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SERMONS

The First Sunday after Christmas
December 28, 2003

Four nights ago we gathered in the darkness to celebrate the birth of a baby. As a part of that celebration we read the account of his birth. We read of his mother and of his father. We read about the circumstances surrounding his birth and about the people who came to visit him.

Today we have just finished reading another account of his birth, but what a difference. Wednesday night's account, from Luke's telling of the gospel, began with a tiny child unable to feed or care for himself. Today's account, from John's telling of the gospel, begins with God himself, the creator of all that is and the source of all life. Luke's story began in the quiet and darkness of one particular night. John's story begins in eternity. Luke's narrative is set in an obscure village on the edge of the Roman Empire. John's is set in the void from which the very universe was formed.

Who could imagine two stories more different?

And yet the incredible assertion made by Luke and John, by Matthew and Mark, by Peter and Paul and the early church, the incredible assertion that brings us here today, is that both of these stories are about the same person. The helpless baby lying in a crib in a stable in Bethlehem is the maker of this earth and all that inhabits it; the maker of the sun and the moon and the unnumbered stars and planets that fill the void. This baby who can only utter a faint cry is the same person who spoke the word that brought all that is into being.

Every year at Christmas we read both stories. We read both accounts of this amazing occurrence. We read them both because we need them both in order to begin to grasp the true wonder of what God has done.

Without John's understanding that this person Jesus is the one true God, the incarnation remains a sweet story of a sweet mother and child surrounded by sweet animals and sweet shepherds, while sweet angels fly around overhead; romantic fluff devoid of substance. Sort of the gospel according to Hallmark.

And without Luke's understanding that the Christ entered the world as the real human baby born of a real human mother-a particular baby born in a particular place at a particular time who wet and cried and had to be fed and protected-we are left with a god no different from those of the Greeks and Romans; a god walking around looking like a human being, but not really human. A god who pretends to suffer and die, but who keeps his fingers crossed. The mystery of the incarnation requires that we hear what both Luke and John have to say.

The mystery of the incarnation is that God loved the world that he had created so much that he entered it as a creature. God did this in order to bridge the gap between creator and creature, began God and human being. God did this in order to save us from ourselves and to draw us back to God's very self.

The mystery of the incarnation is that God became one of us so that we might become children of God.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.... To all who receive him, who believe in his name he has given power to become children of God,... born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."

David Christian
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi

Isaiah 61.10-62.3
Galatians 3.23-25, 4.4-7
John 1.1-18