Isaiah 9:2-7

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-20

Text:  Luke 10:21

Jesus sprach:

Ich preise dich, Vater, Herr des Himmels und der Erde,

weil du dies den Weisen und Klugen verborgen hast

und hast es den Unmündigen offenbart.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants...

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, I thank you for hiding these things from the clever and intelligent and for showing them to mere children!

My Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I am grateful that you hid all this from wise and educated people and showed it to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that is what pleased you.

Father, Lord of heaven and earth! I thank you because you have shown to the unlearned what you have hidden from the wise and learned. Yes, Father, this was how you were pleased to have it happen.

Close parallels to hiding wisdom from the wise and revealing truth to the simple can be found in 1 Cor 1:18-25 and in Pss 116:6; 119:130; and Isa 29:14. It is God’s pleasure to reveal truth and mercy to the simple (see Luke 1:51-52; 2:14).

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The Lord protects the simple;

when I was brought low, he saved me.

The unfolding of your words gives light;

it imparts understanding to the simple.

I will again do amazing things with this people,

shocking and amazing.

The wisdom of their wise shall perish,

and the discernment of the

discerning shall be hidden.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in

the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful

from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly.

Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace among

those whom he favors!

On Monday morning I sat in the dark. After all it was the second shortest day of the year as we approached the first day of winter here in the northern hemisphere. I had just read from my morning devotion, a piece of scripture taken from the Daily Texts or Losungen produced by the Moravian Church.

The text read:

Jesus said:

"I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,

that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent

and have revealed them to infants..."

I was struck by those words: "hidden from the wise and intelligent ------- revealed to infants." Jesus spoke those words as an adult, but I could not help but think about his birth. Tonight we celebrate the wonderful foolishness of a God who has come to us in an infant. Tonight we celebrate, not the professors or the presidents. Not the rich and famous. Tonight we celebrate with a teenage mother named Mary, a blue color worker named Joseph, some day laborers hired as shepherds, and a little baby born in a stable named Jesus.

"You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants." This is certainly the truth of this night. The mystery of this holy night. The wonder of this spectacular night. God comes to us, not in pomp and circumstance. Not in majesty. But in the common place and the out of the way.

Some of our members and ecumenical friends discovered this truth as they delivered "Angel Tree" baskets to all sorts of locations in Clark County. Some right on our main street and others on dead end, dirt roads. In their service they discovered again the Christmas truth. As they went to the stables of our county, they trusted that just possibly they would be coming across one of the "infants" of whom Jesus spoke. Not just literal infants, but anyone of us who is as a child of faith.

In this time of war, we remember the horrible Battle of the Bulge which took place sixty years ago during Christmas. This was to be Hitler’s last stand, so to speak. At that time a German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sitting in prison. He was the son of a prominent family. He was actually one of the wise and intelligent. What the Germans would call a Wunderkind. But when he came to study here in the USA he discovered that for all his wisdom and intelligence he lacked something. He worshipped in the churches of Harlem and discovered a new spirituality. He would return to Germany with this deepened spiritual sensitivity and lead an illegal seminary. He decided to participate in the plot against Hitler and he would be imprisoned, eventually in April of 1945 standing naked before his executors.

Then the wisdom of the infant became a reality for him as he remembered words he had written at an earlier date:

With such a faith we worship on this Christmas Eve. May we discard our worldly wisdom this evening and come to the cradle of the lowly infant, allowing God to speak to us and abide in us as God came to us in the Christ child one night so long ago.