John 1:1-14 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Christmas Day Wednesday, December 25, 2019 “Live in the Light of God’s Christmas Love”
It is a beloved story. Maybe you heard it in the last few days as many of us did last night. Maybe it is a story that you know almost by heart. Maybe it is a story that you have only begun to love, or one that you would like to get to know better. It’s a story that begins with a young woman named Mary. Young Mary lives in the town of Nazareth, where she is engaged to the carpenter, Joseph. It sounds like a love story. No doubt the two of them had plans to raise a family and live a happy life in their town. But this story has much more drama than that. Mary is going to have a baby. The baby isn’t Joseph’s. Neither of them know quite precisely what to do, except that God sends his angel to help direct them, to share with them his plans. It is a love story, just of a different sort. It turns out that God’s plan is for the couple to travel to Bethlehem, far south of Nazareth, in Judea. They have to go, because the Caesar, the man in charge, wants everyone to register for a census, and registration will take place in your ancestral home. That’s Bethlehem. The journey begins, and eventually it ends. But there is a new problem in Bethlehem—no room. The hotels are booked solid, the guest houses and Airbnb’s are all taken. The only place for these two-plus weary travelers is a stable, a barn, maybe a cave that served such a purpose. It really is the only place, and so that is where Mary and Joseph make their bed (as much as they can). And there the baby is born. There is no crib to lay him in, so they use what is available to them and place him in a manger, a feeding trough. They may have thought that the rest of the night would be calm and uneventful. They may have wanted only to get whatever sleep the stable might allow them. Instead, suddenly some unfamiliar men burst into the door. It doesn’t seem that they are trying to be rude. They are just so excited that they can hardly contain themselves. They talk about angels that appeared to them while they were tending sheep, who told them where they would find a very special baby who was lying in a manger of all places. And they found it, just as the angels had told them. And when those excited shepherds left, Mary and Joseph could still hear their voices echoing as they repeated the story to everyone they came across. And Mary sat quietly, just thinking, thinking about all that had happened both that day and in the months leading up to it. Why do so many people love that Christmas story? What is it about the story that they love? Is it that there is a happy ending after all the uncertainty and all the challenges to this young couple, who nearly got divorced earlier? Is it the fact that no one, or at least not many, can resist a cute and cuddly baby? Is it that we feel we can relate to these people, the characters of this story, in some way or another? Perhaps it’s any of these things or even all of them. But there are much deeper and more important reasons to love that Christmas story, reasons that go far beyond the outward circumstances, reasons that you don’t find in a paraphrase like mine, reasons that are not always noticed as that story is told. The Gospel writer John tells the story in a different way. His account doesn’t start with Mary some 2,000 plus years ago. His account starts in the beginning. “In the beginning…” If that phrase sounds familiar, it is good that it does. The entire Bible starts with that phrase, “In the beginning.” “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). John’s Gospel takes us back to that very same point, to a time before time itself existed and there was only God. Before anything that we see came into existence, God was there. And at that time, God spoke his powerful word and formed the universe that we see all around us. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. He spoke into existence dry land and seas, fish and birds, plants and trees, and animals of all sorts. And God has John take us back to that point because God wants us to know something amazing. He wants to teach us about that powerful Word. He wants to share with us information that is too wonderful for us to really even begin to comprehend about God himself, about the Word that was with God and was God. In these powerfully brief strokes, the Gospel writer paints a picture of a God beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension, a God who is at the same time one God and somehow more complex, a teaching that the Bible expands on in other places as the doctrine of the Trinity—our three-in-one God. And God has John start at the beginning to make it clear what the Christmas story is all about. There is much more to it than what we can see on the surface. We can appreciate the difficulty of a long journey for a young