from the flesh. Celebrate the feast with rejoicing; and let this day also remind
SERMON 192
ON CHRISTMAS DAY
Date: after 4121
We are filled with wonder at the virgin's bearing a child
1. Today Truth has sprung from the earth (Ps 85:11); Christ has been bom from the flesh. Celebrate the feast with rejoicing; and let this day also remind you to think about the everlasting day, and to long with unshakable hope for eternal gifts. Having received the power to be so, have the nerve to be children of God.2 For your sakes the bringer about of all times was himself brought into time; for your sakes the founder of the world appeared in the flesh, for your sakes the creator was created. Why let yourselves, while still mortal, be amused and distracted by mortal things, why put so much effort into holding on to this fleeting life, as if it were possible in any case? A far, far more brilliant hope has lit up the earth: the promise to earthlings of life in heaven.
To help us believe in this hope, something much more unbelievable has been paid us in advance; in order to make gods of those who were merely human, one who was God made himself human;3 without forfeiting what he was, he wished to become what he himself had made. He himself made what he would become, because what he did was add man to God, not lose God in man.
We are filled with wonder at the virgin's bearing a child, and we strive to persuade unbelievers of the truth of this new way of being bom, when in a womb unseeded a seedling offspring began to grow, and a lap untouched by carnal embrace brought forth a son of man without having received a man as his father; when virginal integrity remained closed in conceiving, and undamaged in bear¬ ing. The power is certainly wonderful, but still more to be wondered at is the loving kindness, that the one who was able to be bom in this way was willing to be bom at all. 6
He was already, you see, the only Son of the Father, when he was bom as the only son of his mother; and he that was made in his mother had already made his mother for himself. Eternal with the Father, bom today of his mothermade from his mother after his mother, before all things from the Father—but not made. The Father was never without him; without him his mother would never have been.