The Word Became Flesh

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, December 25, 2022
John 1:1-14

    Merry Christmas!  To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord!  This not just the good news the angels brought the shepherds 2000+ years ago, but good news for us today!  I love Christmas, and I love stories about Christmas in popular culture as well – I love seeing a play like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, watching A White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, going to The Nutcracker Ballet and reading classics like Clement Clark Moore’s The Night Before Christmas with my kids at bedtime.  This year, I was thinking about how many stories involve toys coming to life – Toy Story, Pinocchio, the Nutcracker and The Velveteen Rabbit all quickly come to mind.  Especially as a child, I remember thinking how cool it would be if toys came to life, and I liked imagining that when I left the house or while I was sleeping toys were out there having fun without me.
In Margery Williams’ story, if you remember, a boy gets this stuffed Velveteen Rabbit for Christmas, but quickly puts it aside for more technologically advanced toys and forgets about his rabbit for awhile. The oldest and wisest toy in the nursery, the Skin Horse, tells the Velveteen Rabbit not to worry.  He tells the Velveteen Rabbit that toys can become real when they are truly loved by their children.  He says, "Real isn't how you are made... It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real.”
    Especially at Christmas, we give thanks that God’s love for us is REAL. At Christmas, God became real for us in Jesus.  God made his love real in a baby born in a manger.  Because of the love of God for us in Jesus Christ, the love of God for all his children, God gives us the gift of Jesus.  “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” John assures us today.  This is what Christmas is all about – the magic of the season and the story of Christ’s birth is not a wonderful fairy tale or children’s story but God taking on real flesh and blood for us and for our salvation.  Christ really was born, Christ really died, and Christ has risen for us, thanks be to God!
    A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Jesus’ birth is only documented in two out of the four gospels – Luke and Matthew.  But that’s not quite accurate. This morning, we have the beginning of the gospel of John, which includes John’s cosmic Christmas story.  It’s a different, but beautiful way of understanding the gift of Christmas for us as believers.  John begins with THE beginning, with a reminder of God’s role in creation and that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit were there from the beginning.  The Word, Christ, was in the beginning with God, and the Word was with God, and without him not one thing came into being.  We have life because of Christ the Word, John tells us excitedly!  In John’s mind-blowing telling of Christmas, it’s not simply Jesus who takes on human flesh and form born as a baby in Bethlehem, but Christ who from the beginning has given us and all things life.  It’s a reversal of all those real-life toy stories in a way.  Because of Christ, WE have life!  Because of Christ, we are able to live, just as he became flesh and lived among us!  In worship this morning, we sang that favorite, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing and we rejoiced that Christ was “born that we no more may die, born to raise each child of earth, born to give us second birth.”  
    Christ the Word became flesh and lived among us to save us, so that we might not die but have a second birth and know the life that really is life.  Christmas celebrates that whatever gifts we’ve been enjoying today, God has given us the greatest gift of all, life in Jesus’ name.  In Jesus, God has taken on flesh to experience all that we experience, so that we know God is real.  Thanks be to God!  Merry Christmas!  Amen.