Sermon - Christmas Day 2023 - John 1:1-18

Madonna and Child, Giovanni B attista Salvi da Sassoferrato, 1640

Jesus dwells among mankind.

1. Separation from God

1. God created all things through His Word and walked among mankind.

2. With the entrance of sin man is kept distant from God

2. Nearness to God

1. The tabernacle/temple of the Old Testament brought God closer to His people, although there was still separation.

2. The creative Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, no separation, instead communion between God and man.

Merry Christmas! “For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given.” This only-begotten Son born in the flesh has set us free from the bondage of Sin! Today all the earth rejoices and the fullness thereof, since God has become man to set His people free and usher us into His nearer presence. The whole world changed because God has now become man; no longer is man kept at a distance from God since Jesus dwells among man.

Think back to 2020. We Americans had a fairly easy time social distancing, because we’re already a socially distant people. We’re kind of repulsed by St. Paul’s common concluding instruction at the end of many of his epistles to greet one another with a holy kiss. We often shy away from handshakes and hugs, nevermind a kiss! We like having lots of space to ourselves, not just our personal bubble, but we like having some land in-between our house and the next. We love the old adage: good fences make good neighbors. Sharing walls and being that close to others is perhaps the hardest part of living in an apartment.

We also do this socially, where we interact with family and friends through a screen instead of face to face. I don’t mean using technology to communicate when we’re far apart, I mean using technology when we’re in the same building or even room, or we use it as an excuse so that we don’t have to come together. So we have video conferencing, or social media, or text messaging, or emailing.

One of the obvious and unfortunate results of this is that people feel lonely and isolated from one another. Like God said in the Garden of Eden: “It is not good that man should be alone.” We are not meant to be isolated and lonely. This is not the way God wants us to live; neither isolated from one another or isolated from Him. Instead, this isolation and separation are a result of sin.

In the beginning God created the world through His creative Word. God wasn’t distant or separate from man, but near, intimately so! “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Like a Divine Potter with clay in His hands God fashioned man from the dust of the earth. Later, “the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man.” God’s creation of man is uniquely intimate in the entire creation, since everything else is simply made through God’s Word, but mankind is created by God in physical closeness.

It’s only with the entrance of sin that God and man are now kept separate. When “they heard the sound of Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God.” Sin brought about such a profound separation that God and man could not dwell together anymore. The Lord had to drive them out from the garden and banish them from His presence.

But God’s and man’s holy desire is not to be separate from each other, but to be near to one another. For instance, Moses desired to see the glory of the Lord, but God told him that “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” A few individuals in the Bible, instead of dying, it says that they walked with God and they were thus taken into His nearer presence.

Later God dwelt among His people in the tabernacle, a tent made with human hands, and then the temple, a house made with human hands. “The cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.” But even within this tabernacle God had to be separated from His people. Moses “brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen, and screened the ark of the testimony, as the LORD had commanded Moses.” Most people could not even come near to God in the tabernacle. Moses wasn’t even able to enter the tabernacle when the glory of the Lord filled it. When the temple was constructed most people couldn’t even get close to the holy place, and only the high priest could enter the most holy place once a year, and then only after much preparation. God’s nearness towards man was greatly limited due to sin.

But all of that changed with the birth of Jesus! “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” or literally it says “tabernacled among us!” Meaning, the same God who dwelt among His people in a tent made with hands now dwells among His people in a “tent” not made with hands, namely, in the person of Jesus Christ. The fullness of God dwells bodily in the person of Jesus! So in Jesus “we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace… grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

How could this be? Only because Jesus became man. He’s not just like a man, or partly human, but is Himself fully human and fully divine. Having become man He took into Himself all of our sins which separate us from God, and was crucified in order to atone for those sins. Thus, through Jesus Christ we have all received grace upon grace, and that which separates us from God was removed by God in order to bring us nearer to God. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.” The only way to the Father is through the Son, Jesus Christ, and His grace which He so lavishly and abundantly showers upon us.

So it is through the same Word of God which so intimately created us in the beginning, that now became flesh and dwells among us. So that all who believe in His name He has given “the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” We have all become children of God through Jesus! You know what little children are like, they can’t help but be close to people. They’re right in your face, always touching you, wanting hugs and cuddles and kisses. So are we now children of God our heavenly Father!

The picture of the nativity is a wonderful image of God’s desire to be close to us through Jesus. Think of how close baby Jesus was to His mother Mary. She nursed Him, changed His diapers, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and cuddled Him wherever she went. Jesus was as near to Mary as a baby is to his mother. So, God is near to us who are His children. As close as a mother and baby are, we are even closer to God through faith in Jesus.

Through the birth of Christ and His entire ministry, from the manger to the tomb to ascending on the clouds, Jesus has brought us not just near to Him, but in communion with Him. God unites Himself to us. The Word of God tabernacles in our hearts and when He’s made flesh tabernacles on our tongues. 

The loneliness and isolation of modern America finds communion only in the person of Jesus, the Word made flesh, who dwells among us. You today have a greater closeness to God than the saints in the Old Testament. The Israelites only had shadows and prefigurements, but you have the real deal in the person of Jesus! Modern Americans think technology will bring them closer to each other, but only through Christ can we truly commune with one another. Many today are living in the darkness and do not know the true Light which gives light to everyone, so they grope about in the darkness looking to be closer to their deceased relatives and the gods of their own devices. But you know the true Light and believe in His name, so you’re not groping in the dark, but you have communion with the God of the universe who made you and gives you the gift of eternal life. Merry Christmas!