WEEKLY SERMON

Christmas Day - John 1:1-14 –
This Christmas, Celebrate by Opening Wide Your Ears and Eyes!
December 25, 2009 by: Pastor Benjamin Wessel

 John 1:1-14 – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received 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. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Introduction – It’s natural to see bright eyes at Christmas, eyes that seem to shout “WOW!” Most often they seem to be children’s eyes, but sometimes they are the eyes of adults as well. They are eyes that open wide when they see bright and flashing decorations; glittering wrapping paper, a display of good food. Maybe your eyes are bigger than your stomach which can’t handle all the good food that your eyes would love to swallow up.

It’s also natural for ears to be tuned to a special frequency at Christmas, extra sensitive to certain familiar songs that make you happy or reach deep into your emotions. We hear fun songs about snow and children’s stories; songs about love—missing those we love and helping those in need; and, of course, songs about the most important birthday of all time.  When I was young it would have been a new Star Wars action figure or spaceship or maybe a GI Joe that would have opened up my eyes as wide as they could go. Or maybe it was an exciting movie that I had seen in the theater which came out on Videocassette.

Eyes and ears are focused in a very special way this time of year for many people. But it’s temporary, isn’t it? Decorations come down—eventually. Meals become everyday food instead of something special. The wide eyes squint again as they are filled with e-mail messages and memos and books for work and school and numbers that keep our lives stable and our bank accounts constantly shrinking and growing as we pay for this life in these United States. Our open ears will eventually turn off the Christmas music and tune again to the massive amounts of information poured out of television and radio, on our cell phones, from our friends, family, and co-workers who help to keep life real for us. Isn’t that how it goes?

This Christmas, I want you to listen more carefully, and see more clearly, so that when life goes on after Christmas, you aren’t hearing anything different than the Word of God spoken to you and aren’t seeing anything different than the Light which came to shine in your life. Even without ears and without eyes, you can hear and see, because the hearing and seeing God talks about today doesn’t depend so much on functioning organs of our body, but on the grace of God and the power of his Holy Spirit. It is hearing and seeing that you enjoy as children who have been born again, not by your will power or the power of any other person, but born again by the grace and truth of our God. This new birth was made possible in your life because of the One whose birth we celebrate today.
                                This Christmas, Celebrate by Opening Wide Your Ears and Eyes!
                                I. With your ears, hear the Word of God that has spoken to you
                                II. With your eyes, see the Light of Life that has shined on you

I. With your ears, hear the Word of God that has spoken to you
Who would you like to meet in person? Think about someone, either someone who is alive right now or someone from history. What would it mean to you to meet that person? How excited would you be? What would you say to the person? Or do you think you would keep your mouth shut because you would be afraid of saying something that would sound silly and you wouldn’t want that person to think you are a silly person who is nervous and excited about meeting him or her? Maybe some of you have had opportunities like this, to meet someone famous that you have always wanted to meet.

Take those emotions and thoughts and nervous excitement and the awe that you are imagining right now and multiply them by a trillion. I would think that would only touch the surface of what Mary felt when she held her firstborn, the Son of God himself, the Creator of all life, in her hands. The One who was all powerful, forever with God, yet so weak and seemingly helpless.

What thoughts were dancing around in Joseph’s mind? Here he was with his fiancée, in the hometown of his ancestors and there was no cradle for her to place her newborn Son, so they had to use a box used for animal feed. If this child really was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would save his people from their sins, as the angel had told him, wouldn’t there be a more fitting way for him to be born?

And the shepherds who were pulling the night shift in the fields with their sheep, what were their thoughts? It was apparently no different a night than normal, except Bethlehem was unusually crowded with people. But the angel’s announcement and the words of praise to God the chorus of angels spoke and then the shepherds saw for themselves, just as the angel said—the baby wrapped in strips of cloth. The angel said the baby they saw in the manger was their Savior; the angel said the baby they saw was Christ the Lord, the Chosen One that every faithful Jewish family hoped for to come and rescue their people. We know they glorified and praised God. It must have brought tears to the eyes of Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. They got to witness what their ancestors had not seen. They could confess with John: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The glory was hidden, but revealed to their faithful hearts by angels.

This Word of God, who was with God in the beginning, when God spoke our planet and its elements into existence, became a part of his creation. He became just like one of those people he had made and he lived just like one of us, from conception to birth, growing up, eating, sleeping, living, and dying.

Just as God had spoken when he made the stars of the universe and all their systems, the plant and animal life here on earth, the rocks and water that make up our planet, so also when Christ, the Son of God became a human being, God was speaking to us. The Word that has been with God had a message of grace and truth to proclaim.

The Word of God, Jesus Christ, tells you that God has seen your problem and he has brought the solution with him. The problem is that you have been deaf to his will. You have closed your ears to the person God would have you be and have left him to form your own ideas of life. Your sinful nature has engaged in selective hearing, listening only to those who say, “Do whatever makes you happy and don’t let anyone tell you its wrong. As long as no one gets hurt, it must be fine.” You have selectively listened to the GPS from within instead of hearing the Word from above who has spoken to his creation ever since the beginning. You have chosen to be self-guided instead of guided by the Word. That is the problem.

So the Word of God became a human being in order to speak the truth to us. That is the solution. This is the truth. You are guilty. God condemns all your sin. Your sentence is pronounced: The wages of sin is death. But your Savior has come, born to walk a mile in your shoes, submissive to the law of God, to buy your freedom and make you God’s own. The Word speaks the truth about God’s grace—the baby born of Mary will be condemned instead and punished instead with hell’s desperation and horror. Then you will be forever free, by the grace of your merciful God.

Could Mary and Joseph and the shepherds comprehend what their newborn Savior would go through in his life and death? Before the fact of Jesus’ ministry and death, they still needed to live by faith in God’s promises given through those heavenly angels of God. All they could see was this baby, who probably looked no different than any other Jewish baby.

God often wraps power in weakness, doesn’t he? He brings faith through the Word, washes sins away with the Word in water, gives the peace of sins forgiven with the Word in bread and wine. The almighty Word of God, without whom nothing was made that has been made, was a baby. His voice may have seemed nothing more than his cry and the inhale and exhale of his lungs, but the presence of the Word of God among us has spoken volumes upon volumes of God’s grace. The presence of the baby of Bethlehem speaks, “The time has come for you to know how deep the love of the Father of life really is. The time has come to rescue the people of the earth from the punishment of their sins. The time has come for the world to know the eternal peace that God, with his big heart, offers to all people.”

II. With your eyes, see the Light of Life that has shined on you
The fancy word for what we celebrate at Christmas is the incarnation, “in flesh”. There is no doubt about what is said here. The Word became flesh. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. The Creator of all life was becoming one of those people with a body and soul, just like the first people he had created at the beginning. Why? It’s all about light. The light that darkness hides, but cannot put out.

As people try to understand what life is all about and try to get a concept of why we exist, where we’ve been and where we are going, the idea of seeing God in the flesh is often very hard to swallow. How could that baby have been God? Unbelievable! God is supernatural and everywhere, the Supreme Being, a spiritual force that directs and sustains life. You can’t wrap him up in a human package and feel his hair and have his little fingers hold onto yours. How foolish an idea is that? For many people who acknowledge that there is some intelligent, invisible, powerful being, they believe that being doesn’t reveal itself in ways that we can see or hear or touch. How could a being that has no limits limit itself to a mortal existence here on earth? Why would it?

I think that we have to admit that it is unbelievable! It seems unreasonable, until by Spirit given faith you take God at his word and recognize God’s ability to do anything, even humble himself to be born of a virgin. It’s doesn’t seem to make sense until you read in God’s Word why he had to and how the Son of God becoming one of us was the only way for us to be saved, not only from the guilt of our every day sins we trail behind us on our path through life, but saved also from the human guilt that we inherit because we are descendents of Adam and Eve.

The physical and spiritual parts of our lives aren’t really supposed to be separate. Every human being with a body and soul should know that it is God who gives life and the conscience within every person should guide that person to know how to serve the Creator. But there is that darkness. It covers everything, so that from the most knowledgeable scientist, with stunning ability to experiment and observe, to those living simple hunter and gatherer lives in the jungle, all people are essentially blind. We see the evidence of the Creator, but our own will that we possess is hostile to that Creator. It is that darkness that was set like a fire in Eden and has spread throughout the world. It blankets every culture and time and has even infected nature which is groaning, waiting for happy relief.

Throughout history, the Light of life has continued to shine in the darkness through the promise of his coming, promises given to specially chosen people in history—Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah. Then he came and burned brightly, the Light of the world drawing attention to his glory for a short time. But still only some saw the Light. Most remained in the darkness. But those who believed in his name, who became children born a second birth from God himself, took their testimony about the Light and spread it in ripples throughout the Middle East, into Asia, Europe, and Africa, and those who heard it spread it to their children and friends and strangers. The Light of life still shines as the knowledge of the grace and truth he brought is taught throughout the world and God gives birth to more of his children.

The darkness of sin and unbelief will never understand the Light of life. By God’s grace, we also know that the darkness of sin and unbelief will never overcome the Light of life. In the most natural, loving way, God reached out to us, his people, by becoming just like us. Many people have stubbornly refused the Light, choosing to remain in darkness, where people think they can hide their ungodly lives without guilt or fear. But the Light will expose everything at the end of the world.

By God’s grace, you see the Light of life for what he really is. You are not in darkness, but by the Spirit, you look into the manger and believe that this little newborn boy is the Light of life and has kept the universe going ever since it was first made by God. This little baby boy knew that no price was too great to pay for you to be with him in the family of God, now and forever. So the Light of life came into the world, by way of a young woman’s womb. And the Light shined brightly, revealing the grace and truth of God, our merciful Father, lighting the path home for our restless bodies and souls.

Conclusion – I really enjoy walking or driving around and seeing the lights displays at Christmas. There is something about the lights, shining bright in the dark night, that is very comforting, even if some displays are maybe a little overdone. And boy, the Christmas carols we have sung this morning and have been singing over the last few weeks, along with Advent hymns and listening to recordings. It’s a feast of musical joy for the ears.

But deeper still, we hear the Word of God, speaking grace and truth, more joyful than any music that we can put to pen and paper and produce with our voice or hands on an instrument. Deeper still, we see the Light of life, who shows us grace and truth, more clearly and more wonderful than a thousand light displays. The baby conceived and born of Mary is God, the Creator, the Giver of all life. I pray that my ears may never be deaf to God’s own Word or my eyes blind to God’s own Light.

What is it really that we are celebrating today? A birthday for a baby boy?—Yes! God showing us his loving face—Yes! We could spend a lifetime celebrating, pondering, meditating on these verses about the wonderful glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Nothing affects your life more than what these words tell you. Nothing affects your attitude at work more than these words. Nothing affects your life with your family more than these words. Nothing affects your development from childhood to youth to adulthood to maturity to the final years of your life more than these words. May the celebration never end – not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, never in our lifetime, never after our lifetime, because there we will also shout for joy with the angels: “Glory to God in the Highest” and we will testify in eternity that the angels were right, our Savior was born for us. Amen. Alleluia!