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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
By this midmorning on Christmas Day, some of you may have already opened your Christmas gifts, both those under the tree and in your stockings, if you use them, while others of you may have yet to open your Christmas gifts, from one place or the other, or maybe from both places. Regardless of when we open our Christmas gifts, we are likely to form an opinion about what we received as a whole, maybe whether what we received this year was in some sense more or less than what someone else received this year, or more or less than what we received in previous years, better or worse, or some such contrast. We may even be willing to consider the economic effects of higher prices and so maybe lower real wages, or whatever else may have affected our family’s and others’ ability to give Christmas gifts. Of course, the Almighty God and the Christmas gift that is His Son ultimately are unaffected by the kinds of things that affect our ability to give Christmas gifts. For example, in today’s Gospel Reading, the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. John describes God’s giving and our receiving, specifically our receiving, from the Word’s fullness of grace and truth, what the English Standard Version that was read translated as “grace upon grace” (confer NEB), and there is no limit there! Considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme, “From His fulness we receive grace upon grace”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is the so-called “Prologue”, the “introduction” or the “opening”, to St. John’s Gospel account. Probably most-important for the Prologue’s use on Christmas Day is its telling how He Who the Prologue refers to as “the Word”, Who is usually understood as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity—how that Word “became flesh” and “dwelt among us”, we might say took into the Divinity a human nature, so that the glory of the only Son from the Father could be seen from the man Jesus Christ. The term “Word” is said to have been meaningful to both Jews and Gentiles, and the term “Word” has been described as referring to the Speech and Will of God, through Whom God works (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:14, p.107). Also important for correctly understanding especially the Prologue’s final five verses is seeing their relationship to Old Testament accounts of the glory of God’s appearing at the giving of the Law through Moses on Mount Sinai and later at the Tabernacle and Temple where that Law was in the Ark of the Covenant (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:1-18, pp.177-180).
By this midmorning on Christmas Day, you and I may be wiped out, not only from celebrating last night or this morning, but also from preparing for those celebrations long before. We normally may feel empty and incomplete or beleaguered and beaten down, and the holidays may make us feel all the more so. Our favorite foods may not have been or be prepared or, if they were prepared, they may not have turned out well. We may be disappointed with the gifts that we were given or with how the gifts that we gave were received. The absence of family‑members for one reason or another also may make us sad. Other things going on in our lives may be a seemingly‑unignorable distraction. And yet, in a very real sense, those things are and should be the least of our concerns. Our greatest need is more than met by the Christmas gift of His Son that God gives us. By nature we are sinful and unclean, and so we sin against God and against one another in thoughts, words, and deeds, by commission and omission. We justly deserve God’s present and eternal punishment, except that He calls and so enables us to repent, and, when we repent, then He forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
Sometimes we are given a gift that surpasses a gift that we were given previously: for example, new, intact underwear that fits surpasses old, torn underwear that we have outgrown; a new favorite sweater surpasses an old favorite sweater; a more-grown-up bicycle surpasses a kids tricycle. Arguably similarly describing a “surpassing” gift, in today’s Gospel Reading, St. John the evangelist says that we have all received grace upon grace: the first grace corresponds with the “law” or “teaching” given through Moses, consisting of both God’s commands and His promises; the second grace corresponds with grace and truth that became through Jesus Christ. Under the teaching given through Moses, repentant sinners were saved by grace through faith in the Savior Who was to come, but that teaching, even though it revealed God’s steadfast love (or “mercy”) and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6)—that teaching is surpassed by the Savior Who has come, with faith in Whom repentant sinners are also saved by grace. That Savior Who has come is full of grace and truth, as He is the Word become flesh.
The Word, Who existed before creation, a distinct Blessed Person of the Holy Trinity yet sharing the same Divine essence, in time became flesh—not flesh in general, but the specific flesh of the Virgin Mary; not sinful flesh, but holy flesh, by the work of both the Holy Spirit and God the Father (Luke 1:35) and by the indwelling of God the Son. The only Son from the Father at the same time was eternal God and newly-conceived human. He through Whom today’s Epistle Reading says God created the world and He Who upholds the universe by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:1-12), completely depended on His Virgin Mother and legal Father to feed Him and wrap Him in swaddling cloths. Exactly how the Trinity and the Incarnation work are mysteries beyond our understanding, but God reveals them to us, and we believe that they are true, and we trust the Triune God to forgive us our sinful nature and all our sins for the sake of His Incarnate Son. The Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews says that, since we have flesh and blood, God’s Son Himself likewise partook of flesh and blood, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all of us who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:14-15). And, so He did!
Especially in St. John’s Gospel account, the lifting up of the Son of Man on the cross reveals the glory of God to those who see by faith (John 12:23-33). The Proper Preface for Christmas calls “the mystery of the Word made flesh” a “new revelation” of God’s glory, and, only by the glorious cross does the birth of the only-begotten Son in the flesh make possible what we prayed for in today’s Collect, our being set free from the bondage of sin. By the cross, in the words of today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 52:7-10), God has comforted His people, redeemed Jerusalem. By the cross, in the words of today’s Epistle Reading, the Son made purification for sins. Yet, the Son’s flesh and blood did not stay dead but was resurrected. Jesus invited His unbelieving disciples to touch Him and perceive that He had flesh and bone (Luke 24:36-42), and Thomas, for example, believed and confessed Jesus as His Lord and God (John 20:28).
God invites and enables our faith and confession by revealing Himself through His Word and Sacraments. In today’s Gospel Reading, John the Baptizer bore witness about Jesus, as Moses arguably did also, and, of course, Jesus Himself bore witness. Since He is at the Father’s side, Jesus can make God known uniquely, so much so that Jesus later tells Philip that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father (John 14:9). From His fulness, we receive what we might call another “grace upon grace”: God’s Word with water in Holy Baptism, God’s Word with touch in Holy Absolution, and God’s Word with bread and wine in the Holy Supper. God is, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says in his Smalcald Articles, “surpassingly rich in His grace” (Smalcald Articles III:iv)! In Holy Baptism we are born not of blood or of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God, born from above of water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5), saved by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5), by the washing of water with the Word (Ephesians 5:26). Similarly the Holy Spirit works through those Christ sends with the authority to forgive or retain sins (John 20:21-23). And, as we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, we have His life in us, eternal life, and we will be raised up on the last day (John 6:53-54)—we will be raised up on the last day, and so will be raised up all who have gone before us in the faith, with whom we are joined in the Holy Supper even now. Especially in the Holy Supper, like the apostles before us, we perceive and touch the Word that was from the beginning (1 John 1:1). We seek His fulness of grace and truth only where He promises we will find it.
For whatever reasons, we may receive fewer Christmas gifts from family and friends, be wiped out from celebrating, feel empty and incomplete, have various disappointments this holiday season and other times, or be distracted by seemingly-unignorable other things going on in our lives. Yet, we keep our various issues in perspective: arguably nothing else matters. The Almighty God has given His Son and saved us from our sin. “From His fulness we receive grace upon grace”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +