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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.
What did you get for Christmas? That is a common question on Christmas Day, whether you open your gifts on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day or even at some other time. And, our answers can indicate how excited we are about one or more gifts in comparison to some or all of the others that we received, excited perhaps based on how well a gift met a particular need that we had. I still remember from years ago not understanding a cousin’s excitement about receiving underwear, until she explained that she really needed some.
What did we get for Christmas? If we ask that question of the Gospel Reading appointed for the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day, we find at least one, if not more, answers of a sort. Today’s Gospel Reading, the so-called “Prologue” of St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, tells us that the True Light gives to those who receive Him, to those who believe in His Name, the “right” to become children of God, and that from His fullness we all receive grace upon grace. So, considering the Gospel Reading, and what the “right” to become children of God means, we might say that, for Christmas, God gives and we receive “The gift of becoming children of God”.
As the Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison, the president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod noted in his recent letter to the Synod’s congregations and pastors, this past calendar year has been full of challenges. Some of those challenges stem from talk about “rights”. Perhaps we ourselves have even participated in some of that talk about “rights”, whether about other’s rights in view of such things as social justice, or about our own rights in regards to such things as restrictions related to the coronavirus. We may have even quoted the United States’ Declaration of Independence that all people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” among which “are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Whatever Bible passages may or may not support the Declaration of Independence’s claim, the passage before us as today’s Gospel Reading hardly means that God gives all people the power or ability to choose to be, much less make themselves, God’s children (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:12, pp.103-104; confer 162). For example, St. John the evangelist makes clear that St. John the Baptizer was sent and came as a witness about the True Light in order that all might believe in that True Light through St. John the Baptizer. And, St. John the evangelist makes clear both that the True Light, Who enlightens everyone, was in the world, and the world did not know Him, and that the True Light came to His own people, and even they did not receive Him.
Like those St. John the evangelist describes, you and I by nature are no different. We lack the power or ability to choose to be, much less to make ourselves, God’s children. Arguably, even the first man and woman before humankind’s fall into sin were only God’s children because God created them, as we ourselves are only human children because God created us through our human parents. Yet, because of humankind’s fall in to sin, because our human parents were sinful, we are sinful, too. And, our sinful nature and all the actual sin that that nature leads us to commit merit us death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless, as God calls and enables us to do, we repent of our sinful nature and all our sin and trust Him to forgive us our sin for the sake of His Son, the True Light, the eternal Word, Who became flesh in time for us!
God gives and we receive “The gift of becoming children of God”, but the eternal Word, Who became flesh in time for us, is uniquely God’s Son. That Second Person of the Blessed Trinity already existed in the beginning, He was with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, and Himself was God. (Today’s Epistle Reading [Hebrews 1:1-12] similarly described Him as the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.) In order that God might give and we might receive “The gift of becoming children of God”, that eternal Word became flesh. Some nine months before His birth that we celebrate today, that eternal Word became the child, and later He eventually grew to be the man, Whom we know as Jesus (Kittel, TDNT, 4:129). As the Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews writes elsewhere, since we have flesh and blood, He took on flesh and blood, that through His death on the cross He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:14-15). If He had not assumed our human nature, He could not have redeemed our human nature (Gregory Nazianzen’s axiom cited by Pieper, II:68). But, He did assume and redeem our human nature. So, the Good News mentioned in today’s Old Testament Reading goes out (Isaiah 52:7‑10): the Lord has redeemed and so comforts His people. The watchmen sing for joy and all others break forth into singing!
Our legal right to become a child of God flows from Jesus’s death on the cross for us (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:12, p.163), but we can say that we receive “The gift of becoming children of God” elsewhere. In Holy Baptism, we are born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5). We are not born of the will of the flesh, nor of human blood, nor of the will of man, but we are born of God. Our becoming children of God at the Baptismal Font is purely God’s gift to us (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:12, pp.103-104, confer 160). And, His giving and our receiving from His fullness do not stop there! He also forgives our sins through both individual Holy Absolution and the Sacrament of the Altar. There, under the forms of bread and wine, the Word made flesh gives to all the faithful “His own self for heav’nly food” (Lutheran Service Book 621:2). As we today celebrate this “Christ Mass”, there may be sadness over those who have absented themselves from this holy meal, but such sadness is transcended by the joy that comes as we join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, including those who have gone before us in the faith.
What St. John the evangelist writes in the Prologue of his Gospel account that is today’s Gospel Reading is essentially confessed by at-first-unbelieving but then-believing Thomas near the Gospel account’s end, as Jesus greets Thomas with peace and commands him to put his finger into the mark of the nails in Jesus’s hand and to place his and into Jesus’s side, and Thomas answers Jesus by confessing Him as his Lord and God. Christmas is given its fullest meaning in view of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and we realize “The gift of becoming children of God” as we faithfully confess Him, partake of His Divine nature, and ultimately fully experience eternal life. We can say truly that God became man in order that man might become God (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:12-14, p.159), and so, in some sense, the first man and first woman’s desire to be, as the devil described, “like God” (Genesis 3:5), is met.
What did you get for Christmas? Today’s Gospel Reading would have us answer “The gift of becoming children of God”. God gives us repentance and faith that through His Word and Sacrament receive the forgiveness of sins that we so desperately need, and then He works in us so that we do good works. Out of His great love for us, and by His mercy and grace, we live in His forgiveness of sins now, until at last we are in His presence and so in glorified bodies for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +