I don’t know how it is in your home, but in my home at Christmastime, Christmas trees of several different sizes begin to appear, and they all have a different look to them. Some folks have only one tree, I know, and on that tree will be all the various kinds of decorations that a family might collect over the years: the homemade ornaments that kids bring home from Sunday school, the special collectors ornaments, and then all the odds and ends ornaments that just seem to appear over the years until you have a veritable smorgasbord of decorations for your tree. The trees in my house are not merely a collection of everything we have. No, our trees all must have their own particular theme. We have this year a “purple and green” tree, a “burgundy and gold” tree, a “golf” tree, a “crèche and church” tree, a “southwestern” tree, and a “unicycle” tree. Our Christmas trees are a far cry from strings of popcorn and cranberries that once were popular but way too much work, or even the red and green construction paper chains that I once thought were the most beautiful ornaments ever invented. As if Christmas weren’t complicated enough, now we have to have “themes” for all our trees. And I love it!

What is the theme of your Christmas this year?

Our theme in our church home this year is one simple thought: peace. That’s not a new theme, of course, but it’s one of the best. You can argue that peace is the theme that underlies all the others, because peace is what Christmas is all about. Not just any peace, mind you, but a particular kind of peace, a peace that originates in the heart of God and reaches out to encompass the things that God loves, which is pretty much everything! So we have been pondering peace here this year: our yearning for peace, the need for peace within ourselves, the ingredients for peace with others, and today, how to have peace with God.

Peace—or the lack thereof—is one of the big issues of human life, not just at Christmas. But that is why Christmas is so vitally important, because Christians believe that we cannot have true peace without Christmas. Who doesn’t want peace? Everyone wants peace, unless they are so sick in mind or spirit that they are twisted into wanting something else. And so Christians celebrate Christmas because without it we cannot have what we want and what the whole world wants. Of course there are lots of folks who would disagree with what I’ve just said, who would say that Christmas is not all that special, or even that Christmas is false and wrong and misguided. But I believe and I hope and I know even in the midst of my doubt that Christmas is the key. But I have to understand what Christmas is all about before I can understand why it is so crucial to this business of peace. And so do you.

Last week at one of our celebrations here one of our church members greeted everyone with the phrase “happy holidays,” and everyone in the room immediately shouted back, “Merry Christmas!” We are so accustomed to hearing “happy holidays” that we can’t help but slip sometimes and say it when what we really mean is “Merry Christmas.” And there is the heart of the matter. Christmas is not just a holiday. Christmas is not just another excuse for a party, not just another justification for having a day off from work, not just another holiday like all the other holidays of the whole of human society. Maybe we should go back to saying “Christmas” like it was originally termed: “Christ Mass.” Christmas is not a generic celebration of love and goodness and joy. Christmas is not a generic celebration of a generic “God.” Christmas is Christ Mass: a celebration of Jesus who was born in Nazareth and whom we believe to be the Messiah of God, the one through whom God makes it possible for us to have peace with ourselves, peace with others, and peace with God himself.

Let’s take a look at Jesus through three different windows, each of which gives us a crucial perspective on the whole picture of just what it is that makes Christmas a holiday—a holy day. First let’s look at Isaiah. In the passage we read together a few moments ago, Isaiah gives us two stunning pictures of what human life feels like when we are not at peace with God. He talks about women who can bear no children and about women who have been divorced by their husbands. In ancient Jewish culture perhaps the most important function of women was to bear children. That may seem terribly narrow-minded to modern sensibilities, but consider this fundamental truth: unless women bear children, the human race is doomed. Little chance of that, we may think, as the world struggles with a growing population. But in the ancient world childbirth was no sure thing, and it still remains a fundamental truth: no children, no future. Also in ancient Jewish culture, there was the problem of divorce. The problem was mostly felt by the women. If a husband became dissatisfied with his wife—especially if she did not bear children—he could easily and quickly divorce her, which generally consigned her to a tenuous and poverty-stricken existence. So when Isaiah mentioned the childless and the husband-less woman, he immediately calls to mind two categories of people for whom life was a terrible burden filled with suffering and pain.

But what does Isaiah say? He says, “The children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married,” and “your Maker is your husband.” The fortunes of the most unfortunate will be reversed when God comes on the scene. And just as God had promised that he would never again flood and destroy the earth as in the days of Noah, so now was God promising in the prophecy of Isaiah that he would deal decisively with his anger and instead remember his covenant with Israel, the promise of steadfast love and peace which would not be removed. The mountains and the hills might disappear, but God’s love and peace were here to stay.

For the Jews, that promise of God was partially fulfilled when they were allowed to return to the homeland of Israel and rebuild their nation, but still they looked and longed for the time when the suffering and the struggle of existence would be transformed through the leadership of God’s Messiah. The Jews still look for that Messiah today. But some Jews, and many other people, believe that Messiah has already come, not just for the sake of the Jews, but for the sake of the whole world. And that brings us to Matthew’s story.

Matthew tells us a story that we think we already know, a story about Joseph and Mary and the birth of “Jesus the Messiah.” This Jesus would also have the name “Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” The dream and desire of steadfast love and the covenant of peace so passionately proclaimed by Isaiah has come to pass, Matthew says, in the person of the Messiah, who has been born into the world, the son of Mary and Joseph by power of the Holy Spirit of God. God has indeed accomplished the establishment of peace between him and his whole creation in the very person of Jesus. This is what we mean to say when we speak of “the Incarnation,” the “becoming of flesh and blood” that we celebrate at Christmas.

What God did and who God became in the person of Jesus is a mystery beyond telling, but also a mystery that is revealed to we who believe and see with eyes of faith. God actually became one of us in Jesus, and by so doing, God bridged the gap between Divine Perfection and Human Imperfection, God destroyed the barrier between his Holiness and our Unholiness, God restored the perfect union of Creature with Creator that the Creator intended at the beginning. That is one thing that we mean to say by our belief in the Incarnation. God actually became one of us in Jesus, and by so doing, God found a way perfectly to illustrate and demonstrate and exemplify what kind of people God wants all people to be. God in Jesus is the perfect picture of God in all of us, living human life unstained by human sin. That is another thing we mean to say when we speak of Incarnation. God actually became one of us in Jesus, and by so doing, God invites us to respond to him, not with terror and trembling, but with simple trust and love. God in Jesus came to all of us and comes to each of us in the most compelling way possible to invite us to welcome and know him. That is another thing we say when we say Incarnation. When Jesus was born into the world of human beings, God overcame the problem of our sin, God embodied the possibility of our new life, and God invited the response of grateful and believing hearts.

All of this is stated in a different way through the pen of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. In a few moments we will read his words as we affirm our faith, but hear them now: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice what Paul does not say. Paul does not say we have peace with God through our ability to achieve some form of goodness and holiness in our own lives, as if we could earn our way into God’s good graces. Paul does not say we have peace with God through the agency of the church, as if the all too human and all too imperfect institution of the earthly church could somehow save us. Paul does not say we have peace with God through some belief system or religious practice other than Jesus Christ, as if all roads of faith lead to the same place. Paul states simply that Christ is our peace. No matter how much trouble and suffering you have in your life, no matter how much disappointment you may experience in the church, no matter how distracted or confused the rest of the world may be about who Jesus really is, the truth remains: we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can be added to that statement, and nothing taken away.

Earlier in this service David Marshman sang for us a beautiful song of Christmas that focuses on what children see when they see Jesus. The song celebrates the gift of Jesus for the whole world, white and black, yellow and brown, and every color in between. But it does more than that. Listen to the ending of it again: “The children in each different place will see the baby Jesus’ face like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace, and filled with holy light. O lay aside each earthly thing and with thy heart as offering, come worship now the infant King, ‘tis love that’s born tonight!”i “Come worship now.” Would you like to have peace inside your soul? Come worship Jesus. Would you like to have peace with others? Come worship Jesus. Would you like to have peace with God? Come worship Jesus. This is the season of Christ Mass, when you can find forgiveness of your sin and an example of the new life you can lead. This is the season of Christ Mass, the celebration of the one and only Savior whose birth into the world means something to you only if you will invite him to be Lord of your life.

Amen.