• "Jesus Christ, Genuine Humanity Revealed"
• Sermon for the Christmas Eve
• December 24, 2003
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The mystery of Christmas is the union of God and man in Christ. Jesus is fully God. He reveals God to us. But Jesus is also fully man. He reveals to us what genuine humanity looks like.

We often mislabel behavior that falls short of God's glory as human. We excuse sin by saying, "Well, he's only human." But sin is a perversion of genuine humanity. When we sin, we are more like animals; sometimes we are not even that noble. Hebrews tells us that Jesus was "like us in all ways except for sin." This is why the Son of God is the New and True Man.

What Jesus is by nature, we become by grace. By the baptismal gift of the Holy Spirit we become genuinely human. We begin a vocation of holiness, the goal of which is to become like him. Tonight, we look to the prototype in the Bethlehem manger to see what genuine humanity looks like. We see at least two things.

First, we see humility. We believe that the fall of both angels and man was the result of pride. The devil, glorious angel that he was, looked at the more glorious Son of God and attempted to usurp his throne. The devil said to man, "Don't you also want to be like God?" We said, "Yes, we do!" and we joined the devil in sin. Ironically, the result of pride is that we both became less than we were. The devil was cast out of heaven. And we, through sin, became subhuman.

On Christmas, the Son of God responded to the pride of the devil and man with humility. In becoming man, Christ was made, as Psalm 8 says, "lower than the angels." The Son of God, who was with the Father in the beginning, who is God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God... by whom all things were made, became a baby in order to save his rebellious creatures.

The Incarnation, the act by which the eternally begotten Son of God became man, tells us that the devil had it all wrong. The devil gave us a false picture of the human vocation. We achieve greatness, we become like God, not by walking over others or disobeying God's Word. We achieve greatness through humble obedience. As Jesus said, "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Matthew: 20:27).

It is, of course, easier to get sentimental about the humble circumstances of Christ's birth than it is to practice humility. One evidence of our renewed and redeemed humanity is that we will begin to take the lower place.

How will we do this? Each of us must look at our families, our work and our relationships and discover where and how to practice humility. Most of us will find at least one enduring quarrel that is fueled only by wounded pride. An act of humility can end it. Most of us will find abundant opportunities to take the lower seat, to seek greatness by serving. Life provides many mangers for us. The question is, Will we lie down in them?

The second thing we see in the manger is a gift. "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour." "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." A genuine human lives in service to others.

St. Peter tells us that the devil roams about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He lives his life to take from others for his own benefit. And the devil has taught us well. We too readily accept his proposition that life is to be lived for our own account and profit.

But Christ gives himself to us for food. He was born in Bethlehem, which means, "house of bread." He lies in a manger, which is a feeding trough. Tonight in Bethlehem, the house of bread, the bread of life lies in the feeding trough, offering himself to us as food for the soul. As Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst" (John 6:35).

We who accept the gift ought to learn, thereby, to give. The Christmas gift challenges us to rethink the goal of life. Do we judge our lives by standards of income, comforts, privileges and pleasures? Or do we judge ourselves by our missionary successes and our level of service to others?

Each of us must consider what this means. How do I orient my life away from sin and self and into service and mission? For some this requires that new things be done. For others this requires that old things be done in new ways.

It will require that we refuse to evaluate life and work solely in terms of money and pleasure. It will require that we learn to recognize and serve the image of God in other people. As Jesus said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

The Son of God became man to show us what man should be like. As we gaze at the manger with shepherds and angels, we see that we should learn to practice humility and that we should learn to spend our lives in service to others. As the epistle says, "Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."