• "The Problem with the World is Sin"
• Sermon for Christmas Eve
• December 24, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord." A saviour is one who saves us from something. We call Jesus a savior because he saves us from sin and death.

The problem with the world is sin. Sin is a spiritual sickness that affects every human being and makes each one of us less than we are supposed to be. We were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We were made to reflect the glory and holiness of the Creator. But because of sin (Genesis 3) even the best of human effort falls short of divine glory and perfection.

The human shortfall is seen not only in the wars in Iraq and Africa, in the hungry and homeless around the world and the various inequities of the current world order. The human shortfall is also seen in the conflicts in our own families and in our own inability to rise above selfish concerns and love as we ought.

The consequence of sin is death. The death that sin causes is not, primarily, physical death. The death that sin causes is spiritual death: the separation of the soul from God. As Isaiah the prophet says, "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you" (59:2). The great danger of the human condition is that we will experience physical death while we remain in a state of spiritual death and our separation from God in time will become eternal.

What the angels announced this night to certain shepherds is the beginning of the answer to the problem of sin. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Jesus came to save us from sin, from our natural state of alienation from God, and from the eternal death that is the natural consequence of sin.

The angels said to the shepherds, "This shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." As Isaiah said, "The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (7:11). The baby Jesus is a sign of our salvation because he is the New Man. In the manger lies the first human being not born with the disease of sin (Hebrews 3:14, 4:15). His birth marks the beginning of a new humanity.

Typically, the word "human" is associated with weakness. We excuse our failures to love by saying, "We're only human." But the humanity we accept as normal is not the humanity that God created in the beginning in his image. Fallen, sinful humanity is a perversion of the archetype. In the babe in the manger, we see genuine humanity; we see what we ought to be. Thus, the babe is a sign of the gift of new life God is offering to us.

We inherit sin by right of birth. We inherit new life in Christ by a new birth. As St. John tells us, "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12, KJV). We are born into this world as fallen children of the first man. We are born again in Christ as sons and daughters of God.

To receive the gift of new life we must repent and believe. We must acknowledge that we are not what we are supposed to be. We must want to be what God wants us to be. And we must believe that Jesus is the One who can save us and change us. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

As God gave a sign to shepherds, so God gives signs to us. He gives us the sign of water in baptism. He gives us the signs of the bread and the wine that become the body and blood of Jesus. Through these signs the saving power of Christ comes to us. Through the sign of water in baptism, our old fallen humanity dies and a new redeemed humanity is born within us. Through the eucharistic signs, our sinful bodies are made clean by his body and our souls are washed by his most precious blood.

The salvation from sin and death that Jesus accomplishes in us is a messy business. The concept of being saved is easy to understand. However, as Jesus comes into our lives through the Holy Spirit, the actual working out of that salvation is hard. We are deeply attached to our sins. We are used to living the old way. We are afraid to change. It takes long seasons to learn to follow the pattern of the New Man.

This messiness seems to be okay with God. He was willing to be born in a dirty stable among smelly animals. He is willing to take up residency within us. There is a pre-communion prayer that says, "Since thou did not disdain to be laid in a manger among unclean beasts, so vouchsafe to enter into our souls and bodies, unclean though they may be through many sins and defilements."

Jesus is willing to remain with us as we struggle with sin, as we return again and again in need of forgiveness and new strength. We are like spiritual toddlers who are in the process of becoming genuinely human. We try to walk and we fall; then we get up and try to walk again-and again and again. Through this process, God promises, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5, Genesis 28:15, Deuteronomy 31:6,8, Joshua 1:5).

God's presence with us despite our unworthiness is called grace. It is grace, God's unmerited favor towards us in Christ, which saves us. And it is grace, God's unmerited favor, which continues to renew us. We cannot be worthy of grace. We can only be willing-willing to acknowledge that we are not what we are supposed to be and willing to let God do his new work in us. As Titus says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (3:5).

Many people are comfortable only with a God who is way out there somewhere, who is transcendent and completely separated from the messy human experience. Christmas presents us with a God who has come down to save us. Christmas presents us with a God who is very close. As St. Matthew explains, "They shall call his name Immanuel, which means 'God with us'" (1:23).

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord."