Sermon: Christmas - 2018

25 December 2018

Text: John 1:1-18 (Ex 40:17-21, 34-38; Titus 3:4-7)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

We begin our first day of Christmas not with a partridge in a pear tree, but rather with a Word in a Tent.  St. John the Evangelist doesn’t introduce us to Jesus as the babe of Bethlehem.  We don’t hear about the wise men and Herod and Mary and Joseph.  John doesn’t tell us about the shepherds and the angels.  In fact, John says nothing about that first Christmas.

John takes us further back to the Book of Genesis: “In the Beginning…”  Jesus is there, even thousands of years before His earthly birth.  He is there, because He is God.  And John describes Him curiously as not only as God, but also as “with God.”  He describes Jesus as “the Word” – “In the beginning was the Word.”  The Greek word for “Word” is Λόγος, which is where we get the word “logic.”

In the beginning, there was logic, order, and design.  And there was design because God created a perfectly planned universe.  Everything had its place.  Every molecule and atom, every element and compound, every planet and galaxy – all interconnected by the Logos, the mind of God, every bit of matter and energy working together harmoniously according to the divine plan, according to the Word, for “all things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.”  

And by means of the Word of God, according to the Logic of God, our world came into being.  And as the creation reached its pinnacle, God created man – in His own image, male and female.  He created a man and a woman, and placed them into the most beautiful garden ever made – for it was perfect.  Not only molecules and atoms, but animals and Adam all lived together harmoniously.  Even Eve and the reptiles had no enmity between them.  There were no predators.  No living creature knew the meaning of fear or pain, and certainly not of death.  For in Him, in Jesus, in the Logos “was life, and the life was the light of men.”

St. John imbedded all of this history by starting his Gospel, his introduction of Jesus, with those iconic words of Genesis: “In the beginning.”  But of course, rather than submit to the Logos: the logic of the design of God – Adam and Eve, manipulated by the lying serpent, decided to operate according to their own distorted logic, thinking that they could appropriate knowledge that they were not yet ready to understand, and thinking that they could “be like God.”  For it wasn’t enough that God made them in His image.  They wanted God’s power.  And the world has been broken ever since, with that perfect logic cast into chaos; that harmony replaced by discord.  Humanity became self-centered, illogical, irrational, and brutish.  Even the animals lost that original beauty and harmony.

So Jesus, our Savior, our Rescuer, is this Word, for He is the one who “became flesh and dwelt among us… the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John uses another word here that doesn’t come across as well in English: “dwelt” – as in He “dwelt among us.”   The Greek literally reads: “tabernacled among us.”  And this is the connection to our Old Testament text from Exodus.  When God chose the children of Israel, He opted to tabernacle with them, to dwell with them in a tent.  So that as they made their way to the promised land, He would physically go with them, in a cloud “on the tabernacle by day, and fire… by night.”  The Lord was physically present with them in this tent, this physical location in space and time.  For we don’t worship a God who is some kind of ideal from the realm of thoughts.  Jesus is logic, but He isn’t an abstract equation.  Rather, He dwells with us personally, in His flesh, in the baby of Bethlehem, in the Sacrificial Lamb of God on the cross, in the risen Lord who bodily rose from the dead, and in His ongoing tabernacling with us in His holy body and blood given to us in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  

For “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The perfect mind of God put on the tabernacle of a body.  And this, dear friends, is the wonder of Christmas, the mystery of the incarnation.  For God, in His infinite mind, is willing to come to our fallen world and dwell with us in the body of a baby in the womb of a daughter of Eve.  God is willing to take on a mother.  And He is willing to be born, to grow, to learn (though He is the omniscient God), and to suffer the results of the sins that He did not commit.

He dwells among us even in death.  And especially at the cross, we have seen His glory – the glory of the perfect divine Logos defeating the devil by divine logic that Satan could never figure out.  But also by divine love that transcends any and all mere human reason: the love that is willing to die for the sake of the beloved, though we are not worthy.

“And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

The Lord Jesus has come to give us grace and truth, to restore the disharmony of our broken world with peace, and to replace our misshapen logic with His perfect Logos.  Jesus does all of this from the moment of His conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, the physical descendant of Eve.  Jesus comes into our world to crush the serpent’s head, and to being us sons of Adam and daughters of Eve back into communion with the God who created us.

For Jesus truly is the “light of men,” who “shines in the darkness,” and not even the darkness of our sins and the darkness of the grace can overcome the Light that is our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament tabernacle was a shadow of a greater Tabernacle to come: the fleshly Jesus, the very Word of God, the Logos, the Logic of God in human form, who has come to bear our sins and defeat the devil at the cross.  And it all started when this “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And St. Titus proclaims what the Word Made Flesh has come to do: “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we mighty become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

That justification, that being put back into harmony with God and man and creation itself, is the reason for the season, this is why the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Christmas is about “eternal life” won for us by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Word, the very Logos, the Logic of God.  

Jesus has come to take away the chaos of sin and replace it with eternal harmony and order.  He is God and He is man; He comes to bring peace between God and man, between men, and between all of creation itself.  

“In the beginning was the Word.”  The Word tabernacles with us, washing us in renewal and new life.  And the Word will abide with us even unto eternity, where the ongoing Christmas celebration will have no end!

“In the beginning was the Word.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.