Christmas Is Forgiving (Matthew 1:18-25)

Christmas time is for giving. Why? Because we have been given something. We’ve been given forgiveness through God’s Son who came into the world on Christmas. Now it’s our turn to give. And forgive. Christmas is forgiving. 

Transcript

Can I get a little nostalgic with you tonight? One of my most cherished Christmas memories has to do with an orange. Yes, the fruit. Often, my family would travel to Missouri to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lehmann, Mannheim Steamroller blasting in our van the whole 6-hour drive.  We’d pull into the driveway, unpack, and start getting ready for supper. One year, while that was all in process, my grandpa took me and my younger brother Danny into the sunroom. He put an orange in both of our hands and said, “I have an orange story for you.” Seemed like a set-up for a corny, or better yet an “orangey” (thank you for the courtesy laugh!) grandpa humor moment. But it was anything but. He described his Christmas celebrations during the Great Depression, how scraps of wrapping paper served as tree ornaments, and old yellowy newspapers served as wrapping paper. The big gift for my grandpa and his siblings was an orange. But as sweet as that orange was, my great-grandpa once said, “The gift of forgiveness is always sweeter.” Now I realize I just shared a very sentimental story with you, but this gift of forgiveness deserves far more than a shallow heartwarming treatment. It is far deeper, far too close to our hearts, far richer! Why do I say that? Because forgiveness truly is the gift we long for most. It’s the very gift we hope we have at the end. 

Earlier this year at the commencement program at the University of Pennsylvania, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee talked about the four most common thoughts people share when they’re close to death: I want to tell you that I love you. 
I want to tell you that I forgive you. Would you tell me that you love me? Would you give me your forgiveness? What is on the minds of people as they face death? Forgiveness. Why? Because without forgiveness relationships stall, and eventually die out. Closure is impossible and quite frankly, hope is gone. Without forgiveness, we can’t truly experience love, not on a human level and certainly not with God. This is what makes Christmas so meaningful, so life-altering, that the Lord would send us forgiveness through his own Son, but to fully appreciate what this means, we need to understand what forgiveness is truly all about, don’t we?

Forgiveness is all about release. And it is a HUGE theme in the Bible. Forgiveness is mentioned directly almost 100 times, and indirectly in countless Bible verses. Why is it such a big deal? Because if we cannot release our sin, our guilt, our shame, if there is no hope for forgiveness, there really is no hope at all. I know what that’s like, and I have a feeling you do too. The struggle to forgive yourself for that horrible thought you had, or what you said, or what you did, and each day that shame is there, and you filter how you view yourself through it. The struggle is there when you can’t forgive that person who hurt you more deeply than you like to let on. The struggle is there when you get together with family, and you feel that tension with every breath you inhale. Forgiveness is difficult. We try and try, and if we’re being transparent, baring our souls, we know we can’t earn forgiveness. We can’t make it happen for ourselves. So how can such a gift become ours?

Before we go to the place where that most vital of life questions is found, we have one more question to pursue: Why do we struggle to forgive? I heard a story once about Rabbi Isaac D. Weiss. He testified during the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi leaders were held accountable for the vicious abuse they did. The story goes that as Isaac was walking up the courtroom aisle to take the stand, he looked up at the Nazi officer he would testify against. He broke down. 
He ran out of the courtroom, and as he was being consoled, people asked, “What are you feeling?” and he said, “I thought he’d be a monster, but he’s human j like me.” He realized that every one of us is just as broken, just as sinful, just as human. Why do we struggle to forgive? Because we forget we’re all on the broken level. Brant Hansen explains this well in his book Unoffendable: “The thing that someone else has done, that thing you can't believe, that thing you think is beyond you? It’s not beyond you. You’ve thought about it. Maybe you’ve acted on it in a smaller way. Maybe you’ve fed it with a fantasy. The same seed of evil is in you. It’s in me, too. And the more I see it, the more I understand my absolute need for grace.” We need the underserved love of forgiveness, most especially from the Lord, because we know without it, hope is no more. Here my dear friends is the wonder of the Christmas story. It’s your deepest hope for forgiveness, finally realized, in a most unexpected way.

This unexpected gift came in the shadows of a forgotten place. Two people engulfed in shame, rejected by their family. Trying to explain how the Son of God could be conceived. No one bought it. Not even Joseph at first. Here he was so excited to be married to his bride, Mary. But then she tells him she’s pregnant. What was he supposed to think, other than betrayal? Yet, he forgave her and was going to divorce her quietly, to lessen the ostracision Mary would have endured. But then the unexpected happened. God stepped in. He sends an angel to tell Joseph, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus’ very name, his identity would be “The LORD saves.” It would be easy to pass by that name quickly, matching the hustle that so often floods us at Christmas, but dare to pause and answer a most essential question for your life: What does it mean that Jesus will save us, save you, save me, from our sins?

It means but one word: Forgiveness. And for true, real forgiveness to happen for you, someone has to take your sins, right? There are two options: Either you take them and their punishment, or someone else will choose to take them and give you a gift you could never earn. Do you see? For Jesus to save us “from our sins,” he chose to enter into your brokenness and mine. He chose to live in this world of disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. He chose to endure everything Satan could attack him with, trauma and aloneness on all sides. All to go from the manger to the cross, to save you, yes for eternity, but his gift runs even more profusely than that. He has saved you from your sin being your legacy. Doesn’t that arrest your attention? 

He has released you from the nightmare of being forgotten, worse yet disowned, ghosted. Through faith, he defines you by a new name: “The Lord has saved.” He has saved you from those sins committed against you, those dark avenues in your mind where light never seems to shine, victimizing you, stealing your hope. Now his light shines through, and where Jesus is, fear cannot breathe. He has saved you from trying to live a life paused in nostalgia, the exhausting existence of trying to grip what you have, only to see it slip out of your fingers. Instead, his gift of forgiveness is one he renews for you every day. He has saved you so that even death cannot snatch your joy. Christmas means that we are so lost and broken that nothing less than the death of the Son of God could save us. But that’s exactly what he’s done. It’s all true just as Jesus has told you.

Do you still find doubt lingering? I understand it. How could the God who spoke galaxies into existence so willingly release my sins from me, only to place them on himself? How could the Lord of infinite power so long to carry every burden, stress, and hurt I’ve ever felt, his entire life through even as a baby? Why would he bother with me? It’s why this gift of forgiveness remains so unexpected, so radical, so shocking. It hits its peak in one word: Emmanuel. God with us. God with you. There was no room for him in Bethelem, but he always has a place for you. And for him to welcome you with a hug through his Word that warms you even in the coldest times of silent suffering, he chose to forgive you. He chose to be punished so you wouldn’t be. He chose death on a cross, so he could be near you, in you, and for you. It’s God’s one great thought, the only way not only could he forgive you and me, but show his love for you in a way that’s undoubtable, is by including the most gut-wrenching pain ever felt in his own story, to show you his love that never fails to forgive you and to fortify you. Dare to believe this, dear Christian. Kneel beside that manger, see the place always reserved for you there, forgiveness filling every void and longing left unsatisfied by this world, and do you what will happen to you? You’ll see a truth reserved only for God’s dear children that forgiveness is a gift of an entirely new existence, a new look at every relationship in your life!

Let me describe this forgiveness existence Jesus has given you: Imagine a life of being unoffendable, not emptying your energy with grudges, anger, and rotting bitterness, but forgiving, releasing? Imagine a life when you stopped silent shaming yourself as you look in the mirror each day, but live free from guilt, “not enough’s,” or “damaged goods.” Imagine a legacy of staring into that manger with the ones you love, and even the ones who hurt you. Live in the boldness of your Jesus to see what this gift of gifts does. Make it real. Forgiveness is no abstract thought, drifting around unable to be grasped nor lived. What if this Christmas was the year you finally gave that gift of forgiveness whether deserved or not, appreciated or not? It would be a gift for you, to experience even more deeply how life-changing Jesus’ forgiveness is. It’s only because you know how Jesus has forgiven you to remember your sin no more, not that he has memory loss issues, but he chooses to not remember them and is steadfast in doing so. 

What if you weren’t okay or accepting of the conflict lying in wait when your family gets together? What if you weren’t content with living in the shame sitting next to you at Christmas dinner? What if forgiveness was the gift you gave this year. To sit on the couch next to someone who maybe will never say sorry to you, but to tell the story of the gospel in the most personal of ways. You proclaim: I will not punish you, because Christ has carried the punishment for me. What if you got to see God’s gift of forgiveness do what it’s always done: Unexpected joy, transforming brokeness to beauty, experiencing the “with-it-ness” of Jesus. Remember what Jesus said about those times when you dream of reconciliation, of relationships restored, especially those that seem beyond repair? “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” Emmanuel, there again, where he always remains. 

It’s for this reason, and I know I’m breaking my “not be nostalgic and sentimental rule” that I established earlier, but it’s why Old Man Marley is my favorite Christmas character in Home Alone. Even as a child my favorite scene in the movie wasn’t all the shenanigans, but when Marley hugs his son and welcomes their family back into his home. It’s tear-inducing, why? Because the hope of forgiveness runs in the deepest corners of our souls, we crave it, we long for it. See in Jesus your deepest hope has been answered. You live forgiven. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. Such a gift is for you and for all, and let that Christmas joy overflow through you until the best Christmas ever comes, when God with us, Jesus will come back for you, yes you. The greatest gift of all. He’s Jesus. He’s yours. Amen.