The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. St. John 1:1-14
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The familiar Christmas stories are told by Saint Luke and Saint Matthew. You could say that Luke tells the story from Mary’s perspective, and that Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s standpoint. Yet the Gospel appointed by the Church from the earliest times to be read on Christmas Day is neither Luke nor Matthew; it is the great prologue of the Gospel according to Saint John. This tells the story not from the perspective of the parents but of God. It starts before creation, before time itself.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This Word, by whom all things were made, says Saint John, was made flesh and dwelt among us. He means that the baby lying in the manger, the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, the wonder-working healer, the man of sorrows on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, is this very Word which was in the beginning with God. He means that Jesus Christ, whom we call the Savior of the world, is the Word by whom all things were made. The Lord going about his Father’s business restoring people to life is the same Lord who created life in the first place. To put it bluntly, the Child of Bethlehem is God in the flesh.
This recognition took time for Jesus’ followers to realize. In Saint John’s Gospel, which begins with the proclamation of the deity of Jesus Christ, it is Doubting Thomas (our patron saint) who first makes the confession which is the climax of John’s Gospel, My Lord and my God! Thomas does this on the first Sunday after Easter. He had missed the appearance of the risen Lord the week before, and he was not prepared to take his fellow disciples’ word for it. He needed to see Jesus for himself, by which he meant the crucified Lord – the prints of the nails in his hands and side. Jesus met his need, but Saint Thomas does not appear to have taken up the Lord’s invitation to touch his wounds, instead crying out his great confession, My Lord and my God.
In the light of the Resurrection, the disciples could then recall any number of occasions that Jesus said and did things indicating his deity (I and the Father are one; he who sees me sees the Father; before Abraham was, I am. Your sins are forgiven. I am the bread of life. Lazarus come forth.) They have passed along this good news to the Church Christ founded.
You can feel Saint John’s own excitement about this in one of his Epistles. Remember that the Beloved Disciple had leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper. He writes, “It was there from the beginning; we have heard it; we have seen it with our own eyes; we looked upon it, and felt it with our own hands; and it is of this we tell…the word of life. This life was made visible; we have seen it and bear our testimony…” (I John 1:1ff NEB)
Now we might ask, if those first disciples saw the Lord and touched him, what, besides their testimony, enables us to do the same? Well, we could begin with the Sacrament we are about to celebrate, the same Sacrament shared by those first disciples. But there is more, much more. The visibility of Jesus consists in the continuation of the love he displayed. Only the person who loves dwells in the light and life of Jesus Christ. The person who does not love is in the dark and is still in the realm of death. Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, for God is love. The love John speaks of is the love God showed to us by sending his Son, the Word made flesh, as the remedy for our sins. If God so loved us, the Incarnation of his Son is made visible by our loving one another as he has loved us.
So the outward and visible sign of the ongoing presence of the Child born in Bethlehem is not only the bread and wine of Holy Communion. The Real Presence of Christ is proved by the deeds of love done in his Church by his disciples, and wherever self-giving love may be found. Christmas comes whenever love springs into action; the Word which was made flesh in Bethlehem lives today by this means.
Dearly Beloved in Christ (that is Saint John’s phrase), let us love one another as Christ has loved us, and thereby enjoy and spread the glory of Christmas.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
