Hail th'Incarnate Deity

Hail th’Incarnate Deity

(Matthew 1:18-25) 7 pm, Christmas Eve

Dec 24, 2012; Windsor UBC; J G White

It’s Christmas Eve! – A very traditional moment.  We do things now that we do only once a year. 

Much of our tradition is the seasonal music.  In 1739, preacher and poet, Charles Wesley, published a collection called Hymns and Sacred Poems.  He was 31 years old.  This was but a sample of Wesley’s lyrical career.  Some of his 6000 hymns continue to be popular.  The most popular of them all appeared in that book.  You know it; it is Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. 

Those great revival preachers gave many a sermon in the songs they wrote.  This carol is no exception.  We sang: God and sinners reconciled.  That’s a big theme in our rhetoric about Jesus.  Veil’d in flesh, the Godhead see.  God – beyond our explaining and complete understanding – is seen in human form.  Hail th’incarnate Deity.  Hail Jesus, sing of Him gloriously, join with all creation and spiritual realities in pointing to Him.  The original Wesleyan lyric said: 

Joyful, all ye nations, rise, Join the triumph of the skies;

Universal nature say, “Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Worship this infant, who is an incredible way for the God of the universe to come and meet us. 

The great genius of our faith is our experience of God as one of us.  God as a fragile baby who was born.  God as a child who grew up in a Middle-Eastern Family.  God as an itinerant teacher and miracle-worker, who called disciples to follow and do as He did.  God as a betrayed man, tortured and executed.

Then, this man, Jesus, alive again.  God and sinners reconciled:  in one body, one reality at last!

When I wrote the first page of our devotional booklet this year, I thought of the lyrics of a song that was popular 25 years ago.

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make his way home

We might not think of Jesus as a slob; but some of his critics, back in the day, called him a glutton and a drunk.  We might not imagine Him appearing ordinary, quietly looking out the windows while riding a Kings Transit bus; yet He did travel very cheaply up and down the Holy Land of long ago, and said He had nowhere to lay his head. 

And we might not want to say Christ is a stranger to us; but the final paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s pivitol, 1906 book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, says of Jesus,

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

As familiar the story of Jesus’ birth is, His life is imbued with mystery.  This is one very important life story.

I believe in the God who meets us as one of us: Jesus Christ. Tonight we celebrate His arrival, which was about 2016 years ago.  May you know the presence of the incarnate Deity, the God who is human.  And may you hail Him as such, when you meet Him.