John 1 - Part 3

Read John 1

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I often add the words, Merry Christmas, after reading this verse.  This is about as short a Christmas story as you will find. 

God—almighty God—entered this world in human flesh and stayed a while.  He didn’t just pop in.  He dwelt—he tabernacled among us.  He set up his home here.

While he likely had a home in Capernaum, that’s not what tabernacled with us means.  It’s not about a house of stone or stucco.  It’s about dwelling in the human condition on purpose. 

It’s about bringing the glory of God to humankind in person.  He came because it was his Father’s will which he fully embraced as his own.  He came to bring grace and truth.

We as people deserved condemnation but the truth that Jesus brought was centered in how much the Father loves us.  The Father desires mercy—forgiveness that we have not earned.  The Father desires to give us grace—blessings that we do not deserve.

What are the trademarks of the one whom the Father sent?  Mercy and grace!  He is the way, the truth, and the life, but we will get to that later.

Later on, it would be John who would pen the words, God is love.  We see the manifestation of that love in Jesus who came to bring grace and truth.

We don’t get the babe in a manger story here.  There are no angels and shepherds.

John skips the poetry of the birth and goes straight to the mission.  Jesus came to live with us and bring us truth and grace.  The truth—if we would really see it—would bring us to repentance.  Grace would bring us home, a home that we have forsaken again and again.

Much like the father in the Prodigal Son, God stood ready to receive his children once again in spite of what we had done.  He loves us so much that he sent his own Son into the world to be the light of the world, the hope of the world, and the sacrifice that brings reconciliation to the world.

God is love.  His Son came with mercy and truth.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas.

Amen.

The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us!

Read John 1:14

If you want to hear the Christmas story, you go to Luke’s gospel or Matthew’s gospel.  That’s just the way it is.  You get a little genealogy in each.  You get a couple songs in Luke.  You get the Magi in Matthew.  The child Jesus is presented at the temple in Luke.  The family flees to Egypt in Matthew. 

If you take both together, you get a fairly full Christmas picture.

Nobody uses Mark’s gospel to tell the Christmas story.  It doesn’t have one.  John the Baptist and Jesus are pushing 30 when this account starts.

Few use John’s gospel to tell the Christmas story, but it’s there.  There is no genealogy, no baby leaping in the womb, nobody singing We Three Kings of Orient Are.  But the Christmas story is there.  Only 14 verses into this gospel, John says Merry Christmas!

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Most of the year I preach and teach discipleship.  I offer charges and challenges to be a disciple of Jesus.  Follow him!  I am a little, OK, I am very passionate about this thing called discipleship.  How could I not be knowing what God has done for me, for us.

I am preaching to people who have said they follow Jesus.  I don’t preach much about salvation when I am talking to the saved.  Occasionally, I will sell a little ice cream to the Eskimos.  I love to tell the story to those who know it best.  You don’t need to walk the aisle every 6 months to be recertified in salvation.  I am not going to use the Evil One’s tool of guilt to get you to profess your faith yet once more.  No!

I talk mostly about following Jesus.  That’s a big subject area.  There is no dearth of material from which to preach.  Discipleship is our focus.  We want to get good at following Jesus.

We want God to be pleased because our hearts and our effort are in concert with each other and we are putting a lot of effort into pleasing our Lord.

I will offer words of invitation on a recurring basis but most of my teaching and preaching is to the saints, and you guys are saved.

Most of what you hear from me is about what we are called to do as disciples of our Lord.  I don’t look around the congregation and think, “Well, his salvation didn’t take.  I don’t know if she is really washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

I don’t think, “It must be time for a Seven Sunday Series of hell fire and damnation sermons.”  It might be sort of fun for me just to yell at you for an hour and see who is sweating my message, but I have been ordained to deliver good news.

And you have received the good news.  You celebrate the good news.  So sometimes, we just need to acknowledge and celebrate.

At Easter, I will say, He is Risen dozens of times in the course of that Holy Week which precedes the Resurrection Service. 

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Christ the Lord is Risen today!

You usually get a short message at Easter.  He is risen just about covers every Easter message that I have delivered.

 

But at Christmas, we need angels and shepherds and overbooked inns and people going to their home towns to be counted so the Emperor could make sure he got all the tax he thought he needed.

We have to decide whether we will tell people to enjoy their worship service for the Christ or enjoy all of the holy days that we have this time of year.  Yes, that’s Merry Christmas or Happy Holy or Holly Days.

Easter is so much easier.  We just say, He is Risen!  That’s the message.

Have a merry worship service for the Christ—enjoy your late December worship hour—doesn’t convey the same thing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had something like He is Risen at Christmas time?  Wouldn’t it be nice...

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

That cuts to the heart of the matter.  God, who 3 chapters later in this gospel is identified as Spirit, came in the flesh.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Jesus stepped out of heaven and came into this world.  Matthew and Luke cover some of the conception highlights, deliver golden nuggets about his birth, and early childhood events, but John gets to the heart of what happened.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Not only did we—humankind—suddenly jump from the world spinning out of control to a babe in a manger, we witnessed the magnitude of God’s mighty act.

And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

He came with grace—not sent here to condemn us but to save us.

He came with truth—not humankind’s version of its own situation.

And John said, we beheld His glory.  Humankind witnessed God with us.  We sing Emanuel because people witnessed God with us.  He became flesh and lived among us.

But he was like no other.  He was unique, one of a kind, one and only Son of our Heavenly Father.

Today, we are not diving into our discipleship.  We are not picking up the pace of our race of faith.  We are not even going to spend a lot of time rightly dividing the word of God.  These are all good things that we should be doing.

Today, just think on John’s simple message.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Just as we frequently say, He is Risen as we approach that Easter Sunday each year, start saying, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

John gets to the heart of the matter.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas and Amen!

We love the Christmas Story

Read Luke 2:1-20

We love the Christmas Story and mostly we love it in Luke’s gospel.  Mark skips it altogether.  John gets it squeezed into one verse—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.  Merry Christmas! 

Paul even sneaks in a quick Christmas story. 

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.  Merry Christmas!

Matthew gives us a little insight into the earthly parents of Jesus, a visit from the Magi, and a hasty exit to Egypt.  Matthew and Luke include the genealogy of Jesus; but it is Luke’s gospel that truly sets the grand stage.

The world of those days was the Roman world.  A man by the name of Octavian had succeeded the first man to be Caesar of Rome, that being Julius Caesar.  Octavian had taken on the name of Augustus Caesar and after consolidating his power, he declared that a census would be taken of every  part of the world under Roman control. 

That included those living in what was given to the Hebrew people as a Promised Land.  Had there been no census, Joseph and Mary would have had no reason to travel to the City of David—to Bethlehem.  Nazareth in Galilee would have been their natural homestead and a trip to Bethlehem would have been a hundred miles of travel that no pregnant woman would inflict upon herself.   But the Savior of the world was to be born in the City of David.  So the Christmas Story takes on a global nature from the beginning.  What that meant to Joseph and Mary was 3 days of traveling while very close to Mary’s delivery date.

And of course, there was no room at the inn.  To make sure that the Savior of the world was born in the humblest of estates, there was no room at the inn.  We are probably not talking Motel 6 or the Hilton Garden.  There were just no rooms available in the places where Joseph knew to look. 

So this Christ child would not be born in a palace or even in a fine hotel.  He would be born where the livestock gathered at night.  There would be little comfort for this child that would step from his place in the heavenly realms to the humblest of dwellings.

But the birth of this child would not be treated as a small thing.  Angels, in fact a heavenly host, announced his entry into our domain and proclaimed glory to God because of it.  God’s love and peace were bursting into the world, albeit in a small bundle in a place that resembled a pasture more than a palace.

Of course the angels frighten the shepherds and then tell them not to be afraid.  Eventually, these men out guarding their sheep at night decide to go check out this news delivered in angelic symphony.  They were in the same area.  God had sent them messengers and told them what the sign would be for a reason.  How could they not go check this out for themselves?

And it was just as the angels told them and as they left they shared what the angels had told them and what they had seen.

Away in a Manger, Silent Night, The First Noel, and other songs paint these Christmas images for our modern minds as we try to picture such primitive conditions in a faraway place from two millennia ago.  There is mystery and majesty and yes, it even seems like magic—the Disney sort of magic—in this Christmas story.

Why is it special to us?

We don’t get all that excited about reading Paul’s letters.  There is not a whole lot of anticipation to a theological crescendo that we might find in Romans 8.  The gospels and Acts are full of miracles but the Christmas story is what gives us chills and smiles and that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

The Psalms are special but they just don’t hit us in the same way that the Christmas story does.

We love the Christmas story.  And why shouldn’t we?

God comes to earth as a baby.  He is not sitting on a throne.  He is not riding a white horse.  He is born to a young lady.  It is her first child.  She is away from home.  She delivers in some makeshift shelter.  There is no delivery room or midwife or EMT on the scene. 

There are no insurance forms to fill out.  There is no waiting room for Joseph to pace back and forth within.  He is doctor, nurse, orderly, and did not even have to check the block on the admissions form that elected NATURAL CHILDBIRTH. 

It doesn’t get much more natural than this. 

But the entire creation has waited for this moment.  God’s creation has longed for this child.

Joseph is probably thinking, “This kid looks all wrinkled and covered with goo to be the Son of God.” but this child is the Son of God.

This Christmas story is special to us because it is intended to be special.  God wants us not only to know his great love but to know that love is not a commodity.  Love is not just a quality.  Love is more than emotion.  Love is more than a verb and action and sacrifice.  God is love and in this story that we know all so well, we get to know a little more about the Love that spoke everything into existence and longs so much for everything to be at peace with him.

Our story of Love comes with sheep and shepherds and a manger and a very bright start in the sky.  It is meant to be told and retold again as if it were new each time.

This story, this Christmas story is a story of peace and good will and we should feel good each time we tell it and each time that we hear it.

So today, let’s not get too theological.  Let’s not overanalyze Luke’s pericope.  Let’s not overthink these scriptures.  Let’s just enjoy them.

Let the words be music to our hearts and bring peace to our souls.

Let them bring the joy of the season.

Let them take us to that place where we truly celebrate Christmas.

Let us hear a small part of the story once again, this time in the King James Version.  This is how many of us heard the story as we grew up.  It doesn’t explain anything any better. 

It’s just the story we know.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Merry Christmas!