Scripture: Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-14; Luke 15:11-32; Luke 15:3-7; Luke 15:8-10 Series: Christmas
A Christmas Eve sermon built on Barth’s image of ‘the journey of the Son of Man into the far country.’ Opening with the pastor’s own 2000-mile Appalachian Trail hike, it argues no distance compares to the gap God crossed in the incarnation, becoming not a universal human but a particular Jewish child in a particular place and time. Reading the prodigal son alongside the lost sheep, it claims the far country is where we all live, having spent our divine inheritance prodigiously. The good news: Jesus does not merely wait like the father but goes into the far country to seek us, bearing its judgment without losing himself, so that on Christmas God comes for you, offering forgiveness and life.
Illustrations: appalachian-trail-thru-hike, karl-barth-far-country, prenatal-class-ice-cube, clint-briggs-spirited, nouwen-return-prodigal-son, john-brown-harpers-ferry, stonewall-jackson-fremont, mary-joseph-walking-bethlehem, manger-dirty-feed-trough
December 24
Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-14
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. You have multiplied exultation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Great will be his authority, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. - Isaiah 9:2-7
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room. Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” - Luke 2:1-14
I love hiking with my family, I especially love backpacking with them. Before I was married, before I even went to seminary, I went backpacking for four and half months. I took a bus from Austin to the middle of Maine and started walking south. I ended up in the north of Georgia. It was over 2000 miles of walking. I journeyed over a lot of different parts of America. I saw a lot of different cultures from Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth is, through the mud of Vermont, the switchbackless trails of New England, through the rocks of Central Pennsylvania, past Harper’s Ferry in West Virginia where John Brown had his raid. I went past the valleys where Stonewall Jackson outwitted John Frémont in the civil war, through the Shenandoas of Central Virginia, into the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina and finally to the north of Georgia and Springer Mountain. Like I said, it was a long hike. Georgia is different from Maine, North Carolina from Massachusetts. The people in each of these places were different. There are longer hikes than people can take. The continental divide trail is the longest trail in the United States. There are less organized trails and journeys across Asia, across Africa. None of these distances compare to the distance between God and us. The distance between transcendence and finitude.
Karl Barth was a Swiss Theologian in the middle of the 20th century. He was a leader of the underground Confessing Church in Germany and helped write the Barmen declaration in 1933 against the Reichskerke which had acquiesced to the Nazi regime. Barth’s greatest work was the Church Dogmatics. They take up a lot of space. This is literally all of them. My favorite volume is IV:1 on the doctrine of reconciliation. In the middle of this volume is a chapter titled the journey of the Son of Man into the far country.
I love this language about Jesus journeying into the far country. This is a greater journey than any trail, any road, any distance. It is not just physical. For God did not just come to us fully formed. God came to us as one of us and put on what is part of us, our bodies.
Or as Barth says,
The Word did not simply become any “flesh,” any man humbled and suffering. It became Jewish flesh. The Church’s whole doctrine of the incarnation and the atonement becomes abstract and valueless and meaningless to the extent that this comes to be regarded as something accidental and incidental.
Jesus did not become a universal human but a particular one in a particular place and time. None of us are universal. We all were born in particular places to particular parents. No childbirth is “general” or “universal.”
Before our oldest, Dominic was born, my wife, Alina and I, attended a few prenatal classes together. In one of them, we each held an ice cube in our hands to mimic the pain of a contraction. My understanding, though, is that actual contractions are much more pointed and painful than an ice cube. It is a particular pain for a particular reason and the particular birth of a particular person.
Each child is unique. Each birth is unique. I belabor this point because it is essential for our understanding of Christmas. Jesus is often turned into this general idea of niceness that ignores the concrete power of his coming.
In talking about Jesus, Karl Barth uses the language of the far country. The journey of the son of man into the far country.
The incarnation, the taking of the form of a servant, means not only God’s becoming a creature, becoming a man…but it means His giving Himself up to the contradiction of man against Him, His placing Himself under the judgment under which man has fallen in this contradiction, under the curse of death which rests upon Him. The meaning of the incarnation is revealed in the question of Jesus on the cross: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
The language of the far country points to the parable of the prodigal son.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son takes place in Luke chapter 15 as Jesus is explaining what the kingdom of heaven is like. The first parable he gives is the one of the shepherd who is willing to leave the 99 sheep who listened and came home in order to find the one who is lost. The shepherd goes out in an incredibly inefficient moment very few of us would do. Most would just write off the lost sheep. Think to ourselves, “Oh, well, a coyote got it. Let’s move on with our lives.” However, like this shepherd, God does not write off the lost. The second parable is of the lost coin, the woman who has ten coins and loses one and spends the whole night looking for it and rejoices when she finds it. It’s hard to spend 30 minutes looking for something, let alone the whole night, knowing that you were just going to be exhausted and the next day is going to be horrible, an image that takes me back to college all nighters and the mistakes made. Finally, there is the parable of the Prodigal Son. There’s a father who has two sons and the younger son wants to move on with his life. The younger son wants to act like his father is dead and get his inheritance. And so the father gives it to him. This is when the son goes into the far country and spends the inheritance prodigiously. That’s where we get the name “prodigal.” The son could have gone away in a lot of different ways. We could imagine another situation where he went off and used that money to become a slaver or to set up a jewel thief business, or to be a public relations maven like Clint Briggs in the update of a Christmas Carol called Spirited. Clint functions as the Scrooge figure and is marked as an unredeemable. This might be what his older brother in the prodigal son thinks, too. Whether the younger brother spends his money prodigiously or uses people prodigiously, he still hollows himself out in the far country away from where he needed to be. He eventually finds himself sleeping with pigs and decides to go home to beg to work at his father’s ranch. At the moment of reunion, the father forgives him, which is beautiful. It’s this this amazing moment of mercy and grace. Instead of like trying to teach the son a lesson, like, “oh, you should have listened to me.” No, the father forgives him and has a feast, a celebration. and the older son is like, wait, that’s not fair. I’ve been here the whole time. And the father has this great line: you will always be there for me, but this son of mine was dead and now he’s come back. He was lost and now he is found.
Now, this is an incredibly rich parable. There’s so many ways to think about it and interpret it. There’s this wonderful book by Henri Nouwen, which I recommend for everybody, called the Return of the Prodigal Son. In it, he puts himself in the position of each of the three main figures of the parable: younger son, the older son, and the father. But the far country is what I want us to think about tonight.
The far country is the place that the prodigal son goes to. The far country is where he spends his inheritance prodigiously The far country is where we all live The far country is where we all live. Where we have spent our divine inheritance prodigiously.
Wherever we are in our life, in our journey of faith or journey without faith, we have spent the good gifts that we have received. And in this way, we can understand this parable in a new light. and what this reading and understanding of the parable of the prodigal son is not just the Father waiting around for the younger son to come back.
Barth has helped me to see is how Jesus embodies this, not as the Father waiting, but going into the far country with the son. It’s this combination of the lost sheep and the prodigal son together, searching and seeking and being willing to bear the judgment of the far country, the judgment of the prodigious waste of the gift of goodness, of love, the prodigious practice of of pride and self destruction. And in coming to the far country to find us, Jesus doesn’t lose himself.
God gives Himself, but He does not give Himself away. He does not give up being God in becoming a creature, in becoming man. He does not cease to be God. He does not come into conflict with Himself. He does not sin when in unity with the man Jesus He mingles with sinners and takes their place. And when He dies in His unity with this man, death does not gain any power over Him.1
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
In the midst of a history, a man set out from his workhouse with his beloved. He was walking—they were both walking—south. There is no donkey in the Bible. They walked. She was tired with pregnancy and could not keep up. He lifted her and helped her along.
They did not find a place to stay, a place to rest, save for a stable, but it was enough. When the child was born, there was no crib to put the baby, but a feed trough filled with animal saliva and food parts. Animal feed 2000 years ago did not come from Petco. In this particular trough, in this dirty manger, Jesus lay. The birth of Jesus was one of the least hygienic moments in history and yet in that God came for us that particular time, the particular place to a particular people. In that journey beyond any journey we could go on, God came to us. God came for you. However you have spent your divine gifts that you were created for: love, compassion, justice, however, you have spent these, you are forgiven and loved and God is here for you. May you be blessed this Christmas. May you receive God’s blessing. May you remember that you are forgiven, and that God has sent his son all the way to the far country, to the land of prodigious spending and brokenness and pain, so that you will have life.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Footnotes
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CD IV:1 ↩