In preparing for Christmas each year, I like to read Martin Luther’s Sermon on the Nativity. Read it and you will understand why. It is deep, it is earthy, and it is the Gospel.

Bad enough that a young bride married only a year could not have had her baby at Nazareth in her own house instead of making all that journey of three days when heavy with child! How much worse that when she arrived, there was no room for her! The inn was full. No one would release a room to this pregnant woman. She had to go to a cow stall and there bring forth the Maker of all creatures because nobody would give way. Shame on you, wretched Bethlehem! The inn ought to have been burned with brimstone, for even though Mary had been a beggar maid or unwed, anybody at such a time should have been glad to give her a hand. There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: “If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the baby! I would have washed his linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in a manger!” Yes, you would! You would say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don't you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.

The birth was still more pitiable. No one regarded this young wife bringing forth her first born. No one took her condition to heart. No one noticed that in a strange place she had not the very least thing needful in childbirth. There she was without preparation: no light, no fire, in the dead of night, in thick darkness. No one came to give the customary assistance. The guests warming in the inn were carousing, and no one attended to this woman. I think myself if Joseph and Mary had realized that her time was so close, she might perhaps have been left in Nazareth. And now think what she could use for swaddling clothes, some garment she could spare, perhaps her veil, certainly not Joseph’s breeches, which are now on exhibition in Aachen.

Think, women, there was no one there to bathe the baby. No warm water, nor even cold. No fire, no light. The mother was herself midwife and the maid. The cold Manger was the bed and the bathtub. Who showed the poor girl what to do? She had never had a baby before. I am amazed that the little one did not freeze. Do not make of Mary a stone. For the higher people are in the favor of God, the more tender are they.

Let us then meditate upon the nativity just as we see it happening in our own babies. Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother. What can be sweeter than the babe, what more lovely than the mother! What fairer than her youth! What more gracious than her virginity! Look at the child, knowing nothing. Yet all that is belongs to him, that your conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. To me there is no greater consolation given to man than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breast of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this site would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to this gurgling babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you, but to save. –Martin Luther, 1483-1546

Amen. Merry Christmas!

Hughey