Christmas 1 Year C

Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 147, Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7, John 1:1-18

This week our lectionary takes a break from the usual pattern of following the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the lectionary shared by most mainline Christian churches. The Episcopal Church takes a break from the regular lectionary because it is important that we hear the beginning of the gospel of John again.  The very same story we heard on Christmas morning.  There is of course the temptation to dust off the sermon I offered on Christmas morning, but I would be doing a disservice to those of you who were here on that wonderful morning.  There are some themes that I touched on before that I would like to expound upon today.

While this text may seem rather simple on the surface it is really much more complex.  It is packed with theological ideas and doctrinal statements that even with two preaching opportunities I cannot cover them all.  But today I will offer you a few ideas about this complicated text.  One aspect is that rather than starting with the earthly birth of Jesus, John starts his story in the very very beginning, before anything in the world was created.  John tells us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  John speaks in very poetic language, but his message is clear.  

From the very beginning of everything Jesus has been with God and is God.  John tells us this because the focus of most of his gospel is about the divinity of Jesus. 

This text was one of the driving forces in the creation of the Nicene Creed.  In 313 Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan which in turn made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  However at that time there was no official canon or unified statement of faith and there were many different variations of Christianity being practiced within the Empire.  So in 325 he convened the Council of Nicea and charged them with drafting a single statement of faith.  

Today’s text played an instrumental role in the creed that was formulated.  We say it each and every week, here is just a portion: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”  While this by no means settled the debates of the time you can see that John’s narration of the origin of Jesus as the Word has had a tremendous impact on the development of our doctrine of the Trinity as well as our modern profession of faith.

Another aspect found in our gospel today is that this is John’s version of the incarnation of Jesus. John does not talk about how Jesus was born or what animals were present as other gospels do. Instead John says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John leaves out all of the other details about the earthly birth of Jesus because those details are not important to him. The most important part of the incarnation of Jesus is that he was human and dwelt among us.

Dwelt means something like “pitched his tent” among us. This means that when we pick up our tent stakes and move on, the Word, Jesus, can pull up and travel with us. And the fullness of this Word from which all life, all things, all light proceeds, is shared with us all. Not some, not a lot, but like creation itself, all persons and all things receive this grace. And what an amazing gift of grace that is. Jesus, and the rest of the Trinity, move about our daily lives with us.

We are not alone, even in our scariest or darkest times, we are not alone.

John also says that Jesus is the “true light which enlightens everyone.”  It is this light, the light of Jesus – the light of God, that no darkness can ever overcome. This is a powerful statement that I feel we often overlook so I will say it again.

There is no darkness that can overcome the light of God.

I’m not saying that we will never go through hard times, we each have our own memories and stories that tell us that we do go through hard times, but God is always with us. During these months where our days are shorter, it can be hard to find hope on our own and it is during this time that we should rely on the Light – the hope of Christ.  God became human in Jesus so that we might better know God, so that we might have hope in the Light of God, so that we might be saved by that light.

John closes our gospel today by talking about Moses, the law, and Jesus.  Moses was the bringer of the law, which was supposed to not only the blueprint for the Israelites to enter into a “right relationship” with God, but also as a way to create community among the Israelites.  However over time the law distorted that relationship, as the people focused on the law itself and not its intention.  With the birth of Jesus we have been freed from the laws that had previously distorted our relationship with God, through faith in Christ we are brought back into a right relationship.  Jesus was not brought into the world to discredit the law or to disprove it.

Jesus provides us with another opportunity to understand the law the way it was originally intended, to bring us together as a community and into relationship with God.  Another way of thinking about this is to say that through Jesus we are now free to have a relationship with the author and the book so that we can better understand what is written.

So why are we hearing John’s version of Jesus’ origin again today? We hear it so that we can remember that although Jesus was born of a woman, like you and like me, Jesus is also fully divine.  We hear it so that we remember the true light that leads us through any darkness.  We hear it so that we can be reminded that our faith and our understanding of our faith goes back thousands of years. We hear it so that we remember to tell our Christian story – that Jesus who is God, who is the light, became like us and never leaves us.