Incarnation, Resurrection, and Christmas
What’s your favorite Christmas song?
A few weeks ago, I mentioned in one of my sermons that many of the hymns we sing around Christmastime depict the night Christ was born as a quiet, serene, peaceful night.
Consider “Silent Night”:
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
‘Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Or perhaps “Little Town of Bethlehem”:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n!
In addition, “Away in a Manger”:
The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.
As beautiful as these hymns are, they give us the idea that Christ was an unusual baby who didn’t cry or make a peep, but that’s not how babies normally are. A friend of mine recently had his first child and told me that during the first week of the baby’s life, he slept for no more than 2-3 hours without waking up and needing to be fed. No doubt, Baby Jesus cried just as much as any other new born baby, got upset as a toddler, and couldn’t wait to hit the playground after the Synagogue service was finished (even on the Sabbath!). While pleasant to meditate on, the serene telling of the Christ-child may depict him as less than human and encourage an overly sentimentalized telling of the Christmas story.
There are other Christmas hymns, however, that beautifully tell the Gospel story as summarized by the Christian tradition throughout history without unrealistic sentiment. Consider the italicized lines in the second and third verses of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”:
Christ, by highest heaven adored;
Christ, the everlasting Lord;
late in time behold him come,
offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’ incarnate Deity,
pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King!”
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King!”
This hymn, authored by Charles Wesley in 1739, beautifully captures the essence of the Gospel, packing complex theology into a few short lines. Let’s unpack it a bit.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’ incarnate Deity,
pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Mild he lays his glory by
Jesus, as the incarnate (in the flesh, made human) Son of God, reveals the Father (John 14:9) and makes him accessible to humanity. As Matthew’s Gospel puts it, he is “Emmanuel, God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Wesley’s words echo John 1:14:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
As the Chalcecodian Definition (451) clarifies, Jesus Christ was “truly God and truly man… consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood.”
“Consubstantial” is fancy theological language which means in most simple terms, “made of the same stuff.” Essentially, it means Christ was no less man and no less God, but fully human and fully divine. That’s why Jesus is worshipped in the New Testament! He is Divine. But even so, Paul tells us in Philippians 2:5-11 that Christ gave up his divine rights (while retaining his divine essence, being in the “form of God”) and became human, taking the “form of a servant” embracing an undignified and shameful death on the cross. Mild, he lays his glory by!
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give us second birth.
Through Christ’s incarnation (the fancy word for the doctrine that God became man), humans can have a second chance at life and the sure hope of resurrection in the future. Just as Christ was raised bodily, so those united with Christ will be raised bodily. Paul says Christ’s resurrection is the “firstfruit” of many more resurrections to come (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). As Athanasius (296-373) said in his classic work “On The Incarnation”, “Christ became what we are so we could become what he is.” In other words, when I die, I won’t stay dead. At some unknown point in time, my spirit will be reunited with my changed, transformed body at the Resurrection and I will rise, just like Jesus did. This fills me with hope! Life is not meaningless as the preacher in Ecclesiastes lamented. Christ redeems the meaningless through his resurrection, and ours.
The future resurrection is acted out in baptism as a drama. When one is lowered into the water, we anticipate our future death. But as one is raised, we anticipate our eventual resurrection from the dead when Christ returns! But baptism is not merely a symbol of the future; baptism is an effectual symbol. It accomplishes that which it signifies! When one is lowered into the water, he dies to his sinful nature and rises to a new life in Christ. The “new birth” of “water and Spirit” (John 3:3-5) begins in this life and will culminate when Christ returns to truly raise our bodies. Baptism is a transforming encounter whereby one is united with Christ in death and resurrection; a second spiritual birth.
There you have it. Incarnation, Christology, Theology, Eschatology, and Soteriology all packed into a few short lines in a Christmas hymn! That’s much better than a fictionalized story about baby Jesus sleeping peacefully all through the night amidst lowing cattle.
May God bless you this Christmas as we rejoice in all that God has done, is doing, and will do through Christ and in the power of his Spirit.