Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. Merry Christmas! When a new baby is born, many people rejoice! Of course, the mother and father are the gladdest of all. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, older brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, and even neighbors celebrate the birth. Some friends and colleagues may have put together a baby shower prior to the birth. Perhaps they will tie balloons to the mailbox to welcome the child home after the hospital stay. The new parents will likely post pictures of their pride and joy on Facebook and Instagram, and they might get a few hundred “likes.” Even so, a relatively small number of people celebrate the birth. Nobody would claim that the baby was born for the entire world. The baby was born for its parents and immediate family. And seemingly, that is all.
Yet the 2006 science-fiction film, Children of Men, imagines a world in which the birth of a child, even just one tiny, little baby, would spell hope the whole world. Children of Men is set in a nightmarish world in which no babies have been born for eighteen (18) years! For some mysterious reason, the entire world has been afflicted with infertility. The youngest person on the planet, “Baby” Diego, is eighteen years old. The world watches him grow up on social media like a celebrity. Nowadays, on NBC’s Today Show, Al Roker makes a big deal about the birthdays of centenarians. But in Children of Men, all eyes mournfully watch the life and death of the world’s youngest person.
It is a tragic vision of a world without hope. Without the prospect of future generations of humanity, there is nothing left to live for. Society crumbles into violence and despair. A world without crying babies is horrifying.
Yet into this strange world, a miracle happens. An African refugee named Kee becomes pregnant for the first time in a generation. And an aging Oxford professor named Theodore is suddenly tasked with the unlikely charge of protecting Kee and her unborn child by smuggling them out of the dangerous refugee camp to get them to a hospital.
There’s a powerful scene in which a feverish battle between soldiers and rioters suddenly comes to a pause as the gunfire ceases and everyone hushes to hear the powerful cry of Kee’s baby. A moment of stillness, peace, and hope in a dying world. Here, perhaps, is a baby born for the entire world. But then the group moves on, and the fighting resumes. Hope dies again.
The Children of Men is a dark fantasy. But the story of Christmas is true history—and hope for the entire world. For tonight we hear the angels declare to the shepherds: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11, ESV).[1] Jesus is the first and only child who was truly born “for all the people,” for everyone on earth—for the whole world! He is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6). Unto us a child is given. Unto us a Son is born.
He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary to bear our sin and be our Savior. Here in the manger of Bethlehem we behold a baby born to rescue the whole world, a baby born to save us from our sins (cf. Matt. 1:21), a baby born to die.
That is the wonder and terror of Christmas: God in his great love has sent his Son to save us from our sins. The wonder is that God, the Creator, has become a creature in the flesh of Jesus Christ. He is truly Immanuel, “God with us.” And yet the terror is that our need for a Savior underscores our need to be saved. That means we are in need of rescue. There is something from which we must be saved because we are in a pickle. And that thing from which we need to be saved is ourselves—our wickedness and selfishness and rejection of God’s way of love and truth. We have gotten ourselves into a real mess. But it’s no laughing matter. God takes sin very seriously—so seriously that it cost him the life of his Son.
And yet the story of Jesus’ birth and death and new life is not a story of hopelessness. Rather, it is the only story that gives hope for the world. Because the babe of Bethlehem was born in a manger, we may be born again through water and the Word. We are born again in the baptismal font, which is both manger and grave for all who dare to enter. For when we believe the Gospel for the first time in our lives, whether it be through Baptism or through the preaching of the Word of God, we are saved. God extends his grace to us, and we receive “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” All of this is possible only because of Jesus’ birth.
There is a beautiful scene toward the end of another movie titled The Nativity Story (2005), which stars Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary and Oscar Isaac as Joseph. After Mary gives birth to the baby Jesus, she cradles him tight to her bosom as a gaggle of unkempt shepherds approach the cave. Joseph eyes them suspiciously—like any protective husband, he is nervous of the newcomers. One of the older men kneels down and reaches out to touch the baby, but then withdraws his hand cautiously. Who can touch divinity, God wrapped in human flesh? Yet Mary smiles at him and says, “He is for all mankind.” She holds up the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and adds, “We are each given a gift.” The old man touches the sleeping Savior and begins to weep.
Remember what Mary said: “He is for all mankind.” Jesus came not just as the Jewish Messiah, but as the Savior of the world. He did not come just for Christians. His coming was for the benefit of all, whether they would receive or reject him. (I hope you will receive him by believing in his name). It is as the angel proclaimed: “Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10).
The baby born in Bethlehem on that first Christmas was God’s Son for everyone. Jesus came for all people. He was born for you. He lived for you. He died for you. And he lives again for you. All that Jesus ever said or did, he did it for the love of you. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isa. 9:6a). Dietrich Bonhoeffer marvels at this Scripture in one of the last Christmas sermons he ever wrote: “The unending mercy of the almighty God comes to us, comes down to us in the form of a child, the Son of God. That this child, this son, is born for us, that this human child, this divine son belongs to me, that I know him, have him, love him, that I am his and he is mine—on this my life now depends. A child has our lives in his hand.”[2]
We are each given a gift. Our heavenly Father loves to lavish us with gifts of his grace: water, Word, bread and wine. Yet the greatest gift of all is Jesus Christ, his Son, our Lord, born in the little town of Bethlehem so many years ago. May his love be born anew in your hearts today. In the name of Jesus. Amen. And Merry Christmas!
[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Two Christmas Meditations,” in The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, vol. 2, ed. Victoria J. Barnett, trans. Claudia D. Bergmann et al (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 202-203.