator, but just as significantly, the Son of Man shows Himself to be the Bridegroom of Israel. Only one chapter afterward, Jesus will plainly state that He will give Himself into death for His bride.

This world does all it can, with the help of the devil and our old sinful nature, to cultivate doubt in God’s promise of perfect, undeserved love and mercy. God’s remedy is simply to unveil, to announce, why in fact His love for us absolutely trustworthy: because His relationship with us is marriage! Before Him we acknowledge that we are sinners and we plead for forgiveness.  And God who is faithful and just and forgives our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. 

His bride, the Church, has not always given Him reason to rejoice.  We have grieved our Lord greatly.  Back biting, infighting, greed, envy, lying, sexual immorality.  Yes, we are guilty of all these things and more. Isaiah rightly proclaims our sin as the equivalent of marital unfaithfulness.  Like an unfaithful wife, we deserve to be divorced, forsaken, by our Groom Jesus.  If God had not taken pity on His fallen creatures, our fate would have been that of an unfaithful wife, abandoned by her husband to live out her days amid the ruins of a wretched life. 

But He has redeemed us with His own blood. He does not treat us as we deserve, thank God, but He delights to make us His own holy people, made beautiful by His forgiveness. Through Baptism the Groom acquires His bride and purifies her for Himself.  Holy Baptism is the touch of Christ Himself, so that through it there takes place the most intimate union with God’s Son in the flesh.  By grace, the Lord looks at His Church and loves her. She is beautiful in His sight.  A crown of beauty. A diadem in the hands of her husband.

In this marriage, our Lord gives His bride His name, taking us into His family. Zion Lutheran Church, we are named such after that ancient name for God’s people.  Zion is Jerusalem, more specifically, the mount on which the temple stood, but it also referred to the people of Jerusalem, the people of God.  And so we are, built upon the foundational mountain of Christ Himself.  And Zion, we, become righteousness only by the mouth of the Lord. 

No longer forsaken and desolate, are we are the delight of the Lord and married to Him.  The only reason we can be called “My Delight” is because God made His Son in whom He delighted the Forsaken One. God placed all of our unspeakable and idolatrous and adulterous sins upon Jesus. God forsook Him. God turned His face away from Jesus so He could shine His face upon us and delight in us.

The only reason we can be called “Married” is because God made Jesus “Desolate.” Upon the cross Jesus suffered the very desolation of eternal hell we all deserved. What love that God would condemn His Son so He could rejoice over us! Now nothing separates us from that love. Nothing stands between us and God. We are married!

God speaks and His Word bestows what it says.  And we listen with ears of faith.  Faith that is born from what is heard from the mouth of the Lord acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Where His forgiveness is given, we freed and forgiven and married to Christ, acclaim Him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words He has uses to make Himself known to us.

Our righteousness and God’s glory is the reason why He will not keep silent.  So that through our lives, through our actions, and our words the nations might see the righteousness of Christ and give glory to God.  When you have really good news like this, you can’t keep silent.  In Psalm 51:15, the opening verses for Matins and Vespers, we say, “O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise.”  As the bride of Christ, we too cannot help but speak out the news of Christ, for the Lord has opened up our lips to proclaim the Word that does not lie, the truth that does not change, and the Word of the Lord that accomplishes what it promises.  The Epiphany season is about making known this really good news. It’s about shining the brightness of this good news into a sin-darkened world and into sin-darkened lives.

When people sin and have hearts burdened with the darkness of guilt and regret, we have good news to shine upon them. We have the good news of a Savior who has taken our sin and taken our place on a cross because of that sin.  We have the good news of a Savoir who not only restores, but restores completely. With such good news, how can we be silent?  For He bespeaks us righteous and holy, delightful and married, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Several years ago my mom started getting strange phone calls from California threatening legal action for not paying her bills.  This was pretty strange given that we didn’t live in California.  Not too long after they started, she had to get fingerprinted to be a coach for the high school swim team.  While she was there, her name was flagged and her fingerprints were run against one Sharon Shaver, who had a warrant for her arrest in California and Oregon for fraud.  It turns out there was another Sharon Shaver, born the same year, but with different middle names that was doing some bad things, and there was a case of mistaken identity.  Sadly, this sort of thing probably goes on more often than we realize.

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 9 million Americans have their identity stolen each year.  Credit Card fraud, phone, bank and finances, ID’s all can be stolen or used against us.  Some of you might even know someone who has been a victim of this crime.  Most of us probably have no idea what to do if something like this would happen.  How do you get your life back if your identity has been stolen?

The Israelites in our Old Testament reading were struggling with this question.  Their identity had been stolen, and they didn’t realize it until a lot of damage had been done.  They looked all over for the thief, blamed several others for the crime – the nations around them, trouble makers within themselves, even God Himself, when the whole time they had done it to themselves.  If we were to back up a chapter, we would read of Israel’s failure to hear and to see because of their sinfulness and continual rebellion against God.  They threw off their identity and traded it for something else.  Their sin had stolen their identity and they didn’t even know it until they were exiled from their homes, cut off from their families, aliens in a pagan land. And that same theft and fraud is still going on today as our sins, the devil, and the world try to steal away our identity, and who we are. God will not bless those who cast His name aside or exchange it for a name that is flashier to the world, as a marketing ploy, or an attempt to glory in our own ego.

Whatever Israel’s blindness and insensitivity may have been in the past, through their wandering around without a sense of identity, God speaks to such a people through His Word to remind them whose they are. God’s relationship with His people is where their identity stems from. Much can be endured if we have a sense of destiny borne out of a particular identity.  But if that identity is lost or stolen, all that is left is a sense of hopeless, a lack of purpose and direction in life.  It leaves us with the deepest pain of exile, the fear that their sense of identity, the glory of being a people called out by the eternal God, was after everything, just a fantasy. If you don’t know who you are, and whose you are, you can’t know where you’re going or what life is even about.

But the God who has named Israel now gives His own names to Israel as indicators of the character that redeems them, that supports them throughout their lives as His sons and daughters. God does not say that there are no floods or fires, but He does promise that one can survive them because of His presence.  When we are challenged by our sinfulness, when thieves come to steal our identity from us, God is right there with you. As much as Israel is the Lord’s, the Lord is Israel’s. This reciprocity is what God’s covenant is about: Israel is God’s people, and He is her God.

From this relationship, a new identity is created, it is formed, when God puts His name on His people.  Sinful people shape idols, but God is the true shaper. The sovereign and holy Creator is also a hands on artist who molds people as a potter shapes His clay. Like all artists, He signs His creation with His name. By doing so, He connotes ownership. By signing His name, He possesses that which He has created.

Today, we remember Jesus being baptized and beginning His journey that took Him to death on the cross and the grave before He came back to life on that first Easter.  We hear the words of the Father speaking of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” And today, we are reminded of our own baptism, when God placed His name on us, when He spoke of us that we are His sons and daughters that He is well pleased with us for the sake of Jesus.  All that belongs to Christ by nature, He places in water of Baptism, so that it may be ours by His grace.  When we are connected to His death and to His life. As the apostle Paul reminds us in our Epistle reading today, “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life…  For one who has died has been set free from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:4, 7-8, 11).

For God, no price is too high to pay for the redemption of His own.  He could go to any length to buy our identity back from the sin, death and the devil that seeks to steal it.  It was not ultimately Egypt, Cush and Seba that God gave up as a ransom, He gave up His Son.  He who had no sin became sin for our sake (2 Corinthians 5:21) and giving his life as ransom for many (Matthew 20:28).  Martin Luther explains it well in talking about the second article of the Creed, “He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness…”

Our names mean something.  We are named “Christian” because Christ has claimed us as His own. We are named “Lutheran” because we are focused solely on the Good News that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and that He delivers His salvation to us through Word and Sacrament.  We are named “Zion,” the name of God’s holy mountain and His holy people, because He has gathered us His people from as far as the east is from the west to be His own possession for His glory.  We are called by His name, we belong to Him and He to us.  It has nothing to do with us qualifying for such redemption.  God’s grace is that He love us with no self-delusions.  He knows exactly who we are in all our sinfulness, but that does not make us any less precious to Him.  For the sake of Jesus, He calls us His own. For the sake of Jesus, He forgives us our sins. For the sake of Jesus, He gives all that He has for us.  Amen.

“We have come to worship Him.”  So said the Magi when they spoke to King Herod. They had travelled from the east to Jerusalem in search of a king. They come to worship the king of the Jews because in the east kings were worshipped as rulers of earth often by divine right.  They did not fully understand yet that this Jesus was not just the king of the Jews, but also their king, the king of the Gentiles.  And so, on Epiphany every year, on January 6, we remember and celebrate that God began to reveal the saving glory of Christ which is for all people. 

Isn’t that what we are saying with our words and actions whenever we come here?  “We have come to worship Him.”  That’s why we are here after all.  We too follow the path of these Gentile magi, led to the King of kings and Lord of lords, to worship the Christ.

It is entirely possibly that these magi were the remnant of those who had been the scholars or disciples of the prophet Daniel. Several hundred years earlier, God used the Babylonians to discipline His wandering and idolatrous people, sending them into exile in a foreign land.  There, Daniel, and others, lived out their faith in God and the promised Messiah in a pagan land.  There, they gave witness to the hope they had in the Word of God who would keep His promise to the world.  Now, these magi, students of nature, observed the star that had appeared and believing it to signal the birth of a king head out of their home to search out the king to worship Him.

Here the magi teach us the right faith. After they had heard the preaching and the word from the prophet, they were not indifferent nor slow to believe. And yet they had many obstacles in the path: a long journey, an incomplete understanding, a deceitful king. We too face obstacles in our lives of faith, sometimes ones larger than others: a long drive to church, an incomplete understanding of scripture, a deceitful and greedy heart.  The star goes before these magi and leaves them not until it brings them to the Christ child.  But neither does it go any farther, but stands still over the house where the Child is.

This revelation of where to find Jesus and what it all means came to them not through the star, nor through their feelings or decisions nor religious leaders. It came to them through the Scriptures.  This was done to teach us to be guided by the Scriptures, and not by our imagination, not to follow any worldly wisdom. We seek neither Jerusalem nor Rome nor earthly political saviors, but the King Christ in the Scriptures.

We are led to Jesus by the light of His Word.  Thus also the light of the Gospel is as a lamp in the darkness (2 Peter 1:19) leads us to Christ, goes no farther; for beyond Christ it teaches us nothing (1 Corinthians 2:2; Colossians 2:8). God revealing Himself to us through His Son. The great revelation of Epiphany is not just who Jesus is as the savior, but who this Jesus is for.  That the Gentiles are fellow heirs of the promises of God throughout history.  And that this status comes only by faith in the Christ, the revelation of God to the world in the means He has chosen.

As the magi find the Christ child, the king of whom they had been led, they did not balk at the humble estate in which they found Him. They were not offended at the lowly and poor appearance of the little Child Jesus. Rather, they knelt down and offered their gifts in all reverence and respect, worshipping Him. 

When we are led to Christ, we too are met by Him as He humbles Himself before us through the means of Scripture and of the Sacraments.  While the world may never understand the meaning of the King of the universe being found in such a meager manner, we come bringing the offerings of our worship and praise in response to His epiphany among us. If we would join them in honoring Christ, we must close our eyes to everything that is beautiful and brilliant according to worldly standards, and exercise ourselves in such works as appear foolish and of little importance to the world; for instance, such works as feeding and clothing the poor, consoling the troubled, and helping our neighbor in his times of need.  But most of the all, joining together in the highest worship of the King: believe in His name and to receive the gifts that He bestows upon His people. The true gifts of Epiphany are not those that the magi brought to Jesus nor their worship of Him, but what Jesus brings to His people. He is the gold of the Father. For your sake, He became poor so that you might make you rich.  He is the frankincense of heaven, as His death on the cross serves as the sacrificial incense offered up as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. He is the myrrh of salvation, for in Him, the stench of every sin is taken away for all time. 

Come, let us worship Him, led by the light of His Gospel, receiving His gifts of Word and Sacrament in repentant faith, for in Christ, the epiphany, the revelation, of all that God is, all that God has, and all that gives is lavished upon you. In the name of the Father and of the T Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.” The words of this Nunc Dimittis, Latin for the first words of this song, often wash over us with a poetic force, but as Simeon spoke them, they are quite matter of fact. Simeon has the actual fulfillment of God’s promises in his arms.  Not just a promise to him, but a promise to the entire world that was thousands of years old when Simeon was born. 

These words tell us why we celebrated Christmas. It is painfully clear that the world cannot create or maintain peace.  Terrorist activity around the world and our country.  A role model fallen from grace. Family fights and arguments over the holidays. We grieve for a world so lost without this peace, but peace has come in the salvation that God brings about through God becoming flesh. A peace of Christmas that heaven cannot contain so it breaks into this world at the incarnation and the angels proclaim.

Simeon was old but his life was not filled with the things of old age – he waited.  He waited at the Temple.  He waited on the Lord.  He took the promise of God personally and daily he entered the Temple to pray to the Lord and wait upon the Lord to fulfill the promise and give the eyes of an old man the blessing of seeing the promised future unfold. Not an aimless waiting for death, nor a waiting for perfect happiness or fulfillment in this life. But it is a waiting on the timing of the Lord. Simeon saw with the clear vision of faith and knew his time of waiting was over.  He had seen the Lord’s salvation and now his life was full.

Unfortunately, Simeon’s prayer has been trivialized for centuries. It’s the “I will die happy if” version of the prayer. Most of us have uttered that phrase… “I will die happy if I get that job; I will die happy if she will marry me.”  In fact, there is a book out there entitled Die Happy: 499 Things A Guy’s Gotta Do While He Still Can. The blurb for the book says, “Face it. There are some things in life that come with an expiration date.”

But you see, Simeon’s prayer is not just about dying in peace.  Seeing Jesus is not just another thing to check off the bucket list.  It’s about living in the promises of God fulfilled in Christ and what He has done for us on the cross.  Being ‘dismissed’ was not just a synonym for death. It also meant that one was being released from some obligation from a master, such as sentry duty.  It is clear that Simeon had been on such duty.  He waited and prayed each day, as did Anna, to see God’s salvation.  And now, just as he took Jesus in his arms, his sentry duty was over for God had kept His promise of salvation for His people.

Seeing the salvation of God gives us a peace that comes from knowing that we can face death without fear; a peace that allows us to live in God’s purposes for our lives; a peace that leads us to grateful praise and joy; a peace that means we can rest from searching for answers and God because God Himself comes to us.  Peace is not having our dreams come true. Peace is seeing God’s promises come true. Like Simeon, you have been led here today by God’s Holy Spirit.  Like Simeon, God has fulfilled His promise to you.  Jesus was there for Simeon. He’s there for you.

It might surprise you that in the early years of the Reformation little distinguished the Lutheran Divine Service from the Roman Mass -- not ceremony or vestment or words or even language. Only what was proclaimed from the pulpit loud and clear and a little addition to the Mass made by Luther.  Luther’s greatest modification to the mass was to add the Song of Simeon as the post communion song. The peace he talks about is perfect contentment which seeks no more.  We sing this after Communion because that is the same peace that we have after receiving Jesus’ body and blood.  No more is needed.  Our sins are completely and utterly forgiven.  God’s promise is fulfilled.

Though we don’t see Jesus just as Simeon did, we see Him working through His means of grace.  When we see God’s salvation in God’s living Word, through the waters of Baptism, and in the bread and wine, His very body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Having seen Christ in the Sacrament, receiving Him in our bodies and souls, we join Simeon in his inspired song.  Each time we hear God’s forgiveness, each time we taste God’s forgiveness, we have that peace in which we can depart.  It’s no accident that after we receive the body and blood of the Lord, we hear the blessing, “Depart in peace.”

Because of this Gospel we are not without hope, not without grace to sustain us, not without purpose to our waiting, and not without all we need to be ready now and every day to meet our Lord and enter into His heavenly glory where He has prepared a place for us, that we may be where He is.

By now, most of you have either opened up some presents are going to as soon as you get home today.  Giving and receiving the gifts. The wrapping paper is torn and useless, the boxes are opened. And it’s all headed to garbage. We keep the gift and throw away the packaging as if it were nothing important. But we dare not do that in regards to Jesus.

God in a box.  The infant Jesus in a manger. That’s what we celebrate today. So that we might know God, that we might believe in Him, that we might live with Him, He boxes Himself up as the Christmas gift to the whole world.  He wraps Himself up in swaddling cloths, being laid in a wooden feed trough as the Christmas present to the world. 

But the real miracle of Christmas isn’t that God placed Himself inside a manger, but that God places Himself in a box that is a human body.  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  In the womb of Mary. In a manger.  In the Jordan River.  Teaching, preaching, healing in Galilee. And then upon a cross. In the grave. In heaven, at the right hand of God the Father.

Now you might think, “Wait a minute here. Who are we put God in a box?  He is too big to be limited by our understanding or our ideas or our doctrines or our buildings or any other box we create.  There’s an old philosophical saying that goes, “the infinite cannot be contained by the finite.”  Sometimes we Lutherans are charged with limiting what God can do and how He goes about doing it.  How can the infinite God, the creator of the universe, ever be contained when the very earth is His footstool?

No, we cannot limit God, nor box Him up into things of our own making. When it comes to the created universe, God alone is holy, which is to say, God alone is “set apart” from all that exists in creation. So, if we are to know God or have a relationship with Him, He must locate Himself for us within creation. Another pastor once put it this way, that in the same way we could never have a relationship with the architect of a building by talking to the walls or getting close to the carpet, we will never have a relationship with God by searching for Him in creation.  We can learn about the Creator by looking at what He has made, but we cannot know Him this way. He remains separate from all things, apart from all things, holy. If we are to truly know God, He must come to us so that we may know for a certainty that He is with us — which is exactly what God has done at Christmas – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

At the incarnation, God literally located Himself for us within created matter. Put another way, God placed Himself “in a box.” He humbled Himself and delivered Himself for us in the “box” of flesh and blood.  From the beginning, Jesus was appointed for the cross and tomb by which He would reconcile us to Himself by paying the price for our sin. Indeed, in this infant dwelt all the fullness of the godhead bodily — the God of God and Light of Light who came for us, died for us, and rose again for us within creation so that we might know His love and receive His salvation in the gifts He gives to this day (Rev. James Holowach). He delivers that present to the world, not with a sleigh and reindeer, but through much more ordinary and mundane ways. In words upon pages of His Book. In water in a bowl. In bread upon a plate, in wine within a cup.

In the end, God can certainly come to us any way He chooses. He has chosen these lowly means, just as in His lowly birth. These means of grace are the way by which we may see the glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14) boxed up in the flesh, and delivered to us personally.  If we desire to have life in relationship with God, then we are well advised to receive it in the gifts He gives in the manner in which He gives them.

You can’t put God in a box.  Yes, but you also can’t take God out of a box that He has put Himself into. He has put Himself there for us.  Why do we get so easily become unsatisfied with the gift and with box in which it is packaged? Now that He has come to us through His Son and located Himself for us in His word and sacraments, are we really going to insist on something different, something more? Are we going to act like children who are unsatisfied with the gifts their fathers have given because they are too small, too boring, or simply not what we expected?  We are called to repent of trying to sneak a peak at God undressed, of treating His gift of salvation in Christ too lightly, of trying to toss the present out with the wrapping paper and box.

If you want to have anything good from God, any blessing from Him, He’s got to put Himself in a certain place for the good of His people.  In Exodus 20:24b, right after delivering the 10 Commandments to His people, God states, “In every place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.”  The blessings come from when God places Himself in a box, the box of human flesh in Jesus, the box of Word and Sacrament. Trying to take God out of the box in which He has placed Himself is a very dangerous thing. Luther once talked about those who want to see God in His full glory, unboxed as it were.  He warned of a speculative theology about those who wanted to sneak into heaven and see God nude.  The problem with seeing God in His full glory is that we can take it. It’s too much for us. If you want to see God unclothed from the boxes that He puts Himself in, that ends only in destruction. “No one can see God and live.”  You cannot see God in His unrestrained glory and, as a sinner, survive.

Let us take hold of the gift of God who comes for you “in a box,” in the flesh and blood of Jesus, in bread and wine and water and word to be God with you and for you. On this Christmas Day, let us rejoice in this free gift of God, received by faith in the Word made flesh, the one in whom is the life of the world.