Today, Christmas Day, this is when God gets real!
A new life begins, a baby is born in Bethlehem, lying in a manger. This child is the one who was promised, and he has finally come! That’s pretty real, it’s raw, it’s human.
And to celebrate all this we’ve got the decorations, we have the carols, we have the Christmas tree, we have the presents, the new things we’ve given and received – and (for most of us) they have now finally been opened! We celebrate this together with family and friends. We come together in God’s house today, to remember and to receive the blessing of God’s only son given for us. We celebrate that God has become one of us.
Because God has got real with us, that means today is also a new beginning.
I know what a new beginning is, our second child our son was born earlier this year, we’ve had a new life join us and what a joy that is! He wasn’t here last Christmas but today here he is, amazing!
What comes to mind for you, have you had a new beginning recently, or at some point this year, or maybe you’re looking for one right now?
This beginning we’re talking about today isn’t just a new beginning.
It’s not just another Christmas, another holiday period, another celebration with family and friends, another stash of socks and jocks for the drawer, as great as these things are!
It’s not as though Jesus wasn’t there and now he is. As we read in John’s gospel, he was there in the beginning. In the beginning of the whole world, when the world was made. Not just in the manger as a baby, but right from the start.
John’s gospel doesn’t start by telling us about a baby in a manger – have you noticed that? It’s a different angle, there’s no mention of Christmas here. But there is a new beginning.
There is the beginning.
We’ve heard these words before. ‘In the beginning’ – the first words of the bible. And the first words of John’s gospel. Jesus coming to be among us is linked to the creation of the world in the very beginning. When God made the world he said: ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. And here in John’s gospel we have the light of the world, shining in the darkness.
We heard a desrciption of this in our second reading as well today from Hebrews (1:10), how God ‘laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of [his] hands’ – beautifully put!
This earth and the people in it are the work of God’s own hands, and he cares about what he has made!
Looking back to our gospel reading from John, there are three key words to pull out today, three key ways to understand who this child born in manger is and would be for us >
Word, Light and Flesh.
This is where God gets real with us this Christmas >
WORD
Initially it seems a bit weird how the Word is referred to as ‘he,’ not ‘it’ but ‘he.’
We could think of this as the words jumping or leaping off the page, coming to life in human form.
Here we see not only what the word is, but who the word is – without Jesus bringing God’s word to us, all we have would be words on a page.
Our Hebrews passage helps us again today to understand what’s going on here – God speaks to us, through his Son. God’s word speaks to us and it changes us, it changes our hearts, our souls, through Jesus coming to live among us.
So it’s not just an ‘abstract concept’ but actually God’s words brought to us, his people, to change us, through his Son Jesus.
Like how when you finally get to open that present that’s been sitting under the tree, when Jesus as the Word of God comes to live among us, it gets real!
God tells us he works through his word, right from the beginning. John says ‘through him all things were made’ – ‘through God’s word all things were made.’
How was the world created? God said it and it was so.
How do we hear about who God is, what he’s done for us and who he says we are? Through God’s word, written, spoken and shared with each other.
Jesus is the embodiment of God’s word, the word come to life in human form, and he did this for us, for our benefit.
Our God brought the word to life to walk and live among us.
LIGHT
Jesus is the light of the world, shining in the darkness. The true light that gives light to everyone.
Don’t we know it’s Christmas when our Christmas lights are set up and turned on, especially at night when houses and front yards are lit up with all sorts of lights and decorations.
John says the darkness has not overcome the light, the darkness can’t even understand it > Imagine a light that can’t be overcome by darkness, that can’t even be understood by darkness. That’s a powerful light – there’s no way to turn it off!
This reminds me of the classic film Christmas Vacation, which has a scene with a powerful light. In the film the dad – Clark W. Griswold – desperate to have a good old-fashioned family Christmas, staples a few thousand light bulbs to his house to have the best lights display in the neighbourhood. After a few mishaps the right switch is finally flicked and the lights come on, blinding the next-door neighbours and causing a power outage in the city. But the lights are beautiful, even if they’re not the true light >
Clark Griswold might have done his best, but of course what Jesus has to offer is a little bit more than a blinding light for one season of the year!
The true light is beautiful and powerful and it lasts. It’s intense.
The darkness can’t beat it, doesn’t even stand a chance.
But why did God need to send the true light into the world? Because humans were in the dark, we needed to know the light.
As humans our natural instinct is not light, it’s actually darkness. We are sinful, and we can’t save ourselves from this fact.
We read when the light came into the world in the person of Jesus, he was not received, he wasn’t recognized.Creation didn’t recognize its creator.
In the book of Acts (26:18) it says our ‘eyes need to be opened,’ we need to be turned away from darkness and into the light, so we can receive forgiveness for our sin and the gift of being part of God’s own family.
John says to those who did receive the light, God gives the right to become children of God. Children born of God, children of the light. This is why the true light came into the world, what he came to do.
As we hear in Isaiah at Christmas, ‘the people walking in darkness have seen a great light,’ the light of the world.
Jesus is that light, and the light shines on in all who believe in him. We are called to be children of the light, not the darkness.
The light came into the world to free us from darkness, to turn us away from darkness and into the light, to be forgiven and adopted children of God.
FLESH
Such a gritty word isn’t it, not body or presence, but flesh, the stuff we all have covering our bones, as real as it gets!
It’s not a word we use much today, but it comes up here. Jesus, as the Word of God, took on this form and lived among us. He had flesh. How can God have flesh? That would make him just like us?! This is exactly the point.
Jesus didn’t come into the world above us, as a king or a rich man or a celebrity, with status, wealth or fame. That’s NOT how he chose to reveal himself.
How did he come to us? As a baby born in manager – not born with a silver spoon in his mouth but born where the animals lived! That’s a seriously low place to come from isn’t it.
And he died, not of old age after a long and enjoyable life, but as a young man, put to death by his own people. Pretty dramatic, pretty hard for us to hear if we take this – by faith – as a real thing that actually happened, just as real as a baby being born.
The word becoming flesh is dramatic, it’s profound; the God who created us also became one of us! This is strange, unexpected, why would God do that? God in human form, in the flesh, is him getting up close and personal with us.
What’s the most obvious way God could reach us? By becoming one of us – he gets real with his people! And he didn’t just ‘make an appearance’ in the flesh, he made his dwelling among us.
The word to dwell here means to pitch a tent, to set up camp. Why tent, and not house or permanent residence? Because he wasn’t going to be here forever.
We’re not going to be here forever either, because what he did for us means there is something more than this life. Everything here on earth is temporary, because we are citizens of heaven (Php 3:20).
When the word became flesh, when Jesus came to live among us, it meant sin and death could be defeated. Jesus became human, then suffered and died for all people, and then rose from the dead.
Today we celebrate he has come to be among us! Immanuel, God with us! God has got real with us, this is his name and who he is, his name tells us what he does.
He’s not a God who looks down on his people, but a God who comes down to be among them. A God full of grace and truth, living – and dying – for us. By the word becoming flesh we can know our God on the deepest possible level – as one of us.
Our faith is not based on our own sense of spirituality, whatever we come up with, but on the real life of a man who was also God. The reality of his flesh and blood, given and shed for us. The event of his life on earth and the refreshing and renewing of our hearts and minds when we share His meal together.
Today, on Christmas Day, we celebrate this new beginning where God gets real with us, where all things are made new through God’s gift of his Son for us.
So may this new beginning speak to us this Christmas, to our hearts and minds, as we hear the word, walk in the light and live in the flesh, the flesh he took on himself //
Tom Kitson 