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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Merry Christmas! As some of you know, I began my Christmas Eve activities yesterday morning with a more‑than‑four‑mile run to downtown and back (the night before I had enjoyed too many of the treats I have been given). Many of you know that I used to not only run outside but also swim outside. Then, I was much more aware of the shortening and lengthening of daylight hours, but, now that I swim inside, as much as I still appreciate daylight earlier in the morning and later into the evening, I had almost forgotten about last Friday’s Winter Solstice, until George mentioned it before Bible Class Sunday morning. If not Jesus’s birth itself, perhaps at least our celebration of His birth is placed near the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere so as to give us a great illustration of Jesus’s birth bringing light to the world. The appointed Gospel Reading for Christmas Day tells us about that light and its connection with the Word Who has life in Him. So, I have titled this sermon, “God’s Christmas Gift of Life and Light”
The Gospel Reading is the very beginning of St. John’s Gospel account, what is usually called “the Prologue”. The divine inspiration of the words is evident in its elevated speech! Where St. Luke’s Gospel account, which we heard last night, gives more of the historical details of Jesus’s birth, St. John’s Gospel account is said by some to give more of the theological details of His birth. Regardless, today’s Gospel Reading is steeped in the Old Testament, for example, it refers to Jesus as the “Word”, the agent or revealer of God’s power and wisdom in the Old Testament, and, as in the Old Testament, it closely connects life and light. Today’s Opening Hymn included both of these examples; we sang:
This is He Whom seers in old time / Chanted of with one accord,
Whom the voices of the prophets / Promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the Long-expected; / Let creation praise its Lord
Evermore and evermore. (Lutheran Worship, 36:3)
The sad reality, however, is that much of creation does not praise its Lord, even though He created all things that were made. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, there was darkness, and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and the light was good (Genesis1:1-4). The night-time darkness that remained was not itself evil, but, after humankind’s fall into sin corrupted God’s perfect creation, that night-time darkness came to be thought of as providing a sort of cover for sin, just as Adam and Eve tried to hide from the Lord among the trees of the garden. So, the darkness comes to symbolize and otherwise refer to evil.
You and I hardly need darkness to provide a cover for our sin. We have the privacy of own homes, the anonymity of the internet, the deep recesses of our own minds, and we think those places keep our sin from others, maybe even from God. In such places we think, say, and do things that we should not, and there we also fail to think, say, and do the things that we should. Even in public we might conform to the society around us, ignoring the Lord and hurting one another. The verdict Jesus declares to Nicodemus later in St. John’s Gospel account is certainly true; Jesus says:
Light has come into the world, but [people] loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his [or her] deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)
In the Gospel Reading, St. John writes that the darkness has not “overcome” the light, but the Greek word he uses can also mean that the darkness has not “understood” the light. Both meanings seem to be intended. By nature, all of us are in a spiritual darkness: in a dark, blind world that neither knows nor regards God. We all are sinful by nature and deserve to die in this world and to spend eternity outside of God’s Kingdom, in the darkness where, on account of torment, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“But Pastor,” someone might say, “today is Christmas Day; no one wants to hear about such things!” They might as well have said, “We want the sweet sentimentality of Christmas and Easter when we come to church, we do not want to deal with why those events had to happen.” Such thinking might be why some people omit the third stanza of our Closing Hymn, “Joy to the World”, with its references to “sin and sorrows”, “thorns”, and “the curse”. Surely none of us wants to hear about such things, but we all need to hear about them! Our service this day in Christian freedom omits the usual rite of “Preparation” so as to be a bit more joyful, but we hardly excise from the liturgy, readings, sermon, and hymns every reference to our sin and the death we deserve. No, such references serve to call us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to believe God forgives our sin, and to want to do better. The Gospel Reading, for example, makes clear that there are two groups: those who do not receive the True Light, and those who do receive Him. In which group are you and I?
Most living things—admittedly not all, but most living things—need light in order to live. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, we find the Bible using the expression the “light of life”, which can refer to being alive, especially living eternally with God. The Gospel Reading says the Word in Himself has life, that is, the power to make people alive. And, the Gospel Reading says, that life was the light of men, that is, it enabled them to see God the Father in the world (as the Epistle Reading said, the Father speaks to us by the Son, the exact imprint of His nature). The Gospel Reading says the Word was God and with God in the beginning. The Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, existed even before creation: He existed from eternity. Then, the Gospel Reading says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. Out of His great love for humankind, the Word took unto Himself our human nature in the person of Jesus; only, on account of the holiness of His divine nature, He did so without taking into Himself human nature’s sin. And, He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man for us and for our salvation! As the Epistle Reading put it, He made purification for sins. The baby born in the manger at Christmas does us no good if He does not also die on the cross on Good Friday and rise from the grave at Easter. We sang in the second Sequence Hymn:
Into flesh is made the Word Alleluia!
He, our refuge and our Lord. Alleluia! (Lutheran Worship, 69:3)
The Word made flesh is the true light, come into the world, that gives (or offers) light—and so also life—to everyone. Only in Him is there life and light. When we receive Him, that is, when we welcome Him in faith, repent and believe, then He forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be.
What are you doing later today? Some families go to see a movie theatre on Christmas Day, and there is a big movie opening today: “Les Misérables: The Musical Phenomenon”. That move has not even opened yet, and it already has four Golden Globe nominations, so at least the nominators think it is pretty spectacular. The kind of attentive seeing that you might give a movie in a theatre is like the kind of astonished seeing that St. John writes he and we have of the glory of the Word Who became flesh and dwelt among us. With our eyes we see “glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”, and from His fullness we receive grace upon grace. We do not take; our receiving is not something we do actively, at least not initially. As the Gospel Reading makes clear, spiritually we were not born of the blood of our parents, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but we are born of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit (John 3:6). We are born from above by water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism. The Church has understood Holy Baptism as a form of enlightenment, and so at times it has given lit candles to those baptized to signify their being given Jesus, the light of the world.
Holy Baptism is just one way we see God’s glory for ourselves; it is just one way that word and deed come together to create faith and give forgiveness of sins. Yes, preaching itself is important, and today’s Old Testament Reading rightly praises the proclamation of God’s Good News, even to the point of saying that the feet of the messengers who bring it are beautiful. (I would not say my feet are beautiful otherwise, especially not after my run yesterday left me with a bloody sock.) In today’s Gospel Reading, John the Baptizer is an example of such a messenger with beautiful feet, a witness to the light, and he combined his witnessing to the Word with water in Holy Baptism. Holy Communion is another way the Word is combined with elements that in some sense make it easier for us to hear with our ears, see with our eyes and touch with our hands that which was from the beginning. In bread and wine we eat the flesh of the Word and drink His blood and so have the life He gives in us. On the day we celebrate the Word becoming flesh for us, we do well to receive that very flesh and blood—now from either a common cup again or from individual cups. Through Holy Communion we have fellowship with one another, but, more importantly, through Holy Communion we have fellowship with the Father. And, in the Sacraments, we who believe constantly have fresh experience of Jesus, His life and our light. We sang in the Hymn of the Day:
The Light Eternal, breaking through, Made the world to gleam anew;
His beams have pierced the core of night, He makes us children of the light.
Alleluia! (Lutheran Worship, 35:4)
Since I swim inside now, some of you have heard me say that I do not get enough sun (that was especially true when I was running in the early summer mornings to avoid the heat). I do not think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder or anything, though I know the disorder is more common as one goes north and can be successfully treated with bright light therapy. Other things can cause any one of us to be in a sort of darkness of depression and gloom. Into that darkness the Light shines, and the darkness cannot overcome it. “God’s Christmas Gift of Life and Light” comforts us and enables us to cope with the problems we face in our workplaces, schools, church, homes, and even within ourselves. As we come into the light and live by the truth others see God working through us. If we let Him, God can use us to bring others here so that they can receive “God’s Christmas Gift of Life and Light”, and we can help others in different ways, too. For example, the congregation provided a room in an inn last night and tonight for a family in need. In this world, we all will have afflictions, but we can take heart for Jesus has overcome the world. We may have to wait, but we will fully experience the “Joy to the World” our Closing Hymn describes. We will fully experience such “Joy to the World” in the context to which its author Isaac Watts apparently originally referred: when the Word made flesh establishes His Kingdom in the form of the new heavens and new earth.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +