Before God Incarnate: A Sermon for Christmas Day (III)

If you were here for the 4th Sunday of Advent and if you were here yesterday, you will have noticed a great deal of emphasis on birth. Last Sunday we heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus, and yesterday we heard Luke’s. Both involved Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Both tell us how God became incarnate – how God became enfleshed – as one of us…as a human being in the world. And both of these narratives are essential to the Christian story. Mark’s gospel was the first one written, and he chose not to include an infancy narrative for Jesus. Clearly Matthew and Luke felt like the story of God’s enfleshment – the  incarnation - needed to be included in the larger narrative. And aren’t you glad that they did?! It’s hard to imagine the Christian story without Mary, Joseph, the angels, the Magi, and the shepherds. But Mark told it without them, and as we heard today, so did John.

John wrote a good bit later than the other three, and he likely had access to some version of Mark’s, Matthew’s, and Luke’s telling of the story. And it appears that John wanted to make something clear that the others didn’t touch on. John wanted to make sure that we all know that the 2nd person of the Trinity existed before Jesus of Nazareth was born. God’s divine Word – God’s Logos – existed alongside God the Father and God the Holy Spirit from the very beginning – even before the world was created.

John very purposefully began his Gospel in the same way that the creation narrative in Genesis begins…with the words “In the beginning.” This “copy and paste” job by John was very intentional. John’s story doesn’t focus on a particular time, particular place, and particular people in the way that  Matthew’s and Luke’s do. John is taking us back to the very beginning, before the world was created, and making sure that we know that God’s divine Word was an active agent in creation, as well as all that has happened and all that will happen since then. John wanted to make sure that before humankind was invited to make room for Jesus, Jesus made room for humankind by creating us!

It might even sound a little callous or scandalous, but dare I say that God’s divine Word didn’t need to be born to exist. If Mary had said “no” to God, and if Joseph had said “no” to the angel in his dreams, the story indeed would have been different. But God’s divine Word would still exist.

So if this is the case, what’s the point of preaching on John’s cosmic gospel on Christmas Day if there is no birth narrative? After all, Christmas is about the celebration of the birth of Jesus, right?

I actually think that the prologue to John’s gospel does involve a birth narrative. It’s just not like Matthew’s and Luke’s. It doesn’t involve the mother Mary. And it doesn’t involve the baby Jesus. John almost casually includes the detail that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” He doesn’t include how, where, or when. But there is still a conception, a pregnancy and a birth. It just so happens that we are the ones in whom and through whom Jesus is born. John says, “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.”

John is inviting us to receive Christ, and to believe in his name. And in doing so, the great mystery of Christmas is that it is we who are born on this day…not of the flesh, but of God. And every Christmas we are invited, like the mother Mary, to “ponder these things in our heart.” And in so doing, we can be born again each and every time we make room in our hearts and in our lives for Christ to dwell within us. It is we who are carrying and giving birth to the Good News of Jesus Christ in the world. And the great mystery of Christmas is that in so doing, it is we who are being born anew in Christ Jesus.