Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Second Christmas Day
Luke 2:12-13 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel . . .
HEAVENLY CHILD
When a child is born in one of our families, we let others know about the joyful event. We send out cards or we get on the telephone as quickly as we can. But Jesus' birth was announced unlike the birth of any other. When He was born, a great company of angels appeared in the sky saying, "Glory to God in the highest."
How did Jesus rate a heavenly chorus? Actually, one could quite expect such messengers, for this Baby was from heaven itself. Hadn't the angel Gabriel told Mary months earlier that her son would be great and would be called the Son of the Most High? The heavenly announcement at Christ's birth puts an exclamation mark to this that Jesus is truly "God of God, Light of Light".
Yet the shepherds found more when they went to the manger. They did not discover a bright shining spirit-being in Mary's arms, but they found a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Jesus looked like a baby, made noise like a baby, and had needs like a baby. Nothing of the Lord's outward appearance would have led his visitors to know that this human was any different than any other.
Thus in the angelic announcement and in the manger bed we find this mystery: Jesus fully divine and fully human. Two natures are here brought together in an amazing, miraculous way.
"We believe, teach, and confess that the Son of God, although from eternity He has been a particular, distinct, entire divine person, and thus, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, true, essential, perfect God, nevertheless, in the fullness of time assumed also human nature into the unity of His person, not in such a way that there now are two persons or two Christs, but that Christ Jesus is now in one person at the same time true, eternal God, born of the Father from eternity, and a true man, born of the Virgin Mary" (Formula of Concord).
