Christmas 2 | January 3, 2021 | A Sermon based on John 1:14 (RCL) | David Zersen |

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (NIV)

Increasingly, and this year because of the fear of what Covid might do to shopping, Christmas decorations, music and sales opportunities were pushed back into October. Despite that, shopping, the mark of a good Christmas economy, was down from 2019 in 2020! These numbers are important to economists, to amazon.com and to Macey’s in varying ways. On the one hand, 60% of shoppers now buy their presents online. Surprisingly, another 60% buy their gifts the week before Christmas. Those numbers may not make sense, but then perhaps some recipients just get IOUs on Christmas given that it may not be possible to have an online order delivered within a week! (grins)

Children, on the other hand, are another market. Remembering the joy of wandering through the toy department in large department stores at Christmas, I wonder how most children now learn what they want for Christmas? Through catalogs? Through classmates? Through TV advertising? It’s a new world and the costs for various kinds of technology toys/gifts have gone up substantially. About 22% of parents report that they will enter January in debt!

One wonders what the various characters in the crèches that we set up on our mantels think of it all. Increasingly they are relegated to less prominent locations. No more mangers in town squares. None in public school classrooms. Allowable Christmas concerts offered in public schools generally stick with “Rudolph” and “White Christmas”. “Happy Holidays” is the greeting that store clerks are instructed to give to make sure that Kwanza, Hanukah and Las Posadas share what has become our common secular experience.

The various figures in Matthew 1 and 2 as well as in Luke 2, portions of which we used to memorize, are wondering whether it’s really Christmas yet? Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, Simeon and Anna, surely even Herod, wonder if they’re waiting on the mantle for no reason at all! Our children used to enjoy moving the various figures carved from Philippine mahogany closer to the manger—as the days passed. The sheep had to be arranged, the cattle set to lowing and the shaggy and brown donkey positioned just right. It was more than playtime. It was an investment in a heritage, one that could claim us personally—even eternally.

Many are the stories that developed around the travel to and from Bethlehem. One of those stories remains on the tip of my tongue. We had traveled to Egypt in January when Americans from the North were happy to get out of the country and Egyptians were happy to share their role in the Christmas story. There are numerous stops along the Nile remembered as destinations of the Holy Family during the flight to Egypt (Mt. 2:14). At one stop, a hospitable guide in a church showed me what appeared to be a footstep in a rock. “This,” he explained, “is the footstep of the Lord Jesus when he was with us in Egypt.” Frowning, somewhat, I said, “How do you know that it is the footprint of Jesus?” “What else could it be?” he answered with both surprise and conviction.

As you can see, the stories and characters get confusing and can be imbued with a touch of humor. Children today, challenged to keep the characters straight and not mix them up with modern visitors sometimes have to be chided to let Rudolph, the Grinch, Tiny Tim and the Elves stay out of the Bethlehem story. It’s such a long journey from October until Jan 3, and it’s still only the 9th Day of Christmas today! “Are we there yet?” our children used to ask on what seemed like interminably long journeys? Are we there yet indeed!

Are we bold enough to receive the Christmas Gospel?

After all the weeks and decorations and presents and characters from Matthew and Luke, let’s check our destination with John. His Christmas Gospel is just this: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” There you have it! Quite simple. Quite  profound. So short we can put our arms around it. No waiting characters, no lowing cattle. Yet, so mysterious that we have spent centuries trying to understand it. Are we there yet, dear friends?

One the one hand, there is depth here that people like you and I will not easily grasp. I have a funny memory of a time when I was a student at the university in Goettingen, Germany and another student came up to me in the Student Union and asked if I knew what “finitum non capax inifinit” meant. I was astonished that he picked me to answer the question and that in a student lounge somebody would even ask such a question! It meant, I told him, that the infinite or the indefinable cannot take part in the finite or defined. It was a statement, I explained, used by Ulrich Zwingli to prove that in the Eucharist it was not possible to partake of anything more than bread or wine because the divine and the human have different spheres of existence. Luther countered by saying that if the divine and human are united in the incarnation, why is it not also possible in the Eucharist? Why indeed? Are we there yet?

Let me give an even more basic answer to the challenge provided by St. John’s simple Christmas paradox. At one time I possessed an etching of Hagar and Ishmael at the well in Zamzam. I offered it to a Muslim friend because it is a famous story in the Islamic heritage. He told me that he wasn’t allowed to accept it because it portrayed divine figures in a human art form, something unacceptable in Islamic theology. The divine simply cannot enter into the human—which is why, of course, that the Jesus of Nazareth known also to Muslims, can’t be divine.

Although Jewish theology had a similar view about the portrayal of divine forms in art (aniconism), modern Jewish theology has taken a more open view of the matter and artists like Marc Chagall have become famous with their portrayal of the divine in human form. Christians on the other hand took a giant leap forward with John’s explanation of the incarnation in Chapter 1, verse 14. If in Jesus we have come to see the Father, full of grace and truth, then God used our humanity to share with us the very essence of his grace and truth. Imagine that! Seriously.

At first, Christians weren’t sure what to do with such an insight. However, gradually, they came to understand that human media like art, language and music could be used to approach divinity. The Eastern Orthodox with their icons give profound examples of this. Through the human image they visit the divine. Also in the West, DaVinci, Botticelli and Fra Angelico began to paint boldly the truth that we joyfully proclaim today: God is Emmanuel, He is with us; the infinite has possessed the finite. This is a paradox and a paradox is its own kind of truth: a truth in which two opposites don’t have to make rational sense. The opposites may lay claim lay claim to one another because they introduce a new form of truth, a new story involving you and me. A new sharing of the human and the divine. Are we there yet?

Are we bold enough to share the Christmas Gospel?

Let me explore this new story with you in a personal way. It’s a story that lets the grace and truth of the Divine speak through human flesh and blood. As a child, my favorite story at Christmas time was called “Why the Chimes Rang”. It told that two brothers longed to attend Christmas Eve worship in the cathedral, but a huge snowstorm had made it impossible to get there this year. The reason both wanted to go was because the legend had it that when the greatest gift was placed on the altar, the bells that had not been heard in centuries would finally ring. The boys set out, but on the way the older had to stay behind because an old woman had fallen in a snowdrift and someone would have to help her to stay alive. The older brother gave the younger his pesos and Pedro made it to the cathedral. He watched as one-by-one, significant people placed their treasures at the altar. Even the king placed his crown in the middle of it. None caused the bells to ring—until little Pedro came quietly up the side and placed his few pesos at the altar and suddenly it happened. It was the sign—then as well as now—that the bells ring and God’s glory shines—when our love for another is more important than care for ourselves.

Martin Luther said this in a unique way worth remembering as we contemplate the meaning of the infinite becoming finite, of the One and Only becoming known to us—and then through us. Luther said that we need to see the Christ in each other and we need to be Christs to our neighbors. Knowing what I know about myself—and knowing what you know about yourselves—that may seem like a tall order. Like an impossibility. And yet we know that such stories are real—not just as the closing positive narrative at the end of the 6:00 News. They are real and happen in our neighborhood. They may seem unlikely, but when they happen, we nod and say “it’s a God thing”!

Let me give an example. As a teen I participated in a high-school play called “Dust of the Road”. I remember the title because the story touched me profoundly. On Christmas Eve, an elderly couple heard a knock at their door and they opened it to find a stranger, cold and hungry. The couple gave the stranger some food and a coat and let him warm himself by the fire before they sent him on his way. The question that haunted them, and they raised it for the audience, was “Who was this man”? “Could it have been…?” they wondered. And of course, there is an equally important question that Luther is raising, “When we share our love with another, have we not become little Christs to our neighbor”?

 As you and I approach the end of the Christmas season this coming Tuesday evening, we have two profound questions to ask ourselves. On the one hand, although we again met up with all the traditional characters in the Christmas story, have bought and received our gifts, etc., have we come to appreciate in Jesus’ love and forgiveness what God intends for us? Have we seen the full glory of God dwelling in Jesus in a bodily way”? (Col. 2:9) And on the other hand, can we in a full-throttled way believe that when others come to experience God’s love working through us, that they have in a finite way seen the infinite Jesus?

That is worth pondering: an affirmative answer would make this Christmas! Are we there yet?

David Zersen, D.Min., Ed.D.

djzersen@gmail.com