Christmas Light

[Here you'll find live stream of video of today's Christmas morning worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with the text of the sermon presented.]

John 1:1-14

Christmas morning may be both the best and the worst time to have John 1:1-14 as our Gospel lesson.

It’s the best time because it tells the story of the first Christmas simply: “The Word [that is, God the Son] became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14)

It’s the worst time because there is so much richness from God to unpack in these verses. That’s a tough thing to address when so many of you are likely tired from family celebrations and crazy weather. 

So, I’m going to do my best to nutshell these verses.

The lesson, known by scholars as John’s prologue, starts before God created anything. There was just God and uncreated chaos. John shows that while God is one being, He’s also more than one person. “In the beginning was the Word,” John tells us, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) This Word, God the Son, John goes on to say, made the cosmos. He is the Word that God spoke to the chaos–"Let there be light, let there be a vault [the sky], let the dry land appear.” And it all happened!

In this Word, John says, is “the light of all” humanity. 

In other words, the God revealed to us all in Jesus Christ is the One Who can lead us through sin, death, and temptation to life with God. 

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path,” the Psalm says. (Psalm 119:105) 

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus tells us. (John 14:6) 

According to the Bible, the idea of God being the light of all is to be taken both literally and figuratively. 

When Moses met God, His face bore the radiance of God’s presence. 

When Jesus revealed His divinity to Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration, pure light poured from Him. 

And according to Revelation 21:23, heaven “does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb [another title for Jesus] is its lamp.” 

God, including God the Son, is pure light, and the darkness of sin, unrighteousness, and impurity isn’t in Him.

The problem is that, as people born of sinners, we want to do whatever we want, no matter how much it may hurt God, others, or ourselves. We like the dark. Jesus says that we love darkness instead of light because our deeds are evil. (John 3:19) 

When I was a kid, I loved to let my parents know what good thing I’d just done for one of my sisters. But I tried like everything to keep them from knowing when I’d done something rotten.

Once I was put in charge of my sisters while my parents went out for a while. "Don't have pillow fights," they told me. Of course, we had a pillow fight. As I raised my arms to wallop one of my sisters with a pillow, I broke one of the glass shades on the living room's overhead chandelier. How was I going to keep this in the dark so my parents couldn't see what happened? 

I remembered that in the attic, there was an extra glass shade. I cleaned up the old, broken one and installed the spare. Then I swore my sisters to secrecy. After all, I told them, they'd been involved in the pillow fight too.

The misdeed and the cover-up worked just fine until the day that another one of the chandelier's glass shades was broken. No problem, my parents thought. "Mark," my dad said, "go up to the attic and get the spare." It was then that a bright light shone on my lie and cover-up. Busted!

On the first Christmas, as we remembered last evening, shepherds, prompted by angels, visited the manger where the baby Jesus lay, then told everyone they encountered that the Word–the Lord, Messiah, and Savior–had been born. “All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them,” Luke says. (Luke 2:18) 

“Yet we may suppose,” Martin Luther remarks in one of his Christmas sermons, “that with most of them this astonishment was but of short duration.” 

Within a short time after Jesus’ birth, people seem to have totally forgotten about the news the shepherds brought and nobody really wanted a Savior Whose truth or light would show them their sin or guide them off the dark paths of sin and self-worship that they preferred. 

And we too, if we’re honest, prefer darkness. 

Or, maybe we want just enough of God’s light to reach us in order to help us do what we want to do, but not so much that we need to accede to His control over our lives.

And so, John writes in our Gospel lesson of Jesus the Word: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11) That phrase "His own" should not be read ethnically as though the only people who qualified as Jesus' own were His fellow Jews. Every member of the human race, including you and me, is meant by that phrase, "His own." His own didn't want to receive Jesus!

For years, I used a shallow understanding of science to spurn Jesus. I clung to this nonsense even though a creation must have a Creator. The fact is, there was no room for God in my arrogance. 

Others spurn Jesus because they can’t imagine a loving, omnipotent God presiding over a world in which there are things like child abuse, racism, human trafficking, drive-by shootings, abortions cavalierly used as birth control, war, and injustice. But the very fact that we can be revolted by the darkness of our world should tell us that we know, beyond the limitations of our human reasoning or efforts, that there is a light–the Light–Who shines in the darkness and our darkness cannot overcome it!

When the Light of the world came to us, what did we do? 

We did what the darkness of a world enthralled by sin, death, and the devil led us to do: We killed Jesus, thinking that we really could be in charge of things if we did so. 

We were like the tenants in Jesus’ parable: “This is the heir [the Father’s Son]. Let’s kill him, and the inheritance [the creation] will be ours.” (Luke 20:14) 

Even today, I encounter people who tell me that the world will be a better place when the last vestiges of belief in God or trust in Jesus have been wiped off the planet. 

But no matter how hard we may try, friends, as you’ve heard me say before, Jesus will not and could not stay dead! 

When Jesus offered His sinless life on the cross to destroy the hold that sin and death had on us and He finished the work He had come to do for us, God the Father raised Him from the dead!

And that is exactly what Jesus will do for all who receive Him.

It’s what He will do for you. 

Not because you’re perfect. 

Not because you abide by commandments you cannot keep in your own power. 

But solely because He came into your world and has died and risen for you. 

To make you His for all eternity. 

As John writes in our lesson: “...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.” (John 1:12-13) 

To you, Jesus says: “...My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

The lights of our altar candles and the lights on your Christmas trees are meant to remind you that you no longer are stumbling in the darkness, forced to fend for yourself in a sinful, death-plagued world. 

All who have received Christ at the font and at the table and in His Word walk in the light of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, Who came to us at Christmas to die for us on Good Friday, to rise to give eternity to us on Easter Sunday, to be our light in this life, and to one day return to usher us into the heavenly city where He alone will be our light and where darkness will be no more. 

Merry Christmas, friends! 

Amen

God's Plans for Us: Worth the Wait

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church on Sunday, December 27, the First Sunday of Christmas.]

Luke 2:22-40

In today’s Gospel lesson, we learn about the actions and words of four people--Joseph, Mary, Simeon, and Anna. And yet, the four of them are not at the center of things.

At the center of the incidents our lesson recounts is a baby, which seems appropriate on this Sunday when we will see the Baptism of Caroline.

Babies are often at the center of things, controlling the lives and daily schedules of their elders.

This year, my niece and her husband had their first child, a beautiful little boy named Marshall. He is my parents’ fifth great-grandchild, but as we all remind each other, he’s the first baby we’ve had in our family for some time. And so, we all act appropriately loopy over the little guy. Babies don’t really have to do anything to gain our attention or our love.

Luke records different reactions to another baby, the baby Jesus, from the normal ones though.

Among the milling throngs at the temple, few people seemingly notice or care about the child in Mary’s arms.

But two people know that this child deserves and will continue to deserve for all eternity, all our attention, allegiance, service, and worship.

As the text begins, Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to the temple. There, Mary’s purification following childbirth will be certified and Jesus will be circumcised and named. The couple will also bring an offering--a dove or pigeons--to be sacrificed by a priest, these being the sacrifices God had told Moses that Israelites who couldn’t afford a lamb could bring to the temple. Joseph and Mary are doing for this child everything that accorded with Old Testament ritual and sacrificial law.

But soon this young couple will meet two people who will remind them that the baby in their arms spells the end for the need of those laws.

Jesus will become the sacrifice that once and for all, will erase the power of sin and death over anyone who believes in Him.

Several decades later, Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, will point to Jesus and declare: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” [John 1:29]

At the temple, the couple, holding Jesus, encounter Simeon, a man filled with God’s Holy Spirit, the power of God’s life filling his elderly frame, empowering him to tell God’s truth.

Verse 25 in our lesson tells us that Simeon “...was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms…”

Simeon knew about waiting for the unfolding of God’s plans. Most of his fellow Judeans had long ago stopped waiting for the Old Testament prophecies of a Savior-Messiah, so much so that Matthew tells us when wise men came from the East looking for the newborn King, all of Jerusalem was in an uproar at the thought that the baby would upset the lives to which they were accustomed.

But not Simeon! He had believed the prophecies and yearned for their fulfillment, had waited and prayed and worshiped and trusted in God.

Now, in his old age, he sees what long generations of faithful members of God’s people had, according to Hebrews 11:13, only seen and welcomed “from a distance.” He sees the one who, Isaiah had said some seven-hundred years earlier, would “be a light to guide the nations” [Isaiah 42:6] and would bring comfort to His own people [Isaiah 49:13].

He even takes the baby in his arms to offer worship and praise!

All that Simeon had been waiting for was in his arms!

Now, the old man tells God, he can die in peace. “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” [Luke 2:30-32]

Joseph and Mary “marveled” at Simeon’s words.

But that isn’t all that Simeon has to say. He turns to the young mother who had been forced to deliver this child in an animal stall and tells her to steel herself for the cross the baby would one day bear for us all. Verse 34: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel,” Simeon says, “and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”

The baby Jesus, God on earth, the foundational truth of the universe, will be (and still is) an uncomfortable presence in a world given over to sin, where human beings want, more than anything else, to be gods unto themselves.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “...the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Jesus, the Word made flesh [John 1:14], exposes the human race as people walking in darkness needing a great light [Isaiah 9:2], but wanting to run from the light or destroy it, wanting to avoid admitting its need for a Savior, wanting to deny that the wages of its sin is death [Romans 6:13], wanting to rid itself of God altogether [Luke 20:14].

Simeon is telling us that Jesus’ rejection and death on the cross are inevitable. But the God of the universe now in Simeon’s arms is also Mary’s baby, which is why Simeon warns her, “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”    

Mary had told Elizabeth that “all generations will call me blessed” [Luke 1:48]. And so she was. She bore God in her womb and raised Him. To play such a part in God’s plans for saving the world was a blessing! But in this blessing, there would also be grief.

And the same is true for us.

When we dare to take Jesus as our Lord, to live in our Baptismal covenant, along with the new life that He offers, it spells the death of our old selves. As, day by day, we continue to surrender to Jesus, we will grieve over self-centered ambitions and self-driven ways, even as we thank God for the blessing of eternally belonging to Him. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously put it, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

Mary has probably barely absorbed Simeon’s words when Anna appears. She is a prophet. She’s a member of the Israelite tribe of Asher, one of the tribes taken into exile by the ancient Assyrian Empire.

But, despite everything, a few of their number had continued faithfully to follow God, had returned to the promised land, and had waited for the coming of the Messiah.

Anna, like Simeon, continued to trust in God even when those around her had given up on faith.

Like Simeon, she knew the importance of waiting for God to fulfill His plans in history. The believer knows that every passing year when Jesus hasn't returned to finally establish His kingdom, is an opportunity for more to come to repentance and new life from the God revealed in Jesus.

When Anna sees Jesus, “she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” [Luke 1:38].

At the end of these remarkable events, we’re told that Mary and Joseph took their child back to Nazareth, where He would grow strong, be filled with God’s wisdom, and have God’s grace upon Him.

The waiting then, wasn’t over.

It would be decades before Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But those events--Good Friday and Easter Sunday--were worth the wait.

Even today, on the other side of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, we are called, like Simeon and Anna, to wait with trust and hope in the midst of days we can't understand or explain, believing that God has what is best for us in mind.

And, like Mary and Joseph, we are called to do the everyday tasks of life that God calls each of us to do, all to God’s glory.

To me, this, in fact, surfaces one of the primary takeaways from today’s Gospel lesson: Following Christ isn’t, in this life, the glorious, flawless, brimming with success and easy procession that the false teachers on TV make it out to be. Waiting trustingly for the unfolding of God’s plans for our lives--as individuals and as believers in Jesus--is something we go at each day as we follow Christ above all else: as we do our duty to God, our families, and our communities; as we worship and pray and learn to know God better through His Word.

Mary, Joseph, Simeon, and Anna all must have had times when their faith was tested, when prayers seemed futile, when grief worked at driving a wedge between God and them. But our text tells us that they remained steadfast in focusing on the Lord they actually held in their arms and attended to that day in the temple.

Many years after the events in today’s Gospel lesson, the apostle Paul would tell a young pastor, Timothy: “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” [2 Timothy 4:8]

Everyone loves babies, I think. (Except, maybe when they cry?) But the baby Jesus is the only Child Who can change our eternities, giving us life with God. For a needy world, He was worth the faithful waiting exhibited by Simeon and Anna.

And for all He has in mind for us, He is worthy of waiting for all that He has in mind for us in ways no less faithful...and no less certain of His good plans for us. Amen