Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 2:1-12: Christmas and the Failure of Naturalism
Introduction
What most people think of as the Christmas story is shaped more by popular culture and western traditions than the Bible’s own history of the first advent, and so there may be many things we assume about the Christmas story that need to be examined and corrected in light of the biblical account. Take the visit of the wise men as just one of the many examples that could be given. If you read carefully, you will notice the magi did not appear the night Jesus was born but sometime later, perhaps much later. After all, Herod ordered the slaughter of all the male babies in Bethlehem based on the information he received from the magi about the timing of the Child’s birth, and he ordered the death of two year olds! The star may not have even appeared until Jesus was born--we simply don’t know--and the magi may not have arrived until weeks, months, or more than a year later. Regardless, when the magi did arrive, they found Jesus in a house with his parents, not in the stable attached to the inn as on the night of his birth. The Bible’s record is far more amazing than the sanitized and de-theologized version of Christmas our secular society promotes and prefers.
From a naturalistic perspective, the Christmas story is impossible to believe. Perhaps we could enjoy it as a myth, but as an historical account, it would be judged to fail at every point. First of all, the child’s mother is a virgin, and we all know that can’t happen! It’s impossible. Her pregnancy was made known to her by an angel--a likely explanation for a fairy tale, but a bit too deus ex machina for a better educated, modern audience. The woman’s fiancee assumed she had simply been knocked up, and we are sufficiently enlightened to realize this must be what really happened and that there is no shame in it. But once again an angel appears and reassures the naive bumpkin who is Mary’s boyfriend that no, she hasn’t cheated on him; her condition is a miracle, the work of God. Joseph is either foolish enough or willingly ignorant enough to accept such an obviously absurd explanation. The rest of the story is more of the same: more angels, impossible challenges miraculously overcome, a plot against the child, worshippers from around the world gathering to bring presents to the baby. Who could believe it?
But in fact, many people believe it, at least, at some level. As we argued last week, even those most offended and ardently opposed to its celebration do, by their zealousness, give evidence they know its theological implications and believe and fear them. The Christmas story is pervasive and persistent in western culture, and for good reason. It is a story that explains so much about us and the world in which we live. Even those who profess no religion at all, those who deny God’s existence and shun any commitment to Christian ethics, will still often participate in and enjoy the Christmas season and its inescapably Christian context. Their interaction with the holiday may be largely secular and sanitized of the Bible’s historical and theological content, but they can’t escape the fact that Christmas refers to Christ’s Mass and that it would not exist at all were it not for the many centuries of religious observance and celebration around the story of Christ’s First Advent.
We have often lamented, rightly so, the secularization and commercialization of Christmas in the modern, western world. All around us we see Christmas without Christ, a holy day co-opted in service to crass commercialism, materialism, and revelry. It is enough to make a true believer want to turn away from anything and everything that goes by the name of Christmas in our present society. But while there is much value in this critique--we’ve made it before and will, Lord willing, make it again--today I want to suggest a slightly different perspective. Today I want you to see that despite the best efforts of materialists, secularists, naturalists, and atheists, we are surrounded every year by cultural references, language, music, and imagery which are persistently, indisputably, and unapologetically Christian. Even our atheist and agnostic neighbors celebrate a Christian holiday. Even if they deny they believe in Christ at all, even if their participation in the winter holidays is deliberately pagan and blasphemous, they cannot escape the Christian history, context, and content of seasonal celebrations at this time of year. If unbelievers borrow from the Christian worldview the rest of the year, at Christmastime they openly loot and plunder it. But everything they carry out through the front doors still bears the trademark of King Jesus.
Even the non-Christian aspects of this unavoidably Christian holiday are inescapably Christian in their context, message, and magic. To illustrate this, think of your favorite Darwinian Christmas movie. You can’t, because there isn’t one. There are some truly awful Christmas movies that get the story and theology of the holy day all wrong. (I will refrain from naming names in order to protect the guilty and what’s left of my reputation, but you may assume that I would put most Christmas films in the “truly awful Christmas movie” category.) But even the worst of them, the most secular, still can’t help being Christian, even if at the most meager level. There will still be grace, kindness, sacrifice, reconciliation, and an element of magic, whether they call it that or not. If even Home Alone and Elf can’t help but include these themes, you know God has left the fingerprints of Christianity on every Christmas story, no matter how tainted it may be. Nobody gathers around the Christmas tree to hear heartwarming stories of nature, red in tooth and claw. The message of every Christmas movie is not survival of the fittest but usually something far more humanistic: you can do better, be kinder, or more humble. And though moralistic and man-centered, it is nevertheless true. Humankind can do better, and why? Because Jesus came into this world to save us from ourselves and from the Hell we were destined and determined to enter into.
Christmas announces that naturalism fails, as an explanation of our identity, as a system for human survival, and as a framework for moral living. Every naturalist who celebrates Christmas, at any level, is not merely cutting off his own nose to spite his face; he is cutting off his own head. He deals a death blow to his ideology every time he says, “Merry Christmas!” Because if naturalism is true, then there is no such thing as Christmas, and none of us have any hope of ever being merry. But thank God, naturalism is not true, and Christmas is. Therefore, we can be very merry because we know that Christ was born.
The Christmas Story Tells Us Salvation Comes from Outside, Not Inside Ourselves
The Bible is very explicit that Jesus was born in order to save us.
“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)
“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall come a Ruler who will shepherd My people Israel.” (Matt. 2:6; qtd. Mic. 5:2)
Luke 1:68-79
“Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)
“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples”
(Luke 2:29-31)
The Christmas story assumes: (1) humankind needs salvation, (2) salvation requires a savior and not merely a self-improvement program or impersonal process, and (3) the Savior who is required must come from outside the world and its system. The world and its system are broken and corrupt; therefore, the Savior had to be an outsider from it. But the Savior had to belong to this world and its system, otherwise he could not represent and redeem it, undoing the work Adam had done. The only way to balance all of these factors was for God to become a Man, to step into the world from outside the world, participating in the system without partaking of its corruption.
One of the things that is (very) wrong about most Christmas movies is that salvation always comes from within the central character. He must be saved by re-orienting his perspective, realizing his own worth, or repenting of being a scrooge and starting to try to become a better person. But while there is a moral aspect to these messages that is inexplicable apart from the original, Christian context, these morales ultimately fail as a presentation of the gospel. It is not good news to realize that you have been a loser but there’s still time to try to do better. One day, there won’t be any more time, and there is no guarantee you will be able to undo all the harm you’ve done in the meantime. The good news of Christmas is that Christ came to bring salvation because it could not be found within this world or in our hearts. Salvation comes from outside us, but in Christ it has come to us.
The Christmas Story Tells Us That What is Impossible for Man is Possible for God
Every part of the Christmas story is entirely implausible or impossible, as we said before. Yet the story insists that what is impossible for man is possible for God. This is a recurring feature even in secular (and supposedly God-less) retellings and adaptations of the Christmas story. You see it in every moralistic holiday tale. It may be magic or Santa Claus or happy, unexpected coincidence, but Christmas stories always involve the impossible happening. Why? Because that is the Christmas story. A virgin becoming pregnant with the Son of God. The Creator becoming a creature without ceasing to be divine. Angels singing, stars aligning, pagan astrologers coming and converting, murder in the promised land being avoided by refuge in the house of bondage. This could only be the work of God, and it is. There is nothing in the Christmas story that man could have planned, coordinated, or carried out. God had to do all of it, or it wouldn’t have happened.
Christmas gives hope to the hopeless, because so long as God is involved, no one is ever really hopeless. Joseph and Mary were poor, judging by their purification offering. He was a blue collar laborer; she may have been no more than a teenager. They couldn’t even get a room at the Holiday Inn! They were away from home, with probably little money in their pockets, and not even a decent maternity ward at the local hospital. And out of the hopelessness of that scene, the Lord accomplished the greatest event in the history of the world to that point: the Savior came.
Our hope is in what God can accomplish, not in what we can. Christmas reminds us that when everything seemed hopeless, the Lord showed up with all the powers of heaven to bring everything in the world to accomplish his purpose. Christmas is proof that my circumstances are never a limiting factor in God’s salvation program. The fact that I am unable does not mean that God is unable. The Lord is pleased to choose and use the weak and helpless to manifest his own strength and help. Mary and Joseph were not chosen because they were great, but because God is great and good. And the God of grace and mercy who worked through them works for you today.
The Christmas Story Tells Us Everything in the Universe Points to One Central Event
What if there are no coincidences? The Roman government just happened to order a census which required Joseph and his very pregnant fiancee to travel to his ancestral home in order to be counted, which just happened to be where the prophet Micah said the Messiah would be born, and the trip just happened to coincide with Mary’s labor and delivery of her son. Surely she could have gotten a medical exemption or extension. Did she really have to be there? Under the circumstances, couldn’t Joseph have gone alone or filled out the census form online? What are the odds?
None of this is normal, and yet the story shows us that there is nothing really normal in this world at all. We live in a world where angels are always waiting just behind the curtain to step onto the stage to give directions and provide background music for the actors in the scene. We look up at the sky at night, and in our great wisdom, we understand those stars are actually burning balls of gas dozens of trillions of miles away. We know that ancient astrologers and magicians were fools. They looked at the stars because they thought they could discern messages in them. It was only a coincidence that the star over Bethlehem actually led them to the newborn King! Right?
This is the world we live in. It is not a closed system consisting only of matter and natural processes. It is not a biological machine which was wound up either by an explosion or unknown designer. The world is a theater, and there is an Author and unseen spirits working behind the scenes and standing just off-stage. Every character that is visible is an actor. He is reciting lines and reacting to circumstances that were previously written and designed for this scene. And everything in the scene, everything, in one way or another, is pointing to the central character and message: the Child who was born to die and rise, to redeem and reign, is the Savior and King.
Every OT prophet spoke about Christ. Every astrologer and astronomer gazing at the sky is looking for Him. Every shepherd in the field waits to welcome and worship Him. Every old man in the Temple who is waiting to die. Every widow who wonders why she is still alone. Every census, every star, every no vacancy sign, everything points to Christ. There are no coincidences.
The Christmas Story Tells Us the Proper Response to God’s Wonderful Work is Worship
The take-home message of almost every Christmas movie is: be a better person. But the take home lesson from the actual Christmas story is: O come, let us adore him. Worship is the work we are commanded to do by the news of Christ’s birth. Christmas is not a program for self improvement; it simply demands devotion.
Everyone in the story worships, everyone that is, except Herod. The shepherds, the magi, the angels, Simeon and Anna. The birth of Christ brings them all to worship: great and small, rich and poor, old and young, strong and feeble, Jew and Gentile, male and female, human and spirit. To the extent Christmas says anything about us, it says that we are sinners who need saving and who cannot save ourselves. But that isn’t the central message of Christmas. We aren’t central to the story at all. The central message is: the Child is Redeemer, Savior, and King, the Son of the Most High, Immanuel (God-with-us)--worship him!
Human beings are made to worship; we exist for this very purpose (Isa. 43:7; Ecc. 12:13). Christmas provides the outlet we have been looking for since our first parents were cast out of the garden. This is what Abel and Noah, Abraham and Moses, David and Hezekiah, Elijah and Micah were all seeking to do. Their sacrifices and psalms and prayers were all offerings of faith, devotion, and gratitude to the God who made them. They longed for communion with him, but he remained largely hidden from them. Abraham was his friend, but Abraham lived in tents, not in glory. God spoke to Moses face-to-face, or so he said, but when the leader asked for an actual face-to-face encounter, the Lord refused him and said, “You can only see my back. If you see my face, it will kill you.” David yearned to be in God’s presence like a thirsty man in a dry desert. Elijah longed to be done with this world and to go and be with God. But until Christ was born, no man had ever looked upon the face of God. But when Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary saw it. They were the first ones ever to do so. They saw the face of their Creator and Savior Incarnated, and they did not die. They lived. They worshipped. What else can we do once we behold the face of God? It is why we dare not try to make an image of him. To behold his Person is to fall on our face before him. We can only worship. We must worship. O come, let us adore him.
Christmas and the Failure of Naturalism
I consulted several dictionaries and philosophical lexicons in preparing this sermon, but lest I inadvertently misrepresent the naturalists by some neutral definition of their worldview, I chose to use the definition of naturalism provided by the folks at infidels.org who offer visitors: “A drop of reason in a pool of confusion.” They tell us that:
“… naturalism is ‘the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system’ in the sense that ‘nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it.’ More simply, it is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural events, forces, or entities, naturalism is the antithesis of supernaturalism.”
--https://infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/ (accessed Dec. 8, 2020)
So naturalism says the natural world is all there is. Everything that occurs can be explained by natural components and processes. Whatever we might attribute to supernatural causes is only the result of our current ignorance. Superstition and religion were how ancient people explained a world they did not understand and could not control, but these are unnecessary since we are now enlightened and know that we are highly developed primates with social media accounts and cloth masks to keep us safe from COVID cooties. I don’t need to believe in God because I understand that my great-grandmother was a monkey, her grandmother was a bird, and her grandmother was a fish. I am able to love and treat everyone justly because I realize everyone is actually an animal, and I am for the ethical treatment of animals. I don’t need religious ethics because my black square on Facegram proves that I am not a racist, my preferred pronouns listed on my profile show that I’m progressive, and my hashtags on Snapbook let all of my friends who I’ve never met know that I am compassionate and generous. Ignorant people may believe in God, but I believe in science. I am a naturalist because I am a smarter, more honest, and better educated ape than you.
There can be no Christmas in a naturalistic world, but that is not the kind of world we live in. Naturalism, like socialism, works on paper. But in the real world, Christmas is a persistent and powerful presence, and that is because naturalism is simply not true. There is a God. He came into the world as a man in order to rescue men. His coming was explained and announced by angels. He was worshipped by shepherds and by wise men who came from afar. He was hated by kings, killed by religious leaders, and rose again in order to justify and save all those who were loved by his Father before he ever made them or the rest of the world. Because Christmas is true, naturalism cannot be. They are mutually exclusive. Naturalism describes the world as a closed system, but at the first Christmas, the Son of God opened the world, entered into it, and never left it. He may be enthroned in heaven, but he is still present in creation, because he is still the God-Man (1Tim. 2:5). The Incarnation had a beginning, but it does not have an end. When the Son of God became flesh (Jn. 1:14), he became such permanently. He did not lay aside his humanity when he returned to the Father. He remains “the Man, Christ Jesus,” and our hope of glory is that we are united to him as the God-Man, our Mediator, forever (cf. Col. 1:27; 1Jn. 3:1-3).
If naturalism is true, you are a primate with verbal skills. You have no rights. There is no such thing as justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and bad. Morality is a construct, and an unhelpful one at that. It contravenes the survival of the fittest. It is a fool’s notion, rightly discarded along with the remains of superstition and religion. You have no purpose other than to eat, reproduce, and die. This means racism does not exist; neither do human rights abuses--you can’t abuse what is only make-believe. All viewpoints are morally equivalent, because there is no such thing as objective morality. So stop being offended by those who are opposed to abortion. Their morality is just as empty and harmless as your opposition to race-based slavery and execution of homosexuals and your promotion of transgender rights.
We know naturalism isn’t true and Christmas is because monkeys don’t believe in morality or make-believe magic, but humans believe in the existence of moral standards--some things are right and some things are wrong--and we believe in magic, because deep inside we know that magic is real. That’s why even your worst Christmas films include some element of magic. They may only portray it as coincidence, an unlikely but happy turn of events, but it’s there nevertheless. Monkeys don’t tell stories or write books or develop screenplays with moral messages and magic in them. They eat, reproduce, and die. Debating morality and musing on magic would be a waste of time in a world where there is no time to waste. Only human beings waste time on those things, because only human beings realize the real waste would be to spend our whole lives just eating and reproducing, because we’re already dying. Human beings are the only creatures wise enough to know it. So we debate good and evil, right and wrong, and make arguments about how to live a virtuous life. We tell stories which include magic and moral lessons, because those stories give color and substance to our lives that transcend the mere struggle for survival. It is morality and magic that make life worth living; life without them would only be existing. And Christmas persists because it is full of morality and magic. It is the truest of our true tales.
Conclusion
Let’s review the four points we drew from our two texts today. First, the Christmas story tells us salvation comes from outside, not inside ourselves. We needed to be saved, and there was no way for us to save ourselves. The Lord had to come and become a man in order to save men. His advent was a rescue operation, and unless Christ was born to die and rise, we would still be lost. Second, the Christmas story tells us that what is impossible for man is possible for God. Every part of the story was implausible or impossible, and every part became inevitable because the Lord invaded space and time, intruding in his creation in order to redeem it. Third, the Christmas story tells us everything in the universe points to one central event. Even the alignment of the stars and pagan astrologers demonstrated what the heavens declared. The King has arrived, and he can be found and worshipped! And fourth, the Christmas story tells us the proper response to God’s work is worship, and that all men--great and small, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor--are called to honor and adore Christ. It is the purpose of our existence, our destiny, and our joy. Merry Christmas. Amen.
