00:00:00:30 – 00:00:27:12
Clint Loveall
Hey all. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate you being with us as we finish up our look at Christmas and the scriptures that kind of are the foundation of the Christmas story that has gotten through the years, bigger and more involved. And we’re trying to stay true to the text. As we wrap up today, just some final thoughts on Matthew and Luke and what they tell us and what they don’t tell us.

00:00:27:12 – 00:00:54:56
Clint Loveall
And I think to start with Michael, I, it’s maybe the big picture. Well, I suppose we should have some conversation as to how people reconcile these stories. If you’ve read Luke carefully and Matthew carefully. There are some places that are sort of hard to overlap. Christians have for centuries been working on that, and there are some timelines and things that people have had to do, and that’s certainly fine.

00:00:55:01 – 00:01:19:40
Clint Loveall
I, I understand the impetus behind that, the desire to want to make them seamless. I think that caution we have to use in that is that we don’t spill over and not hear what each one is trying to tell us. Matthew is trying to tell us a very particular thing about Christmas. And as is Luke. And they’re not incompatible by any means, but they are unique.

00:01:19:40 – 00:01:24:09
Clint Loveall
They are different. And I think we need to respect that.

00:01:24:14 – 00:01:48:28
Michael Gewecke
So if you look at the title that we have up on our screen, you know, Christmas from the Bible, that might seem rather anachronistic, right? Isn’t all of the Christmas story fundamentally from the Bible? I think if you’re willing to lean into it a little bit, though, and if you’ve been with us through the course of this study, I hope that at some point you’ve had at least one thing that has struck you.

00:01:48:28 – 00:02:12:34
Michael Gewecke
And you thought to yourself, Wow, I thought that was in the Bible. Or I thought that this was, part of the story, whether that’s how many wise men or. Tell us about the donkey or tell us about the innkeeper, you know, whatever that component of the story. I do think that Christmas has gotten legs. Christmas as the grand narrative has sort of been condensed into a thing.

00:02:12:34 – 00:02:39:22
Michael Gewecke
And, Clint, to your point, the temptation of that is not just to synchronize Matthew and Luke. I think the temptation is to make the Christmas story one that lives only in our imaginations and not in the grand story of Jesus Christ, Savior of the world. That what Matthew and Luke are trying to do, of course, is unique to the audience that they’re trying to reach.

00:02:39:27 – 00:03:15:57
Michael Gewecke
But I don’t see that as a problem of interpretation. I don’t see it as a problem of which of these Christmas stories needs to be conflated into the other. How do we get these details to all match up? In fact, what I find unbelievably helpful about the different accounts of the Christmas stories, as well as the other gospel accounts writ large, is the fact that what we gain from that variety of witnesses is we come to understand the importance of women and God’s story, the importance of the family genealogy going all the way back to a, Adam and Eve.

00:03:16:01 – 00:03:55:28
Michael Gewecke
Right? Or, Abraham and God’s call. You have these amazing ways of seeing how Herod is threatened in Matthew, but in Luke, fundamentally, the gospel is announced to the shepherds, and that’s a surprising turn. No matter what you see in these stories from the biblical perspective. Clint, I think what you come to see is that Jesus is coming was unexpected, though it had been prophesied when he arrived, he was unrecognized and fundamentally it takes wise been coming a long way to give him these gifts.

00:03:55:40 – 00:04:27:10
Michael Gewecke
Or it takes an angelic choir to get the shepherds up and moving so that they can come and celebrate it. Either way, there’s something unbelievably world changing happening simultaneously happening in a way that was difficult to see for the people who live there and were alive at the time and were earnestly awaiting a savior. And that sets up the problem, a kind of narrative and textual problem that the Gospels are going to lay out for us about.

00:04:27:25 – 00:04:37:37
Michael Gewecke
So how does that revelation grow, and how does that revelation get confirmed? And then fundamentally, how does that revelation not just reveal, but actually transform the world on the cross?

00:04:37:42 – 00:05:04:12
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and I do think that’s helpful to look for those through lines that that capture our attention in both of the stories and the major one. For me, I think it’s fascinating that if you comb through Matthew and you comb through Luke, and you look at the stories they tell and the characters they introduce us to, the one common thread seems to be that nobody fully understood Christmas.

00:05:04:17 – 00:05:37:53
Clint Loveall
The shepherds get a piece of it. The wise men know something has happened, but they don’t know exactly where, and they’re not sure what it means. Joseph is confused. Mary is confused. There’s some ambiguity in the timeline. Herod is afraid. There are all these various things that happen and nobody fully comprehends what God has done. Because as I said yesterday, there’s just this is an unthinkable kind of plan.

00:05:37:53 – 00:06:04:43
Clint Loveall
Only God comes up with the idea of reaching out to a young, engaged girl to bear his own son for the salvation of his people and then by extension, the world. Nobody at this point of the story wraps their head around that. But what do they do? They each react in their own way. They go home rejoicing. They give thanks.

00:06:04:48 – 00:06:43:21
Clint Loveall
They are afraid. They praise. They ponder. They kneel. They worship. And I think ultimately that’s a good takeaway for us. Not that we’re called to make sense of everything in the story, but ultimately, what is our reaction to it? What do we do with this announcement of the Christ child, the coming of the Messiah? What do we, given whatever we do, know about it, do in response to that good news for all people of a great joy in the city of David.

00:06:43:26 – 00:07:05:11
Michael Gewecke
So I’ve gotta do this, Clint, and I’m sorry. And I, you know, coming at you, but we haven’t covered all of the Christmas texts in the New Testament because of course, we’ve got John one one, which is among my favorite. And yeah, I’m gonna just put Clint up there so you can see his response to this. Okay. But I want to be clear.

00:07:05:11 – 00:07:40:14
Michael Gewecke
I say it in jest because Clinton I we poke fun about my love of the Gospel of John. But in a serious turn here, though, John isn’t intending to tell the Christmas story as Matthew and Luke are, obviously, but John does when he introduces this idea that Jesus Christ is the light that comes into the world, and when he talks about Jesus as being the one who was present, even at the very creation of all things, what John is doing is fundamentally, I think, the same thing that Matthew and Luke are doing, but he’s doing it in a different context and he’s writing it to different people.

00:07:40:19 – 00:08:01:15
Michael Gewecke
But what he’s saying, like they were saying, is that Jesus from the beginning, is God doing God’s things. And it’s surprising to everyone involved. Nobody gets to claim credit for what God has done. Mary doesn’t get full credit, though. She was faithful, right? John the Baptist in John. He doesn’t get credit, but he was faithful. He was a witness.

00:08:01:19 – 00:08:33:25
Michael Gewecke
Oh yeah, all of these characters are faithful. They are courageous. They did important things, take nothing from any of them. But all of the gospels, specifically Matthew and Luke, show it clearly. But I think John has a way of also illustrating this is that that fundamentally, God is doing God’s plan. God has determined, God has shown his power, and God has chosen mysterious, shocking, maybe even offensively to us.

00:08:33:30 – 00:08:57:15
Michael Gewecke
God has chosen to show that power through vulnerability, through weakness, through smallness, through, quite frankly, trusting his son to this young woman and her fiancé and and in that plan, God’s greatness becomes revealed to the entire world. It is astonishing when you see it from that 30,000ft cosmic view.

00:08:57:19 – 00:09:05:56
Clint Loveall
And I think, by and large, I’m okay with that. Michael John is not John is not telling us about the best.

00:09:05:56 – 00:09:08:04
Michael Gewecke
I’m going to get wrong.

00:09:08:09 – 00:09:39:50
Clint Loveall
John is not telling us about the birth of Jesus, but he is talking to us about the arrival of the Christ and really, I, I do think particularly those first few verses one through five specifically translate to Christmas pretty well. I mean, if there’s a if there’s a better verse that illustrates our Christmas Eve service and the lighting of the candles during Silent Night, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

00:09:39:50 – 00:10:08:42
Clint Loveall
It you wouldn’t be far off to say that is the fundamental promise that we receive at Christmas. There’s darkness. There are Herod’s. There is fear. There is no room in the inn. There is a manger where you would expect a royal bed. And yet that light overcomes, and that light has arrived and cannot be overcome by the darkness.

00:10:08:42 – 00:10:16:54
Clint Loveall
That’s it. It’s not a Christmas text per se, but it certainly is large enough that Christmas fits comfortably in it.

00:10:16:58 – 00:10:49:25
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know that I’ve thought of it in this term, certainly not in this frame until we’ve come to this conversation. But when you look at Matthew and Luke specifically, they do an amazing job of showing all of the different angles of conflict that happen. You have conflict within conflict, a faith conflict with relationships and community. Joseph is, you know, certainly worried about what other people are going to think and what the right social action is.

00:10:49:30 – 00:11:20:13
Michael Gewecke
And then you also have conflict with the within and with around the world, right? You have conflict with Herod. You have the big political machination of Rome who’s, you know, throwing around census stuff is causing Mary and Joseph’s live to be disrupted. There’s just there’s no room. In the end, it’s kind of a conflict of happenstance and circumstance that Christmas is, in a way, a big story of how all of these people have this current against them.

00:11:20:18 – 00:11:46:12
Michael Gewecke
And yet somehow, in the midst of it, God has woven a crimson red plan throughout it all. And God is perfectly navigating the revelation and action of that plan. Amidst all of these internal external conflict forces blockages, all of it has been carefully orchestrated and God receives the glory because of it.

00:11:46:19 – 00:12:34:21
Clint Loveall
Yeah. I mean, I sometimes fairly get the reputation of being a little anti Christmas, which I like to think isn’t fully true, but I will say that if you can get past the Christmas noise to the heart of the Bible’s announcement of it, what we find is a God who has a surprising, unexpected wild plan and finds regular, ordinary people in the midst of their life to say yes to it, and that that that’s the beautiful heart of this season.

00:12:34:26 – 00:13:06:41
Clint Loveall
It is sometimes hard to let that show through, because there’s so much other stuff in this season that competes with it at times. Certainly at least shadows it once in a while. But I think at its heart, this is a story about the God who wanted to save people, the son that he sent to do that, and the people who were in some way impacted by it, and even in the midst of their own misgivings and struggles, said yes to it, found it and responded to it.

00:13:06:41 – 00:13:15:22
Clint Loveall
And then ultimately, again, that question circles around what? What do we do with it? What do we make of Christmas, and what do we let Christmas make of us?

00:13:15:27 – 00:13:38:42
Michael Gewecke
Well, and there the Gospel of John has a direct word to you. He does be a witness. Be a witness to the thing you see at Christmas. As we close this out, I want to throw a question at you, Clint. A thing I’ve heard throughout my entire life. And I think there’s certainly truth in it. But when we go through a series like this, we get an opportunity to look at it a little of fresh.

00:13:38:42 – 00:14:03:39
Michael Gewecke
Let’s say I’ve been told over and over again the meaning of Christmas is giving. Giving is the meaning of Christmas that God gave. Certainly. See that? Certainly God gives in Christmas, right? But I think there’s a way in which you can look at this story, and you can see how Christmas is much, much more than giving, because in a way that’s colored by the stuff that we do, we give gifts that we find under a Christmas tree.

00:14:03:50 – 00:14:36:16
Michael Gewecke
We give of our time. We, in a way, you could argue that Christmas is a kind of incursion. You could argue that Christmas is the moment where God takes on the flesh of the very people that God has been leading, that God has been, struggling with, that God has even gotten frustrated and angry with it that that created, receives because of God’s intention, because God said, I am going to become human.

00:14:36:21 – 00:14:43:41
Michael Gewecke
Christmas is far more than just, I think maybe what we think in a popular way. Gift. I’m curious what you think about that.

00:14:43:46 – 00:15:15:13
Clint Loveall
I certainly think giving is commendable. We celebrate the gift of the Christ child. But I think I stand with Matthew, who, when he reached for words to describe Christmas, reached to Isaiah, who said, look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us. And if you if you’re going to push me for the fundamental meaning of Christmas.

00:15:15:18 – 00:15:34:12
Clint Loveall
God is with us. I think that’s the proclamation. I think that’s the point. That is both frightening and wonderful and terrifying and confusing and profound and mysterious and beautiful and.

00:15:34:17 – 00:16:04:04
Clint Loveall
All at the same time. And and yet that’s the reality that we now we now live life. We now exist in a world in which God is with us, in a true and physical and fundamental sense. It seems to me that that would be I think that’s a more complete understanding. And again, it’s it’s not to knock the idea of gift, which I think is, is in the text.

00:16:04:04 – 00:16:12:47
Clint Loveall
But, it seems to me that Matthew’s telling us what he thinks is the key takeaway right there in the verse.

00:16:12:52 – 00:16:30:16
Michael Gewecke
Paul said, thanks for being with us, everybody. I hope this been interesting, challenging, encouraging. I hope you learned something as we’ve gone like this video, you’d be surprised how many people it helps find it in the future. Subscribe. Don’t miss our study. We’re going to kick off again in the new year. We’ll put out there information about when that’s going to begin.

00:16:30:16 – 00:16:34:16
Michael Gewecke
If you have thoughts or ideas for our next study, put that in the comments.

00:16:34:21 – 00:16:35:51
Clint Loveall
Well thanks everybody. Merry Christmas.