By this bread and wine, so say the words of institution, we proclaim Christ’s death until he comes. But it’s not just Christ’s death that we’re proclaiming, it’s our own as well, and the death of the whole world. We’re declaring the end of one era and the beginning of another. The incarnation of God the Son is nothing less than a new creation of the world. It is a reality as surprising as the creation of the world out of nothing. Through sin, the world was falling away, dissipating, fading. Satan’s kingdom was not getting stronger and stronger and more potent, it was dissolving. Because that’s what sin is: it is separation from the source of life and being.

But in the person of Jesus Christ, created reality, stained with sin and slowly wasting away, met uncreated reality in all its divine ineffability and vitality. This baby in the manger, declared by angels and attended by scruffy sheep guys, is the intersection point between heaven and earth. “I am the door,” he says, by which mortal men have access to the realm of light and by which the stuff of heaven can meet the stuff of earth.

And then he died. His body was broken, his blood was shed, the way was shut, or so it seemed. But as Peter says in Acts 2, you can’t fully and finally kill the one who is the Resurrection. It was not possible for death to subdue the Lord of Life. From the moment of conception, Christ was the Lord of Life, the stuff of heaven bound to the stuff of earth. You can’t separate the Christmas story from Good Friday, and you can’t separate Good Friday from Easter Sunday. It’s one thing.

So during Advent we proclaim his death. On Christmas morning, we proclaim his death. While opening presents and eating cinnamon rolls, we proclaim his death. Why? Because his death is merely the death of our sin, the death of the old world order and thus the beginning of the new creation. Christ Jesus is the resurrection and the life, in the Manger, on the Cross, in the Tomb, in Resurrected form, as he reigns at the Father’s right hand now, and when he comes again in glory. We eat and drink now in faith, proclaiming the end of one world and the beginning of the new.