A reading from the Gospel according to John.
Chapter 1.
The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said,
Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is the one I meant when I said,
A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water
was that he might be revealed to Israel.
Then John gave this testimony.
I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.
And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain
is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
I have seen and I testify that this is God's chosen one.
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
You may be seated.
Good evening, Christ Church, and Merry Christmas to you.
What a gift it is to be able to gather in person together this year.
Some of us were at a warehouse parking lot this time last year on Telegraph Avenue,
and that was sweet, but this is sweeter still.
And we are so thankful to God for vaccines,
and we're thankful to be able to travel and welcome special family and friends to be with us tonight.
And if you're visiting with us, we're so glad you're here.
If you're tuning in with us online, we're so glad that you have joined us as well.
There was a kindergarten teacher who was observing her classroom as children drew pictures.
And the teacher would walk around to see each child's artwork,
and so she approached one little girl who was working especially hard
and asked her what her drawing was, and the little girl told her,
I'm drawing God.
But sweetie, the teacher replied, no one actually knows what God looks like.
And automatically, the little girl continued drawing and said,
well, they certainly will in a minute.
The Gospels are each drawings of Jesus that are meant to show us what God is like.
And there are four Gospels with different angles on the one Jesus and the one story of Christmas.
And in Matthew's Gospel, we see Christmas through the eyes of Joseph.
We get his dream that reveals Jesus' identity.
We meet the wise kings that came from Arabia in the east,
Herod and his slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem,
and Joseph, Mary, and Jesus' escape as refugees to Egypt.
That's Matthew's Gospel.
And Luke's Gospel, which we heard earlier,
we get Christmas through the eyes of Mary.
Gabriel's visit to Mary where she says yes to God.
We get those beautiful songs, the Magnificat and the Benedictus.
We get the birth of John the Baptist, the shepherds, the angels.
We get the Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
In the Gospel of Mark, he's in such a rush that he skips right over Christmas
so he can jump straight into Jesus' ministry.
So I think about that as kind of the bah humbug evangelist.
Didn't really stop to celebrate Christmas.
But the Gospel of John, we get this cosmic Christmas.
John expands the dimensions of the story,
reaching back way before Christmas morning in time
and reaching forward in time way after the cradle of Christ.
And every year, we just cycle through each of the four Gospels.
So tonight, we're looking at the Gospel of John,
looking at John's drawing of Jesus that's meant to show us what God is like.
And John tells us that Christmas is about the God who has come,
keeps coming, and will come.
Christmas is about the God who has come, keeps coming, and will come.
Think for a moment about Christmas and this God who has come.
John says he was coming in verse 9.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
It would be a mistake to think that the first time God came into the world
was when he was born into it as Jesus Christ.
For long before he came into the world at Christmas in the incarnation,
he was continuously coming into it.
Verse 10 tells us that he was in the world,
and though the world was made through him,
the world did not recognize him.
John's telling us that nothing in the universe exists
apart from Jesus Christ.
And he's remained in the world since creation.
He never left.
What does this mean?
What does it mean to say that Jesus is the true light that enlightens everyone?
It is to say that all beauty, all truth, all goodness comes from Jesus Christ,
that any light that was in the world in any culture before the time of Christ
was pouring forth from Jesus as the source of all light,
for he's the one who made and sustains all things.
Now, that is a bold claim for this baby in the manger.
But John doesn't stop there.
He says he was coming, and then he came.
In verse 11, he came to that which was his own.
Now we've hit Christmas morning.
Now we're at the incarnation,
where he who had been coming into the world to all people at all places and all times,
now came to Israel, his special covenant people.
He who had been coming incognito into a world without being recognized
in his pre-incarnation history,
now came in person visibly and openly in the flesh.
That's what verse 14 is all about.
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John is telling us that this baby in the manger,
who's crying in order that someone might feed him,
who's crying in order that someone might change his swaddling clothes,
this baby is the eternal logos.
He's the eternal word and wisdom of God.
We talk about the natural order and all those physical forces
that hold everything together.
We talk about the moral order and right and wrong,
justice and injustice, what gives meaning and purpose to things and to life.
Well, what is the glue that causes all those things to cohere?
The natural order, the moral order, John says, it's this baby.
That without this baby in the manger,
you and I and everything else would fall apart.
Well, why did he come?
Why did he bother taking on flesh?
This baby in the manger grew up,
and his cousin John would go around telling people who he is and why he came.
And John says in verse 29 that,
look, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
That's a breathtaking statement.
Because what is sin?
Sin is when you are at home and you go to make a sandwich
and you reach down past those first three or four pieces of bread
to get the good bread, right?
And you make yourself a sandwich and you get those matching pieces
and you leave all the rest of the bread for your family.
Sin is when you use the last of the toilet paper
and you don't fill up the bathroom before you leave.
These are two examples from my house just this week.
John is telling us that all the accumulated guilt
of thousands of years of human self-centeredness,
of looking out for numero uno,
of rebelling against our creator God through our greed,
our malice, our deceit and envy,
our slander and cruelty,
this baby in the manger came to take all of that away.
And the reason this baby took on flesh
was so that he could die
as our God-given substitute,
as the sacrificial lamb in our place
who would bear our sin and shame,
who would bear our curse and condemnation,
who would take on himself
the justice and the judgment of God instead of us.
John is telling us with this cosmic Christmas
that if you want to understand this one in the manger,
you have to see him as the true light
that gives all truth, beauty and goodness.
You have to see him as the eternal word of God
that's holding all things, including you together.
And you have to see him as the lamb of God
who takes away all that which separates us from God.
We have to see his cradle under the shadow of his cross.
But John tells us that Christmas
is not only about the God who has come,
but it's about the God who keeps coming.
Because for many people,
Christmas is just a nice story
that happened long ago
that's completely irrelevant for us today.
But John says,
he who was coming and who came is coming still.
This baby in the manger of past history
is also a person of present significance.
That this historic Jesus
is also the contemporary Christ.
And that he who came 2,000 years ago
as a tiny crying newborn
in a cave in Bethlehem
still comes to have a relationship
with me and with you.
And that's what verse 12 is all about.
Yet to all who did receive him,
to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God.
Children born not of natural descent
nor of human decision or a husband's will,
but born of God.
This baby in the manger would soon learn to talk.
And over the last two millennia,
this one who's called the Word of God
has been calling out the names of individual people
and giving them the ability to receive him
and to believe him.
And when you do that, we're told,
he, the Son of God,
makes you a child of God.
That he, the one who was born on Christmas,
makes you to be born from God,
to be born from above.
You see, Christmas is not only about
Jesus' birth as the Son of God,
it's also about our birth
into a new life as the children of God.
There's a great book that I commend to you
called Knowing God.
And J.I. Packer, in this book,
he talks about the difference
between knowing about God
and actually knowing God.
And he says,
what is a Christian?
The richest answer I know
is that a Christian is one
who has God as Father.
But cannot this be said
of every person, Christian or not,
emphatically know.
The idea that all are children of God
is not found in the Bible anywhere.
Sonship to God is not a universal status
upon which everyone enters by natural birth,
but a supernatural gift
which one receives through receiving Jesus.
The gift of sonship to God becomes ours
not through being born,
but through being born again.
You sum up the whole of New Testament religion
if you describe it as the knowledge of God
as one's holy father.
For in adoption,
God takes us into his family and fellowship.
He establishes us as his children and heirs.
Closeness, affection, and generosity
are at the heart of the relationship.
To be right with God the judge
is a great thing,
but to be loved and cared for by God the father
is even greater still.
And how does this baby in the manger enable us
to become children of God?
John tells us in verse 33
that he came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit.
This baby in the manger came not only
to eradicate all the stains of our past
and to bundle away into oblivion
all the skeletons in our closet
and to write off all of our debts to God
and to give us a clean slate and a fresh start.
He did all those things.
And he came not only to make us a child of God,
born from above,
to call God our father.
He did those things as well.
But John tells us he goes further.
He came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit.
That is to put the Holy Spirit into you
and to bring about a radical,
inward spiritual regeneration
to give you a new life.
That is to give you the divine,
eternal, abundant life of God himself.
He came so that God could be dwelling in you,
transforming you,
making you more and more willing and able
to live as God made you to live
and to come to bear the family resemblance
of your father.
You see, Christmas is an invitation
from this God who came,
but who keeps coming.
That if you're estranged from God,
this Christ of Christmas came to reconcile you
into a father-child relationship with God.
And if you feel defeated
by that wide gap between who you want to be
and know you ought to be
and who you actually are,
this Christ of Christmas came
to empower you with the Holy Spirit
to live a whole new life.
That's why this baby in the manger came
and that's why he keeps coming still.
But I also want to say that Christmas
is about the God who has come,
who keeps coming,
and finally, who will come.
And I'll end with this.
Later in the Gospel of John,
Jesus is giving this farewell discourse
and he's teaching his disciples
in this upper room the night
before he's to be crucified
and he's preparing them for what lies ahead.
And he says this to his disciples.
He says,
In my Father's house,
there are many rooms.
If it were not so,
I would have told you,
I'm going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back and take you to be with me
that you also may be where I am.
And that is the reason he came
and made his home with us
is so that after this baby
who came in the manger on Christmas morning
grew up,
he could eventually take us home
to be with his father.
We receive him when he comes to us
through the Holy Spirit
and then he will receive us
in his final coming in power and glory.
And then he will complete the salvation he has begun.
For those of us who've received
and believed in him
and had our sins taken away by the Lamb of God
and been born from above
to call God our Father
and been filled with the Holy Spirit
if we've already been redeemed in our souls.
On that day,
the word who became flesh
will deliver our flesh
and our bodies from pain,
from senility,
from handicap,
from sickness and disease and death.
And we will be liberated
from all of those things
which mar our flesh and our bodies
and we will be vested
with new and wonderful powers
and a new creation
where righteousness and justice reign supreme.
And my friends,
that is why God came.
That's why he took on flesh
in the womb of Mary.
It's why he took on a body
as a baby vulnerable in his manger
so that he could come again
to heal and enliven our bodies
for an abundant everlasting life
at home with him
in his father's house.
If you're like me,
this cosmic Christmas
is much bigger than
perhaps you dared to imagine.
In fact, John tells us
we don't really know
what Christmas is all about
if we just leave off
at this cute, cuddly baby
in the manger
for we must see him
as the true light
that enlightens everyone.
We must see him
as the eternal word of God
that's holding all things together.
we must see him
as the one
who came to be the Lamb of God
and take away the sins of the world.
And we must trace the story
from his manger
all the way to our story,
from his birth
to our new birth,
our second birth
as children
who call God our Father.
And we must follow
that golden thread
all the way
until we're at home
in the Father's house.
So brothers and sisters,
I want to invite you tonight
to praise this Jesus,
this Christ of Christmas,
this cosmic Christ
with a full and a glad heart tonight.
Let us celebrate his birth
with everything that we've got.
Let us live out
a cosmic Christmas this year
as people
whose sins have been taken away,
who call God our Father
and we get to call ourselves
his children
who are filled
with the Holy Spirit
and who have the sure
and certain hope
of an eternal home
to have bodies
like this one
who was born in his manger
and then one day
was raised
from his tomb.
In the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit,
Amen.