Martin Luther preached his first sermon of Christmas 1532 on Christmas Eve using Isaiah 9:1-7 as his text. In that sermon, he briefly summarized the reasons we celebrate Christ’s birth. The following are his major points from that message.
We celebrate this festival, first of all, because of what we confess in the Creed. For it is a great, unspeakable endowment that we have in faith to regard this as God’s consummate wisdom that he, who created heaven and earth, is born of a virgin. …
Second, we also celebrate this festival because of the great good connected with it. … For if God were against and hostile to us, he certainly would not have assumed the poor, wretched human nature into his person. … Therefore, we celebrate this festival, so that we may truly learn to recognize and lay hold on this kinship we have with God and God has with us, and the communion of this grace, comforting ourselves with it and rejoicing over it.
The worldly-wise and Epicureans set no store by such things. … You see, the world never ceases to look upon it as absurd that God became our flesh and blood and was crucified for our sins. … That’s the route the world takes; it pays no attention to preaching and, meanwhile, is absorbed in thinking: We would rather have our belly full of beer, gorge ourselves, and carouse. … Of a truth, that’s the way it might well have been, with the whole world rejoicing and in high spirits because of this birth. The beloved, holy angels respond this way, regard it as a wonderful happening, and never cease being astonished over it. …
He gives this child the greatest and most beautiful names; that should cause us not merely to ponder him as he lies in his mother’s lap, having body, eyes, ears, and members, and looking just like any other human being, but also to see and recognize him as being the true, eternal God. … The prophet, therefore, wants to rouse us, and get us to look properly at this child and recognize who he is.
Ah, Lord God, everyone ought open his hands here, take hold of and joyfully receive this child, whom this mother, the Virgin Mary, bears, suckles, cares for, and tends.
Hopefully, may everyone lay hold on this! I shall say one more thing; God allowed this child to be born for the sake of condemned and lost sinners. Therefore, hold out your hand, lay hold of it, and say, True, I am godless and wicked, there is nothing good in me, nothing but sin, vice, depravity, death, devil, and hellfire; against all this, however, I set this child whom the Virgin Mary has in her lap and at her breast. … I accept this child and set him over against everything I do not have.
Whoever, therefore, wants to be a Christian ought to listen with joy to this preaching and believe that it is true what the prophet says, ‘Unto us a child is born.’
We keep this festival and preach about it in order that we might learn that our labor is not in vain or useless, and that at least for a few people, comfort and joy will follow. Amen.
