Scripture: Luke 2:1-20
I told you a couple of weeks ago how much I love Christmas music. I start listening to my dozens of Christmas records around November 1, and only stop around New Year’s. I love Christmas music. And I’ve noticed there’s one Christmas song that’s been growing in popularity in recent years. It’s from 1977. Y’all know it. It’s the duet between Bing Crosby—the singer of the most popular Christmas song of all time, “White Christmas”—and a very different kind of singer, the English glam-rocker David Bowie.
And that’s surely part of the song’s appeal: you have these two popular singers from entirely different eras coming together to sing this song. In fact, it was the last thing the 74-year-old Bing Crosby ever recorded: he died only a month later.
But in the song, Crosby sings the words to “Little Drummer Boy” while Bowie sings a countermelody, called “Peace on Earth.” It’s quite lovely. Its words are a meditation on the song that the “multitude of the heavenly host” sing in verse 14 of tonight’s scripture, which from the King James reads: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Bowie begins his part of the song by singing these words:
Peace on Earth, can it be?
Years from now, perhaps we’ll see
See the day of glory
See the day, when men of goodwill
Live in peace, live in peace again
“Live in peace again”… Again?
I’m sorry… When did we human beings live in peace the first time? Not since the Garden of Eden—and I doubt Bowie was thinking that far back.
No… Bowie makes it sound as if “peace on earth” was achieved on that first Christmas… and somehow we failed to live up to its spirit ever since… We lost that original Christmas spirit of peace and love and brotherhood… And we have to get it back.
And how do we get it back? That’s simple: We just have to try a lot harder. We need to do better. He sings,
Every child must be made aware
Every child must be made to care
Care enough for his fellow man
To give all the love that he can
And this idea of “trying harder” to love one another and to work for peace and to live up to or fulfill the promise of Christmas has been a recurring theme of modern Christmas songs.
Think of that 1984 charity single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” I sort of picked on that song a little in my Advent devotional booklet, if you read it. But I still feel great affection for the song. But the premise of that song is something like this: “The spirt of Christmas is great and all—and we all love it. But we’re really doing a lousy job sharing it with others—especially hungry people all over the world. We need to stop being so selfish—to start thinking of others for a change. So that they, too, can feel the spirit of Christmas… of peace and love and generosity, et cetera.
Again… the message is, “We need to try harder. We need to do better.”
Or how about John and Yoko’s ever popular “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” which is also chasing after the spirit of peace and love and brotherhood that Christmas promises. There’s a gospel choir in the background of that song that literally sings, “War is over/ If you want it/ War is over now.”
Whatever you say, John… Again, the point of the song is, we have it within our power to change the world for the better—to live up to or fulfill the promise of Christmas… If only we’ll try harder… if only we’ll do better.
But these songs beg the question: No matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to do better. Why? Why can’t we live out or live up to the spirit of Christmas for any length of time? Why can’t we seem to overcome selfishness and greed and violence. Why can’t we be generous the way we want?
No matter how hard we try, why does peace on earth remain ever elusive?
Besides… It’s not as if the main characters in our Christmas story experienced the kind of “peace on earth” that these popular modern Christmas songs long for…
You don’t believe me? Consider this:
Mary miraculously conceives her child—out of wedlock—and then has to have a difficult conversation with her fiancé: “Joseph, I’m pregnant… But let me explain!” And Joseph doesn’t believe her at first. Almost breaks off the engagement! And of course, if it was difficult for Joseph to believe Mary, how about their fellow townspeople in Nazareth. From now on, Mary and Joseph will have to hear the whispers and gossip about this scandalous pregnancy!
Doesn’t sound very peaceful!
And what about this census… referred to as a “registration” in tonight’s scripture? Mary was probably eight months pregnant at this point. Yet she and her husband had to travel about ninety miles south from Nazareth down to Bethlehem, which was Joseph’s ancestral home.
Doesn’t sound very peaceful!
To add insult to injury, once the couple arrived in Bethlehem, Luke reports that Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
It’s fashionable these days to say that the English word “inn” isn’t the best translation of the Greek in verse 7—that Luke himself, for instance, uses a different Greek word for “inn” in the parable of the Good Samaritan—and why wouldn’t he use that same word here if he was referring to the first-century equivalent of the Motel 6? That’s the argument. So some scholars say that “inn” should instead be translated “guest room.”
In which case, Mary and Joseph would have been staying—or attempting to say—not in a motel but in the home of a relative. So the NIV, among others, translates the word as “guest room.” And that’s fine…
But I just want to say, “It doesn’t matter! Same difference!” Whether there was no room in the inn, or no room at a cousin’s house, can’t we all agree that no mother wants to give birth in a stable, a barn… very likely with live animals in that barn! No mother wants to lay her child in a manger, which is a feeding trough for animals. No mother dreams of laying her newborn son on a bed of hay!
These are not ideal conditions under any circumstances!
It doesn’t sound very peaceful!
And you say, yes, but then Jesus was born… And finally we have it… Peace on earth!
Really?
Because Matthew’s Gospel makes it clear that the trouble doesn’t stop with the birth of Christ. In fact, it escalates.
Wise men from the East arrive in Jerusalem asking what seems like a perfectly reasonable question: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” And that one question is enough to shatter whatever illusion of peace we might still be clinging to.
King Herod hears the question—and instead of rejoicing, he panics. He smiles. He pretends to be interested. He pretends to be religious. He lies to the wise men and sends them on their way, all the while plotting to eliminate a potential rival to the throne. And when his plan fails—when the wise men don’t come back—Herod does what insecure, power-hungry rulers have always done: he turns to violence.
Matthew tells us that Herod orders the slaughter of every baby boy in Bethlehem two years old and under. Mothers screaming. Fathers helpless. Cradles suddenly empty.
This is Christmas too.
This is the world Jesus was born into. It doesn’t sound peaceful.
And it still doesn’t stop there.
Joseph is warned in a dream to take Mary and the child and flee in the middle of the night—to Egypt, of all places. Refugees. Exiles. Running for their lives. And even after Herod dies, they still can’t safely return to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem, because Herod’s son now rules Judea with the same cruelty. So they settle in Nazareth instead—always looking over their shoulders, always aware that the world is not safe for this child who is called the Prince of Peace.
It doesn’t sound very peaceful…
But here’s the thing… If we understand why our world doesn’t experience peace on earth, then we begin to understand the meaning of Christmas!
See, our problem isn’t that we haven’t tried hard enough to be good. The problem is that apart from a miracle of God’s grace, left to our own devices, we are unable to be good. The problem is sin—our rebellion against God, our distrust of him, our insistence on being our own kings, rather than submitting to the King of Kings.
The birth of God’s Son Jesus will make true peace possible… And it will only be possible at great cost.
To see what I mean, let me remind you of a story from the Gospels that many of you remember—the healing of the paralytic in Mark chapter 2.
Jesus has just begun his public ministry. He’s teaching in a home in Capernaum, and the place is packed—standing room only. If there were a first-century fire marshal, he would have shut it down.
Meanwhile, four friends are trying to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus. They’re carrying him on a mat, but there’s no way through the crowd. So instead of giving up, they climb onto the roof, break a hole through it, and lower their friend down right in front of Jesus.
And what does Jesus do?
He says something shocking: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”[1]
Your sins are forgiven. Excuse me? That’s not what these friends came here for. They wanted healing. They wanted their friend to walk again. And at first, Jesus seems perfectly content to leave it there—as if forgiving his sins is enough.
But for the scribes and Pharisees, pronouncing forgiveness of sins is the real scandal. Healing a paralytic would have been impressive… and uncontroversial. The religious leaders wouldn’t have a problem with that. But forgiving sins? That’s blasphemy. Only God can do that. Who does Jesus think he is?
And Jesus knows what they’re thinking, and he asks, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”[2]
And we know the answer… Of course it’s easier to say “your sins are forgiven.” Because whether they are or not, it’s invisible. You can’t prove whether it happened or not.
So Jesus—in addition to doing the invisible thing—also does the visible thing. He tells the man to stand up—and he does. And Jesus says he does this so that they may know that the Son of Man also has authority on earth to forgive sins.
From our perspective, forgiving sins seems easy. Making a paralytic walk, however… that seems hard.
But we’ve got it backwards.
After all, Jesus is God in the flesh. And it’s not hard for God to do miracles. It’s not hard for God to make a paralytic walk, or a blind man see, or even to raise the dead.
That’s not hard for God.
And when it comes to our Christmas story, it’s not hard for God to turn the wheels of history itself. It’s not hard for God to put it into the mind of Augustus Caesar to call for an empire-wide census—one small decision in Rome that eventually sends a carpenter and his pregnant fiancée ninety miles south from Nazareth to Bethlehem, just in time for a prophecy spoken centuries earlier by Micah to be fulfilled.
That’s not hard for God.
It’s not hard for God to place a miraculous star in the sky—bright enough, strange enough, compelling enough—to catch the attention of pagan astrologers hundreds of miles away. It’s not hard for God to guide these wise men more than seven hundred miles west, across deserts and borders, to kneel before a child they barely understand but somehow know is a king.
That’s not hard for God.
Miracles like that? Power like that? Guidance like that? That’s easy for God.
But forgiveness of sins—that’s hard.
After all, was it easy for Jesus sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and pray that this cup—in Old Testament terms, the “cup of God’s wrath”—might pass from him?
Was it easy when he was beaten, mocked, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross?
Was it easy when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Was it easy for the Son of God to experience separation from his Father for the first, which is nothing less than hell itself?
That was hard. Yet that is what forgiveness costs.
God paid for our forgiveness with the blood of his own Son—indeed, with his own blood. Because Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Trinity.
And that raises the question: how does God have blood to shed in the first place? How does God have a body that can bear God’s judgment for sin? How does God die in order to save us?
By becoming human.
That is the meaning of Christmas.
And maybe some of you are thinking, “Pastor, you’re talking an awful lot about the cross… and Christ’s atoning death on the cross. You seem to have your holidays confused. This is Christmas, not Good Friday or Easter.”
But brothers and sisters, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve missed the point.
Because… the meaning of Christmas is Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
So finally… what does it mean when the angels sing about “peace on earth”?
It means peace on earth is not a feeling we’re trying to summon. It’s not a moral achievement we’re trying to maintain. It’s not something human goodwill will eventually figure out.
Peace on earth is not so much something that happens on the horizontal plane, between people… It’s something that happens on the vertical plane, between us and God. And it’s something Jesus secured for us through his atoning death.
That’s what the cross accomplishes for us.
And then… once we have this peace with God through faith in his Son… God gives us his Holy Spirit, to live within us and change us over time… To enable us to be people who are finally capable of working for peace. To be disciples, as our own mission statement says, “who share Christ’s light.” If we do that, we will bring a greater of measure of peace to this world, by all means.
But that peace won’t be made fully and finally manifest until Christ comes—not the first time, which is what we celebrate tonight—but when he comes again… in the Second Coming.
So tonight, the message of Christmas is not “Try harder to be peaceful.”
The message is: Receive the peace Christ has already made.
[1] Mark 2:5
[2] Mark 2:9 ESV