Finding our place in God’s vision
Christmas Day | John 1:1-14
For so many, Christmas is the biggest deal. That wasn’t true two thousand years ago. The first major feasts were Easter, Epiphany, and Pentecost. They were the biggest deal.
Centuries later, they began celebrating this day, which we know as Christmas. Jesus’s birth really ought to be a big deal to followers of Jesus, right?
And yet, we don’t celebrate Christmas like a birthday. Some do, of course. Every year, the same parishioner would give my Dad a “Happy Birthday, Jesus” cake. Which we always considered a thoughtful gesture.
So, while it is the day we celebrate Jesus’s birth, it isn’t the birth itself we’re celebrating. Or even, in a sense, Jesus. This may sound a little like splitting hairs, but what we’re doing is celebrating God in Jesus’s birth.
This is the Feast of the Incarnation: the day we celebrate the Logos, the Incarnate Word: God’s presence in the flesh. An act of profound generosity, hope, and faith in humanity. An act of genuine and abiding love.
The Christ Mass
The pattern we adopted many centuries ago was to mark the Feast of the Incarnation three times, in what became known as the Christ Mass. Three services through the night, much like the three services that conclude Holy Week.
And these three services, in the evening, night, and morning, mark different pieces of the event.
Christmas I was originally marked with the genealogy from Matthew. So we might focus on the part of the tradition Jesus is being born into.
Christmas II shared the birth story from Luke. So we might hear of the Messiah’s arrival in the form of a baby.
Christmas III, the gathering on Christmas morning, would offer the opening verses of John. And we would hear about Christ’s place in the cosmos.
Each service reminds us of a different aspect.
Of course, we no longer celebrate the Christ Mass this way. Our focus is far more about ensuring people take time in their Christmas for the Christ Mass at all.
And our Christmas traditions go well beyond hearing stories of Jesus’s place in the Cosmos.
And yet, here we are. Gathering on Christmas morning to celebrate this truth:
“And the Word became flesh”
This Word, the Logos, is a brilliant double entendre. For it is a reference to Jesus and to Scripture. A way of naming the way God’s grace is spoken and enfleshed. We very much are supposed to think of a book coming to life at the same time that we see God sharing in human life.
No other phrase is so transgressive or remarkable in the English language than this. Because the Word, which was with God and was God is now also here, literally personified.
Gods don’t do this. But ours does.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
The Word did not just come to us in the flesh. They came to us as one of us. To live among us.
God became human to share in our humanity. To be. The great being that exists beyond our temporal existence, whose form is not dictated by the laws of nature. Whose sense of time is neither physical nor calculable. God chose to be.
Gods don’t do this. But ours does.
and we have seen his glory,
We have seen—humanity has seen the glory of Jesus. Coming to us, to be with us, enfleshed.
And we have seen—these people here, us! The glory of Jesus has come to us and we have seen it with our eyes, felt it with our flesh. Because Christ’s glory is not bound by that flesh then. But is present in all flesh now.
Gods don’t do this. But ours does.
and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,
As the glory of Isaac to Abraham, the impossible birth, the incredible promise, the unbound blessing.
Jesus is not God’s only son, for we are all God’s children. But like an only son, a proverbial heir. As the one who inherits and one who expands the kingdom.
We have seen the glory of the miraculous. And we have known the abiding love embedded within it. That love made manifest.
the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The love of God made manifest in Jesus: full of grace and truth. Could there be any gift greater than this?
God’s love enfleshed in Jesus, full of grace and truth.
This is the Word we hear today. About love, grace, truth in the flesh. Embodied.
The Big Picture
When we take these stories together, we get the big picture of what God is up to in Jesus.
The genealogy reminds us of our ancestors. But not as heroes. As people. People who often failed. And not men only, but also heroic women. We see an expanding gospel of love that defies our expectations and traditions.
In the birth story, we remember the vulnerability of the Messiah arriving, not as a champion, but as a baby. And we are witness to who God’s revolutionary mission is for: the lowly.
And now, in the prologue from John, we are reminded of the scale, the purpose, and the hope wedded to the Incarnation. That it is an act of love. A deliverance of grace and truth. The embodied Word who was and is and will be.
This, all of this, we celebrate as Christmas. The revealing of God’s vision. A vision we declare as simply: love. God’s love for the world. The gospel; Good News. The Messiah. The Word made flesh. Incarnation.
Love.
Gods don’t do this. But ours does.
Ours saw it fit to be with us. To love us as we are. And long for us to be as full of grace and truth as Jesus.
Let us make this a Christmas miracle.
To see the grace and truth in ourselves.
Lovingly share that with our neighbors.
And be at peace with all of creation.