John 1:1-14 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Christmas Day Thursday, December 25, 2025 “Holy Infant so Tender and Mild”
If you have been to enough Christmas worship services here at Grace, perhaps you’ve noticed something that the worship leaders and planners have been aware of for some time. If you’re here on Christmas Eve, in the darkness, with candles lit, the songs tend to be a little more quiet and subdued and reflective. We sing Silent Night. It sounds like a lullaby. The whole mood of the service brings us to the side of the manger to see a tiny baby wrapped in cloths. Christmas Day feels different. O Come, All Ye Faithful is not a lullaby. Instead of singing Silent Night, we sing Joy to the World. The trumpet sounds out. The sun shines. It feels different. Whether you’ve noticed that before or are just realizing it now, if I told you that the theme of our Christmas service is “Holy Infant so Tender and Mild,” would that sound to you more like a Christmas Eve lullaby or more like a Christmas Day trumpet? Wouldn’t you say Christmas Eve? Doesn’t it seem a little unusual that this is, in fact, our theme for today on Christmas Day? It’s also a little striking to use that theme for a sermon based on John chapter 1, a section of Scripture that never mentions an infant specifically. It also doesn’t say anything about tender or mild. What it says is, this is the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God and has been from before the beginning. In the beginning, he was. It is not a coincidence that John begins his Gospel in the same way the entire Bible begins in Genesis, “In the beginning.” In fact, John by God’s direction points us right back to the powerful work of creation, and it puts this Word right in the middle of all of it. Through him everything was made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made That sounds like the loud and powerful sort of message that we might associate with Christmas Day. That sounds like a trumpet blaring out an announcement. This is the Creator. This is the almighty. This is God who has done unspeakably more than all we can imagine. You can see his power and wisdom all around in every functioning system and every beautiful vista and every piece of creation. This is the one God who created us. He made all people to be his own and serve and honor him. This is a Joy to the World kind of message shouting at you. It always has been. But thousands of years removed from the creation of the world, things sure looked different. Things sure were different. This Word of God that first spoke light and all things into existence was shining forth as the light of mankind, the crown of his creation. But mankind turned away. Mankind lived in darkness instead of light. From almost the beginning, people stopped listening to God’s Word and listened to God’s enemy. They became enemies of God. And now when we look around, it is easy to see the darkness of sin. So many around us reject God and his truth and his direction and his love. And how often our own hearts are inclined the same way. God’s light shines out, but we live in darkness. God directs our paths, but we ignore his direction. He wants nothing more than for us to give him the place in our hearts that he deserves as our Creator, yet we spend all sorts of time throughout our days and weeks and years barely even aware of his existence. We pray to him when we need something. We think of him when it is convenient. We set aside an hour or two per week, and sometimes more on very special occasions. This darkness has been around for a very long time. This line of darkness extends to the first people and from them all the way to the present. But at one point in that history, when God had prepared the world according to his good plan, when everything was prepared just as he determined it should be, he stepped into that history. The Word. The Creator. The almighty. And he did not shake a mountain with thunder and smoke. He did not come to terrify with a glowing light at which no one could gaze. He did not come with the loud announcement he deserved. He did not overwhelm. He came wrapped in the flesh and blood and bones of an infant. He spent months in the womb of his virgin mother just as the people he created do. Only a select few saw and heard the announcements of his birth: an
angel chorus that rang out to shepherds and a star that beckoned the Magi from afar. He grew and developed into a young boy, into a teenager, into a young adult. Through all these moments and movements of his earthly life, he was hiding at least to an extent, often to an extreme, the reality behind it all. This was God himself in the flesh. This was the Creator of the world who had entered his own creation. This was the only truly holy infant that this world has ever seen or known. He came into the world so that we could see his glory. No sinful human being could see the full glory of God in its essence. No human being could handle the powerful demonstrations that at times displayed the glory of God to people at other times in history. But the glory of God could come into our world as a tender, mild infant. The glory of God could be seen and held and embraced. So many missed it still. Too many thought this infant was nothing special. Too many assumed that even when he grew up to be a powerful speaker with large crowds gathered around him, he was nothing more than what they saw and heard. Too many did not even for a moment suppose or comprehend that they were his creation, that he was living among the people he had created in the world that he had created. The darkness that necessitated his incarnation was real and powerful. Even with God sending a man to point to him as the light coming into the world, even with John the Baptist calling out what he had come to do, people still missed it. People still did not recognize him. People still did not accept him. And left to our own devices, the same would be true for each and every one of us. Sure, we could study the history to learn that he was a real person. We could consider the testimony of eyewitnesses and come to understand that he changed the world in profound ways. We could even recognize that society at large is different after his life and death than it was before. But we need him to tell us who he is. We need him to lead us to embrace him. We need him to reveal himself to us as the true light of the world, the true Creator of the universe, the true eternal Word of God. That’s how we have become children of God. It’s not by our bloodline. It’s not by our reason or strength or thinking or choosing. It’s not by any desire or decision on our part or our parents’. It is by him and through him. He gave us his gifts so that we might believe. He gave us the revelation to know him. He gave us the right to become children of God. We have seen his glory. We have recognized the glory of the only-begotten Son of God. We have come to appreciate that in this human being whom we first glance as a mild, tender infant is everything that God is. The eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful God is wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger. The light of the world has entered our darkness, faced rejection, faced ridicule. In fact, he came in flesh so that in our flesh he might die for us. As glorious and spectacular and powerful as his creation of the universe is, God points us to the glory of Christ as one full of grace and truth. This is his glory: not only that he is the all-powerful Creator, not only that he gave up nothing of his essence while humbling himself to become one with us, but primarily that he did so to die for us and our sins. He came to serve us in our greatest needs. He came in truth not to cover up sin but to deal with it. He came in grace so that the punishment that our sins deserved would not fall on us. And he still reaches out to us with his love in quiet and unassuming ways. Christmas is our celebration of a tiny baby, and it is a celebration of the almighty Word of God. We celebrate with quiet reflection in dim evening candlelight, and we shout our praise in the bright sunshine of the morning. We sing Silent Night Holy Night, and we sing Joy to the World. We sorrow over our sins and all the grief and pain and loss that sin has caused, and we rejoice in a Savior that has overcome it all and gives us life eternal. We sing praise to a holy infant so tender and mild, for we have seen his glory, the glory of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Text: John 1:1–14 (EHV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him everything was made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. 5The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6There was a man, sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as an eyewitness to testify about the
light so that everyone would believe through him. 8He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. 9The real light that shines on everyone was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world
was made through him, yet the world did not recognize him. 11He came to what was his own, yet his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who did receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. 13They were born, not of blood, or of the desire of the flesh, or of a husband’s will, but born of God. 14The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory he has as the only-
begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.