SermonStudio

How do you start a funeral sermon in the Christmas season? Funerals at this time of year are harder, and sometimes, I find myself thinking of those whom I’ve been called to bury in this season when the angels sing.


We’ve made Christmas into such a time of song and joy that it’s easy to forget the real message that the Christ Child brings.


God understands and shares our pain and sorrow.


Jesus came into a troubled world. He himself was threatened from the very start.


'Out of Egypt have I called my son,' Matthew quotes the words Hosea said about Israel.


What happened in Jesus was something even greater than the exodus, the saving of God’s people Israel, and for us on earth, it is made known at Christmas.


There’s the message! We may sing bright songs that only make it harder for those of us who have to grieve, but the real message of the Christmas season is in the words the Lord had spoken through Isaiah: ' ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (which means, God with us).'


How do you start a funeral sermon in the Christmas season? You tell people what the real message is.


But that’s not all. It’s fine to say that God is with us in the Christmas season and the whole year ’round, that God understands our grief, that God grieves, too ..., but that’s just a start.


Jesus is God’s new exodus, the gospel writer says. 'Out of Egypt I have called my son.'


We all know what it meant to Moses to say that God had saved his people. When your children ask, 'Why do we do all these things?' Moses says, tell them: 'We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand ...'


'God saves,' Moses says, 'and we know God saves because we know what God has done for us.'


And so it is with Jesus. I’ve always especially loved the last verse of Phillip Brooks’ Christmas hymn, 'O Little Town of Bethlehem.'


'O holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in; Be born in us today.


'We hear the Christmas angels, The great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.'


'Cast out our sin, and enter in ...' That’s just what Jesus does. The baby who was born in Bethlehem is the man who was killed in Jerusalem and then raised on the third day.


Paul says it well when he says, 'But now in Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ.'


The child born in Bethlehem is the Christ who died for us that we might sit with God 'in the heavenly places.'


In the first exodus God freed his chosen people from bondage in a foreign land. But in the new exodus, the exodus we know in Jesus Christ, God created a new nation. God freed Jews and Gentiles — all who come to him in Jesus — from the power of sin and death.


Not that it came easy. In this season when the angels sing, all kinds of people grieve, and God grieves, too.


It’s not easy when we have to say good-bye, even for a little while, and that’s especially true when others seem so filled with joy.


But the joy Jesus came to bring was a greater joy than the joy of our shallow Christmas celebrations. 'So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God ...,' the great apostle says.


God saves, and through his Son, Jesus, we who have come to him are a new and holy nation raised up with Christ and saved from sin and death.


Yes, this is Christmas. And yes, this is an especially hard time to have fresh grief. But Christmas is so much more than just bright decorations. It is the earthly beginning of God’s greatest saving act in Jesus.


So the 'great glad tidings' which the angels bring include the message that the baby born in a manger was the man who died that **, and all of us, might know God’s graceful love in Jesus.

Let Us Pray


'O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in; Be born in us today.


'We hear the Christmas angels, The great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.' Amen.



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