The Gift of a Child - Sermon for Christmas Eve, A+D 2022

Christmas Eve 2022
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
The Gift of a Child

    Quite a big fuss over one little baby.  One solitary infant was born, a little over 2,000 years ago, in a small village in Roman-occupied Israel.  And we still can’t stop talking, and singing, and gifting, and all too often over-indulging in our celebrations about this birth. 

    Every baby is always a big deal, at least for the mother, whose body bears the infant for nine months, feeding and protecting and undergoing tremendous changes, an experience that concludes, by God’s grace, with one of the most frightening, intense, and yet joyful experiences of human life.  It’s a big deal for the mother, and in our better moments as a species, it is an equally big deal for the father, even though less physically so.  And for the grandparents, and any brothers or sisters who have preceded the newborn.  This describes how things should be.  The miracle of a newborn should always be momentous, should always be celebrated, should always be seen as a blessing from above.  

    The birth of a baby is an even bigger deal in recent years, within the Christian Church at least, because it’s so rare.  We’ve kinda stopped having babies.  Just one… or two, maybe.  The numerical decline of the Christian Church in America and the world can be connected to many factors.  False teaching.  Bad preaching.  The acceptance of worldly values within the Body of Christ.  But no single factor is as important as the reality that Christian couples stopped having babies. 

   The Gospel of Jesus Christ, for all we do to corrupt it, still has remarkable power, most especially in the ears and on the hearts of children.  And Christians who drift away from the Church are most likely to return when they have a baby.  Which is a feature, not a bug.  Having lots of babies is not the key to salvation.  There are many reasons that some couples only have one, or no children at all.  Those who want more, or just one child, but cannot, bear a special burden.  But we should not deny or forget that God does use the miracle of children to remind adults what is truly important, truly valuable, as well as to create more Christians. 

   But if Christians don’t have children?  The negative effect on the number of Christians when Christian families bear fewer babies is pretty simple math.  I am the fifth of five children.  But Shelee and I only had two.  This is a common pattern.  The trend over the last century plus has been for smaller and smaller families.  There are numerous factors for this decline; certainly, the capacity to choose when and how many babies to have is central.  Choosing to plan our families, and so, we think, to exert positive control over our futures, to have the “right number” of children at the “right time,” is entirely normal in today’s culture, including in the Church.  But this shift, from the baby being a gift that comes when the Lord wills, to the baby being a choice, is significant. 

   Things we receive as gifts are properly cherished, because of the bonds of love shared with the giver of the gift.  We still teach our children to smile and express thanks to that slightly weird aunt who gives us wool socks for Christmas.  She’s family, and she’s given a gift, so we are thankful, or else.  And perhaps later, when it’s 25 below zero and we have to shovel the driveway, or the power goes out and the floors are cold, we discover Auntie isn’t so crazy after all. 

   But, our attitude toward a thing we choose is different.  Chosen things can be kept, or thrown away, depending on our mood.  This difference is most frightfully potent when children are understood to be a choice, not a gift.   

   Of course, it is not just birth control and family planning that causes there to be fewer babies in America.  This shift, from a man and woman seeing their children as gifts that come when God says so, to seeing them as choices that we autonomous people get to choose to have, or not, this shift also has a darker side.  A very dark side.  In fact, “choice” has become a terrible euphemism, that is, the lie that says it is good to choose to end one life in order to supposedly make another life better. 

   If our nation or the human race can be said to have a soul, “pro-choice” has certainly proven to be a cancer on that soul.  At the very least there is a grievous wound on the soul of every implicated person, a wound made worse because of the lie that it is “no big deal.”  And, as citizens of a nation which has made the choices we’ve made, we are all to some degree implicated.  Chattel slavery may be the original sin of the American Republic, but at least everyone today agrees it was horrible.  Our treatment of the unborn is our day’s terrible collective sin, guilt which is so difficult to wash away, because we work so hard to hide, or deny, or minimize it.       

    Collectively as a nation, and perhaps individually too, we stopped seeing babies as gifts from God.  But that doesn’t change reality.  Every child, including you, is a gift from God.  (Had you forgotten that once upon a time you were conceived and born?)  You are a gift, from God, to your family, and to yourself.  You are not a random accident, no, you exist, along with all the other babies ever conceived, by God’s gracious will.  The Lord Almighty declares that you, and all the other babies, are gifts.  So that’s what you are.

   Because we forget that human life is a gift, because we seek to take control of our lives, no matter the consequences for others, because we so easily believe Satan’s lie that we are insignificant, for all these reasons, God acted, and the Virgin Mary conceived and gave birth to a Baby.  For all we’ve done to treat babies as choices and burdens, even though every one of us started out as a baby, for all we’ve done to devalue life, God’s Son took on human flesh, and came to live among us.   

   Our attitudes toward babies are not new.  We have magnified the error, for sure, with technology, chemicals and cultural callousness.  The attitude of devaluing human life among us is worse than ever, perhaps.  But it’s not categorically different than it has always been.  God creates each one of us.  He calls each of us to child-like faith, that is, to honest and unembarrassed dependence on Him.  But we by nature do not want Godly dependence.  We want to control, to choose our own path, including choosing if and when to have children. 

   We are fools.  Our self-centered ignorance is shameful.  But Jesus came to replace our foolishness with God’s eternal wisdom.  This Baby was born to take away your shame, and mine.  God’s eternal and glorious Son knows the value of each child, so valuable that He willingly joined us.  He was born into our broken world, in order to restore us, and the world. 

  For us, for you, the Love of God came down at Christmas.  Angels sang and Shepherds worshiped. 
Wise Men brought prophetic gifts, as Joseph and Mary marveled.  God’s love came down at Christmas, suffering from His first day until the last, pouring out God’s love, pouring out His own lifeblood, 33 years later.  Jesus chose to die, in order that you and I could be forgiven all our sins, including our sins of not cherishing every human life.  Jesus, the perfect Son of God, has come, to rescue us orphan sinners, and make us into children of His Heavenly Father. 

   Jesus is God’s gift to you, tonight, and every day and night, God’s gift of correction, pardon and restoration.  Whatever our errors of thanklessness, whatever our sins of lovelessness, in the Babe of Bethlehem, there is forgiveness and new life, for everyone.  So we hug our babies, and each other, and we sing, Joy to the World, the Lord is Come!  

We greet Thee Jesus at Thy birth, which fills the world with joy and mirth,

for you came down to join the fight, to bear our sins and make us right! 

Merry Christmas, and joy and peace be yours, in Jesus, tonight, and forever and ever, Amen.