Christmas Day
Jn
1:1-14
12/25/18
The Greek philosopher Plato taught that the soul was
immortal and existed before the body.
Human existence as we know it takes place because the soul has fallen
into this material world from a higher order of existence. It’s not surprising to learn that Plato
sharply contrasted the body and the soul.
He said that the soul has been bound to the body against its will, and that
the body is a harsh prison. If the soul
is to achieve its true destiny, it must escape the body and return to that
higher existence from which it came. On
this view, death is not something bad, but instead good because it means the
soul escapes the prison of the body.
This dualistic view of the world in which the spiritual
or intelligible world is “above” and the physical or material world is “below”
dominated thought in the Greco-Roman world of the first century A.D. People were encouraged by philosophers to
think of death as something to be welcomed because it meant the escape of the
soul from the prison of the body. The soul needed to escape, and according to
some it needed to return to the astral regions from which it came.
Faced with a world that believed this, if you wanted to
win over people to a new religion, the words of our Gospel lesson are about the
dumbest thing you could devise. They are in fact expressing the exact opposite of what the
Greco-Roman culture believed. Yet the
apostle John wrote it, and the early Church believed it, because it is
true. The Church believed and taught
this because on Christmas the baby in the manger was true God and true man at
the same time. He was the Word become
flesh – the incarnate One.
Our Gospel lesson begins with words that evoke the first
verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.” John says, “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The apostle is going to talk about creation,
but he wants to us know that while there is only one God, there is more to God
than just oneness. Instead he says that
in the beginning was the Word. John is
talking about the second person of the Trinity, the Son, and he declares that
not only was Word with God in the beginning, he was God.
Before we have even gotten to the second verse, John has
plunged us into the mystery of the Trinity.
The language about the Spirit later in the Gospel simply reinforces what
find here. There is only one God, and yet the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit are distinct from each other and relate to one another.
John asserts that the Word is God. He goes on to
express one of the ways we see that this is true: “All things were made through him, and
without him was not any thing made that was made.” The Word, the Son of God, made the
creation. As God he carried out the
action described in Genesis chapters one and two.
The phrase
“in the beginning” and our text’s reference to the Word’s act of creation
prompts us to consider what we find in Genesis.
There, God makes a material, physical world and he continues to judge
that it is good. We are told, “And
God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” This includes how God makes man, for in
Genesis chapter two we get a “close up” of this. We learn that, “God formed the man of dust from the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature.” In the unity of the
body and what we call the soul God created human life as it intended to be
lived. Our bodily existence is not just
good, but it is very good, and very necessary.
In our text
we hear that from the start, John sets light in opposition to darkness. The darkness exists in our world because the
devil succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve.
He told them that God was holding out on them. He told them that they could be so much more. He told them that they could be gods.
You know
the result. They sinned and profound
darkness entered into the world. It is
the darkness that John describes in our text. It is the darkness that continues to tempt
us. John writes in chapter three, “And this is the judgment: the
light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light
because their works were evil. For
everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light,
lest his works should be exposed.” Even
though we are now in the light, the darkness still trips us up. John knew this. That is why he wrote in his
epistle the words that we spoke at the beginning of the service: “If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Sin entered
God’s creation because of man. Yet God
did not abandon man. Instead, to
overcome the darkness and enlighten man, God himself entered into his
creation. John says, “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.”
In one brief and simple phrase John expresses
what we are celebrating at Christmas. He
summarizes a mystery of the faith. He
says that the “Word became flesh.” God
became man, without ceasing to be God.
The term “flesh” was one that the
Greco-Roman world viewed in a pejorative fashion. It was the exact opposite of all that was
good and spiritual and “above.”
Precisely for that reason, John says the Word became flesh.
God’s participation in human existence was complete and total.
This was not something the world
wanted to accept. In time the world also
made its presence felt in the Church. A denial of the incarnation was a cancer
that threatened to spread. John warned
in his first letter, “By
this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus
is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was
coming and now is in the world already.”
Jesus
Christ took on human flesh – he took on a human nature – in order to redeem
it. Because of sin, flesh now means
death. The Son of God himself became flesh in the incarnation in order to free
flesh – our flesh - from death. He passed
through death in his flesh in order to give us life. Our Lord said, “I am the living bread that
came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And
the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Jesus Christ’s
flesh was nailed to the cross. He became flesh as a baby in a manger for that
very reason. He cried out “It is
finished” and gasped his final breath.
To ensure that he was dead a spear was thrust into his flesh, and blood
and water poured out. And then his dead
flesh was buried in a tomb.
But his
flesh did not remain dead. On the third
day he rose from the dead. He appeared
to the disciples on the Sunday of the first Easter and showed them his flesh – he
showed them the marks in his hand and side.
He sent the disciples to deliver what he has won through the cross. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you
withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
On the next
Sunday Jesus showed Thomas his risen flesh, and the apostle confessed, “My Lord
and my God.” Jesus Christ who was the
Word become flesh, is still the Word
become flesh. He was true God and true man on the first Christmas morning. He was true God and true man on Good Friday
as he hung on the cross. And he is now still
true God and true man as the risen and ascended Lord.
By his
resurrection he has redeemed human flesh so that it is once again fully and
completely very good. He has redeemed it
so that we can again possess it on the Last Day when Jesus returns in glory and
raises the dead. On that day he will
transform our flesh to be like his.
Jesus Chris
is now the risen and ascended Lord. Yet he continues to come to us in the
flesh. And in doing so he assures us that we too will share in his
resurrection. Jesus said, “Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal
life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” The Son of God became flesh in
the humility of a baby lying in a manger. In the Sacrament of the Altar, the
same incarnate Lord comes to us and gives to us what he won by his death and
resurrection.
The Word became flesh and dwelt
among us as baby in a manger. The Word
continues to be present and give his saving flesh in the Sacrament of
Altar. And the Word become flesh will
return in glory on the Last Day to transform our flesh so that we can live with
him forever in the new creation.
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