Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
“She’s arrived.” “He is finally there.” “I see them coming.” Waiting is difficult as tension rises, and doubts nag: Will she ever get here? Did he forget to start out? Whoops, I thought it looked like them on the horizon.
Among the Jews two thousand years ago, patience often wore thin as the anticipated Messiah remained just over the horizon, and many wondered if he would ever arrive. The tragedy of the event is that when the Messiah did arrive, many did not recognize him. They had imagined a different kind of Deliverer, one with short-term benefits for Judea’s political status. They failed to recognize that this Deliverer came to fix the brokenness of daily life, to restore the hope that had been stolen not only by the machinations of others but by their own misconceptions of what kind of Savior they had in fact to hope for.
He really did come. Love arrived, but many did not realize what this love was doing to change the world.
The birth of this Savior delivered deliverance from brokenness and hopelessness. He came as love in person, a king whose nature is being kind and loving, gracious and merciful. He came to those who had broken his creation and stolen hope from themselves and others.
This king did not regard the treasure of his kingship as something more important than his subjects. He did not clutch his being Lord of the universe tightly. Instead, he gave himself, his everything, to redeem—that is, to liberate—those broken and without hope. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born as a human being. He humbled himself to become a gift, a sacrifice of love, the embodiment of mercy so rich that he could supply the whole world with new life. He emptied the hands in which he held all power. Empty-handed, indeed, even with holes in his hands, he scooped up unbelievable, unlimited, unconditional love and poured it out upon his chosen people. He drenches them, saturating them with the richness that only Mary’s baby has at hand. Isaiah called him the prince of peace, the one who would come to restore calm and order, fullness and wholeness, hope and love to those who had chosen to break with him and thus break their own lives.
His restoration of lives that have cracked and crumbled brings us to break into song, just as the angels on the night he was born just had to celebrate, even if it was only with poor, rag-tag shepherds. The angels perceived what Mary’s giving birth to this child meant: the glory of God at its heights, the glory of God at its core, came to us in this baby. The true and ultimate peace, the restoration of all the goodness of creation, came to earth as this baby. The angels had to celebrate, and they decided to do it at a sheep stall, in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of guys who lived just on the other side of proper society. That meant that the angels were not far from the barn where the Prince of Peace had just come into this world. The angels came to where he had come, in the midst of human life, broken and hopeless as it often seems to be.
The prince of peace knew that he had come to do battle and to wage his attack on the one who breaks the goodness of God’s creation. He came to assault and defeat all that steals hope from those whom he made to live in the hope that depends on his love and mercy. His siege of Satan’s fortresses in the hearts of all us sinners, his assault on the prison in which the devil held us bound to our own self-centered, self-seeking plans for life, began on that night when angels celebrated the birth of Mary’s child.
He came to set captives free. As Luther tells it in his Large Catechism, “Jesus Christ, the Lord of life, righteousness, and every good and blessing, has snatched us, poor lost creatures, from the jaws of hell, won us, liberated us, and restored us to the Father’s favor and grace.” He struck no deals in the form of a commercial transaction similar to paying with gold or silver, as Peter tells readers of his first epistle. He paid for our sin in the way that soldiers pay for liberation and ultimate protection for their fellow citizens with their lives, with the ultimate sacrifice of the lamb led to the slaughter. So it was on the battlefield of Golgotha. Mary’s baby bled in agony and finally gave up his spirit as blood and water spurted from his side.
And then he came back. By the third day the disciples had lost all hope, and then the wonder enveloped their lives. He came to Mary Magdalene at the opening of his empty tomb. He came to a couple disciples on the road to Emmaus. He came to the frightened, hopeless group of his followers behind closed doors, for he comes wherever he wills. And he keeps coming into our lives today, to set us free from the inward-turned desires that hold us captive and prevent us from delivering the love he shows to us to others. He comes to the ends of the earth and all its little niches where we try to hide from him. He comes to announce our death as sinners in the sight of our heavenly Father. He comes to announce that he has raised us up to the precious gift of his kind of life, a life filled with sacrifices of love.
For Mary’s baby, Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is the gift that keeps on giving. His mercy and love have poured out on us the wondrous love that frees us to give what he has given us to bring hope and peace into the lives of others. That is why he came. That is why he keeps coming each day into our lives. That is why he will be coming again to raise us to eternal life, with all the richness of his mercy and love.