Sermon – Christmas Day – "The Word Became Flesh" – John 1:1-18 – 12/25/09
December 25th, 2009Click play to listen to the audio version of this sermon.
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If you've come here this morning expecting to hear about Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, you're going to be disappointed. Last night, we heard the Lukan version of the Christmas story which is full of the things that make Christmas so Christmasee. Both Matthew and Luke give us the Christmas story from the earthly perspective – the way Mary and Joseph and the shepherds in their fields saw things. Grant it, human minds could barely comprehend what they were seeing, but Paul and Peter would explain it all later.
This morning we get the Johanine version of the Christmas story. John gives us the Christmas story, not from the earthly perspective but from the heavenly perspective, as only the eyes of faith can see it. This is the way that angels and the archangels and all the company would have told the Christmas story if John hadn't been the one commissioned to do so. John wants us to see what human eyes could never have seen apart from divine revelation.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:1-2,14).
What are we to make of God becoming human and taking on human flesh, with all its attendant weaknesses and limitations? Everything that we bible believing Christians have been taught about human flesh has been positively negative. The bible says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God because it's perishable, and what has the perishable to do with the imperishable?" (1 Cor.15:50).
Peter recognized Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, but flesh and blood had no part in telling him so. This was the work of the Spirit. (Matthew 16:17).
Even Jesus Himself warns us to pray, because as willing as the spirit may be, the flesh is weak. (Matthew 6:41).
St. Paul says that "the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these." (Galatians 5:19-21).
In another chapter of his gospel, John will tell us that "God is spirit." But he begins his gospel by telling us that God, who is spirit, took on flesh. And we wonder, why would God take upon Himself the very part of us that interferes so much with His Spirit and that is responsible for all of those "works of the flesh" that separate us from God?
Actually, Matthew and Luke may not be so radically different than John after all. When Luke tracked down those shepherds who went to visit the baby in the manger to interview them, he asked them what made them leave their fields to look for a baby in such an unexpected place. And the shepherds told Luke that it was those angels and their song. And Luke would have asked, 'do you remember what they sang?' And they would have said, 'Remember? Are you kidding, we can't get that song out of our heads. Nor do we want to. They sang 'gloria in excelesis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.' (These were educated shepherds.) "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace and good will to mankind."
The angels were announcing that the tension between heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, God and man, was over. Man's sinful flesh which, ever since Adam's fall into sin, has caused such a divorce with God's Holy Spirit, was about to be reconciled. The enmity and warfare between our sinful flesh and God's Holy Spirit was about to cease. And peace and goodwill between God and mankind would be the new order of things.
God and man would be reunited, one to another, and the two shall become one FLESH. And all of this wold take place, not by us taking on God's Spirit, but by God taking on our flesh.
John simply writes the prelude and postlude to the angel's magnificent hymn. He wants us to understand that heaven and earth were never meant to be separated from each other as they have become. That's why he begins his Christmas story with Genesis 1. "In the beginning, God created the heavens AND the earth." And He announced His benediction over the "heavens AND the earth" saying, "it is very good."
In the beginning, the God of heaven, walked and talked with Adam in the garden on earth. God was as 'at home' with Adam in the garden as He was with the angels in heaven. And Adam was as at one with God in the garden as he was with the lions, tigers and bears.
But one day, Adam raised his fist to God. The human one rebelled against the divine One. Adam's sin turned that little word "AND" between "heaven AND earth," into a dividing wall that separated the two from each other. What God had joined together, man tore asunder.
So, when John says that the Word which was and is and always will be God, became flesh, what he is telling us is that God is reuniting together what was torn asunder. God will not deny Himself, even if man denies Him. God's original intention for His creation would prevail in the end, despite Adam's sin. Adam's word would not have the final say. But God's powerful and creative Word will. God would not permit Adam's 'NO' to prevail against His "YES."
The reunion of heaven and earth would be accomplished. But not by destroying man's sinful flesh and turning us all ghosts. And not by destroying this creation and creating a whole new one.
He comes in the flesh, with all of the attendant weaknesses and limitations of human flesh. Not to destroy His creation but to redeem it, not to take us out of this world, but to give to all flesh, His Holy Spirit in this world. And all of this He does through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." No honest reading of the Scriptures can conclude anything but that Jesus is true man. He is not an abstract man or a spiritual being who just appears to have flesh. He is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones.
And the same Scriptures say that this same Jesus is also true God. "God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God" as we say. In Jesus, God and man, heaven and earth, the celestial and terrestrial are united in one, perfect unity. Heaven and earth are both one, undivided, "very good," in Jesus Christ.
In the Word made flesh, there is no separation of man from God or God from man. Jesus is the God/Man. The baby in the manger is God in the highest, who humbled Himself to dwell in communion with mankind. And He is also mankind who is in full communion fellowship with the Father in heaven. "I and the Father are one." In Jesus Christ, God has reconciled and reunited heaven and earth, the spirit and the flesh with each other again. In Christ Jesus, God has established peace on earth, goodwill toward mankind, in all its flesh.
All of this is what John means when he says, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." From our earthly perspective with our human eyes we wonder how this can be possible. From our perspective, the finite is not capable of the infinite. But with God, all things are possible. With God, the infinite is capable of the infinite. On Christmas, eternity took on time and space, so you and I who live in time and space may take on eternity. Or as our Eastern Orthodox friends like to say it, "God became man so that man could become like God."
This work of reconciliation and reuniting heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, is entirely the work of God. Christmas is not the celebration of man raising himself up to heaven, or of the finite grasping hold of the infinite. Nor is it about man attaining some state of Nirvana by freeing himself from all attachments to his body. Christmas is the celebration of heaven coming down and uniting with earth. God unites Himself to us.
The thing that makes all of this so hard to grasp, is that in Christ, the infinite God not only embraces the finite world of mankind, but that He does so in spite of mankind's resistance and rejection. "He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him." Our sinful flesh crucified the Word made flesh when He came to redeem us.
And in this we see the love of God for His creation. Because God is love, He cannot remain distant, aloof, far removed from His beloved. He embraces finite humanity with all our sins and weakness and limitations, and even against our own will. He will not let our sin or our will stand in the way of His purpose and His desire.
And in this we see the power and wisdom of God. He makes even the worst that our sinful flesh is capable of – work for good, "very good," even the highest good. By our works of the flesh, God has redeemed His creation and reconciled us to Himself.
"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." He does not deal with our sin and rejection in a detached and remote way. He became flesh. He became sin. He was rejected. What the Scriptures say about the flesh is exactly right. Jesus became all of this when the Word became flesh. He became what mankind had become. When Jesus was put to death on the cross, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men's sins against them, but counting our sins against the Word made flesh.
Through holy baptism, you have been united to the God / Man. God's peace and good will have been established in you. For you, the infinite takes on the finite as He gives Himself to you in the bread and wine of His Supper. Every time we eat the Lord's Supper, it's the miracle of Christmas all over again.
All of this is to be found within the words, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." God has reunited heaven and earth through His Son, Jesus Christ so that we may also say, "we have beheld His glory, the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth."
Related Entries:
» Sermon – Christmas Eve – "Twas The Night Before Christmas" – Luke 2:8-12 – 12/24/07» Sermon – 4th Advent – "Divine Revelation" – Matthew 1:18-25 – 12/23/07
» Sermon – Christmas Day – "Christmas All Year Long" – Titus 3:4-7
» Sermon – Christmas Morning – "The Word Became Flesh" – John 1:1-14 – 12/25/07
» Sermon Index – Lutheran – LCMS
» Sermon – Epiphany 4 – "Teaching With Authority" – Luke 4:31-43 – 1/31/10
