Incarnation Collectibles
12/18/22
People who are avid collectors usually know all about the thing they collect, and if a thimble, button, fishing lure, or dessert bowl has a specialized name they’re going to know the difference between a ramekin and a cocotte. Our text is familiar ground. No surprises here, but there are truths taught here that are worth collecting. Truths about which it’s profitable to know the distinctions.
First, we have this little Latin gem: Nomen est Omen not nomen Dei essentiale. This says we don’t go by an incommunicable name of God. The Masonic Lodge does that. “One of the most important symbols in Freemasonry is the ineffable, or incommunicable name of God” (rimasons.org/freemasonry-community-rhode-island). You have to reach the 17th degree to find out what that name is (www.christianministriesintl.org/should-christians-join-the-masonic-lodge/), The unknown God is whom Paul found the people in Athens worshiping and proclaimed he knew who that was. And so do you: the nomen est omen. The name is the sign. Separately both Mother Mary and Stepfather Joseph are told by an angel to name Mary’s Son: Jesus. Jesus is Je = Yahweh (Jehovah) + sus (saves). The God who walked with Adam in the Garden, was Abraham’s Friend, the One who spoke to Moses face to face yet who only showed him His Glory from behind. Yahweh who drowned a world to rescue His Church. Yahweh who dwelled in a cloud that protected His Church from the Egyptians, and who dwelled this way in the Holy of Holies. That’s whom Mary is giving birth to.
Other OT spellings of the name Jesus point to different aspects of who He is and what He’ll do. Think of Joshua in the OT, the Commanding General of the OT Church’s armies who delivered the Promised Land into their hands. Jesus is the Greek way of saying Joshua. God’s people are oppressed and outnumbered in Mary’s time by the Romans for sure, but even more by Sin, Death, and the Devil. General Jesus is born to defeat them. Notice what the angels says: “You are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” That’s the salvation they really needed not from Romans but sins, and us too. We think we need saving from Cancel Culture, a Sodom and Gomorrah decadence, and run away inflation. Nope. For us too it’s sin.
The name is a sign and Jesus in the NT is also Hosea in the OT. Hosea’s wife is unfaithful. God knows it; Hosea knows it. Nevertheless Hosea is told to take her back and he does. See here how God’s love, mercy, grace for us fallen sinners can only be shown by human loving that is way beyond the pale. God in Jesus has inexhaustible love for sinful mankind. Hosea’s patient, superhuman love saves his repeatedly fallen wife. Hosea was a “living prophesy of the tenderness of God toward sinners; a picture of God’s love for us when alien from Him, and with nothing in us to love” (Vincent, I, 18). Jesus is the Book of Hosea come to life.
From Latin we go to 2 Greek words that are not used today as much as they were 200 years ago. Here we collect Theanthropos not misanthrope. That is the God-Man not a hater of mankind. Immanuel in this text is not a name but a description of who Jesus is. God with us. Christmas carols dwell on this mystery. For example, “We sing Immanuel” says, “In lowly manger dost Thou rest./ Thou, making all things great, art small;/ So poor art Thou, yet clothest all.!” Or how about that Luther hymn we sing Christmas Eve. Can’t get plainer than this. “Made like yourselves of flesh and blood,/… Your brother is the’ eternal God./ Let hell and Satan rage and chafe,/ Christ is your Brother - ye are safe” (TLH 103: 3-4).
God with us. WW I & II German soldiers wore belt buckles with Gott mit uns ('God with us'). This is not confessing the incarnation but hubris. God is on our side. Read Joshua 5:13-14: “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.; Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in worship,’” Read the prayers of Robert E. Lee. Compare them to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The North believed they were the Lord’s armies “Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath were stored.” That would be the South getting trampled. The North was the Lord’s “fateful lightening” and “His terrible swift sword.” Lee prays for his enemies, prays for humility, and prays for the war to come to a quick end.
“God is with us” in the Immanuel sense when we see He is Theanthropos. He is the God-Man. He is the bridge whose Divine Nature reaches Deity and His Human reaches humanity. If a bridge doesn’t reach both sides, it’s useless. God sent His only beloved Son into the Virgin’s Womb to establish a beachhead for Deity in her humanity. He is not like Hercules, son of Zeus, 50% God and 50% man. No, Jesus is 100% God and 100% Man. So in the depths of falleness, brokenness, and despair that only sinful men can know, the Man Jesus knows. He’s with you in the pit, in the terror, in the joys too. And also He’s with God as a Man and so can speak before God as the One who ever lives to make intercession for sinful mankind. He’s there at the throne of the Almighty speaking as our Lawyer. He on our side ever reminding the Father that we are made of dust, and that He descended all the way into that dust to raise us mud-men in His Person all the way up to be partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4).
We can’t close out this text without collecting this Latin thought Semper Fi not Semper Virgo. The proper way to value Mary is as a virgin who humbled herself to receive the Gift of the Christ-Child at the cost of her reputation, almost her marriage, and at the pain of a sword piercing her own soul. As the Marine Corp motto has it: value her as semper fi, always faithful to God’s grace, and not semper virgo always a virgin even after giving birth. It’s true; Luther and other Lutheran fathers believed Mary gave birth clauso utero, with a closed womb, and so remained semper virgo. You can find Calvin, Zwingli and Wesley saying similar things: (pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com/2020/01/semper-virgo.html).
Here is what our Confessions say: Jesus has a mode of presence where He can be present without occupying space as a musical note does. “He employed this mode of presence when He left the closed grave and came through locked doors, in the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, and, as people believe, when He was born of His mother” (FC, SD, VII, 100), This is not about Mary but about how Jesus could be present in Communion. In another place we say: “On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed Virgin, did not bear a mere man. But as the angel testifies, she bore a man who is truly the Son of the most high God. He showed His divine majesty even in His mother’s womb, because He was born of a virgin, without violating her virginity. Therefore, she is truly the mother of God and yet has remained a virgin” (FC, SD, III, 24).
Again, this isn’t about Mary but about Jesus having 2 natures and the Human taking on qualities of the Divine. Furthermore, we subscribe to our Confessions based on them being a true exposition of the doctrines of the Bible. It’s not a doctrine of the Bible that Mary gave birth with a closed womb or remained forever virgin. It’s a deduction some in the Early Church and Lutheran Church made. But it’s no more binding than that same Lutheran Confession saying some believed smearing garlic on a magnet impedes its power (FC, SD, I, 22). As for the early church confessing Jesus was born of or incarnate of the Virgin Mary. They were confessing against the error that Jesus only seemed to have a human body. Saying that Christ was born from or of the Virgin Mary means from the substance of the mother rather than simply through her. Born of the Virgin Mary emphasizes, in today’s terms, that Jesus had Mary’s DNA not that she remained ever-virgin (Horton, Christian Faith, 471-2).
Semper fi not semper virgo. The Man Jesus was always faithful to God in our place, to the requirements of the Law in our place, to bearing the just judgements of the Law in our place. He went to hell on the cross and then went through death itself because that’s what the Law requires of sinners. Hebrews 3:5-6 says, “ Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house. …But Christ is faithful as a Son over God's house.” I use with kid’s The Prince and the Pauper. Jesus is kicked out of the Father’s house for our sins and sinfulness which He clothes Himself with; we covered by His blood and righteousness, are welcomed into and over God’s house as princes.
Semper Fi – not semper virgo. Jesus never gave up our flesh and blood even when Hell, Sin, and Death stormed Him. He went through life, hell, death, resurrection, and Ascension never letting us go. And He doesn’t let go of our human nature now. Therefore, since the incarnation wherever you place God you must place man and wherever you see man you must see God there too. That is Immanuel, God with us, is not only true in Him living our life and paying for our sins, but for all time and eternity.
Old calendars called Christmas the Feast of the Incarnation or the, Beginning of Redemption. In the West, that’s our ancestors, it's a feast in honor of Mary; in the East, that’s the Orthodox, it's a feast day of Christ (Feast Day Cookbook, 44). The particular collectible from Lutheranism concerning the incarnation is go from below to on high. Here’s Luther: "'...the Scripture begins gently and leads us to Christ as to a man, then to a Lord over all creation, then to a Lord over all things, and then to God. Now the philosophers have wanted to begin at the top; there they become fools; one must begin from below'" (Confessing Gospel, 1, 343, fn. 1). Read Ezekiel. Prominent throughout the book is the phrase: "then you will know that I am Yahweh". Neither the OT Church nor the NT come to the confession Messiah is Yahweh easily. And based on our text, Phil. 2, and Rev. 19 the full implications of the divine name ‘Jesus’ will only be known in eternity and then worshipped and adored not explained, (Ezekiel, I, Hummel, 495). Amen
Rev. Paul R. Harris
Trinity Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas
Fourth Sunday in Advent (20221218); Matthew 1:18-25
