Bowled over by the incarnation
This Gospel is a terror to the great, learned, holy, and powerful because they all despise Christ. It is a comfort to the lowly to whom alone Christ is revealed.—Martin Luther, from a Christmas sermon excerpted in Martin Luther’s Christmas Book edited by Roland Bainton
By Jennifer Woodruff Tait, managing editor Christian History magazine
Almost 20 years ago, a friend gave me Martin Luther’s Christmas Book as, naturally, a Christmas present. It’s a small, attractive green book that originally came out in the 1940s, and pairs excerpts from 30 Luther Christmas sermons and two Luther Christmas carols with Christmas woodcuts from Luther’s era (many of them by famous artist Albrecht Dürer). If you're looking for an Advent devotional, this would make a good one!
I’ve carried the book with my other “coffee-table books” to, at last count, five houses. Since it’s pretty, I sometimes get it out at Christmas to put on a table or under a tree. But in all honesty, I haven’t thoroughly looked at it until recently, when we at Christian History began working on our four-issue series to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (read the latest issue in the series here).
Rereading it now as a middle-aged church historian, I am struck by how absolutely bowled over Martin Luther was by the Incarnation. The fact that God became one of us was the most wonderful thing he could imagine. It shaped everything else he thought, did, and felt. About the same time my friend gave me the book, Joan Osborne’s “What if God Was One of Us” was a popular song—not a popular Christian song, mind you, but a popular popular song. In it Osborne wonders:
Albrecht Dürer, detail from Adoration of the Magi (1504).
“If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with him
In all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?....
What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home.”
I heard that song all those years ago and thought: you know what, Christians have done a really bad job of showing the world that such thoughts are orthodox Christian theology. (In the video I linked above, Osborne begins her performance by singing a fragment of a gospel song called “Heaven Airplane” which seems to picture the gospel as entirely otherworldly. Then she begins to sing over images of ordinary people enjoying an ordinary day at an ordinary beach.)
The other thing that I am struck by is how, for Luther, the Incarnation is not only life-transforming, but is something you are likely to miss if you are hanging out with the rich and powerful. In his Christmas sermons, he dwells on the poverty of Joseph and Mary and their relatives and the ordinary nature of Mary’s task as the angel came to speak to her; he notes that the Wise Men were perceptive enough to not look for “a velvet cushion and a host of servants and maids;” and he gets in a dig at the temple priests who, when Jesus was presented, “pocketed the five groschen and paid no more attention to the child.” (A groschen was a German coin in Luther’s day: he is translating Biblical monetary terms into everyday equivalents.)
These Christmas sermons are so shot through with wonder that if we let them, they can help make Christ’s coming as life-transforming for us as it was for Luther. “When the power of man fails, the power of God begins, provided faith is present and expectant,” he writes. And then, as if he was speaking to Joan Osborne on her ordinary beach, he goes on, “Even so was Christ powerless on the cross, and yet he was most mighty there and overcame sin, death, world, hell, devil, and all ill.”
What if God was one of us, indeed. A story that never grows old. May we proclaim it anew this Advent season.
(Join us each Thursday for a fresh look at a quote from the Reformation era! Sign up via our e-newsletter (in the box at the right) or through our RSS feed (above), or follow us on Facebook for the next year as we celebrate 500 years of Reformation.)
Donations made online to Christian History Institute through Friday, December 2, will be doubled in size, thanks to a challenge from a generous donor! As always, donors will receive a subscription to Christian History magazine! Details are here!