The manger is the sure sign of God’s love for mankind

Sermon for Christmas Day

Titus 3:4-7  +  Luke 2:15-20

Last night we heard the angels announce the good news of Jesus’ birth. This morning we go with the shepherds to investigate if what the angels proclaimed is true. Now, one thing the angel said couldn’t really be investigated by the shepherds. The identity of the baby as “a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord” couldn’t be seen. But that’s why the angel gave them an external sign, something they could investigate and see if it was true: that they would find in the town of Bethlehem a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Finding a baby wouldn’t have been much of a sign. But finding a newborn baby, lying in a manger, that would be sign, something otherwise unheard of, something they could search for and find to prove the angel’s word. Because if that was true, if they found a newborn baby lying in a manger as the angel had said, then everything else the angel said must also be true: that the Child’s birth is good news, because that Child was born “unto them,” unto us. Then He truly is a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.

Well, they went. They hurried into town and started searching the stables, because they had to know if what the angel said was true, that this Child was actually the Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah, the One who is who He is. If they found things as the angel had said, it meant proof that God was not some distant Deity who was disinterested in mankind, or who had abandoned us in our darkness and written us off because of our sins. If they found that baby lying in a manger—in a feeding trough for animals—it would prove that God cares about us, that He loves us deeply enough to become one of us, that He loves us greatly enough to choose, not a palace, not even a crib, but a manger for His first bed, and humble shepherds for His first visitors.

Not only that, if the shepherds found a baby lying in a manger, as the angel had said, it would mean that the angel’s other word was true, that the Child is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One whom Israel had been waiting for for thousands of years, the Seed of the woman promised to Eve, the Seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Star rising out of Jacob, the Son of David, the Builder of the Lord’s House, the great Prophet, Priest, and King, the perfect Substitute for sinful Israel, the Light to the Gentiles, the Servant of the Lord from Isaiah’s prophecies who would be despised and rejected by men, led like a lamb to the slaughter for our sins, for our iniquities, the price that would bring us peace.

Not only that, if the shepherds found a baby lying in a manger, as the angel had said, it would mean that He is the Savior whom God sent to save mankind, first, from our sins, and finally, from all the consequences of sin, including a world filled with hatred and evil, even from death itself.

You know how it turned out. The shepherds did find Mary and Joseph and that Baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. All the proof they needed was staring up at them with newborn eyes: the angels were telling the truth. This is the Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And truly He was born “unto us,” to be our Savior and Christ and Lord. As St. Paul wrote to Titus, The kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared. The birth of Christ was the first appearing of that kindness and love for mankind. The ultimate appearing of it would be that same Child grown up into a 33-year-old Man hanging on a cross. This is what it took for God to be not only our God, but our Savior, and it all began with a Baby lying in a manger, the sign of the angel’s truthfulness, but more than that, the reality of the depth of God’s love.

But God’s kindness and love for mankind didn’t only appear. He actually saved us, Paul writes to Titus, not by being born—no one was saved from sin, death, or the devil by Christ’s birth alone. He saved us, not even by the act of later dying on the cross. He actually saved us from sin and from the power of death by connecting us with His birth and with His death, as Paul says, through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Through Holy Baptism. Through Baptism, which is the rebirth of water and the Spirit, the Holy Spirit made us “newborn babies,” as it were. Reborn babies. To all who received Christ, God gave them the right to become children of God, as John writes in his Gospel, sons of God, just like our Brother, Jesus, who lay in Bethlehem’s manger.

And now, as children of God, we are called on to reflect the kindness of God and His love for mankind in our words and deeds, with similar kindness and love for mankind. If God our Savior was willing to humble Himself to be placed in a manger so that He could become the Savior of lost mankind, how low is too low for you to humble yourself to serve your neighbor in his need? If Christ received shepherds as His first visitors, who is too lowly for you to receive? If Christ has saved us, not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, to whom will you not show mercy, regardless of what works of righteousness they may or may not have done?

It’s a holy calling you have, if you believe in the birth of Christ, if you celebrate Christmas at all, a holy calling not only to believe in, but to imitate the One who lay in the manger, and to make known in the world, as the shepherds did, not only the fact that He was born, but who He is and why He was born, to show God’s love for mankind to mankind as a member of mankind, to draw all people to Himself, that all may believe in Him, be baptized into Him, and be saved by Him. That is what the sign of the manger is meant to prove. Amen.