Sermon: Christmas - 2019

25 December 2019

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

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

We live in an age of paradox.  We have never been more connected to family and friends all over the world through social media and the internet.  We now communicate in real time at the speed of light.  And yet it seems as if we are also more detached than ever before.  Today, even a phone call seems like a lot of work when a few taps on the phone can put a text into cyberspace, and we can then move on to the next task.

And in spite of all of these connections “in the cloud” – more people are isolated and lonely than ever before.  We are designed for actual social interaction, not just looking at a screen.  And even today, the ultimate human contact is to sit down at a table together, and to share a meal.

At the fall in the Garden of Eden, that intimacy with God that we enjoyed was broken.  We became estranged.  The best that we could do was a kind of social media contact with the Lord God.  We could pray and offer sacrifices.  God would speak to us through prophets.  But the closest that God would come to us was “in the cloud.”  He spoke through Moses, but the people were not allowed on the mountain.  God make covenants, and we held on to the promise – but He was not physically present with us.  Our interactions with God were mediated through priests.  The sacrifices were a kind of token of God’s presence.

But we craved the original fleshly contact that we originally had with God in the garden.

This closeness began to be restored when God instructed Moses to build a tabernacle, a tent in which the presence of God would dwell with us.  Later, this tent would be replaced by a house, the temple, where God’s presence would abide with His people – but once again, only mediated through the priests and prophets.

The prophets spoke of a coming Messiah, a Savior, a manifestation of God to come among us – not just in the cloud, and in a way that transcended the nearness of God to us mediated by priests.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” 

This is the mystery of the incarnation, of God becoming small, of the eternal Son putting on mortal flesh, of the Almighty becoming all-vulnerable for the sake of rescuing us.  This miracle in which the finite put on the infinite is the event of which the prophets spoke.  God the Son, the eternal Word, the Creator, entered space and time as a single human cell, microscopic, and hidden in Mary’s womb.  And according to God’s will, He grew and made His appearance on the first Christmas: in the flesh of a baby delivered by His mother, born and tabernacling with us.  No more in the clouds, He is now flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bones.  At last, we can see God face to face – unmediated by priest and prophet, no longer requiring the sacrifice of tokens of flesh.  At last, God could sit down at table and look us in the eyes.

And as Titus proclaims: “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us.”  Our salvation is wrapped up in this incarnation of Jesus just as surely as the baby Jesus was wrapped in swaddling cloths.  

Titus also mentions that Jesus is our Savior “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 might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Jesus saves us not through disembodied words, but through His Word attached to water.  Baptism is incarnational, as God’s Word is not in a cloud or mediated by a priest – but attached to a physical element that it placed on our bodies.  The token of sacrifice has been replaced by the direct fleshly sacrament!

Since the Word became flesh, He sits at table with us.  We have the intimacy of eating a meal together with Him.  The Lord’s Supper is likewise incarnational.  It is the true flesh and blood of our incarnate Lord, the Word Made Flesh.  We do not experience Him in the cloud or through an impersonal text message cut off from His presence.  He is physically present in His Word.  And in the Sacrament of the Altar, He appears to us in the flesh.

The world mocks this idea of God becoming small.  The world scoffs at a God who takes the despised form of a baby in the womb.  The world holds us in contempt for believing that the Man on the cross is in fact God, and that when you come to this altar, you are not only sharing a meal with God, you are in fact participating in the true flesh of God – the body and blood of the Lord that is not a sacrificial token, but a sacramental reality!

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” 

This is what we have been waiting for, dear friends.  Not just with the Advent season.  Not just in anticipation of the Christmas meal.  Rather this becoming flesh is what all of humanity has been waiting for since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden.  For when the Word became flesh, He was to dwell among us.  He was to eat with us, teach us, forgive us, and deliver eternal life to us in the flesh.  He took on flesh so that His flesh could be sacrificed upon the cross – not as a token, but as the once-for-all atonement for the sin of the world.  And that flesh was to rise again at Easter, ascend into heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that flesh, dear friends, is coming again on the Last Day.

Indeed, we live in an age of paradox.  God comes to us even as we are poor, miserable sinners.  God dies so that we mortals might live.  God becomes humble so that we might be exalted.  The Creator who is outside of creation becomes one with His creation, even to the point where we can eat and drink Him.  He is not in a cloud or on a screen, but in the manger, on the cross, in the tomb, in His Word, in the font, and on the altar.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Amen.

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