4th Sunday of Advent 18 Dec 2022 Sermon

 4^th Sunday of Advent 18 December 2022 Incarnation

 And the word was made flesh…. And dwelt amongst us.

 And became man.

 These phrases are familiar to us, perhaps too familiar insofar as we could take them for granted, without appreciating their massive importance.

 As often as we say those words we must never allow ourselves to forget the enormity that they contain.

 Given who God is, and who we are, we can say with the psalm, what is man that you should make so much of him…You have made him little less than the angels. (Ps 8,4-5).

 It is one thing that God would even  create us, when He had no need of us. God is perfectly happy within Himself.

 We understand that He wants to share His glory with us. Like a rich man opening up the grounds to the peasants and then feeding them. He takes pleasure in their pleasure.

 But rich men are not likely to want to become poor; they give from their excess. It does not bother them much because they still have so much left over.

And the rich are even less likely to take on the punishment due to the sins of others.

This is what God the Son did, when He came down from Heaven.

He did not have to come at all. If He did come he did not have to become man; He could have simply acted out of His divinity, and pardoned us without actually dying in our place.

It seems that God must love us a great deal to put Himself to such trouble.

Many are scandalized by the assertion that God would do this, and they therefore deny the divinity of Christ. They will say he was a good man, but no more.

However, God can do as He decides, and it is not necessary or helpful for us to dispute His actions.

He became Man without ceasing to be God. He has from the moment of His conception been both God and Man, and this is a fundamental belief to being a Christian.

By becoming Man He upgrades human nature, purifying it and raising it to a higher standard.

As Man He can do all the things which we were meant to do, but cannot unless we are freed from our sins.

For example, As Man He can love God with perfection of heart and mind. He can love neighbour without the usual restraints we would put on that obligation.

He understands the mind of God much more clearly than we would otherwise be able to do.

He can draw down the power of God to intervene in human affairs, eg working miracles.

He has restored human nature to the favour it had before the sin of Adam

He can claim a place in Heaven which was always God's desire that we could share.

He has perfect control over His human will, which is always in perfect union with the Father, whereas we struggle to keep our will on course.

He gives us a focal point as we come out of this struggle. Submit our wills to His and we have great peace.

All this is what He did and why He did it. At Christmas we celebrate that His coming to birth in humble circumstances was a major step along the way of our restoration to God's favour.

Christmas gives us great hope, and at the same time a lesson in humility. If we are to share in the new humanity of Christ we must imitate His humility.

We see ourselves as life-long disciples, with so much to learn. We take every chance to draw from the humanity of Christ and so share in His divinity.