Written by Jared Kennedy, managing editor for books and curriculum at TGC
Christmas is just three days away. This week, I’ve been reflecting on how Christians throughout church history have approached this season in different ways. On Saturday, TGC published two articles about Christmas during the Reformation—one on Martin Luther by Todd R. Hains and another on John Calvin by Obbie Tyler Todd. What did Luther and Calvin want for Christmas? The differences between the two reformers may surprise you.
In Luther’s home, Christmas Day was filled with noise and joy. “Sing, dear children!” Luther shouted to his household. “Sing of the dear newborn little baby!” For Luther, there was no more fitting response to the incarnation. After all, as Todd R. Hains writes, “We sit in darkness, crying out in the distress and sorrow of this world ruled by sin, death, and the Devil. And, look! The Maker of heaven and earth has sent his Word to deliver us. His Word become flesh—a little baby in Mary’s arms.”
How can we help but sing! Yet most don’t, and Luther lamented it. Across the world, says Luther, most receive the good news of Christmas “like cows with their big, dumb eyes trampling beautiful flowers in the field. We don’t want God with us—we would rather have riches!” Oh, that on Christmas we might put aside our laziness and indifference and instead sing with the angels!
On Christmas Day 1551, Calvin—in contrast to Luther—wasn’t thrilled to see that an unusually large number of people were present for his regular Tuesday worship service. “No day is superior to another,” Calvin said as he pressed his congregation with the truth of Romans 14:5. “It matters not whether we recall our Lord’s nativity on a Wednesday, Thursday, or some other day.” If we come to church simply because it’s Christmas and not to extol the incarnate Son of God, Calvin reasoned, we’ve lost Christ himself. As Obbie Tyler Todd writes, “May we find our holiness not in holy days but in the Holy One of God.”
As a pastor, you’ve likely felt both these impulses—the longing for your congregation to respond to Christ’s presence in the freedom of Spirit-filled singing, and the desire for them to lay aside all extrabiblical, cultural accretions to instead worship the Holy One with Word-driven simplicity.
More than you want your people to know Christmas, you want them to know Christ.
Isn’t it encouraging to remember that this is what the old heroes of the faith wanted too? So whether you’re gathering Wednesday to sing “Silent Night” by candlelight, or meeting simply and regularly as you always do this coming Lord’s Day, encourage your people to put aside their indifference and their cultural idols. Call them instead to worship the Savior with a living faith. Whenever you gather this week, hold high the incarnate One who came low for us so that we, his children, might be raised to him.
Merry Christmas!
—Jared
