He is Both Christ & Lord

Advent Festival of Lessons & Carols: The Angels & Shepherds of Bethlehem. Luke 2:8-20. Theme:  He is Christ and Lord

When the angels made that awesome history-breaking world-shattering announcement of the Savior’s birth, they summed up both the meaning of this birth and the identity of who he was in two simple words: Christ and Lord. What do these titles tell us? What do they mean?

Christ means the Anointed One. The Christ (which is translated as Messiah in Hebrew) was to be a man who was specially chosen, blessed and gifted by God. He was not thought of as one who was to be divine, rather, He was expected to be a man who would become the greatest hero of Israel, delivering God’s people from their enemies.

The title of Lord, on the other hand, does indeed refer to divinity. The Hebrews had such profound respect for the name of God that they used the title of LORD as a substitute for the Divine Name.  There was even a prophet called the future Messiah, Emmanuel, which means “God-is-with-us”, though they did not grasp the full meaning of this prophecy.

So, you see, what the angels are telling the shepherds, telling us, is that the Baby laying in the Bethlehem manger is both human and divine, totally God and yet completely Human.  And they preface their announcement by calling this newborn child the Savior. Now, this should make us ask ourselves the same questions we asked about the titles of Christ and Lord: what does this tell us about Him? What does Savior mean?

A savior is someone who comes on a rescue mission. He sees people in great danger and, forgetting about himself and his own well-being or needs, He does all within his power to bring them to safety. Then once they are out of danger, He sees sums up their condition, does a kind of triage on their needs, and provides what he can to heal and restore them.

Putting it all together we see that the angels are announcing an awesome Birth of one who was a Deliverer of the people, a God who walks among us, and a Rescuer who saves us from danger.  And that’s literally the gospel-truth about Jesus: He is all these things wrapped up into one totally amazing Christmas gift!

But like all Christmas gifts, it’s not enough for us to simply receive it. We have to unwrap it…we have to use it…and we must treasure it…so that it becomes for us a gift that keep on giving throughout our lives.

·       We unwrap the gift that is Jesus by opening the pages of the Gospels and getting to really know Him, just as we examine an unwrapped gift and become acquainted with how it works.

·       We use the gift that is Jesus by turning to Him in our everyday lives, asking Him to walk through life with us and to empower us against temptation and sin, to free us from selfishness, because He is Christ the Deliverer.

·       We treasure the gift that is Jesus by never forgetting what He has done for us – rescuing us from self-destruction, healing our wounds, setting us safely on the path to eternal life - because He is the one only Savior, who is both Christ and Lord.