Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Merry Christmas!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
Luke’s gospel gives us the Nativity scene. John’s gospel, however, gives no mention of Mary or Joseph. We don’t hear a thing about angels or shepherds or a manger. We aren’t even told about Bethlehem. But we do hear is this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing that was made” (John 1:1-3). This is Christmas, according to St. John.
Today, we are here to celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord. Nativity, literally means “birth” or “birthday.” So, we are here to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. But we are here to celebrate even more! John reveals to us so much more about the nativity of Christ. John reveals that the Son of God did not begin at His birthday, or even at His conception. John reveals the Son of God was there at the beginning of time. Jesus spoke creation into being. Jesus is equal to God the Father.
But we are here to celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ. We are here to celebrate how on that Christmas Day “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14a).
Jesus, who was fully God from eternity, became flesh. He became man. He dwelt among us.
Today’s gospel lesson is very deep. John uses simple words, but his message is profound. God is born of Child. This is something so deep that it is hard to fully comprehend. And if we say that we fully comprehend how God became Man, then Jesus isn’t God, because God is beyond our ability to comprehend. St. Augustine once wrote, “To reach to God in any measure by the mind is a great blessedness; but to comprehend Him, is altogether impossible.”
How God became man is a profound mystery. It’s a mystery how the Creator could take the flesh of a creature. It’s a mystery how Jesus assumed the human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. It’s a mystery how the two natures – the Divine and the human – are inseparably joined in the one Person Jesus Christ. It’s a mystery how the two natures are unchanged and yet are personally united. We sung of this mystery in “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.”
Jesus, the eternal God, the Creator of the world, became flesh and entered the world. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him” (John 1:10).
For nearly 30 years, Jesus was unknown. In his boyhood, His conduct resembled that of any other youth. He was subject to His parents and obeyed their commands. Now, there were some moments when Jesus wasn’t like the other youth. At the age of 12, He stood at the temple listening to and asking the teachers questions. “And all who heard [Jesus] were amazed at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:47).
But all of this was soon forgotten. It was only Mary who “treasured up all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
Only two kinds of beings exist: creatures and their Creator. The Word, Christ, was not created; He did the creating.
There, being held by Mary, is the Creator. He is in the world. He lives among men. But He is well hidden. The world did not know Him and paid no attention to Him. It was not until He would be 30 years old that He would begin to preach, heal the sick, and raise the dead.
The world is quite unaware that this child, lying in His mother’s lap and being washed and bathed by her like any other child, is the Light of the world. The world is unaware that it is through this Child that the world was created.
And yet, there were some people in the world who did know Him. To be sure, they did not know Him by their own reason, but by revelation of the Holy Spirit. Among these were Zacharias, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, the shepherds, Mary, and Joseph.
However, the rulers of the Jewish people and the Good Friday crowd would not acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, much less accept Him. His miracles, signs, words, and sermons really should have identified Him, but they chose to live in the darkness.
But doesn’t light penetrate darkness? Yes, but many would rather be spiritually ignorant and blind. Yes, they can see Jesus right in front of them, but they refuse to believe that He is the promised Messiah, the Savior of man. Those in darkness fail to understand what the Word is bringing and remain in darkness. The dark world of sin and unbelief failed to understand that Jesus is the promised Christ. Even the religious leaders of Israel failed to see the light and opted to stay in the darkness. They went as far as to crucify the Word in an attempt to silence Him forever.
Instead of worshiping the Creator, man chose to reject the Creator and worship the creature instead. Man naturally chooses to reject Jesus because our sinful nature on our own cannot believe in Jesus Christ as Lord, or even come to Him. Our sinful human nature always focuses inward. We seek our identity from our own minds.
You see, for the vast majority of the people, they were not seeking a Messiah to save them from their sins. No, they wanted a Messiah who would make them rich, great, and mighty. They wanted a Messiah who was earthly, just as we are earthly. So, when they didn’t get what they wanted. God used their evil as a way to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy:
“Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:1-3).
This is still happening today. As in the earthly ministry of Christ, the Gospel has free course today, and the Lord comes to us and visits us graciously; yet still so many refuse to trust in Him. Even those who honor Jesus. Have you been living your life honoring Jesus within these church walls, but living your life far from Him in your daily life?
Despite unbelief, denial, and disobedience, Jesus became flesh, because of His love for mankind. Mankind was trapped in sin and the wages of sin is eternal death apart from God. He came to save man because man was His own. He came into His own. He endured their hatred and murder. He never flinched from what had to be done to save mankind, because they were His from the beginning and He would not give them up.
“To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
We have become the children of God because He became a child of woman, “not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). The Holy Spirit overshadowed the virgin. She conceived the Child without sin, a Priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. He did not abandon His Divinity. Nor was He changed into a Man: He became a Man. He added to what He already was. He took up the life of man as His own in order to live and die as a Man for men that He might make us “children of God.”
“We have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”(John 1:14b). Christ’s glory was revealed to all in what He came here to do: suffer and die in our place. The Christ child came to be “the light of men” (John 1:4). He came in to reveal God’s glory in a way that we could look at it and not be blinded, but believe. At long last, God would let us see His glory by giving us His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who alone reveals God’s glory through His work of salvation.
The Word became flesh because we are flesh, subject to pain and misery. Jesus assumed human existence, with all its frailties and failings and consequences, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Love moved God to become man, love for us sinners because we are sinners. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in human flesh because God’s will is that we should be saved from the power of sin, death, and Satan.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us becoming our Life and our Salvation. The Word still dwells among us. Through repentance and faith in Him, He speaks us clean, forgiven, and His own. Thus, we have become children of God, baptized into His cross, joined to the mystery of the Eternal Word become Flesh.
Today, Christ comes to us in the Flesh in the Sacrament of the Incarnation where He comes to us with the same Flesh and Blood under the bread and wine that Mary held in her arms. This is the very same Flesh and Blood that was crucified for your salvation. The very same Flesh and Blood that rose from the dead. The very same Flesh and Blood that will come again on the Last Day.
The Word became Flesh and remains Flesh for us for our salvation to make us children of God. Merry Christmas! Amen!
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +
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