Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Feb 4

4 February 2020

Text: John 1:1-18

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  All things were made through Him… In Him was life, and the and the life was the light of men….  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Thus confesses the disciple whom Jesus loved, the youngest of the twelve, the last of the apostles to die, the disciple who took the Blessed Virgin Mary into his own home to live, the bishop who ordained St. Polycarp into the Office of the Holy Ministry.  Through St. John, the Holy Spirit has revealed the truth of who our Lord Jesus Christ is: confounding both those who would say that our Lord is only a man, as well as those who would scoff at His incarnation.  This passage is about the sublime love and grace of God, and leaves no wiggle room about our Lord and His ministry.

How sad that people reduce Christianity to things that pale in comparison to the lofty and glorious truth about God becoming a baby to rescue us from death and hell!  To most people – and even to many people bearing the name “Christian” – Christianity is reduced to an ethical system, a call to “be nice,” a political philosophy that just so happens to resemble Marxism.

But what does the apostle and the evangelist teach us?  Jesus is God in the flesh.  Jesus is eternal.  Jesus is the Creator.  And Jesus also humbled Himself to become a one-celled zygote in the womb of Mary.  Moreover, Jesus came into our darkness – our world of sin and mortality, of discord and self-centeredness, of hatred and self-righteousness, of unbelief and the deification of idols – and He shines the uncreated light of His transfigured face into this gaping darkness, and He reveals it to be nothing.  The monster under the bed is really just a slipper with a hole in it.  The 800 pound gorilla that stalks us is nothing more than a shadow on the wall.  Satan is a defeated and defanged enemy – for darkness cannot abide light.  Our Lord is indeed “the light of men,” and “darkness has not overcome it.”

St. John the Evangelist begins his Gospel here: “In the beginning,” and he jumps to the ministry of John the Baptist – who will point the entire world of every age to the Word Made Flesh, saying: “Behold the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world!”  And we too sing this confession in defiance of the unbelieving (but deceived) world and the believing (but deceiving) devil every time we gaze upon the veiled forms of bread and wine that are indeed the body and blood of the Word: the God made flesh!

This passage that comes to us by both the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the inspired pen of St. John the Evangelist and Apostle and beloved friend of Jesus.  This passage leaves no room for the reduction of Jesus to a mere teacher or philosopher.  Rather, we rejoice in our Lord and our God who heroically takes flesh and dwells in our midst, who is the Light of the World, who dies on the cross for our redemption, and who rises again for our justification.

“In the beginning was the Word…. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  “Behold the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.”  To Him, our God and Savior, be glory, now and even unto eternity!  Amen.

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