Sermonette: Jan. 06, 2020

This is from the devotional, “God is in the Manger” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned and executed for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Authority over the world is supposed to lie on the weak shoulders of this newborn baby! (Isa 9:6) One thing we know: these shoulders will come to carry the entire burden of the world. With the cross, all the sin and distress of this world will be loaded on these shoulders. But authority consists in the fact that the bearer does not collapse under the burden but carries it to the end. The authority that lies on the shoulders of the child in the manger consists in the patient, merciful bearing of people and their guilt. This bearing, however, begins in the manger; it begins where the eternal word of God assumes and bears human flesh. The authority over all the world has its beginning in the very lowliness and weakness of the child.

Because of the child’s lowliness, there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people {in prison}, it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the sentimentality is kept. The misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgement of humans, that God will approach where humans turn away, that Christ was born in a barn where there was no room for him— these are things that the suffering can understand better than other people.

If you’re interested in reading more about this upside-down authority, read Philippians 2:5-11.