Christmas Day – 2019
– John 1
In the Name of Christ Jesus, our Newborn King +
In the Name of Christ Jesus, our Newborn King +
Let’s
start where John starts His Gospel, the beginning. “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.” It’s a good place to
start, the beginning. . . but the Word is there before that – for
the Word was God. Yes, the Word was of the Father’s Love Begotten,
ere the worlds began to be. “All things
were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was
made. In Him was life.” Pretty
impressive – it is as we confess in the Nicene Creed – the Word
is the Maker of all things, by whom all things were made – God
Almighty, God Himself, the 2nd
Person of the Trinity – this is the Word that John Speaks of this
Christmas morning.
“And
the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.”
And here our jaw should drop – our surprise should be greater at
this than at anything we saw under our tree this morning. The Word,
God Almighty Himself, became Flesh, became Man, and dwelt among us,
lived among us. Think on that. God became Man – God looks down
from heaven and sees us sinful folks mucking it up, making a mess of
our lives. He sees us earning nothing but His wrath and Damnation. .
. and what does He do? Does He blot us from existence? Does He run
away and leave us alone, deciding to just let us rot in our own mess
that we have made? No. He becomes Man. God sees us in our sinful
state and says, “You know what, I will fix that. . . I’ll become
one of them, I will live the perfect life, and win for them salvation
by my own death.” God sees our sin, and how does He respond? By
becoming Man, by being born, by being a helpless infant. God, in
order to win our salvation, hungers until His mother decides to
suckle Him, lies in dirty diapers until His mother changes Him, stays
where He is put until He can learn to crawl, then to walk. We often
get this sweet, neat picture of Christmas – but that sort of misses
the point. Christmas is messy, babies are messy. Christmas means God
becomes Man and dwells among us – He comes down to us because we
can’t go up to Him. God chooses to participate in our lives, share
in what we have. And He comes to share in all of it – not just the
highs, but also the lows, the hardship, the weakness, the frailty.
We see God tasting in all that we taste in our days. We see God for
our salvation lying in a food trough.
“The
Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Indeed, God came down to earth, down to the
world to be among men, and by in large men reject Him. Wicked King
Herod sought to kill Him, sent our Lord’s Adoptive father Joseph
and His Virgin mother scurrying into flight into Egypt in order to
protect their infant Child. Yes, a few wise men from afar would come
and bow down, but those who were accounted wise among His own people
– the Pharisees, the scribes, the priests – they mocked Him.
They said He was possessed, they called him a Drunkard. They plotted
His death. The crowds on Good Friday finished the job that Herod
started as they shouted for His death. But we shouldn’t think it
was only people way back then who reject Christ. Look at the very
Holy-day of Christmas even in our own land. By in large, we’re
more apt to be thinking about Santa than Jesus for most of December.
If you tell people that Christmas is coming, they tend to be more
worried about getting their shopping done than they are about giving
thanks to Christ Jesus for His deigning to come to us. Or maybe we
should say Happy Holidays instead. Of course, we’ve even taken the
holy out of the holy days. Christmas day has become simply a day for
eagerly opening presents and feasting – many Churches don't even
have service today, so people can be at home with their families,
instead of worshiping together with their real family, the Body of
Christ, instead of gathering together for the great and true
Christmas Feast – the Lord’s Supper.
But we
shouldn’t be surprised. The presence of the Lord, God’s
presence, is a scary thing when you are a sinner. It terrified the
people of the Old Testament – Adam and Eve hid in the garden, the
children of Israel demanded God keep His distance, Isaiah thought He
was going to die when He saw God in the temple. Sinful man is
reminded of the wages of his sin when He beholds God’s holiness.
It’s no surprise that the people of Christ’s day or the world
today reject Christ. God with us reminds us that we need God to be
with us, that we are not self-sufficient, that we of ourselves are
condemned need rescuing from our sin. Instead we often crave better
ways to delight in sin. And often enough, even we who know better
cave and give into sin, we are tempted to want nothing to do with
Christ. When we sin, we shout at the Christ child “Be away from
me, I want no part of you. Let me live my life how I want to.”
But God does come to us, in His great and wondrous mercy our Lord
comes to us again and again – but He doesn’t come as we would
expect. He doesn’t come yet as an angry judge to damn us for our
sin – that’s what we feared. He doesn’t come yet as a mighty
King to defeat and destroy. In His mercy, God has held off that
judgment of the last day, and instead He devised a different coming,
a coming that would give us hope to be able to stand on that last
day. He comes to us simply as one of us.
“The
Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”
The Boy born in the stable at Bethlehem would grow, He would run and
play, He would learn His letters and how to work a saw, a hammer. He
would learn from Joseph and Mary to go the temple and pray. They
taught Him His prayers which He said at night before He went to bed.
God dwelt among us – He lived a life with all the things that we
see. Jesus got picked on growing up by the neighborhood bully and
caught the colds the kids passed around. He grew into a young Man
and had to work – He had friends who disappointed Him and abandoned
Him when He needed them. He went hungry and suffered. He wept and
mourned. He laughed and rejoiced and celebrated. He heard people
complain about Him. Everything you can think of in your life, all
the range of experiences, He too shared in them – all except sin,
for this Christ Jesus is the spotless lamb, the One without Blemish.
He lived how Adam would have lived had he not sinned, Christ lived
how we would live if we didn’t sin. This is way in which Christ
comes to us, dear friends. Jesus comes to us to share in our lives.
Know that Christ Jesus knows our struggles in life well, personally.
He too has shared them. Your ups and downs, He knows them. Your
joys and sorrows, our Lord knows them. Even your temptations, our
Lord knows them, why they would appeal, although He did not give in.
Christ has dwelt among us, He has shared fully in your lives. He
understands the trials you face, and as such in Compassion He is
determined to win you salvation from them. That is the miracle of
Christmas Day – that God would lower Himself to our level, simply
to be with us, all in order that by His life and death and
resurrection He might raise us up to the life everlasting.
Christ
Jesus our Lord continues to come to us this day. Jesus still dwells
with us, He is still here for our Salvation. Jesus still has the
Body that was born in that manger, it is His. Satan tried to wrest
it from Him, put Him to death upon the Cross, but on Good Friday
Satan overstepped His bounds, and so the Father restored Jesus; the
Father was pleased, saw all that His Son had done, and returned Him
to life – and now Christ Jesus has risen and lives to die no more.
Right now the Man Jesus, born of Mary, Jesus our Brother who shares
in all that we are, rules all of Creation from heaven. And Right
now, Christ our Brother comes to us, comes to dwell with us here in
His Supper. This is Christmas. . . Christ Mass. . . the service of
Holy Communion where we celebrate the fact that God became Man for
us, that He gives Himself to us, even His own Body and Blood in His
supper. It is the feast of His incarnation. As the manger held the
infant Christ on the first Christmas morn, this Christmas morn we
hold in our hands the Resurrected, life-giving Body of our Lord.
Behold your King comes to you humble and lowly, His Body and Blood
under Bread and Wine, and brings with Him your life and Salvation.
God Almighty comes down from His throne, Christ Victorious over sin
and death comes and gives us His own life! This is why we celebrate
Christmas – we in fact celebrate it every time we have the Lord’s
Supper. God has come and been our Savior – He has won for us full
redemption by His death on the Cross, and He gives us His own life to
share.
Dear
friends in Christ, a most happy, joyous, and blessed Christmas to
each of you. This day we remember and rejoice in a great and mighty
wonder. Christmas comes again, as Christ shows us His own Body in
His Supper and gives us His life. God has come to be with you, to
give you life and salvation, to give you Peace with God and each
other. God grant that we might ever more know and realize this, even
until the day when we see Him face to face. In the Name of Christ
Jesus, our Newborn King +
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