[AI translation] It's Christmas again, almost two thousand and one times on this earth! The sweet, beautiful, old story of the child in the manger, the angels telling the shepherds the good news, the wise men making the pilgrimage from the far East, is being heard again today in many places, in churches large and small, in every language imaginable. Is that really all there is to the Christmas gospel: a sweet, beautiful, old story? Oh, how much the world has changed since then! In the courtyards of today's inns and modern hotels in the countryside there are no longer mangeries but petrol stations, and on Christmas Eve, instead of angels shining in the sky, there are bumper planes, rockets and satellites flying. And this so-called nice, beautiful, old story is about exactly what man needs most today: redemption, and redemption as an idea, as a concept is no longer enough - there is no shortage of beautiful ideas on earth - man needs a Saviour! And the great good news of Christmas is precisely that God has given it to the world: A SAVIOUR! For once on this earth, someone has appeared who can really help us, the people. Who can lift us, the fallen, and save us! So says the Apostle Paul in the Word we read. " This is the Good News of Christmas!But is that really what we need in this Word? For the very term "grace" provokes opposition from many people. The so-called pious man is not a sympathetic one these days. It is not attractive, it is not modern. Yes, if I say piety in this way, then modern man does not need it - but if I say it in this way: a higher, purer morality, then he does need it, doesn't he? This is the original meaning of the word "piety", as you know. It does not, therefore, mean what it is used to mean today, that is to say, it does not mean some kind of unnaturally behaving, pious, religious, sanctimonious, pious man, but a completely new type of man, in short, I might say, a Christian man. And indeed, in the true Christian personality a whole new type of man emerges, as different from the ordinary man as the ordinary man is from the animal.
Let me illustrate this with an example, unfortunately an old example. I read somewhere the other day, in a letter written by Aristades, an Athenian orator to the Emperor Hadrian, at the beginning of the second century AD, the following statement: 'Christians know God and believe in him. They reconcile and befriend those who oppress them, they do good to their enemies. Their wives are perfectly chaste, their daughters modest, their husbands abstain from unlawful marriages and all impurity. If any of them have slaves, he persuades them by his love for them to become Christians, and if they do, they call them indiscriminately brothers... They love one another. They especially help widows and orphans. Those who have, give without grumbling to those who have not. When they see a stranger, they welcome him into their home and welcome him as a true brother... If someone is poor and needy among them, and they have no surplus food, they fast for two or three days to provide the needy with the necessary food. They conscientiously obey the commandments of their Messiah. Every morning and every hour they give thanks to God and praise Him for His goodness to them... Because of them, all the beauty that there is in the world shines forth. But they do not shout their good deeds in the ears of the masses, but take care that no one knows of them. In this way they strive to become righteous... Here is an authentic historical record of real people, former followers of Jesus! Imagine what this world would be like if the followers of Jesus were still living like this today!
They are a new people, and there is something divine about them! Well, this is the piety of which our Word speaks. And I believe that this is what it is more urgent and relevant today than ever to discover and to put into practice anew. For today it is really a case of either we are changed morally, we are changed spiritually into new people, or we are destroyed! What our old man can produce, we have seen, is evident in all the wars, destruction, blood, tears, sorrow, moral decay, which make life on earth so tragic. With the heart, the thinking and the morality that we have, with what we can do, we will not carry it any further than we have done! What is needed is a new, entirely new type of man, one with something divine in him! We need a truly Christlike man! And if we, the people of the church, do not become truly and completely that, a Christ-like man, then we have no raison d'être as Christians, as believers in this world. For if salt is unseasoned, it is good for nothing! They throw it away and trample it underfoot! If the church is not renewed, it will become a historical past, it will be destroyed. And it's not a pity! All that remains of it is what is truly Christian! But the gates of hell cannot prevail against that!
Well, but is there a truly Christian life in this world? Look, our Word says: "Great is the mystery of godliness without doubt" - so there is a mystery to this particular godliness, this new way of life. It is not done by aiming at it, or by pulling ourselves and each other towards it, nor by practising it - no! It is the secret of this grace: "God has appeared in the flesh!" That is, the very fact of Christmas! Because the essence of Christmas, however you want to put it, is that God appeared in the flesh! Just as if he were a fellow human being. In that baby born in the stable in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, God himself came to us! That is the holy mystery that I cannot get enough of this Christmas. The old and always new, the great and worshipful miracle: God in the flesh!
And now I also know that the apostle's statement that God in human flesh really did appear in Jesus of Nazareth is a highly disputed fact in the world today. After all, we often hear that Jesus is not a real historical person, but only a figure in fiction. So, that Jesus never really existed, but was only the figment of the imagination of his worshippers, is only to be regarded as a person of faith... I know that the faith of many Christian people is gnawed like a moth to a flame by this oft-heard idea. One is what Rousseau once said about the person of Jesus: "If any man had invented him, the inventor himself would be greater and more admirable than his invention." The point is, of course, that the image of Jesus presented by the evangelists is beyond the possibilities of human imagination and invention. This Jesus is great, holy and wise in a quite different way from the way in which man has come to imagine the great, the heroic and the holy. What greatness is he who has humbled himself to the deepest service before the small and miserable? What saint is he who seeks the company of the last sinners? What hero is he who lets himself be bound? What Saviour is he who, doomed to die, who seeks to conquer by being crushed? In that Jesus of Nazareth, there truly walked among us someone who could not fit into any human template. Such a person cannot be invented by human beings, but only described, reported, reported by those who saw him among them. This man is so new, so different, so alien that he can only be from above, only God among us! Do many of us deny it? No wonder, for so strange is this Jesus that one either flees from him into denial or bow down before him.
The other thought-provoking fact is that the divine action that took place on Christmas Eve 2000 years ago is still in the throes of it even today, even among those who do not believe in it. After all, there must have been some great divine fact in the birth of Jesus, so that the effect of this, even for those who deny Jesus, is that Christmas is a celebration of peace, of love, of joy. God did something on the first Christmas that even today, even the angry are reconciled on this day, and a ray of light shines on this day. God and the body, these two extremes, these two opposites, met and united in Jesus. In him human aspiration and divine inspiration meet. In him heaven and earth are forever reconciled and reconciled. In him matter and soul are reconciled. In His life, the natural and the supernatural melt into one... Behold, now the heavenly ray can pierce through human life, the human body can also be a servant and bearer of divine goodness, love, mercy, beauty. And to believe in Jesus is precisely to be filled with the surplus that God gives us. To believe in Jesus is to become part of the divine action that began at Christmas. To believe in Jesus is to enter into a relationship with God in such a way that in your human will there is an omnipotent will at work, in your love there is divine love, your intellect is illuminated by divine reason, and through it you yourself become more, you become a person worth more, a new person, someone with something divine in him.
I wonder how the disguise cast off from kings must have been later cherished by its simple wearer. How reverently he must have touched it, thinking that the king had walked in it! How he might have tried to move in it in a royal manner! Well, then, think that in this body walked the King of kings, this body was the disguise of God. Feel committed to walk in it worthy of him hereafter.
God appeared in the flesh. So Christmas is not just about our souls, it is about our bodies. It's not enough to have a little spirit that then fades away as the holidays pass - God is looking for flesh today, an embodiment of His love, goodness, peace. A body, a human body that embodies, that carries His glory, that radiates Jesus! The great question of Christmas for us today is this: who gives flesh to the idea of God? Who gives himself to the visible, tangible realisation of God's good will? Who will give his hand to help, to bind up wounds, to wipe away tears? Who gives his feet to bring joy and comfort to God? Who gives his tongue, so that God may speak a good word to someone with it? So God wants to raise you up to a higher life now! Through Jesus Christ, through faith in the Saviour, through obedience to him! - Don't just accept life as it is, but make it what it should be! You receive the redemptive energy from Jesus to change the quality of life!
My brothers and sisters, I know that Christmas, with all its beautiful memories and atmosphere, is for many people today the last thread that still connects them to God, to the Church, to Christ. It is a thin, fragile thread! But you know what? It could be the first thread! Just like when they moor boats on the Danube, they first throw a thin rope ashore, which is only good for pulling out the thick wire rope that will tie the boat to the shore. Well, in the spirit of Christmas memories, this thin thread should not be the last, but the first thread to catch the mooring, Jesus, the secret of new life, of God in the flesh, and then your life will be safely on course!
Amen!
Date: 25 December 1960 Christmas Day
Lesson
Lk 2,1-14