12/24/50

Scripture: Galatians 4: 1-7

Text: Galatians 4: 4; “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son.”

Once again we stand at the portals of Christmas. Again our ears are tuned to the “Alleluias” that are lifted up at the news of the birth of our Christ. It is a time of gladness, of the laughter of children, of cheery greeting and friendly remembrance. It recalls the time when God gave to mankind the gift of love in Christ, so that through his life and teaching and faithfulness-unto-death people might perceive the very heart of the Father and be drawn to Him and be saved.

But there are questions that arise and persist when we celebrate Christmas in a time such as ours. Christmas is a time of gladness, but there are many hearts that are heavy with the burden of the world’s pain and grief and danger. It is a time for the laughter of children, but it is also a time of compassion on the anxious and distraught and on the sorrowing. It is a time when millions of children are fatherless, homeless, ill-clad, cold and hungry. It is a time of love and of giving; but who loves these homeless ones of earth or stretches out the hand of help in giving the food and care that mean life? It is a time of feasting, but there are the faces of those who know no joy, and to whom food comes not as a feast but as a crust of stale bread or a cup of thin soup, or a bit of contaminated meat seized and wolfed down or carefully hoarded for life tomorrow.

Yet is was for this world that Christ came. It was to the poor, the forsaken, and neglected that he addressed much of his tenderest ministry.

And now, after 19 centuries of history that has had the impact of Christianity, we face days wherein there are not just a few, but multitudes of these poor, suffering, homeless, friendless people -- and more to be made desolate. And we thoughtfully ask “Why?” Surely Christ did not live and teach and die in vain! Or did he? Did God send his Son into the world before mankind was ready for Him? Would it have been wiser for Jesus to have been born at another time and in other circumstances? Could God have done better to send Jesus, say, now, when he might have laid hold on the resources for health and help which undeniably do exist in our time?

Christ was “born out of due time” so far as the world’s willingness to receive his message was concerned. For, while some folk heard him gladly, there were others -- people of influence and people of neglect alike -- who would not hear him nor heed him. The world is never altogether ready to receive the message of Christ. He speaks of love when we are not ready to love; he speaks of brotherhood in a world of competition that often becomes ruthless; his message is one of peace, but the world plunges into strife and warfare. And so Christ stands in silent, inescapable judgment upon us who live in the year of our Lord 1950.

If the manger in a barn at Bethlehem is symbolic of a great gift to the people of the world, the inn, where it was much more comfortable to stay, is symbolic of a judgment on the world, for it represents the rejection of Jesus, the rejection that continued to the cross.

This Christ of ours was “born out of due time” because many men will not give up their ways for his way. Often they seek to sanctify their sins with his name. People are slow to reject the customs they have built. We find it difficult to confess our sins honestly. We do not find it convenient to make room for him at the inn of our hearts. He comes at an inconvenient season in our history.

And yet, there is a much deeper sense in which Christ was born in “the fullness of the time.” For people did then need the word of God as revealed in Christ, and do need it now. The time of his birth called for a new beginning. The art and learning of Greece had degenerated. The Roman empire had reached, and was passing, the peak of its power. The religion of Israel had sagged from prophetic zeal to ritualistic contentment. The time was ripe for a new beginning. The world needed a new word of God, a new, creative and redemptive power. And so Jesus was born “in the fullness of time.”

In a tragic sense, the world never wants the word of Christ, for the word which saves is the word which judges. “This is the condemnation of the world, that light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” [John 3: 19]. The world crucifies Christ because he speaks the word which alone can save the world from self-destruction. But God speaks because of his love, and because of man’s need. And “in the fullness of time” that word became flesh in the coming of Christ.

Perhaps our day, 1950 and 1951, may be another “fullness of time.” It is not a time to put off or shun the word of God, but to seek and find and receive that word. The political and economic and cultural forces which have led to the development of a great civilization in the West have brought mankind to a new burst of fury. The spiritual and moral lack of the days is apparent to any man. “Man’s inhumanity to man” mounts. We shudder at stories of systematic starvation, and torture and murder that have come from prison camps of East and West. And we of this nation still have sober concern about the use of an implement of destruction that was so much of our devising.

The time seems ripe for a new moral and spiritual rebirth! It is a new “fullness of time;” a spiritual shaking; a judgment. ---- And it is Christmas! Today, as in every year, in every age, in every land and condition, Christmas has meaning. For the spirit of the Christ-child -- the spirit of gentleness, of good will, of love among people -- must become flesh and must walk the earth in the forms of those who love God and their neighbors.

God is speaking to our time and people, speaking the word of salvation and of judgment which he spoke in times of old in Christ. When men reject that word a judgment is passed upon them.

We must decide what we are going to do with this Christ - this eternal Word; this Wisdom of God. Now is the inevitable, inescapable time. We cannot wait another thousand years, a hundred or even ten years. We shall live or die in our time by the way we hear and heed, or refuse and neglect that word, incarnating that word into our personal, and social, and political living.

We can be like the busy, comfortable inn at Bethlehem, closed to Jesus and hence forever condemned. Or we can be like the welcoming stable, like Joseph and Mary, like the wondering, eager shepherds, the searching wise men, and those who later “heard him gladly.”

Standing in love and admiration before him who is the living Word of God, we can let that Christ become in us the gift that transforms life into its truest freedom.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, December 24, 1950.

Wisconsin Rapids, December 18, 1955.