“Christmas, as John Writes It” John 1.1–14 Xmas Dec. ‘23

 

“Christmas, as John Writes It” John 1.1–14 Xmas Dec. ‘23

1.                  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. A very Merry Christmas to all of you this day as we celebrate our Savior’s birth! Last night, we feasted together on many words of the Word of God, but especially on the words of St. Luke from Luke chapter 2. Those words about the nativity of Jesus are most familiar. There is much humanity in Luke’s writing. Proper names of real people: Joseph. Mary. Quirinius. Real places on the map: Syria. Nazareth. Bethlehem. Passionate emotions expressed by those real people: Joy. Fear. Relief. Our message from God’s Word today is taken from John 1:1-14, it’s entitled, “Christmas, as John Writes It,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                  This morning we feast upon the words of St. John. Less human interest, but just as important. These words of John focus upon the divinity of Jesus. Nothing here about the trip to Bethlehem, the swaddling cloths, or the quaking shepherds. Still, John reports as accurately as Luke did, even as John is focusing on the glory of the person of the Word made flesh. In our text today, St. John Prepares a Divine Feast of the Word.

3.                  John confesses that it is God in the flesh who makes that night stand out in history. We already know God didn’t need reporters or a book contract to make that night holy. He could have brought that night forth even without the shepherds, angels, and manger. God made that night holy because of himself. God came to earth. He became flesh. Incarnate, we say. And though many historians, scientists, politicians, and even theologians miss the significance, God’s holy people don’t. Life was manifested. In Jesus. His is the light of men.

4.                  We need to be cautioned on this joyous Christmas morn. We need to be warned that the world is already past the point of believing what John has written. The world warms up to a human interest story as reported by Luke, loving all the details—the names, the places, the emotions—whether coming from the lips of a pastor in a stole at a lectern or coming from the lips of Linus holding his blanket in A Charlie Brown Christmas, running now every year for almost six decades. The world can become sentimental to Luke’s Gospel, but the Gospel according to St. John is hardly considered on an equal level.

5.                  John writes in John 1:1 & 14, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh.” That is John’s truth about Christmas. But that’s not truth according to Harvard University, MIT, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or The New Yorker. For those sources, “in the beginning” there were molecules or gasses or nothing at all or “we’re not sure.” But John is sure! He says that it is better to be a child of God than to be a citizen of the world. So, John starts with the Word, the preincarnate Christ. He was in the beginning. He was with God. He was God. He made all things.

6.                  But does one have to believe John in order to believe that Jesus was a cuddly baby born in a manger? Isn’t it possible to believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem without believing that Jesus also created all the heavens and all the earth (Ps 33:6)? Why not? Why are baby Jesus and his existence as the Son of God before Bethlehem inextricable from one another?

7.                  Why? The Church has always needed to answer that question. Even before the Bible was written, believers had to answer the question of whether the God who created the world was also the God who would redeem the world. Same God? Different Gods? No relationship? What exactly? Those pre-Bible believers couldn’t say, “The Bible tells me so.” There was no Bible in Adam and Eve’s day, nor in pre-Pentateuch of Moses’ day. So, why does the Babe of Bethlehem need to be God the Lord, the God who made all things? Couldn’t Jesus simply be human, not God?

8.                  Couldn’t Jesus just teach all men and women a better way to live, how to get along, how to be nice to one another, how to be at peace on earth? Couldn’t Jesus just be a good guy, a best friend, a great teacher? The world answers that Jesus doesn’t need to be God, your God. Your God can be anyone or anything. You. Your friend. Your dog. Your inner thoughts. The entire universe. A god can be anything from which you get help, comfort, pleasure, good vibes, or reassurances. The world does not know the true God because the world does not know its sin, its wickedness, its evil. The world, writes John, is in darkness. John insists that the world was made by God, made by the One who is light, made by Jesus, but the world did not know him. Not then. Not now. Why? Because darkness envelops the world. That darkness is sin.

9.                  But John also confesses that some are not in the darkness. They believe. They believe that Jesus is God. They believe not because they are morally better or because they are above average IQ or because they had an inner light already burning in them. John says it best in John 1:13, These “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”.

10.               Truly, they have been born from above, from on high. The Lord has done the work. Being born of God is Holy Baptism’s work. Holy Baptism is God’s work. Baptism is “of God.” These words of Paul are refreshing, like cool water upon the face in the morning. Paul wrote to Titus: “[God] saved us . . . by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:5–6). Baptism is a bathing in Jesus.

11.               The faithful love the language of God, of John’s Gospel, and of God’s work. This feast. “The Word was God” (Jn 1:1). “All things were made through him” (John 1:3). “The Word became flesh . . . and we have seen his glory” (John 1:14). This is salvation talk. It’s talk of the Savior. It’s talk that “the people who walked in darkness” (Is 9:2), the darkness of death and sin, understand. Martin Luther says that a five- or six- or seven-year-old child can understand this talk.

12.               Those who are still in darkness hate this talk of John. They refuse to confess sin and death and thus cannot confess Jesus as Savior over sin and death. Those in the light, the baptized, love this talk. Their sin is covered by the glorious Savior, Jesus.

13.               When Thomas confessed Jesus as “my Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28), he was making a statement about the connection between creation and redemption. You can’t have one without the other. They go together, like cold and winter, like Christmas and presents, like sunshine and light. This Lord standing alive before him, Thomas knew, is the one who had just so recently died. Were he not man, he could never have died in our place. But unless he is also God, he could never have conquered death for us. God’s Son, Jesus, has brought redemption to the world in his flesh by the forgiveness of sin, and he was also the Word creating at the creation of the world. Two natures in one. You can’t have one without the other. Lord and God.

14.               What St. John wrote in his Gospel about the nativity of Jesus was “written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:31). Don’t expect the miracle of faith outside of the Gospels. Don’t expect the themes of the Word as Creator and the Word as Redeemer to be explained or photographed magnificently in a National Geographic article this month or to be broached in the inaugural address by the US president next month.

15.               But you can expect those themes to be covered here at this pulpit, weekly, in this congregation. Expect them to be preached here in this church in liturgy and hymns where the darkness of your sin is covered by the light of Jesus’ work. Expect them to be delivered to you in this building in the ordinary and in the supernatural. Yes, in an ordinary six-day period, our Lord did the supernatural: he created the heavens and the earth. Yes, the Lord of all became an ordinary male, born in a stall, via the supernatural birth to a virgin. Yes, the Lord’s supernatural body and blood are in ordinary bread and wine. Yes, simple water plus the extraordinary Word of God poured upon the head of an infant forgives that child’s sin.

16.               The Word of God made the world and the Word of God became flesh. The Word of God dripped his blood from the cross and the Word of God rose from the dead. The Word of God has overcome your darkness and the Word of God brings you into his light. That’s the Feast of Christmas. Merry Christmas. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.