[AI translation] A few days ago I had someone in the pastor's office and he was complaining about the many woes that had befallen him in the last few days. He told me how much annoyance he had with the apartment, with the craftsmen, how much annoyance he had with his neighbours, with his own health, how he had accumulated his troubles and worries just in time for the holidays, and at the end he cried out: Is this Christmas?! Oh, my God! Many people still do not really know what Christmas is. Well, in this verse that I have read, the whole essence of Christmas is there. Yes, Christmas is the holy miracle of "the saving grace of God appearing to all men" (Tit 2,11a), and what is incumbent on us as a practical consequence of this, "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, to live temperately, truly and holy in this present world" (Tit 2,12). If we truly understand this, we will certainly have a good Christmas. And I want all of us to have a good Christmas, so I want nothing more than to make you understand this word well. So let's take a look at each of his statements."The saving grace of God is revealed to all men," he says in verse 11, and that is one side of the Christmas miracle. Grace! What a word of immeasurable depth! Even deeper than love! Love can come from only one side, but without love it is powerless. It cannot blossom in all its glory, it cannot give itself. But grace always comes from one side. Nor can it be reciprocated with grace. That is the very essence of it. It asks for nothing, it gives! It gives everything. He lives entirely of himself, and entirely for the other! There is nothing greater than to be blessed by God's grace! This is the grace of God revealed! Grace has come out! I don't know how life is on other planets, on other planets of the solar system, and what it is like, but one thing is certain: on this planet of ours, on this piece of the universe so stained with so much innocent blood, so many vile sins, so much wickedness, on which human life suffers under the curse, under the weight of divine wrath, on this Earth: grace has appeared! Divine mercy! - It has appeared! So it can no longer be changed. God has acted without our asking, out of His sovereign sovereign sovereignty, when He has revealed His grace on this earth. This divine fact cannot be undone by human disobedience, despair, atomic bombs, or any other force! Grace is here! It has appeared!
And this is not just a nice theory that people have made up for themselves. The appearance of grace is not a mythological mystery play, but - and this is the wonderful thing about it - it is historical fact! The grace of God came to us in a living person, grace appeared on earth as a historical personage, becoming a flesh and blood human person among us. The appearance of grace is not some kind of heavenly vision, but an earthly event, a birth of a child that occurred in the course of ordinary human history. It did not happen somewhere and sometime, in some vague intangibility, but in Bethlehem, as we know it today on the map, and in the time of the Roman emperor Augustus, as we know it from profane history. The appearance of grace: a newborn child, a Jewish man called Jesus, a man who spoke, acted and died on the cross! So the appearance of God's grace is as real and realistic a fact as your or my appearance on earth.
Our Word says that this grace is "saving"! It is the saving grace of God! Again, a word of such profound meaning that we no longer really understand it. Let me try to give you an image: when I was a very small child, it happened that at night, when my father was not at home, I would wait up, not daring to go to sleep. But when I heard the rattle of the key in the lock and the familiar, heavy, steady footsteps in the hallway, I was reassured. Then it was good, then I dared to sleep, for the great, powerful man, the embodiment of paternal love, was at home. For Jesus is the very embodiment of the fatherly love of the mighty God. God is at home. He is with us. Now it's good. Something so very good is what this word means: salvific. It's a word that has a slightly old-fashioned ring to it, and focuses too much attention on the future beyond the grave. But in today's terms it is: blissful. In other words, the grace of God that has appeared, wherever it pours out, makes people happy. It is not just that it makes life a little more bearable for us.
"How are you?" people ask each other, and we almost always answer: "I'm fine, I'm just... Well, this saving grace of God does away with all those 'just''s. Then there is no longer any "but" and no "but" to limit happiness. Yes, God's saving grace means, in a nutshell, that everything will be all right. Good spiritually, good physically as it is. Miraculously, people will be good as they are, society will be good, the world will be good. And time is good, and eternity is good. Everything is so good that it is a joy to live. Because if God makes someone happy, then he is really happy, he finds in God everything that is necessary for complete happiness. Remember what happened to Zacchaeus when God's saving grace appeared to him in Jesus? Jesus said, "Today this house has been saved!" (Lk 19:9b) In other words, that's when this man was truly made happy. But until then he had been seeking happiness, seeking joy, seeking to accumulate wealth. He had taken everything he could from everyone, and now, on the contrary, he had distributed everything and was happy. Oh, how happy he was! He made others happy too. Many smiles were put on troubled faces, many bitter tears were shed, many pent-up emotions were appeased. Life was happy in much of Jericho. Such is saving grace! It makes happy whom it touches. Happy on earth as well as in the next world. Happy forever!
And this saving grace of God is revealed to all men. No one can say that for him there is no grace, he cannot be so happy. It is as if the verb were only specially emphasized, "to all men". To the sorrowful also, but also to the joyful. Also to the unhappy, but also to the fortunate. And to those who live in a tenement, and to those who are in hospital. To the one who didn't get a word last night, to the one who had the saddest day yesterday. Even the people they're squeamishly pulling away from. And the Negro, and the Oriental, and the Westerner, and the European. But look: there's a child lying in the manger. "And this is a sign to you," says the angel to the shepherds, "that you will find a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger." (Lk 2,12) Was this not a disappointment to them? To seek God and find a child? No! In fact, this is the great richness of Christmas, that the mighty God has made himself so small, so low, so poor, that everyone, even the smallest, the most wretched, the most wretched life, can have access to him. You too. So can I. All men! That is the great richness of Christmas, that God has presented His saving grace to the world in such a small and simple form that the smallest mouth can eat of it.
But! This grace, fully revealed to every man by the saving power of God, teaches us something, our Word goes on to say. Here is the other side of the Christmas miracle: "which teaches us to deny unbelief and worldly desires, to live moderately, truly and holy in the present world" (Titus 2:12). It causes us ourselves to make a very personal decision, to respond with decisive action, namely by refusing to believe.
In short, what we are talking about here is that a real Christmas is not only a beautiful, romantic, soul-stirring atmosphere, but also has practical consequences. And it is so important to stress this because the melodies of 'Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht' are still what Christmas means to us. It's that our souls are lost for a few hours in the sentimental atmosphere of Christmas Eve and the passing year. Let us not misunderstand! It is also something in a cold world. It is even touchingly beautiful. Just as it can be touchingly beautiful when the evening sun shines its last rays around a deserted, decaying hut in the endless wilderness. But the light is about to fade, and then it's just another orphaned, decaying shack, offering no protection against the cold and the night. Such is the Christmas spirit: it offers no help against the harsh realities of life. And then all that is left of that 'nice' Christmas is a few candle stubs and scattered angel hair, and the next day, with the falling pine needles on the pine tree, the whole Christmas spirit is swept out of our lives again.
God's saving grace is revealed to all people in such a way that those who accept it for themselves, in whom it creates a new heart, works a new soul, opens up inner resources. This grace is not some kind of miraculous elixir, which, if one obtains it, automatically leads to happiness and immortality, but this grace of God comes to us in the person of a living person, Jesus of Nazareth, and thus treats us as persons, that is, puts us before a decision. "The saving grace of God is revealed to all men" - this is true, but you will receive it by now denying yourself unbelief and worldly lusts, and by living soberly, righteously, and graciously in the world. Otherwise you have nothing to do with the grace that has been revealed to all men.
So, denying unbelief, or rather godlessness, that is, God-lessness. To live most of our lives without regard for the presence of God. If God has done this at Christmas by coming among us in Jesus, by coming into our family, our ordinary, our daily lives - not just by showing up on the occasion of a major event, but by being involved in our daily lives - then we cannot have hours, days, affairs, thoughts, in which we leave God out! Let us not have Godless, Godless passages, Godless areas of our lives. This is what is meant by "denying unbelief and worldly lusts."
And to "live moderately, truly and holy", let me illustrate with an example. Jerome, the first Latin translator of the Bible, once had a spiritual conversation with the child Jesus while kneeling before the manger at Bethlehem. He himself described it as follows. How can I thank you?" And then, as it were, the Child answered, "I desire nothing, Jerome, but that you should sing, 'Glory to God in the highest!' Thus I continued: Dear Jesus, I have something to give you, so let me give you all my money! The Child replied: I have heaven and earth, I have no need of it, give it to people poorer than you. I take it as if you had given it to me for myself. I continued: "Dear Jesus, I'll do it gladly, but let me give you something. Then the Child said: Dear Jerome, give me your sins, your unclean conscience and the damnation that awaits you. Jesus answered, 'I will take it upon myself, I will bear your sins, and I will be punished for them, and I will cleanse your conscience, and I will turn your condemnation into salvation for you.'"
Here, then, is the same thing as in our verse: to live moderately, truly and holy. Holy, that is, praising God. Truly, that is, for the benefit of the people around us. Moderately, that is, cleansed by Christ from all our perceived sin, and all this "in the present world"! Not in an imaginary world, but there, in the place where you are, in the environment where you live, where you work, where you deal with people, where it is so difficult, but where there is so much need to live moderately, truly and holy! In this "present world", says our verb.
This present world for us here and now (1961) is socially the world of popular democracy, ideologically the world of Marxist atheism, internationally the threatening world of the tension of war and peace, politically the threatening world of the conflict between East and West. Well, in this present world you may live under the influence of divine saving grace, moderately, truly and holy! That's why Christmas was, that's why Christmas is, and Christmas is only worth anything if it obliges you to live moderately, truly and holy in this present world for Jesus, with Jesus!
Amen
Date: Christmas, 25 December 1961.
Lesson
Lk 2,1-14