December 25, 2016
The Word Became Flesh
- John 1:1-14
- Jon Graybeal
There is something special about this morning, Christmas morning. Every year around Thanksgiving, the Christmas music starts to show…well sound up on the radio, or if you’re like some, you start the music weeks…..weeks before Thanksgiving. I’m not judging, just saying, there are some of you……but the music starts and the autumn season begins to shift into winter and we put lights on our houses and trees in our homes. We buy presents for friends and family, we wrap said presents with decorative paper and beautiful bows (or for us that are more decoratively challenged, we use gift bags, oh how I love the gift bag) we play games that have something to do with albino elephants. We make cookies and sing carols and watch stories of a reindeer named Rudolph and a snowman named Frosty. And then we arrive at December 25th, the culmination of all of these days, these days of shopping and decorating and giving and cooking and lights and carols. We arrive at this day, this morning, this Christmas morning. And for some of us because of all the giving and shopping and cooking and baking and wrapping and carols and lights we’ve arrived at this morning…..exhausted. Well, I am here to tell you this morning, this December 25th has arrived, this Christmas morning is here…..so take a deep breath. The preparations have been made and if they haven’t, well it’s really too late anyway and there’s nothing you can really do anyway, so the day is here, breathe, enjoy, take it in.
In the same way that we’ve prepared for this day with gifts and lights and carols and baking, as Christ followers, we’ve also prepared and eagerly anticipated this day, this morning because a baby has been born, a baby named Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a baby that was and is something more than just a baby, a baby has been born that is our God and has been born to save us all and that baby was born to show us a God that is full of grace and full of truth and full of love. Grace for us, truth for us, love for us. And with that in our hearts and our minds we turn to the gospel of John.
John 1.1-14,16
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
I love this passage, its one of my favorites. John pulls from a very familiar scripture to start his gospel, he’s referencing Genesis…….In the beginning, exactly the way Genesis starts out. Was the word…..God spoke in Genesis and the universe was formed, let there be light and there was light. John mentions the light and the dark, a reference to Genesis and the creation story. John is using Genesis, the opening of the Hebrew scripture, something second nature to the first century Jews of John’s day, to begin his gospel. And as a good first century Jew, you might track with what John has to say….until you get to about verse 9. John begins saying things like the light was coming into the world, that the world came into being through him, that he gave power to us, to become children…..children of God. At this a good first century Jew might begin to have some questions, some thoughts and some concerns but then in verse 14 John says that the “Word became flesh and lived among us”. This is where John takes everything a step further. This would have been blasphemy to the Jew. John reels them in with the Genesis story only to throw a twist into things in an attempt to open their eyes to a new way of seeing the world, to a new way of seeing and understanding their God.
When I was in college at the University of Louisville, I got into the world of backpacking. I had always enjoyed the outdoors and hiking and camping but in college I took it to the next level. I even took a class at U of L called the Basics of Backpacking and I passed and was actually given a college credit for this. Just to clarify, backpacking and camping are two different things. When it comes to backpacking, there are no showers, garbage cans, and no……facilities. Backpackers must carry out everything they take into the wilderness and only bring what they need for the duration of the trip because everything must be carried on your back. Now that might sound like its all downside and you might ask yourself why in the world would anyone do this but the beauty of backpacking is that you truly get away from it all. Backpackers are rewarded with pristine wilderness, uncrowded trails, minimally impacted land and solitude. Some of the world’s most beautiful sites can only be found by hitting the trial with your backpack. I’ve had the chance to backpack in some absolutely gorgeous places like the Rockies, the Smokies down south, Red River Gorge in Kentucky or as we all know it, God’s Country and my all time favorite place, Manistee National Forest in Michigan to name a few. One time I even camped out in the parking lot of Chick-Fil-A, overnight, in December (almost 10 years ago to the day) so that I could get a year’s worth of free Chick-fil-a. True story, the CEO Dan Cathy himself handed me my year’s worth of free Chick-Fil-A coupons at 6am in the morning. But I digress, there truly are places you would never see if you didn’t backpack in, sites you could never get to in your car or simply hiking a mile or two into the woods. There are places that you can only see by hiking in 10 miles, setting up camp and then doing it again the next day, over three, four, five, however many days. Part of being able to do that is the ability to be mobile, to be able to pick up your tent or your hammock or whatever it is you’re sleeping in, throw it in your backpack and move on to the next spot.
Setting up camp implies that you’ll be tearing camp down at some point and moving on, otherwise you’d just say you were building a house, right?
In our text this morning, we’re told that the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word, Jesus, God has been born. He has put on flesh and bones and blood and has dwelt among us. The actual translation for this is is that God ‘set up camp’. Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message, a paraphrase of the Bible puts it this way, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
Whether you go with ‘set up camp’, ‘dwelt among us’ or ‘moved into the neighborhood’, we’re talking about the same thing, the big, fancy word for it is the incarnation which simply means that God became man, one of us, God came, dwelt, moved, set up camp, among us, in Jesus. He put on flesh and blood and bones and was born as baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
Born a baby, a baby is as vulnerable as it gets. The Creator of the universe, the one who created each of us, in diapers, lying in a manger. God, who commands the morning and the night and puts the dawn and dusk in its place, that same God is now dependent on his teenage mom and his carpenter dad in order to survive. That...is the incarnation, that is God dwelling among us, that is God setting up camp. That is Emmanuel, God with us.
In Matthew 1.23 we’re told that the ‘virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God with us.’ We use that name, Emmanuel, a lot during the Christmas season but interestingly enough, this verse in Matthew is the only time Jesus is referred to as Emmanuel. No where else in the gospels do we see Jesus called Emmanuel. None of his disciples refer to him as Emmanuel. But on this morning, this December 25th, this Christmas Day we are reminded that God is with us, that God has lived among us, dwells with us and sets up camp.
150 years ago, on December 25th, Christmas morning, a man named Charles Spurgeon stood up in front of his church family and uttered these words which in my opinion have just as much relevance today as they did 150 years ago….if not more so perhaps.
Oh, may God teach you the meaning of that name,
Emmanuel, “God with us”!
“Emmanuel.” It is wisdom’s mystery, “God with us.”
Sages look at it and wonder.
Angels desire to see it.
The plumb-line of reason cannot reach half-way into its depths.
The eagle wings of science cannot fly so high and the piercing eye of the vulture of research cannot see it!
“God with us.” It is Hell’s terror!
Satan trembles at the sound of it.
His legions fly apace, the black-winged dragon of the Pit quails before it!
Let Satan come to you suddenly and do you but whisper that word, “God with us”—back he falls—confounded and confused!
Satan trembles when he hears that name, “God with us.”
It is the laborer’s strength—
how could he preach the Gospel,
how could he bend his knees in prayer,
how could the missionary go into foreign lands,
how could the martyr stand at the stake,
how could the confessor acknowledge his Master,
how could men labor if that one word were taken away?
“God with us,” is the sufferer’s comfort,
is the balm of his woe,
is the alleviation of his misery,
is the sleep which God gives to His beloved,
is their rest after exertion and toil.
“God with us” is eternity’s sonnet,
is Heaven’s hallelujah,
is the shout of the glorified,
is the song of the redeemed,
is the chorus of angels,
is the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky!
“God with us” – Emmanuel –
And I might add, Paul in 2nd Corinthians asks the church at Corinth if they realize that this baby, this Emmanuel, this Jesus, he asks if they realize that this Jesus is in you? It’s a reminder that our God didn’t just show up for a bit, set up camp and leave us to fend for ourselves, He didn’t set things in motion like a top and step back to see what would happen. He is our Creator and we are his creation. His fingerprints are all over us. God came to His creation, set up camp through this baby that’s been born today and this baby, our God and Creator has and continues to redeem and reconcile and restore and we are His and He is with us.