It was probably 20 years ago now that Chris and I went to see Vince Gill and Amy Grant’s Christmas Concert, which was pretty amazing. The best part for me, though, was a young bluegrass band that was touring with them called Nickel Creek. They performed a Christmas carol I had never heard before called “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella.” Do you know it?
It was only
recently that I learned that “Jeanette, Isabella” is not one person’s name,
like when I got in trouble when I was a kid, and my mom would call me “Eric
Ernest!” Jeanette and Isabella are actually two girls (there is a comma between
the names). These two girls are sent to get a torch – bring a light – to help
find and see the baby Jesus. In the process, the two girls end up gathering the
whole village to see baby Jesus, and there are enough people that the song has
to warn the crowd, “Hush! Hush! See how the Child is sleeping.”
I think it
is important that the song is about two girls who draw a whole village to
Jesus. Christmas is, after all, a time for gathering: family gatherings,
parties, worship services. But the song makes it clear that it is not Christmas
that gathers people – it is Christ.
Christ
gathers us.
Why are we
drawn to worship the baby Jesus? Well, as another Christmas carol says to the
little town of Bethlehem, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee
tonight.”
The hopes
and fears of humanity are why Jesus was born and why He gathers us. Separated
from God by our sin, we wonder if there can be love, and the Christ child’s
emphatic answer is yes! Love has come! Feeling the guilt of our sins, failures,
and the hurts we have done to others, we wonder if there can truly be
forgiveness, and the Baby in the manger’s message is, “This is why I have come!
I forgive sinners.” There is so much turmoil in our hearts dealing with
concerns of life and death, health and illness, financial plenty and lack, harm
done to us and done by us that we wonder if there can possibly be peace – peace
with God and with one another! And the newborn Jesus proclaims, “I am the
Prince of Peace, and the source of reconciliation!” And there is so much
sorrow, so much wrong, so much injustice, so much grief in this life that we
might wonder if there can be joy. And as we consider that baby, we hear Psalm
97, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!” He comes to set all things right and
fix all that is broken in the world, and we can have joy in Him.
The birth of
Jesus calls you to rejoice, alone if you must, but in God’s design, we are to
rejoice together!
We read from
Isaiah 52 for our O.T. lesson. The chapter begins, “Awake, awake, put on your
strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy
city ….” It is a call for all of God’s people to celebrate that God has done
something remarkable.
This
remarkable thing happens because something truly tragic has happened – and that
tragedy is the human slavery to sin. Isaiah 52:3 says, “You have sold
yourselves for nothing.” What a picture of sin! What an image of the futility
of pursuing the temptations we give in to so easily! It feels so hopeless, but
then God says, “And you shall be redeemed without money.”
He is saying
there will be redemption, and money will not be the price. As we say in the
Catechism, “I believe that Jesus Christ … redeemed me, a lost and condemned
person … not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and his
innocent suffering and death.”
The message
of Christmas is that the Savior has come! “How beautiful upon the mountains are
the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good
news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.’”
We hear the
message together! We are drawn together in hope to hear: “Christ, the Savior,
is born!” And even in the birth of Jesus, there is peace, happiness, and
salvation.
How should
we respond to this good news? Isaiah says, “Break forth together is singing …
for the Lord has comforted His people and He has redeemed us.” And that is what
we’ve been doing this morning! We sing like the watchmen in Isaiah’s prophecy –
we sing of our savior, we sing of the miracle of the virgin birth, we sing of
the coming of Immanuel (God with us), we sing of our savior.
We are the
ones who have seen the goodness of the Lord. We are the watchmen who know the
King has come to save His people – born in Bethlehem – and we publish the good
news abroad! Wherever we can, we share the good news so that to the ends of the
earth, people will see the salvation of our God. (And as I’m fond of saying, it
doesn’t get much more “ends-of-the-earth” from Bethlehem than Ohio!)
We invite
everyone to come and worship God, He’s there, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and
lying in a manger.”
So we gather
to rejoice together and to receive God’s gifts of salvation. And I can think of
no better way to celebrate that our God comes to us in flesh and blood to save
us than to receive the sacrament he has given us to remember Him and to receive
forgiveness. (In fact, this is the Mass of Christmas – since Mass is an
old-timey word for the Lord’s Supper.) In a moment here, that is exactly what
we will do. We will take and eat the body, take and drink the blood for the
forgiveness of our sins … and where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life
and salvation!
“The Lord has
bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the
earth shall see the salvation of our God.” We beheld His glory, glory as the
only Son from the Father, and he came to save us. That is good news and worth
celebrating in song. Amen.
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