January 5, 2025 Sermon - “The Cosmic Nativity: The Word Became Flesh”
This sermon expands on an earlier devotional teaching give to staff at the Yonge Street Mission in Toronto. It is adapted for the congregation of Church at the Mission, Yonge Street Mission
This is the first Sunday of the New Year. We are at the dawn of 2025. Time is a very strange thing.
A Pastor friend of mine said: My goal for 2025 is to accomplish the goals I had in 2024 which I should have done in 2023 because I planned to do them in 2022 after I made a resolution in 2021 after thinking long and hard about what I should change in 2020.
Now, some of us are quiet over Christmas. We’re glad it’s done. I hope you enjoyed our journey through Advent, through the themes of hope, joy, peace and love.
But, since in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Christmas is actually in 2 days, on January 7, in a sense, the church universal is still celebration Christmas, still marveling in the Incarnation.
So since in our own Advent service we mostly focused on the accounts of Jesus' birthday, account of the Nativity, from the gospel of Matthew and Luke, I thought we would have a look at the account of the Incarnation from the Gospel of John.
I want to say that I love the accounts of the Nativity, the birth of Christ that we find in the gospels. I love the story, I love lingering with the story, I love its innocence, its directness and its simple beauty.
I also love it because I love understatement.
**I’m going to play two versions of a chord progression. Tell me which one speaks to you more. [Play I-IV-II-V in fast flourish, then with simple, melodic expressiveness).
Which of those do you find more musical, better sounding? Some might prefer the energy of the first one, but the 2nd one was likely more meaningful to most of us here.
Before going to seminary I was trained as a jazz musician and composer and one of the things you learn repeatedly and have to apply consistently is the idea that ‘less is more’...that you say more musically when you keep it simple and subtle, as simple as it needs to be, when you cut out the fluff, when you understate rather than overstate.
That’s how you make music. That’s how you make art. That’s always just a good way to do life.
Now I see the Birth of Christ, or the Nativity, as the grandest understatement of all time.
I say that because at one level what occurs in the manger is what has happened at some point in the life of every human being.
Here’s something I can guarantee with absolute certainty: We were all born, present company included! Anyone not quite sure?
And Jesus is born to a mother and a step-father in a completely normal way, that we could also say was understated in terms of the dignity we would expect such a birth to occur in.
The narrative, the story we get from the gospels of Matthew and Luke gives us the real-time events in the order in which they happened.
That’s good of course, because the whole Bible is completely historically accurate, and the Christian faith is founded on real events like those recorded by witnesses like Matthew and John,
and Mark (who is credited with writing down Peter’’s gospel), or people like Luke who wrote a detailed report of information he gathered from multiple eyewitnesses.
But..,.peel back the simple melody of that story of the birth of Jesus just a layer or two and you get the true story, the reality that was happening behind the scenes,
the story that hints at ‘why’ of the extraordinary importance of this thing that we call the nativity, or the Incarnation.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This is another telling of the Nativity, but different of course from the Nativity passages found in the other gospels. What’s the main difference?
This is what is really going on in the understated events in the manger.
St. Augustine said: “He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute”.
“The Word” here in the koine or ancient Greek is “Logos". And what the word “Word” means is at the heart of the matter.
The Word, or Logos means the communication, the sayings and the moral teachings of God.
It means the personal wisdom and power in union with God, it means God’s minister or agent in the creation of and the governing of the universe, the cause of all the world’s life both physical and ethical.
It means the self-revelation of God. In describing Jesus as the word, St. John’s gospel presents Jesus not only as the One Who gives God’s Word to humans, He IS God’s Word given to humans.
And of course John, who was a direct witness of the events of Jesus’ public ministry, is able to say, though it feels like with a sense of wonder:
“We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the father, full of grace and truth”.
Me: Jesus Christ is the true Word-ultimate reality revealed in a Person. The Logos is God.
And, John states, the Word became flesh. The Logos of God, which previously existed somewhere humanly undefinable, un-enfleshed, un-embodied, much as God the Father is…the Logos of God actually clothed Himself in human skin.
He bound Himself to human bones, and all the physical inner parts, the muscle and skeletal system.
Not to mention all the complex emotions that define what it means to be human.
God’s whole and complete person was given birth on that starry night in Bethlehem in the infant Jesus.
Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form NIV, Colossians 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. KJV
That is why the Nativity is the grandest understatement of all time.
And the pathos or sadness of this understatement is unpacked just a few verses late in John's gospel: John 1: 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The truth is that the child born in the manger 2000 years ago made the universe we live in.
There’s a lovely poem by Luci Shaw:
Down he came from up,
and in from out,
and here from there.
A long leap, an incandescent fall
from magnificent to naked, frail, small,
through space, between stars,
into our chill night air,
shrunk, in infant grace,
to our damp, cramped earthy place
among all the shivering sheep
And now, after all,
there he lies, fast asleep.
But when that child came to us, when the Logos, the Word came to earth as a helpless infant, and when that child grew to manhood, very, very few would recognize Him.
By and large, the world wouldn’t even notice, and when it did finally, as it sorted through its various reactions to the Logos, to this Presence, we see that the world He was born into, the world that was made through Him, was somehow blind to Him.
Even among His own particular tribe He wasn’t received by and large. He was not accepted.
It’s true that most of the first many thousands of believers were Jewish, but still by and large, to this day, Jesus is not recognized by Jewish people as the Messiah and therefore He is not received as the Messiah.
There is great sweetness and pathos in the story of the Incarnation of God, the story of the Christ event, both as Matthew and Luke’s gospels convey it and as John’s gospel elaborates on it.
JI Packer said that:“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation”
We find also in Paul’s letter to the Phillipians more on what was really going on during the incarnation.
Philippians 2:6 (Christ) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross.
This too reveals the glorious understatement of the Nativity. Jesus, having in Himself the fullness of the attributes which make God God, did not cling to or seize hold of for Himself His equality with God the Father.
Jesus let go of some aspects of what it means to be God…even just to be born in one manger in one town in one country is to limit divine omnipresence or the ability to be everywhere at the same time.
He let go of some of His attributes of divinity, but of course He remained fully God.
Paul then says that Jesus made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. The word ‘nothing’ really is more of a comparing word.
Compared to being God in all His limitless glory, Jesus limited himself in some ways.
He took on our nature, the human nature of a servant, or one is who devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests.
And he was made in human likeness. Like you. Like me. Amazing! And all this is us standing at another vantage point, looking at the baby in the manger.
This calls us to look at Jesus. The first look we have of Jesus is a very safe one. God Incarnate, God-in-the-flesh is a baby. Just a baby. That’s no threat. That’s not offensive.
True, that’s a little weird that the Maker of heaven and earth is bound up in swaddling clothes.
But, He’s the Maker of heaven and earth, so He can do as He pleases, no matter how it may assault or comfort human senses.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken”.
Verse 3 says: 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Does that mean that Jesus created all things? That He is the Creator?
The Apostle Paul is helpful in Colossians. Speaking of Jesus, he writes in Colossians 1: 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
So, yes, Jesus was the agent of creation. In perfect unity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, Jesus made all things. [Show 6 slides of various beautiful things in high res]
Was there anything made that Jesus did not make? No. Does that mean He made you? Yes!
Verse 4 says: 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.
Show image of match shadow, no flame shadow
I didn’t quite believe this, so I tried it out myself and it’s exactly what you see here. Light casts no shadow.
Jesus is the light of the world and His light is the light of every person. He wants to light the path of every individual.
He wants to remove the darkness in the world. In fact He’s been doing this for 2000 years. And how does he do this?
When He was in the world He was the light of the world. And His light still shines in the darkness.
Most of us in this room can testify how this is so very true in our lives. We live this every day, as Jesus lights our path, first and foremost through His Word: Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
He’s not physically here since He ascended to the Father and sits at His right hand. Or is He somehow still here, lighting this world?
Well, Jesus says to us what He said to the disciples:
Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
It takes some doing to wrap our brains around this, to wrap our hearts around this truth, but you and I are the light of Jesus in this world. That is God’s intention for our lives.
Wherever you live out your faith, quietly in kindness inspired by your love for God, actively as you serve this congregation...
as you serve your family, as you volunteer at the mission or anywhere,
wherever you are, you , as a followers of Jesus, and us as the Church of Jesus Christ, are the light of the world.
Let’s not hide our lights. Let’s not bury our heads in the sand. Let your light shine, as Jesus says, so that people may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
And always be intentional about being prepared to give an account of your faith, to give your testimony to others that points people to Jesus!
And then we have this:
15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”)16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.
The Message paraphrase of Scripture helps our understanding of verse 16: We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift.
Again, John writes in the first person plural, since He is writing to others who also experienced Jesus in the flesh: 14 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.
The Son of God is full of grace and truth. That is Who He is.
He is full of grace - unmerited favour toward us, and He is so full of truth that He is the Truth - He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
And He calls out to each of us to trust in Him and to follow Him with our whole being - to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind and all of our strength.
17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
As we each continue to grow as disciples of Jesus, as we each draw nearer to Jesus through worship, the reading of God’s Word, fellowship and the practice of spiritual disciplines so central to Christian faith...
As we move closer to Jesus internally, changes appear externally that others begin to notice.
John Perkins, known as the grandfather of the modern-day Christian community development movement in the U.S.A. states, “When God’s love inhabits us (as willing vessels)… every aspect of the way we live will be reshaped according to the new life that is inside us.
“The Spirit challenges our old ways of thinking, reshapes our direction and goals for our lives, rearranges our priorities, softens our hearts and makes them responsive to human pains and suffering, and replaces our selfishness with love for others. We are gradually made an incarnation of the love of God.”
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was a monk and bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He once said, “We should try to live in such a way that if the Gospels were lost, they could be re-written by looking at us.”
To talk about the Incarnation is talk about presence - being present. Incarnation is letting people know that by our presence with them, God has not forgotten them.
So may we enthusiastically celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ - the reality of the presence of the everlasting and ever-living God Who was born into this world in helpless infancy and in great love, and for great purpose.
May we always live the reality that our incarnational purpose as Church at the Mission is so directly connected to the Christ event - the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to Whom be honour and glory forever and ever.
God we thank you that in Jesus Christ we are invited to share in Your life. May we draw near to You. As we do we know from Your Word that you will draw near to us.
And may we also seek to share with many others and in many ways this love that you have shared so graciously with us. We ask this for Christ’s sake, in whose name we pray. Amen
