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This morning, Christmas morning, I thought it would be wise to begin with Luke’s words because this is a show about the news, and Luke is telling us about good news! And I want us to focus this morning on one verse, in particular. I want us to consider Luke 2:10.
“But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”
Now, if you grew up on the King James, that’s gonna sound different. You’re expecting “good news OF great joy.” The New English Translation, produced by scholars at Dallas Seminary translate that verse like this: “for I proclaim to you good news that brings great joy.” But most English translations follow the King James, and other languages also translate similarly.
The trouble is that verse 10 makes perfect sense in Greek and just doesn’t work very well in English, if we’re trying to translate literally. If you wanted to translate it hyper-literally, and by the way, hyperliterally is another way of saying badly! IF we wanted to do a bad translation so we could look under the hood and see what’s going on the translation would look like this:
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I evangelize great joy to you, which is to all the people.”
What the angels are saying which doesn’t translate easily is that the angels are evangelizing. They are proclaiming good news and the content of that news is great joy. Think of it this way. Imagine someone giving you a newspaper. Giving you the newspaper is the evangelizing, it’s the giving of the good news. Because that’s what evangelize means is to give good news. But the newspaper has content. That content is great joy.
But what does this mean? Does it mean that the result of receiving the news of Messiah will cause great joy? Does it mean that the news being delivered is that something greatly joyful has already occurred? Does the news cause joy, or is the news that there is joy? Or is it both?
I don’t know! John Calvin in his commentary says that the angel “announces great joy.” And is the angel saying that he’s announcing great joy for all the people—as in all the people will experience the great joy? Or is he saying that he’s announcing great joy, and this annunciation is for all the people—as in all the people will hear the news that great joy has been announced?
Also, how do you announce joy?
Brothers and sisters, I honestly have no idea. This verse is too hard for me. I can’t untangle it and I have just enough humility to not try to untangle it. I really don’t know what exactly this verse means. And that’s OK.
Because what I don’t want to do is intimidate you—at least I don’t want to intimidate you beyond measure. I want you to be intimidated by the Bible. It’s God’s Word for crying out loud. We should come to God’s Word with fear and trembling. And yet we fear not for these are wonderful words of love and life.
The Bible is the book that shatters the proud imaginations of the theologues and scholars and lifts up the humblest child to the knowledge of God. It makes peasants of kings and kings of peasants. The Word of God is the great equalizer. Before it we stand before God and all the nations are as nothing before him—the mountains are as dust on the scales. The Word of God intimidates us because it is at the same time, a cozy cottage with a roaring fire on a cool mountain summer’s evening and a ponderous abyss, too deep to plumb full of treasures and wonders beyond man’s wildest imagination. It’s a stream for a lamb to wade in and an ocean for an elephant to swim. Yes we come to the Word with fear and trembling and also with love and longing and joy and hope.
We come as we are, but we must become as little children, seeking wisdom from our Father and the Father of all good gifts will grant us wisdom according to His wisdom.
I don’t know what all Luke 2:10 means, I don’t think anybody but the angels really knew what all that verse meant. But I know that it meant something. And I know, for all I don’t know, and all I don’t know is too much to fathom, but something I do know is that Jesus’ birth is good news. And it’s news that’s associated with joy. And that news if for all of us!
What else and more it means, I don’t know.
But I know it means that.
And I know that that’s good.
I know that it’s good that Jesus came.
And unfortunately I think that Christians, serious Christians anyways, we miss out on this. Now, I know that right here right now on Christmas day, you’re probably thinking, “ummm, no, I am not missing out on the good news of Christmas.” OK, maybe not RIGHT NOW. But let me ask you, do you think that Christmas is a bit of a second-class event next to Easter? Do you think that Easter is the good news, Easter is the gospel and that Christmas is just kind of the necessary precursor to Easter. As though Christmas is REALLY nice and all, but it’s really just here to get us to there?
Because a lot of Christians do.
Lots and lots of Christians, when we come to the life of Christ, we think that all of it before the resurrection is just material to get us to the resurrection and all the material AFTER the resurrection is material that deals with the effects of the resurrection. And there is certainly truth to that. I’m not suggesting that there isn’t. In MANY ways, the resurrection is the climax of human history. It’s the hinge of history. It makes salvation possible. It makes the 2nd coming possible. It makes the millennial reign possible.
But so does the Incarnation. Christmas is necessary for all these things as well. And so is the creation! It’s very hard to say what the most important thing is, because salvation isn’t really the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is for God and man to dwell together in loving fellowship. For us to be His people and for Him to be our God. That won’t be achieved until the New Jerusalem. So, how do we decide what the climax of the story is? Is Christmas incomplete without the resurrection? Sure. But the resurrection is incomplete without the saving grace of God from the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life. And the purpose of saving souls isn’t JUST to save souls but so that people can spend eternity with God. And the purpose of them spending eternity with God is so they can be like Him. And the purpose of being like Him for eternity is so that we can love Him and be loved in return.
Brothers and sisters, I’m not saying that Easter isn’t important. It is. And I would say that the Christmas tree with out Calvary’s tree would be empty. But the empty tomb with an empty New Jerusalem would be pointless.
Everything leads up to the thing before it. That doesn’t mean that anything is more important than something else, it just means things happen at different times. There’s a quote attributed to Einstein, I’m not sure if he actually said it or not, but the quote says, “the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” And I think there’s a lot of truth to that.
And maybe this would make more sense if we weren’t so fascinated with breaking things down into little tiny pieces so we can examine them under our microscope, but we could learn to appreciate the thing for the whole. Look, I’m all for deep examination. I’m FOR minute, careful, precise study. But there’s the danger in overfocusing on precision and missing appreciation. If we get so close examining stitches, we’ll miss the beauty of the quilt. We will, as Jesus warned, miss the forest for the trees. There is such a thing as gestalt—the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The gospel story, the Biblical story, is greater as a whole than the sum of the parts. And because the Biblical story is a coherent whole it’s pointless in saying, “well this part was really important and this part was pointless.” You might say that Jesus dying on the cross was more important than Naomi returning to Bethlehem. But if Naomi doesn’t come back to the house of bread after the famine, Ruth doesn’t happen upon Boaz’ field. And if Ruth doesn’t marry Boaz, then Obed isn’t born. And if there’s no Obed there’s no Jesse. And if there’s no Jesse there’s no David. And if there’s no David there’re no Mary or Joseph. And if there are no Mary or Joseph then there’s no Christ.
Again, you might dicker and say that because the resurrection ACCOMPLISHED more that it’s more important. Ok. Sure. Fine. But please don’t miss my point. My point is that the WHOLE story matters. Not just our favorite parts.
And what I’m saying to my buttoned down very theological Christian brothers and sisters is that Christmas matters. It matters just as much as Easter. Christmas is Immanuel. Christmas is the Word become flesh. Christmas is the coming of Messiah. Christmas is the Godman sharing our infirmities. Christmas is miracle and mystery.
Christmas is important. It’s not just some hallmark holiday for second class Christians and capitalists. Christmas is magical. Not in the sense of hocus-pocus. Not in the sense of witchcraft. But Christmas is magical in the sense that the world is full to bursting with supernatural power and supernatural beings. God, angels, demons, the stars in the sky, the heavenly bodies in their courses, ancient prophecies, mysterious travelers, divine visitations, angelic singing, dreams, virgins. Christmas is about these things.
Christmas reminds us that the world is full. You see friends, we live in an empty world. We’re taught that there is matter and nothing else. The secular mind says that there’s just the stuff we can measure and that’s it. But the world of the Bible, the ancient world, the medieval world weren’t empty. The world of the Bible and the world that MOST Christians have lived in and frankly huge numbers live in today is a full world. It’s a world full of angels and demons and spirits and power. It’s a world where the Invisible God is all places. It’s a world where unexplained and unexplainable things happen. It’s a world of magic.
And Christmas reminds us of that. That’s why we put out lights and we love the snowfall. We go out and the night is lighted up in all the colors of the rainbow as the snow falls and we see our breath and we sing thousand year old songs and remember six thousand year old prophecies. And all of it reminds us that we live in a world of powerful spirits and God’s power. We live in a world that is pulsating with the supernatural and the alien and the other that is pushing so hard it's fit to burst through the veil of invisibility. On Christmas the wall between our world and the supernatural is thin, so thin we can almost see through. On Christmas the blindness that prevents us from seeing and interacting with the powers all around us is almost turned to sight. That’s why Christmas is magic.
Christmas is a mystery beyond our comprehension. Christmas belongs to a different world than the world of secular, consumerist, atomistic individualism. It belongs to an ancient world. Christmas calls to us from across the centuries and draws us back to the world as it truly is and not the world as we pretend it to be.
And that’s good news.
That’s good news of great joy.
It’s wonderful good news that Christmas still penetrates the armor of irony and flippant, glibness and existential despair that people put on to live in this empty, cold, secular world that’s at once shiny, plasticated, and customized, and gloomy, despair-filled, and angst-ridden.
Christmas reminds us that not only CAN God break through into this world, it reminds us that He has, He does, and He shall.
And that’s good news. It’s good news we ought to spread.