The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day 2023

John 1:1-14

December 25, 2023

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And He made man in His own image.

He fell. The image is marred.

Our beginnings are thus already headed toward endings. Some children don’t even make it out of the womb. Others are cut down too soon. “All our days,” Moses says in Ps. 90,

All our days have passed away in Your wrath;

We finish our years like a sigh.

The days of our lives are seventy years;

And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Who knows the power of Your anger? [Ps. 90.9-11]

In the beginning, in our beginning is already the ending.

The Gospel for Christmas Day deliberately echoes Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now the Holy Spirit tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is not a book or the terms we use when speaking. The Word is a Name for the Second Person of the Trinity. The Word is God’s Son and His image. To get the sense, we can say, “In the beginning, the Word, God’s Son, already was. He was face-to-face with the Father, and He shared the Father’s glory and substance.”

Yet there’s something more happening here. It’s connected to the beginning, the beginning of this world, the beginning of mankind. Our beginning was ruined. Where there was light, darkness came. Where there was life came death. Where there was love came hatred, and bitterness; envy, mistrust, recriminations – these are our daily bread. All that death and degradation is summed up by today’s Gospel with the word darkness.

Into our darkness comes the Light. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” It’s still that way. To those in darkness, the Light is baffling, and seems hostile, like when you’ve been sleeping and suddenly a full blast of light hits your eyes. But when the Holy Spirit uses the word comprehend, “the darkness did not comprehend [the light],” it means more than just understanding. It’s also a term that indicates victory in a struggle: “the darkness did not overcome the Light.”

It seemed so. After John the Baptist, the “man sent from God,” “came for a witness, to bear witness to the Light,” – after this man called Israel to repent, He pointed everyone to Jesus, “the true Light which gives light to every man.” He said, “Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world – go follow Him! He is the Light. My baptism was for repentance, but His baptism will bestow on you the Holy Spirit, ‘the washing of regeneration and renewal.’ He is the new beginning. He is ‘the goodness and loving kindness of God.’ But watch out, for those who reject His new genesis will find themselves instead baptized by fire.”

So this New-Beginning-Man, this True Light, “was in the world.” “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” Who is this “His own”? We could say His own are the Jews, the children of Israel through whom the promise came. But that would let us off the hook too easily. All mankind is His own creation. And in many and various ways, all mankind has been rejecting His Word since the fall of our first parents.

And you too, how have you refused to receive Him this year? How have you placed your own concerns, and your own anger and contentions, ahead of being His disciple? He has come to you again and again, and you have not received Him.

But today “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior [has] appeared.” Receive Him anew, He who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” In Mary’s womb He took on flesh, and lived among the Israelites for a time. But when St. John tells us that Jesus “dwelt among us,” He means much more than just that He took up residence. Dwelt means in the language of John’s Gospel “to pitch a tent,” “to set up a tabernacle.” That’s why we had that reading from Exodus this morning, reminding us of the original tabernacle. There God was present with His people, to bless them, to absolve them, to protect them.

It was always provisional. God’s purposes are not to give us a happy life for a few decades. The whole thing, the whole world has gone wrong. The Word, the Lord Jesus, tabernacles among us anticipating the final great work He is going to do: to bring all mankind to the new beginning, as Jesus says in Revelation, “Behold, I am making all things new.” It is the new beginning that has no ending. The Bible ends with this new beginning, where the tabernacle extends out to form a vast city where God dwells with His people.

In that New Jerusalem there is no darkness at all, no death, no tears. That’s what Christmas is really pointing us towards. The sentimental birth story from Luke 2 has its place on Christmas Eve, but today is about the bigger thing, the reason for the birth: to re-birth you and recall you from darkness.

So put away this new year the things of the darkness. “His beams have pierced the core of night, He makes us children of the light. Alleluia!”

Merry Christmas! +INJ+