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S. Christmas Eve.24 Luke 2:1-14

‘And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’

What kind of a sign is this, exactly—a baby lying in a manger? What should our takeaway be, seeing such a sign?

I’ll tell you one popular (though wrong) reading of the sign. Let’s say a poor stable boy wandered in on Christmas morning, maybe with the Magi, a servant of theirs (let’s imagine), and he sees Mary, exhausted, having just gotten baby Jesus to sleep and he thinks: ‘What this girl needs is a drum solo…’

I’d say… you’ve missed the point, drummer boy! I’m betting heavily that—contrary to the song, Mary would not approve, and baby Jesus would not smile! I think… Joseph would have beaten the crap out of the stupid kid!

But since “The Little Drummer Boy” is total fiction, without a shred of biblical support, made up in 1941 by an American, Katherine Davis, no drummer boys were actually harmed in the making of the song—though it was recorded in 1951 by the Von Trapp family singers you know from ‘The Sound of Music’.

I’ll usually reference “The Little Drummer Boy”, sardonically, most Christmas sermons. Because it gets the meaning of Christmas WRONG, but entertainingly so, and in a way that’s actually instructive, I think. It sums up the problem of mid-20th century “Christendom”, shows why the triumph of their “neo-orthodoxy” (too “neo” not enough “orthodox” I’d say 😉 has made genuine Xnity something… rare, strange, and as unwelcome in our world as the baby Jesus was in the world of Roman antiquity.

The problem, simply put, is that of works-righteous pietism from Cain at the world’s dawn, to James and the Pharisees of the 1st century AD, to Arians and Pelagians of the 4th, scholastics of the 13th, papists and Calvinists of the 16th, and sentimental neo-orthodox Americans of the 20th and 21st. As we’ll hear from John tomorrow, Jesus came into the world, yet the world rejected him. He came fishing for his own Israelites, but they weren’t biting at all. 😉

Works-righteous pietism (like the drummer boy’s 😉 sees Jesus and thinks: “He needs something from me!” (when what he needed was rest). Wonders: “What can I give to please him, that he might feel like rewarding me with earthly sweets and heavenly treats, later?”

This is the natural religion of the Law which has dominated human piety since the dawn of time. “The Little Drummer Boy” is simply one of the more amusingly silly manifestations of the works-righteous heresy. But putting it at the heart of the Christian Story, the Incarnation, is… troubling—like putting a dog in the manager.

The Roman Church imports the same heresy—that we must make some sacrifice to appease God—into the heart of the Church with the sacrifice of the Mass, insisting that, at the altar, the Roman priest sacrifices Jesus’ body and blood in a real but “un-bloody” manner (how an un-bloody sacrifice could move anyone an inch, I can’t really see) but Rome insists that it’s our sacrifice to God that does the trick, more than Christ’s for us—a mistake that Luther, following the apostolic scriptures, clearly saw mangles the Gospel wherever it’s taken to heart…

Reformed Calvinists do the same thing in a slightly different (but just as problematic) way. They insist that faith is a power that makes us able to keep God’s law sufficiently, so he must let us off; and this “inner light”, this little “Gospel” light of mine’s what we’re supposed to shine to impress God.

The other Protestant churches just double down on “Drummer Boy Theology”, insisting: “if we just have warm feelings for Jesus in our heart, and “play our best for him”, he’ll like us!”

Here are “Gospels” that aren’t exactly like the angel’s over Bethlehem. Yet these have apparently… triumphed, throughout Christendom.

Sorry if any of this harshes your Christmas mellow, but—without correcting modernity’s fractured Christmas fairly tales—that we can’t entirely unsee—I don’t see how we can see what kind of sign God made flesh, lying in a manger is, nor what our takeaway from that should be…

Alight; you’ve had a few minutes to think: what kind of sign is the baby Jesus, lying in a manger? What is the obvious takeaway? You got it, right? No? Hints?

OK: what is a MANGER? No; it’s not a prop for the children’s Christmas Play, a cute cradle for plastic baby Jesus to lie in! Remember your college French! mange means… eat! A manger is A FEEDING TROUGH—for goodness’ sake! Seeing God incarnate lying in a manger would be a sign that he comes so that we should… eat him; feed on him 😉

And with that, we’ve traveled far from the Von Trapp family singers and ‘The Sound of Music’ to… ‘Bones and All’ territory—a crunchy cannibal romance that was the best film I saw last year, but definitely not for the faint-hearted… 😉

See how a sentimental neo-orthodoxy can cloud our vision, keep us from reading Jesus’ signs properly? I don’t expect everyone to thank me for clearing it up, but some of you, someday, might appreciate it? 😉

In case you think I’m being morbidly allegorical or making shtuff up: consider the words of our Lord himself, John 6. When they ask Jesus: “What’re you doing here? What’ve you come for?” Jesus says the signs all point to this—and I quote…

‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me may not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst… unless you EAT THE FLESH of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever is [literally in Greek] crunching my flesh and drinking my blood has eternal life; and I will raise ‘em up at the last day.”

They say: “you are what you eat.” So, when Christ appears, lying in a FEEDING TROUGH!, what’s your takeaway… hmm?

Mine would be that, since Eden, we’ve been subsisting on a diet of spiritual junk food—the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which we ate to make ourselves divine, but instead discovered… death.

Lying in the manger’s a sign Christ comes to be food for us. Since we like forbidden tree fruit so much, Jesus hung on the most forbidding tree of all. And as the sacrificial flesh of the OT Passover Lamb made the angel of death… passover 😉 so, on the tree of the cross, the sacrificial flesh of Jesus swallowed up our death, forever.

It is the most wonderful time of the year. But Christmas isn’t about giving presents (because we have nothing but death to give God, nothing that truly pleases him, or anyone else, really). Christmas is about getting Jesus, yourself. And here, his Table is set, the body and blood of Jesus is on the menu again, and eating that gives you enough to chew on, forever—forgiveness, life with God, salvation, and… Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Merry Christmas. Amen.