Exodus 40:17-21, 34-38; Titus 3:4-7; St John 1:1-14(15-18)
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Where I served my vicarage (over 10 years ago now) the congregation had a large marquee billboard on the corner of the church yard. The Pastor liked to post his sermon title or theme on it. Mine were never that original or innovative. I think the first one was, “Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost.” Not really an ear grabber. That Christmas, though, Pastor thought he had come up a brilliant strategy, a wittily appropriate sermon title perfect for the season: “Free Gift Wrapping.”
He worked from home that week, but I can’t tell you how many stopped by with their unwrapped Christmas presents asking about the sign out front. The church secretary and I explained its meaning. None of them came back for Christmas Day Divine Service. So that kind of backfired.
But his point was nevertheless true. The Nativity of our Lord is God wrapping Himself in our flesh and presenting His only Son to us as the free gift of salvation. Which is to say that the incarnation is not some kind of random fact that stands alone and unto itself. The incarnation of was a purposeful and effective act of the eternal Word. That’s why the text of St John’s Gospel moves directly from the incarnation of the Word to the dwelling of the Word and the revelation of His glory.
And in terms of St John’s Gospel this glory is not the birth of Jesus the Christ, but rather, His passion and death. The crucifixion of the Christ Child, the bloody sacrifice of the God-Man, that is the manifestation of the divine glory.
And this is the truth that has drawn us here this cold Monday morning. The beautiful and wonderful truth that the Son of God has become our Brother, tabernacled in our flesh, to dwell among us, never ceasing to be God, who rescued us from sin and death. The 11th Century Greek Father, Theophylact, said it this way: “You should not think that the Word abandoned His own nature and was changed into our flesh. For He would not be God if He were changed and transformed. But remaining what He was, He became what He was not” (Weinrich, 166).
The point is this: if God the eternal Word was changed into flesh then the story of Jesus would no longer be the story of Immanuel, God with us. Or worse, of God for us. God the Word did not cease to be the divine person that He is, but assumed as His own the life of man and so lived as Man. And died as a Man.
This is what is means for Him to become flesh; to become a true Man, of soul and body consisting, remaining equal with the Father and the Spirt as to His Godhead, yet below them as to His humanity. Consider this: when Adam was formed by God from the dust of the earth, he received the breath of life, the ruach YHWH, the Spirit of God, and became a living soul. Through sin, however, the flesh was stripped naked of this grace and the living being fell into death through the flesh. Now, through the incarnation of the Word the tragic story of man’s fall and of his being bereft of the Spirit begins to be reversed. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “The flesh, when it became His, had to participate in the immorality that comes from Him.” The Word is not transformed or changed into flesh, but assumes the reality of our sin and curse. God becomes man in order to make men His again; to renew fellowship in the Divine life; a participation in the Blessed Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We are wading into pretty deep theological waters here. Some of us still need floaties. Maybe this is why those folks from vicarage didn’t stay. They wanted something simple. The warm nostalgia of Christmas. Fresh baked cookies, chestnuts and fires, you know, the Charlie Brown Christmas experience. They wanted Dickens and got Dostoevsky. Such is the nature of the mystery of the faith, however. Augustine quipped that the Scriptures are shallow enough for a baby to bathe, yet deep enough to drown an elephant.
Before we get too scared, let us plunge back into the deep end. St John writes, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Often this is understood as an extension of His becoming flesh; He walked among us as a Man. He dwelt among us indicates His two natures. This is true, but the Spirit does not inspire randomly. He means more.
The terms, “dwelling,” “seeing glory,” and “grace and truth,” are signals that the Evangelist intends his narrative to stand in the wider revelation of Sacred Scripture and to be understood in relation to the theophanic glory of the giving of the Torah on Sinai and with those Old Testament texts that proclaim the dwelling of YHWH’s glory in the tabernacle and temple. Initially God commanded Moses to make a tabernacle in which the ark and the first tablets of stone were to be placed. This is the place of His dwelling.
I say “first” tablets because after the idolatry of Israel and Moses’ smashing of the tablets, God gives the Torah a second time on two new stone tablets. But this time He identifies Himself as the God of mercy and grace, slow to anger and full of mercy and truth. Now the dwelling of God and His glory is associated with His grace toward a sinful and wayward people who give themselves over to idolatry.
When the tabernacle had been constructed, as you heard in the Old Testament reading and the Ark of the Covenant with the new, that is second, tablets within was brought into the tabernacle. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This is the same cloud and the same glory that descended on Sinai! When Israel finally entered the Promised Land God told David through the prophet Nathan that David’s seed would build a House for His “Name” and that the “throne of His Kingdom” would last forever.
When Solomon completed the Temple, the glory of YHWH filled it. And His presence was coupled with His Torah. By these God dwelt with His people, so long as they were obedient, that is faithful to His Word and will. His presence among them was both in mercy and love and constant sign of divine wrath and judgment. In other words, both Law and Gospel. The destruction of the Temple, the place of God’s dwelling, was the punishment brought upon disobedient Israel when the glory of the Lord left it.
All of this, all of this imagery and reality, along with visions of Ezekiel, the theophanies to Abraham, Joshua, and Hannah, the exalted Servant of Isaiah, in short, the entirety of the Old Testament, all its prophecies and promises, are packed together, brought to fulfillment, and instantiated in the Word becoming flesh and εσκηνωσεν - enfleshed, enskinned - among us! The Torah of God came through Moses on stone tablets. The true eternal Torah, the Full Gift of the Truth, came through Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may add this title to the O Antiphons of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. “Full of grace and truth,” is not merely a characteristic of God, but is a title of the very God of very God, the sole-begotten One. Jesus is the Full Gift of the Truth.
This is the mystery of our Christian faith, dear ones. The mystery into which angels gaze. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. You cannot climb to heaven to find God. You cannot go to the manger or even to the Cross on Golgotha. Would you know God? Would you enjoy His fellowship and love? Would you be enfolded into the mystery? Behold the Gift of Salvation wrapped in the flesh of man and presented to you. This is your manger: the Word. The Word made flesh. The Word enscripturated. Jesus, swaddled in His Word for you to come and behold Him, born the King of Angels.
He is the goodness and loving kindness of God. He is your Savior and Tabernacle and Torah. Rejoice at His birth. Glory in His Cross. Receive Him. Believe in His Name. For He has made you children of God, begotten from above by the mystery of His Word and Water. And here, beloved, is His fullness - His humanity and His divinity - His Body and Blood, grace upon grace, overflowing to you. Here, at His Altar, is your Bethlehem, your House of Bread and His Temple, enfleshed among you, by which He dwells with you and you with Him. Here in His light and life He forgives your sins and gives you faith and eternity together with His Father by His Spirit, who with the Son, be glory now, as it was in the beginning, world without end. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Where I served my vicarage (over 10 years ago now) the congregation had a large marquee billboard on the corner of the church yard. The Pastor liked to post his sermon title or theme on it. Mine were never that original or innovative. I think the first one was, “Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost.” Not really an ear grabber. That Christmas, though, Pastor thought he had come up a brilliant strategy, a wittily appropriate sermon title perfect for the season: “Free Gift Wrapping.”
He worked from home that week, but I can’t tell you how many stopped by with their unwrapped Christmas presents asking about the sign out front. The church secretary and I explained its meaning. None of them came back for Christmas Day Divine Service. So that kind of backfired.
But his point was nevertheless true. The Nativity of our Lord is God wrapping Himself in our flesh and presenting His only Son to us as the free gift of salvation. Which is to say that the incarnation is not some kind of random fact that stands alone and unto itself. The incarnation of was a purposeful and effective act of the eternal Word. That’s why the text of St John’s Gospel moves directly from the incarnation of the Word to the dwelling of the Word and the revelation of His glory.
And in terms of St John’s Gospel this glory is not the birth of Jesus the Christ, but rather, His passion and death. The crucifixion of the Christ Child, the bloody sacrifice of the God-Man, that is the manifestation of the divine glory.
And this is the truth that has drawn us here this cold Monday morning. The beautiful and wonderful truth that the Son of God has become our Brother, tabernacled in our flesh, to dwell among us, never ceasing to be God, who rescued us from sin and death. The 11th Century Greek Father, Theophylact, said it this way: “You should not think that the Word abandoned His own nature and was changed into our flesh. For He would not be God if He were changed and transformed. But remaining what He was, He became what He was not” (Weinrich, 166).
The point is this: if God the eternal Word was changed into flesh then the story of Jesus would no longer be the story of Immanuel, God with us. Or worse, of God for us. God the Word did not cease to be the divine person that He is, but assumed as His own the life of man and so lived as Man. And died as a Man.
This is what is means for Him to become flesh; to become a true Man, of soul and body consisting, remaining equal with the Father and the Spirt as to His Godhead, yet below them as to His humanity. Consider this: when Adam was formed by God from the dust of the earth, he received the breath of life, the ruach YHWH, the Spirit of God, and became a living soul. Through sin, however, the flesh was stripped naked of this grace and the living being fell into death through the flesh. Now, through the incarnation of the Word the tragic story of man’s fall and of his being bereft of the Spirit begins to be reversed. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “The flesh, when it became His, had to participate in the immorality that comes from Him.” The Word is not transformed or changed into flesh, but assumes the reality of our sin and curse. God becomes man in order to make men His again; to renew fellowship in the Divine life; a participation in the Blessed Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We are wading into pretty deep theological waters here. Some of us still need floaties. Maybe this is why those folks from vicarage didn’t stay. They wanted something simple. The warm nostalgia of Christmas. Fresh baked cookies, chestnuts and fires, you know, the Charlie Brown Christmas experience. They wanted Dickens and got Dostoevsky. Such is the nature of the mystery of the faith, however. Augustine quipped that the Scriptures are shallow enough for a baby to bathe, yet deep enough to drown an elephant.
Before we get too scared, let us plunge back into the deep end. St John writes, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Often this is understood as an extension of His becoming flesh; He walked among us as a Man. He dwelt among us indicates His two natures. This is true, but the Spirit does not inspire randomly. He means more.
The terms, “dwelling,” “seeing glory,” and “grace and truth,” are signals that the Evangelist intends his narrative to stand in the wider revelation of Sacred Scripture and to be understood in relation to the theophanic glory of the giving of the Torah on Sinai and with those Old Testament texts that proclaim the dwelling of YHWH’s glory in the tabernacle and temple. Initially God commanded Moses to make a tabernacle in which the ark and the first tablets of stone were to be placed. This is the place of His dwelling.
I say “first” tablets because after the idolatry of Israel and Moses’ smashing of the tablets, God gives the Torah a second time on two new stone tablets. But this time He identifies Himself as the God of mercy and grace, slow to anger and full of mercy and truth. Now the dwelling of God and His glory is associated with His grace toward a sinful and wayward people who give themselves over to idolatry.
When the tabernacle had been constructed, as you heard in the Old Testament reading and the Ark of the Covenant with the new, that is second, tablets within was brought into the tabernacle. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This is the same cloud and the same glory that descended on Sinai! When Israel finally entered the Promised Land God told David through the prophet Nathan that David’s seed would build a House for His “Name” and that the “throne of His Kingdom” would last forever.
When Solomon completed the Temple, the glory of YHWH filled it. And His presence was coupled with His Torah. By these God dwelt with His people, so long as they were obedient, that is faithful to His Word and will. His presence among them was both in mercy and love and constant sign of divine wrath and judgment. In other words, both Law and Gospel. The destruction of the Temple, the place of God’s dwelling, was the punishment brought upon disobedient Israel when the glory of the Lord left it.
All of this, all of this imagery and reality, along with visions of Ezekiel, the theophanies to Abraham, Joshua, and Hannah, the exalted Servant of Isaiah, in short, the entirety of the Old Testament, all its prophecies and promises, are packed together, brought to fulfillment, and instantiated in the Word becoming flesh and εσκηνωσεν - enfleshed, enskinned - among us! The Torah of God came through Moses on stone tablets. The true eternal Torah, the Full Gift of the Truth, came through Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may add this title to the O Antiphons of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. “Full of grace and truth,” is not merely a characteristic of God, but is a title of the very God of very God, the sole-begotten One. Jesus is the Full Gift of the Truth.
This is the mystery of our Christian faith, dear ones. The mystery into which angels gaze. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. You cannot climb to heaven to find God. You cannot go to the manger or even to the Cross on Golgotha. Would you know God? Would you enjoy His fellowship and love? Would you be enfolded into the mystery? Behold the Gift of Salvation wrapped in the flesh of man and presented to you. This is your manger: the Word. The Word made flesh. The Word enscripturated. Jesus, swaddled in His Word for you to come and behold Him, born the King of Angels.
He is the goodness and loving kindness of God. He is your Savior and Tabernacle and Torah. Rejoice at His birth. Glory in His Cross. Receive Him. Believe in His Name. For He has made you children of God, begotten from above by the mystery of His Word and Water. And here, beloved, is His fullness - His humanity and His divinity - His Body and Blood, grace upon grace, overflowing to you. Here, at His Altar, is your Bethlehem, your House of Bread and His Temple, enfleshed among you, by which He dwells with you and you with Him. Here in His light and life He forgives your sins and gives you faith and eternity together with His Father by His Spirit, who with the Son, be glory now, as it was in the beginning, world without end. Amen.
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