The Sign of Glory Ps 96; Isa 9:2-7; Tit 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
Introduction
Christians inflamed about contemporary society’s taking of Christ out of Christmas should examine whether our understanding of the birth of Jesus is wholly biblical. Christmas hymns can be as dreadful as they can be wonderful. Charles Wesley’s Hark! the herald angels sing lifts our hearts heavenward with deeply spiritual truths like, Veiled in flesh the Godhead see Hail the incarnate deity Pleased as man with men to dwell Jesus, our Emmanuel.”[1]. On the other hand, even as a child I knew there was something wrong with these words from Away in a Manger “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Or, from Once in Royal David’s City “Christian children all must be Mild, obedient, good as He.” This is both a denial of the real humanity of the Son of God and indoctrination. No wonder Karl Marx said, “”Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Today however the masses have empty forms of entertainment Marx could never imagine. My concern is not with historical deviance from the biblical nativity story as such, strips away the glory of God for which we were created (Isa 43:6-7)[2]. All that is said and about the coming of God as a real human being must reveal the glory of God for this reality holds together both Bible and history.
The Hunger for Glory
The psalmist in today’s reading sees that all the power and beauty of the Lord are concentrated in his sanctuary and the remedy to human ills is to “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name” (Ps 96:6, 8). Only such attitudes and actions can reverse the destruction of our having “exchanged the glory of immortal God” for experiences of infinitely lesser value (Rom 1:23[3]). Our obsession with the attraction of things has displaced the space created in the human heart for the love of God alone[4]. Prophetically Isaiah[5] saw a time when the shining light of divine glory would descend on Galilee through the birth of a human son called “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”. By sharing the properties of the Lord of Israel this child will reign in peace and justice over the whole world forever (Isa 9:1-7). The Old Testament writers sensed only the personal visitation of God’s glory could make a broken world whole, but only the New Testament identifies this glory with the infant Jesus.
Background
Luke sets the birth of Jesus against the widest possible background where the Emperor Caesar Augustus decrees that “all the world” needs to take place in a census. This catches up Joseph and Mary so that their firstborn son (2:7)[6] arrives in Bethlehem. There are no details of the birth as such[7]; what do you think, do you think the labour was painless…?[8] Unless we believe Mary herself was a sinless sort of super-natural woman[9] the labour was painful because God decreed to Eve[10] pain in childbearing (Gen 3:16 cf. Rev 12:2). The birth takes place exactly as prophesied[11], in the little town of Bethlehem. Are you aware that there is diversity of scholarly opinion as to the location within the town of the birth? The lower level of a relative’s house is the top choice[12], a cave a second favourite but virtually no one thinks Christ was born in a stable[13]. This ruins our quaint nativity scenes[14] but positively testifies that God’s plan for the coming of the Lord of glory as a human being (1 Cor 2:8; James 2:1) is more subtle than we would naturally expect or desire [15].
Signs of Glory
What then about the visible signs of glory prominent in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus? Intriguingly the Lord sovereignly chooses to reveal himself to shepherds, people at the bottom of the social scale[16], making men whose testimony was inadmissible in a human court[17] to be his first witnesses. Watching over their flocks, “an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear…suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host[18] praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (2:9,13-14). The divine glory normally thought to belong in the sanctuary of the Jerusalem temple is now made manifest on a farm! How strange in ordinary human eyes is the wisdom of the glory of the Lord[19].
If you’ve ever seen or heard the words, “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.”, please remember they are not in the Bible and make it seem like God favours only the best kind of people[20] whereas the angels have already testified about “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” (2:10).
Finally, we read, “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” (2:20). There is something in a revelation of God’s glory that moves us to pass it on[21]. Once you’ve had an experience of the richness of the Lord you will tell others about it[22]. Some years ago after an intense healing experience in prayer in Singapore I climbed into a taxi with two other believers and very quickly found myself sharing about Jesus and praying for the driver. When we hopped out of the taxi one of my companions said, “I knew you’d witness to the driver”. She hadn’t made a good guess; the nature of glory is inwardly compelling.
Since the idea of “glory” incorporates elements of brilliance, splendour and honour, the shepherds were so penetrated by the glory of God that it radiated from their lives through their words until the end of their days. They could not more stay silent in their amazement than the heavenly angels could have been silent. At Christmas the people of God experience something of this, don’t we, we just must sing of the goodness of the Lord in his coming down to us[23]? After all this I am up to the central point of this sermon.
The Glory of God in Christ
Jesus being marked out by the angels as “Saviour” “Messiah” and “Lord” (2:11)[24] draws us into pondering an element of this story which rarely receives the attention it is due. The angels did NOT say to the shepherds, ““And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby completely free from crying, distress and deprivation[25] surrounded by a halo[26]” The text points us in the opposite direction, to the real humanity of Jesus as a lowly baby, “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” (2:12). The sign that identifies Jesus as the gift of God (John 4:10; 2 Cor 9:15)[27] comes across as a poor sign[28], a weak rather than an exalted sign. Signs from God however expound the inner meaning of divine actions (Ex 3:12; 1 Sam 2:34; 10:1; Isa 37:30)[29]. God’s appointed sign that this baby is the glorious Saviour-Messiah-Lord is his being wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a feeding trough. There is nothing obviously extraordinary about this. What is extraordinary beyond all human imaginings is that this infant is the great God willingly born in a position of humiliation[30].
Through faith in the humiliation of God’s Son entering the world as an infant totally dependent on sinful human beings for his nourishment, growth and survival, we can be supernaturally empowered to receive sustenance from heaven[31]. The celestial choir of heavenly angels in ecstasy and the sign given to the shepherds exist in a profound unity[32]. The angels burst forth in amazed songs of glory because they have a revelation through the mangered baby of their own eternal creator-sustainer assuming the humble estate of an infant, so great is his love for the lost and perishing[33]. Today, we can share in the revelation given angels and shepherds.
Application and Conclusion
The birth story of Jesus is wonderful and amazing (Luke 2:18), but wonder and amazement are not the same as real faith[34]. Like Mary, we need to treasure and ponder these things in our hearts (Luke 2:19; Rom 10:9; Eph 3:17) for them to mature. Having stripped away all the non-biblical elements of the nativity story, we are left with the raw testimony of the lowliness of God entering existence as an ordinary weak, mortal baby. [This is limitlessly more powerful than the cute and sentimental story that has been popularised in Western culture.] Let me share an illustration that may help you as it has helped me. If the top half of this hourglass represents the almighty, eternal God, the bottom half represents finite broken mortal humanity. The only contact point between these two opposites is the narrow way through the centre, this tiny portion represents Jesus and his taking upon himself of our lowliness.
As a sign that we are in the twilight of Western Christendom the Christmas lights of the city of Perth might no longer clearly portray the biblical story of the birth of Christ, but the sign appointed by the Lord which shocks our normal sensitivities can revive the Church. The swaddling cloths and the manger call us to indiscriminately serve others[35] as witnesses of Jesus. The glory of these signs is a call to ongoing lowliness in prayer, carving out time out from busy lives to listen to the needs of others[36] and to offer practical care.
If the Most High God[37] brought himself so low as to totally dependent on people like us for his own survival, the God of the manger will satisfy all our spiritual needs to his own glory. in the wisdom of God, the way to ascend to the angelic realm of glory is by embracing the way of the swaddling cloths and the manger.
[1] I think Silent Night and O Holy Night are similar.
[2] To sin is the to lose the glory of God (Rom 3:23), and final punishment is everlasting loss of dwelling in this glory (2 Thess 1:9-10). Consider the famous statement of the second century Church father, Irenaeus, “the glory of God is a living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.”.
[3] Think of all the sins Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount, like wanting someone else’s wife or husband, or wanting revenge, for Christ the most profound evil occurs at the level of a thought before a deed (Matt 5:27ff.).
[4] “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.” (Pascal)
[5] Who in a vision had seen “the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord” (Isa 6:3).
[6] Which means Jesus is the rightful heir (Ex 13:2; Num 3:12-13; 18:15-16; Deut 21:15-17).
[7] As there are no details of the resurrection itself in the Gospels. This is because such details have no direct saving significance.
[8] Which is the traditional Catholic position, which surely diminishes the meaning and value of Jesus to Mary.
[9] Which is effectively what the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary teaches. She was conceived free from all the consequences of inherited/original sin.
[10] The “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20).
[11] See Micah 5:2, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel,”.
[12] Since the Greek word often translated “inn” kataluma is better translated “guest room” and a commercial lodging place was improbable in a small town like Bethlehem. Family and animals often occupied one enclosed space at the time.
[13] See https://stream.org/was-jesus-really-born-in-a-stable/ for a hypothesis that incorporates all of these.
[14] Which among other things generally have the shepherds and the “3” wise men all there together, a certain error timewise (Matt 2:7, 16).
[15] Wherever he was born, it was not in Jerusalem (Matt 2). Where the so-called “wise men” from the east sought him, and which exposes the Magi/wise men as spiritually ignorant and so themselves in need of the Saviour.
[16] Though there is no evidence they were considered religiously unclean.
[17] Since they were considered so unreliable.
[18] “Host” has military connotations, “the armies of heaven” appear at the time of the birth of Jesus, no doubt to protect his arrival against satanic attack cf. Rev 12:1-6.
[19] Exactly what we would expect since our spiritual eyes are fallen (Gen 3:6-7; Prov 3:7; 12:15; 26:5, 12; 28:11; Isa 5:21).
[20] The text actually makes it clear that the “good will” belongs to God, a will which in other places expresses the pleasure of God in sovereignly choosing who will come to him in salvation (Eph 1:5, 9, 11).
[21] Glory is “essentially communicable”. This observation isn’t contradicted by what is said of Jesus’ mother, “Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (2:19), for she is commonly seen as a major source of Luke’s Gospel.
[22] “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20).
[23] In like manner the hymnic passages of the New testament (Luke 19:38; Eph 1:3-24; Rev 4:11). For “doxologies” in general (Rom 11:36; 16:27; Gal 1:5; Eph 3:21; Phil 4:20; Heb 13:21; 1 Tim 1:17; 2 Tim 4:18; 1 pet 4:11; 2 Pet 3:18; Rev 1:6).
[24] “Saviour” and “Lord” in the first century would have been commonly associated with the divinity of the emperor; something very oppositional to God’s own Messiah.
[25] As if the Incarnate Lord did not need to embrace hunger and thirst, all his life, for our salvation (Matt 4:2; John 4:7, 31; 19:28).
[26] The Halo in religious art is pagan in origin, rather than biblical https://www.britannica.com/art/halo-art .
[27] The visibility of the Nicene Creed’s description of the Lord Jesus Christ as “God from God”.
[28] Properly understood, the sign that speaks of the lowliness underlying the Saviour’s birth is the foundation upon which God decided to build the universe (cf. 2 Cor 8:9). Which includes all the angelic glory in this story. The angels “know” in a spiritual way that their own creation and subsequent praise is dependent on the humility of God revealed in this sign. They intuit their own creation, preservation, and consummation. More elaborately, the vision of the hierarchy of all creatures around the Lamb in Revelation 5 testifies to this reality.
[29] This is critical to discerning false signs, which always sere the self-aggrandisement of their performer.
[30] In contrast, the sign of his final Advent will be his coming in glory (Matt 24:30) to judge the world.
[31] Which will reverse the prophecy of Isaiah 1:3, “An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.” And is a result of the great/wonderful exchange, “Christ became what we are to make us what he himself is.” (Irenaeus).
[32] Even if they are paradoxically related as far as humans are concerned. See, for example, the tendency of translators to diminish “the humanity of God”. Consider, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself” (Phil 2:6-7 ESV) where “though” is an addition, or “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God making his appeal through us.” (2 Cor 5:20) where “as though” is an addition to the text.
[33] Contrary to various heresies, an angel, or archangel, like Michael, could never become a human being.
[34] See Luke 4:22; 8:25; 9:43; 11:14, 24; 24:12, 41 for examples of amazement by the crowds and others. So with the “sign faith” of John’s Gospel this sort of response doesn’t endure (John 2:23-24).
[35] But not doing this as a way to earn merit either from God or humans.
[36] After all, loneliness is the ongoing pandemic of our time.
[37] Importantly, a title generally used in scripture in dialogue with idol worshippers, or by pagans or demons themselves (Dan 3:26; 4:2; 5:18, 21; Mark 5:7; Luke 8:28; Acts 16:7; Heb 7:1).