The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord | 25 December 2024 | A Sermon on John 1:14 | by Samuel Zumwalt |
John 14 © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers]

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

THE DOWN-TO -EARTH GOD

         Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 God is a down-to-earth God. God, who is a community within Himself; God, who is Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit; God, who alone is God, the One through whom all things came into being and without whom nothing came into being: That God is a down-to-earth God!

God is not an aloof God who despises earthly stuff. God is not a far-off God who has gotten things going and then gone on an extended vacation. God is not a unfeeling God who watches us dispassionately from a distance and must somehow be coerced to act on our behalf. God is a down-to-earth God.

God so loved the world that is hostile to Him, rebellious against Him, uninterested in Him, that He spoke Himself into flesh in the Virgin Mary’s womb (Jn 3:16). The Word that was in the beginning with God and the Word that is God. That Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Greek word “eskenosen” translated “dwelt” has the sense of “living in a tent” or “tabernacled.” That God, whose presence Israel in the wilderness experienced supernaturally in the Tabernacle, has now come down-to-earth in human flesh to tabernacle among us – to dwell with us in flesh like ours, because He loves us!

God, the Word made flesh in the Virgin Mary’s womb; God the Word made flesh born of the Virgin Mary; God the Word made flesh wrapped tightly and provocatively in rags and laid in an animal feeding trough is the down-to-earth God whose glory (in Greek “doxa”), whose Majesty, we can see right where we are — in the muck and mire of real life where both babies and animals urinate and defecate. God can have a Son! God does have a Son! God is Father-Son-and-Holy-Spirit, one God in three persons, who can be and is Himself a community within Himself unlike us. God is a down-to-earth God, because without Him, and the new birth He alone gives in Baptism, we all otherwise remain lost and condemned sinners who cannot save ourselves! Matthew 9:36 and Mark 6:34 describe the Lord Jesus as having compassion on the crowds who were like sheep without a Shepherd!

In Jesus, God’s one-of-a-kind Son, we have seen the Majesty of the down-to-earth God sent by His one-of-a-kind Father. Yes, we have seen the Majesty of God in His Son Jesus, the down-to-earth God, Who is full of grace and truth, because He is Himself Grace, the Gift of God, and Truth. Already in God’s down-to-earth Son born of the Virgin Mary, we see what we were truly created to be when we were created in the image of God. We were created for God. We were created to live intimately experiencing God’s eternal life and love. We were created to live intimately experiencing the Majesty of God and serving Him by serving one another. But our first parents rebelled against God, and we still rebel against God, making the Gift of Himself to be nothing much in our eyes. Standing next to the down-to-earth God, who is both Gift and Truth, we are seen for what we are…rebels in need of redeeming.

This is the reason that God is a down-to-earth God, because He must come down to us to live the life we cannot obedient live and to die the innocent death we cannot die, so that He alone can save us, who are born dead in our trespasses, by joining us in Baptism to His saving death and resurrection. Martin Luther calls this the “froehliche Wechsel,” the happy exchange, where the down-to-earth God in human flesh takes my sin and my death to His cross and gives me His eternal life and righteousness as a free gift. Indeed, John’s Gospel makes the point that the down-to-earth God’s “doxa,” His Majesty, is only fully known when the Lord Jesus Christ is nailed to the cross for us!

I cannot become a child of God through birth from my mother’s womb. I cannot become a child of God through the desire of a godly father to produce a godly child. I cannot become a child by my own reason or effort. I, who was conceived in my mother’s sinful womb by my sinful parents sometime very near Good Friday in 1953, was born in sin in January 1954, had to be fathered by God through water and the Holy Spirit on January 31 when I was only a few days old. Holy Baptism is not what I do for God. Holy Baptism is what God does for me. Holy Baptism is the Gift of God, where He joins me to the death and resurrection of the Gift of God, His beloved Son Jesus Christ. Any claim that I, who was born dead in my trespasses, can save myself falsely wastes Jesus’ death!

The Greek word “caritos” which is translated in John 1:14 as “grace” also bears the sense of not only “gift” but also “joy!” Last night we heard the angel’s tidings of great joy! Jesus, the down-to-earth God, is Joy! He is Joy to the World! He is Joy for you and Joy for me!

Now those early heretics, the Gnostics, were so enamored of the purity of spirit that they despised earthly stuff. This was a Greek idea and could not truly be the Gospel, because it denied God’s Word, His “very good” spoken over His creation (Genesis 1:31). The Gnostics denied the Word became flesh in order to die for us in flesh like ours. Their Gnostic redeemer could only be sort of like the invasion of the body snatchers. The Gnostic redeemer could only come down to temporarily inhabit a body in order to give supernatural knowledge. The Gnostic redeemer could not die for the sins of the world in human flesh. These Gnostic ideas were heresy then and are still heresy today. Heresy means literally to choose wrongly.

God is a down-to-earth God in Jesus Christ. He lives the obedient life we cannot live and dies the innocent death we cannot die so that we can be joined to His death and resurrection and be born from above by water and the Holy Spirit in Baptism. The Word became flesh. The Word joins Himself to water in order to give us His saving Bath. If you are not baptized, or if your child is not baptized, why are you waiting? You cannot save yourself or your child.

God is a down-to-earth God in Jesus Christ for us and our salvation, so that the baptized can, through water and the Holy Spirit, share in the One God’s eternal life and love, that which we lost when our rebellious first parents were expelled from Paradise.

His disciples did not understand what their Lord and Master was saying when He said “unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood you have no life in you” (John 6:53). His disciples did not understand when He promised “This is my Body; this is my Blood given and shed for you” (1 Corinthians 11:24; Matthew 26:26; Luke 22:19). Only later in Cleopas’ house on Easter night did His disciples begin to recognize the Crucified and Risen Jesus is present in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35). Indeed, Luke reports of the brand new Church in Acts, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42).

God is a down-to-earth God in Jesus Christ. The Word of God joins Himself to bread and wine in order that the baptized may continue to abide in Him. Each time we take into our hands and into our mouths the True Body and Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus, He gives us forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and the promise of salvation. We, who cannot by our own reason or effort save ourselves or lift ourselves up to God, receive the down-to-earth God in the Host and the Cup. This is what He promises. This is what He gives. He gives us Himself, the down-to-earth God that we may be His forever.

So… hear again the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11, KJV).

On this day when we celebrate the Word made flesh dwelling among us full of grace and truth. On this day when we see again His Majesty in the earthly stuff of Bread and Wine. Let us offer our thanks and praise. Yes, let us rejoice, for Jesus is Joy for us!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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©Samuel D. Zumwalt

szumwalt@stmatthewsch.org

St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (AALC)

Wilmington, North Carolina USA