It is difficult for people in the faith community, 2,000 years after the Christian movement began, to imagine — much less appreciate — what it was like to stand up for Jesus. To put it mildly, it was incredibly difficult.

The first believers knew something extraordinary. Their hero, who had been murdered by a foreign power occupying their country, was somehow alive and back with them, encountering and encouraging them in the midst of their lives. There was no explaining how a dead hero could be alive once again — although lots of early Christians tried their hand at it — but, in their experience, there was also no denying it.

As the story went out that the rabbi from Nazareth was not dead and wasn’t going away, the pushback was predictable. It came from the most logical place — the community out of which the Jesus movement grew. Leaders of the first-century Jewish faith community recognized a serious threat when they saw one. Followers of The Way, as they came to be called, were beginning to coax members away from Judaism and into Jewish Christianity.

If you had been a leader in an ancient and well-established religious movement when some of your own former faith colleagues were beginning to pull away, and to take more and more of your community with them, and seem to be becoming a growing threat to you, what would you do? The Jewish faith community did the most logical thing they could think of. They decided to kill the brand new Jesus movement in its cradle, before it could grow and do real damage. How did they do it? They developed a simple strategy.

The argument went out from the enemies of the Jesus movement that Jesus wasn’t important — because Jesus didn’t matter. The argument went like this: We have had a lot of charismatic teachers and preachers in Israel. Jesus is no different. None of them claimed they would come back from the dead. Jesus didn’t either. That, his enemies said, was a fiction created by his followers. They have, it was suggested, invented this ‘Jesus-is-alive’ myth. But it’s just that — a fiction. And Jesus is a fly-by-night self-proclaimed charismatic leader. He lived. He died. He’s gone. He doesn’t matter.

This was the challenge the first Christians faced. Their enemies were trying to get rid of Christianity by getting rid of Jesus. And members of Jesus’ faith community, who were convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was alive and with them — and leading them into the future — began to look for ways to show that Jesus really does matter. And they wanted to take the starch out of their Jewish neighbors’ arguments when they did it.

We see signs of this in the first chapter of the gospel of Luke. This Jesus champion, like the other gospel writers, is looking for ways of convincing whoever will pay attention that Jesus does indeed matter. Nowadays we are inclined to say that the arguments Luke used are not particularly convincing, but they may have been at the time.

At the beginning of his gospel, Luke uses two arguments designed to convince his readers — or listeners — that Jesus truly does matter. The first argument is this: Luke tells us that Jesus is descended from David, the great king. It was an argument aimed directly at the Jewish church. It’s hard to tell whether this claim was designed more to convince Christians or Jews. It may have been Luke’s way of saying, “Our claim to King David is better than your claim to King David — and Jesus is his direct descendant.”

It probably didn’t convince Jews, but it may have impressed the first Christians.

The second argument Luke makes is this: Jesus’ father was God the Almighty, not some human being. This sounds sensational to us, but it may not have for the first Christians. The same claim was made for many great men in antiquity. Emperor Augustus Caesar was believed to have had a divine father. So was Alexander the Great. Often these stories arose after a famous man had died.

In Jesus’ case, we call this idea “The Virgin Birth.” It seems puzzling that Luke makes this claim for Jesus, for two reasons. First, it made Jesus sound like any other famous man in the history of Greece and Rome. Second, it contradicts the argument, also made by Luke, that Jesus is a direct descendant of King David. The problem comes when we read the genealogy for Jesus that Luke includes in his gospel. That genealogy concludes that Jesus was a descendant from David through Joseph, not Mary. And so, if the Virgin Birth is true, then the descendancy from David cannot be true. The opposite is also the case.

Why did Luke include two contradictory claims for Jesus in his gospel? The best answer we can imagine is that this writer wants to make the argument, any way he can, that Jesus truly does matter. Perhaps Luke believed that, if one argument didn’t convince his readers, the other would. It’s pretty clear that the Jewish enemies of the faith community weren’t convinced by either argument.

Why does any of this matter for us on this fourth and final Sunday in the Advent season? Here’s why. Christians have always been certain that, when all is said and done, Jesus truly does matter for the faith community. All sorts of arguments have been used to try to prove this to be true. None of the arguments are persuasive in and of themselves. But there’s a reason the faith community has tried so hard to say and show that Jesus really does matter.

The reason is: it’s true. Jesus matters more than we can say.

How does he matter — and why?

Jesus matters because his life and his death and his abiding presence in our lives show us what God means for our lives. Without Jesus’ life among us, we would be left wondering. So, given the life and death and abiding presence of Jesus, what does God mean for us?

Jesus shows us that God means for us to know that we are loved with an impossibly generous love. There is nothing we can do to deserve it, nor to pay for it. The one and only authentic response to that generosity is to love others — including our enemies. Such a response will transform our lives and begin to redeem the world. This is an astonishing Christmas gift to us, by the way.

That’s who Jesus was and is. And that’s why — and how — Jesus matters.

As we come now to the celebration of Jesus’ birth, let us remember why the day and celebration matter. They matter for us because Jesus matters, and always has, and always will.

Rejoice and be glad!