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Christmas Day - 2002
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel lesson from St. John chapter one, particularly verse 14: We beheld His Glory.
It’s so hard sometimes to comprehend the enormity of the glory of God. We can barely fathom the vastness of God’s glory. Imagine a being so great and powerful that He created everything that is, everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be. Almighty, eternal, knowing all things, just plain beyond all of our understanding.
Now there was a time when we grasped the wonder and power of the almighty God. In the Garden we had a perfect relationship with Him, one based on love and trust, not fear. But Satan, that great deceiver, stole that away from us. He blinded our eyes to God, so that all we can do is look at ourselves and think that we understand everything.
But it is not so. You have been deceived, and the only way that God could give you Himself, the only way He could restore your blindness and raise you up from the death of your own sin was by taking on your very life. By coming down into our flesh, God raised us up to Him in a way that we can hardly imagine.
When you see Jesus, poor and helpless, and infant lying in the manger, when you see Jesus, you see God Himself. Hard to imagine? You bet. It’s more than hard. It’s impossible to imagine. But it is true. This is the very nature and character of faith. I think we can all imagine a God of judgment and fear and wrath. That somehow seems to come naturally to us. But a God who would come as a baby? That seems pretty strange, let’s face it.
And yet in that sublime mystery lies the heart and soul of the Christian faith. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made man. Do you catch that? For us men, that is, for us sons and daughters of Adam, He became Man. It’s incredible, and beyond all imagination. But the only way that you and I can know God the Father and love Him for who He is, we must go through His Son. Martin Luther once put it this way:
"We should hold of a certainty that when we look at Christ, hear Him, call upon Him, and worship Him, we are seeing, hearing, calling upon, and worshipping God the Father . . . For what you hear from Christ you hear from the eternal and invisible Father, because besides Christ there is no other God, nor are we to seek any other will of God. Those who indulge their own thoughts and speculate about God and His will without Christ lose God altogether.”[1]
He is the only way to heaven. There is no other way. We may wonder about it, question whether it seems fair somehow, or even try to ask whether this is really, truly the only way to heaven. But at the end of the day, the only way that God comes to us is through His Son, Jesus Christ.
But this is for you and I a very, very good thing. There is no other way to heaven, but why would you want any other way? Jesus has come into the flesh. Your flesh. And with that great gift comes the fullness of God’s very life for you.
It used to be that Christians, when they confessed the Nicene Creed, at the words “and was made man” would bow their heads or even kneel, at the wonder that God would become one of us. There may be some wisdom in that practice, because it helps to highlight and uphold that these are not just any words we confess; rather, we confess here the reality that God has taken on our life, and by doing that He has committed Himself to us men and our salvation.
So rejoice this Christmas Day! Sing to the Lord a new song! For He has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory. Your victory has been one by the God who takes on your very life. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
[1] What Luther Says, page 158.
This page was created on 01/10/2007 and last edited on: 01/10/2007