Christmas Day can seem like a bit of a let-down for some people. It depends, really, on where your hopes for Christmas Day were placed. For people who put great stock in the value of the presents they get, for those who put all their value in the family gatherings, by the time Christmas morning rolls around it can be a pretty down time.
But for those who know what the true value of Christmas is, for those who know Christmas has just begun, today is just the beginning of a much, much bigger joy. Today is the First Day of Christmas. Advent is finally over. Let the feasting begin!
And indeed we do feast on this day, as the name of the day itself indicates. Today is the Christ-Mass, the day of the celebration of Holy Communion in commemoration of our Lord’s birth. Despite any coincident holidays or feasts past or present, for a Christian, Christmas simply is what it is. It is our chance to remember Jesus’ birthday, to celebrate with our fullest of joys the good news that God is with us, that God has taken on flesh and blood and become one of us.
Over the last couple days we have had the chance to hear the story of Christmas from Joseph’s perspective and from the more commonly heard perspective of Luke’s Gospel, as culturally popularized by nativity scenes, Christmas cards, and Charlie Brown. Today we see it from a more abstract, “in the fullness of time” sort of perspective.
And what a perspective it is! John, in writing his Gospel, deliberately echoes the opening of Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld His glory.” “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing” sings the old hymn, O Come All Ye Faithful. That’s the reason we celebrate.
That’s really the heart of the Christmas celebration. Not just that Jesus was born, but that the Word became flesh. We celebrate this strange assuming of flesh by God’s only-begotten Son. We celebrate the massive oddity which is the God of the Universe lying in a crummy little manger in the little stable in Bethlehem.
And we celebrate this mystery, this wonder because what happens on Christmas is precisely what God had set in place so that you and I could be saved. Christmas Day is about that central narrative of the Scriptures, God’s family history. Christmas Day is the good news that you and I are able to be part of God’s family because we too have flesh, because we too are sinners in need of salvation.
For Jesus became flesh. Real flesh. Jesus probably got sick like you or me, He probably got splinters every once in a while, while working at his foster-father’s carpentry business, He got hungry and thirsty and tired. He could bleed and die like you and I can. One of the earliest false teachings about Jesus which arose was the teaching that Jesus only seemed like a human being but was really a god wandering around, and that Jesus didn’t really have a body. He only seemed to. John is writing to combat this false teaching, among other things, because of how incredibly important it is to know that Jesus is really a flesh-and-blood man. Jesus had to become flesh and blood for one really big reason: Adam and Eve were.
As I said, John deliberately echoes Genesis here. Because it is in Genesis that the world begins, certainly, but also because it is in Genesis that sin first appears, that God’s plan of salvation first comes to light. Just as through the sin of Adam and Eve all are reckoned sinful, so through one man all can be reckoned free from sin. But there’s a catch. The man to undo the curse has to do what Adam and Eve and indeed every other human being could not do. They have to be holy, blameless, without sin or fault in all their ways; what we would call, “perfect”. This is something that all of us today must acknowledge, too. There is nothing quite like the Christmas season to bring about the worst of our human failings–greed, shallowness of feeling, anger, malice, and the like seem to travel among Christmas circles as readily as love, joy, and peace do. The curse of sin lingers on each of our heads, stains each of us.
God had promised He would send one to undo the power of the curse, one through whom the whole world would be blessed. The first speaking of the promise of salvation was in Genesis 3:15, where God promised to send one to crush the head of the serpent. The promise traces down through the centuries, being retold and clarified through Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, down until the time when Jesus was born in that stable in Bethlehem. Each giving of the promise through the prophets added little details here or there, each adding depth to the picture. Still and all, nobody expected what happened on that Bethlehem night. Some nine months earlier up in Nazareth, the Holy Spirit had caused the virgin Mary to conceive and carry a Son. Now the time was right for this little one to enter the world. Now the events had lined up sufficiently for God to achieve the next step in His divine plan–by having His own Son, God of God, Light of Light, of one substance with the Father, enter into the world. It’s not the sort of thing you or I can reason out or put logical bounds on.
But it is exactly what we need. For the Word became flesh means nothing more and nothing less than that God has stepped into His creation to do something about it. God is once again walking the garden to speak words of grace to His people, to give them hope and courage when all hope and strength is gone. The Word became flesh.
Not only that, but He dwelt among us. Maybe not here in Southern Manitoba per se, but He dwelt among His people. The Greek word for “dwelt” here is related to the word used for the tabernacle in the Old Testament Greek translation of the Bible. Jesus is among His people, living among them to give them His great grace and favour.
The evangelist also notes that “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Over the coming chapters Jesus will show His disciples just what the fulness of the glory of God is. And the glory of God is shown in its fullest measure in the way which seems least likely. For God’s glory is shown most powerfully in those moments of what seems like God’s greatest weaknesses–the glory of the tiny baby in the manger, the glory of the battered, beaten, and bruised Jesus dying on the cross, exclaiming, “It is finished!” as He died there for you and for me. Taken as a whole, the Gospel of John demonstrates that this is the primary glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. The great truth is our sin and our need for salvation. The great truth is that you and I do all sorts of things in the name of God, with the best of intentions, but all of them fall desperately short because even our best intentions are sullied by sin, even our purest motives are less than 100%.
The truth is also that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the Son came to serve His Father’s will by doing something about that sin. The truth is that the baby in the manger, lying there helplessly came precisely to die. He came to die to show His grace to His people who had broken the covenant their God had made with them so many times. He came to die to bring forgiveness, to undo the great curse. In order to stand in our place, He had to be one of us, a human being, flesh and blood, body and soul. In order to withstand our sin, He had to be God, blameless and holy in every way. It is beyond human comprehension how Jesus can be 100% man and 100% God, but the Scriptures show us that He is–and thanks be to God the Father that He is!
For now grace and truth belong to us, as well. As our catechism puts it so nicely, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that you might be His own, so that I might be His own. That is the great grace and truth of Christmas, dear friends. True, not all will receive this truth. Not all will receive what Christ has come to give. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13) Because of the child born in Bethlehem, we are now God’s children.
And like all children awaiting good gifts from their parents on Christmas morning, we now await the gift of Christ’s body and blood for us this Christmas morning, given to us to strengthen and build us up in the true faith as we ever rejoice in our Lord’s appearing for us and our salvation. There’s no Christmas letdown for those who are in Christ!
May His grace and truth empower us to live as His children this Christmastide and all year through! In our King whose birth we celebrate, even Christ our Lord, Amen
Last updated December 2007 by the webmaster.