John S. Tanner gave this talk at a stake priesthood meeting during Christmas 1997.
My theme tonight is “Christmas and the Cross.” Let me introduce my topic with two Christmas memories and a poem.
As a boy growing up in Southern California, I lived across the street from a big, red-brick Presbyterian church. Each Christmas the church would set up a life-sized manger scene on its front lawn. One year when I was about nine or ten, I sneaked across the street and crawled into the back of the manger. There I discovered that the mannequins clothed as shepherds, wise men, and Joseph were female! I was shocked. The scene was incongruous. And I wondered if the Presbyterians read the same Bible as the Mormons.
Over the years, this image of a female mannequin dressed as Joseph has become a symbol for me of a world that outwardly appears to worship Christ on Christmas but, beneath the outward trappings of Christmas, lacks the substance of belief. And Christmas itself seemed to illustrate the truth of the Lord’s judgment on the modern world: that it preserves “a form of godliness, but . . . den[ies] the power thereof” (JS–H 1:19).
Some years later, when I was about sixteen, I talked about this topic in a Christmas season sacrament meeting. As I watched Southern California prepare for another Christmas, I felt that the world celebrated Christmas without really believing in Christ. Merchants played carols, neighbors (who were not discernibly religious during the year) strung lights, exchanged presents, and even managed a visit to a church—but all without any real belief. Christmas festivities made the world seem Christian, but the traditions somehow felt to me like the form of godliness lacking the power thereof.
It was easy to love the warm, cozy story of a baby born to poor parents. No one could be so Scrooge-like as to object to the sentimental do-good morality that Dickens helped make synonymous with Christmas. The world liked the baby Jesus, but didn’t accept the demands of discipleship that came from the man Jesus or from the resurrected Lord. He made hard, inexorable demands to repent. Did my friends and neighbors, I wondered, really accept the fact that Christ was more than a moral teacher and his message more than morality? With these thoughts in mind, I reminded my ward that it was easy to sing sweet carols about the baby, but we must also live lives answerable to the man.
Later I found a poem by modern British poet laureate John Betjeman that made this point well. Betjeman describes scenes of a British Christmas—the ringing church bells of Advent; the holly and yew decorating the Manor House and village church; the red bunting festooning the Town Hall; the London shops strung with silver bells; the bustling store clerks; the girls who remember Dad and oafish louts who remember Mum; the sleepless children. And then he asks:
And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare—
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.1
The poet reminds us that the meaning of Christmas is revealed in the Sacrament. I also want to connect the Christmas story with the Easter story. At first this may seem odd, but it is fitting to remember that without the agony of the garden and bitter cross, there would be no empty tomb nor forgiveness of sins—and hence, no glad tidings of great joy to all men. The empty tomb fulfills the promise of the manger.
We have just heard “Joy to World.” In our hymnal, this carol bridges the Easter and Christmas hymns. Its position seems to acknowledge that this hymn is not only a Christmas carol but a millennial anthem. The early Latter-day Saints viewed it as such, and W. W. Phelps even altered the words to “the Lord will come” so the text looks forward to a second coming.
Much in that first Christmas foretells the Cross just as much as that first coming also foreshadows the Second Coming. This is evident in the New Testament narratives of Jesus’s birth and abundantly clear in the Book of Mormon prophecies of the “glad tidings.”
The New Testament narratives of Jesus’s birth foreshadow his Atonement and Second Coming. Consider that the king honored by the wisemen in Matthew will not truly come to take possession of his kingdom in this world until he comes again. And consider that they, like we, needed to see the child with eyes of faith to see the prophesied king. For this is a king who was crowned only with a cruel crown of thorns, and who will not be accepted as king until his Second Coming, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is King of kings and Lord of lords.
Consider, too, the foreshadowing of the Cross and of the Second Coming in Luke’s story of Christ’s birth. In this Gospel, the shepherds learn that this birth brings good tidings to all people. Similarly, when he sees the baby Jesus brought to the temple, Simeon testifies that he has beheld salvation, “Which [God] hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:30–32, emphasis added). These announcements speak of the universal scope of the “glad tidings,” or “gospel.” But the gospel didn’t go to all people, including the Gentiles, until after Christ had been crucified and opened the doors to the dead, and after he authorized his disciples to preach to the Gentiles.
Simeon also catches a glimpse of the Cross when he tells Mary that “a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,” thus predicting Mary’s sorrow at the foot of the cross (Luke 2:35). And his prophecy anticipates that Jesus will be rejected, becoming “a sign which shall be spoken against,” and that the child will become a stumbling block for some as well as the Rock of Salvation for others: “This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34).
The cross not only casts a shadow but forecasts light and hope; the redemptive Atonement is implied in the angel’s Annunciation to Mary, and in Mary’s subsequent exclamation of joy, called the “Magnificat.” Consider the term “glad tidings,” which is synonymous with “good news” or “gospel.” What is this joyful good news? The threefold testimony of the angels to the shepherds is that Jesus is the Savior, the Christ (Messiah) or Anointed One, and the Lord, or the Son of God. Heaven rings with such news in the New Testament and even more so in the Book of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon speaks several times of “glad tidings” in reference to Christ’s birth. In most instances, it links the glad tidings of the gospel with the good news of the Atonement.
Samuel says that the angel brought “glad tidings” to his soul (Hel. 13:7). We read that angels also appeared to others at the time Samuel declared “glad tidings of great joy” (16:14). Samuel links this good news not only to imminent birth but also to the saving suffering and death of Christ, “who surely shall come into the world, and shall suffer many things and shall be slain for his people” (13:6).
Many years before Samuel, both Benjamin and Alma speak of the “glad tidings” of Jesus’s birth. In a great sermon, Benjamin tells his people, “And the things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an angel from God” (Mosiah 3:2). And the angel said to Benjamin, “Awake, . . . I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy” (3:3). Those tidings were the incarnation of the Son of God and his miracles performed in the flesh (3:5–6); his Atonement “for the wickedness and the abominations of his people” and the name of his mortal mother (3:7–8); and finally the Savior’s suffering on the cross, “that salvation might come unto the children of men,” which would be followed by the Resurrection (3:9–10). Surely, the promise of a Savior and Redeemer were the gladdest of tidings.
Alma also speaks of glad tidings of great joy, given by the “mouth of angels” (Alma 13:22–26). Earlier, he shares the tidings of the Atonement and Resurrection (7:10–13), for which reason he calls his people to repent, “and prepare the way of the Lord” (7:9). Alma’s charge was much like John the Baptist’s in preparing the minds of the people for the birth of the Savior (Mark 1:3).
Nephi, too, learns not only of God’s condescension to a virgin but also of the Lamb being lifted up on a cross: “And he said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God? . . . Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh. . . . And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms. And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!” (1 Ne. 11:16–21). Then Nephi learns this is the most joyous news. He also learns that this birth will lead to the Lamb being “lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world” (11:33).
Christmas is made meaningful by the Cross—or more precisely by the garden, the cross, and the empty tomb—that is, by the Atonement. These are the glad tidings of which the angels sang: that the Lord God Jehovah had condescended to “dwell in a tabernacle of clay” (Mosiah 3:5) so that he could both show us the way to live and to make room in heavenly mansions for us, though his own would not make room for him in an inn. This he did in anguish (3:7) and on a “bitter cross,” as Milton says in his ode on Christ’s nativity:
The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both himself and us to glorify.2
Jesus arose on the third day and shall judge the world. This is the gospel that caused the angels to sing and that lies beneath the trappings of Christmas. It is the message that President Hinckley reminded us of in his Christmas message last week.
“We honor the birth of our Lord, the Son of God, who condescended to come to earth because He loved us. He came to do for us that which we could not do for ourselves,” President Hinckley said. “Without His Atonement we would be helpless before the unrelenting grasp of death. We would stand hopeless and helpless in our sins, going nowhere, making no progress. . . .
The great political empires have come and gone. . . . But the lonely figure of the Son of God, hanging on the cross on Calvary’s hill, to die a mortal death and to rise again in immortality, has become the realization of the eternal hope of the world.”
It is the miracle of the resurrection that gives wonder to His birth, President Hinckley said.
“And so at Christmas time we honor not only the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, but also the crucified Lord who died for each of us, and rose on the third day to become ‘the first fruits of them that slept.’ . . . How thankful we ought to be . . . for this gift that is greater than all other gifts.”3
I join my testimony with that of prophets, ancient and modern, that the Babe of Bethlehem was and is the Christ. That he died for us and that he lives. He has been seen in our day. He leads this Church. And he shall shortly return. At that millennial day, we shall sing with new meaning the Christmas carol:
Joy to the world, the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King!
Let ev’ry heart prepare him room,
And Saints and angels sing.No more will sin and sorrow grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He’ll come and make the blessings flow
Far as the curse was found.
So, “Good Christian Men, rejoice! / With heart and soul and voice . . . [Christ] hath oped the heav’nly door, / And man is blessed evermore.”4
1. John Betjeman, “Christmas,” lines 31–48.
2. John Milton, “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (1629), lines 151–54.
3. Sarah Jane Weaver, “‘A Gift That Is Greater Than All Gifts,’” Church News, December 13, 1997.
4. “Good Christian Men, Rejoice!” trans. John Mason Neale, in John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore, Carols for Christmas-tide: The Condensed Vocal Parts (London: Novello, 1854), 20, 21.
