Christmas Day | 25.12.2025 | John 1.1-14 | Richard O. Johnson |

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1.1-14 NRSV)

John’s gospel does not offer us a narrative about the birth of Christ, and yet this passage, John’s prologue, is the standard gospel reading for Christmas Day—no doubt chosen for two verses in particular: verse 5, “the light shines in the darkness,” and verse 14, “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” It is the latter verse that I want to consider this Christmas morning—a verse that Martin Luther once called “the most important gospel of all.” “Word became flesh” is the Incarnation, the usual focus of Christmas; but what about that second phrase, “lived among us”? What does that phrase have to say to us this holy morning?

Ancient nomads
To begin properly, we must remember that the ancient Jews were nomads. They had no home, but they wandered all over the ancient near east. The story of ancient Israel is a story of movement. Abraham’s father moved his family from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran; Abraham himself, at God’s call, set out for a new place, a land God had promised to give him. That journey went on for centuries, taking Abraham and his descendants all over the map. Egypt, the wilderness of Sinai, Canaan, Babylon—and in later years, the children of Abraham were dispersed all over the known world. They were a people without a homeland.

Now in the ancient world, being without a homeland was a serious religious problem. In those days, people believed in many gods; and most gods in the ancient near east were local gods. The god of a particular city dwelt in that city, and if a citizen of that city left, he left his god behind him. The god of one nation had no power or authority over any other, because the god’s power was geographically limited. So, the early Israelites were regarded as quite strange. They had no homeland, and so apparently they had no real god.

But the Hebrews themselves had a different view of things. Their God was not local, but all-powerful and all-present. He was God, no matter where they were, no matter where they wandered. He was always with them. You can sense this idea most clearly in the stories of the Exodus from Egypt into the wilderness. There you find Moses pitching a tent outside the camp of the Hebrews each night. This tent was called the tent of meeting, for here the Lord would come and meet with Moses and give him direction. The fact that it was a tent was very significant, you see, because a tent is portable. It meant that God was not tied to one location, but

he went with them. They may have no homeland, they may be wanderers, but their God went with them, wherever they might go.

The background here is quite important, because in this passage from John there is a hidden reference to that tent. It is in the Greek word used when John writes “the word became flesh and LIVED among us.” The word translated here as “lived” is the verb form of the noun “tent.” You might very literally translate this verse as “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.” The image John has in mind is that in Jesus Christ, God is again “pitching his tent” among his people—and no longer on the edge of the camp, but right in the midst of it. He is going where they go, living where they live, traveling where they travel. He is identifying with them, being with them completely and totally. He is demonstrating that he is not a God who is far off, but a God who comes to us and abides with us.

Modern nomads
Now all this stuff about tents and nomads seems worlds away from us. It is rooted in very primitive culture, very primitive ideas about God. And yet perhaps the image is closer to us than we might first imagine. In many ways, we twenty-first century Americans are the new nomads, the new wanderers. How many of you—raise your hands—are living more than 100 miles from the town where you were raised? How many more than 500 miles? How many have lived here in this town all your life? You are a very typical group. Most of us live many miles from where we were raised, and most of us, in our lifetimes, live in many different places. In a society where such mobility is frequent, the sense of rootlessness is very great. We do not have the ties to the land, to family and friends, to church, to other institutions, that most people had just 75 years ago. And that leaves us unsettled, restless.

Sociologists tell us that when people move to a new place, the chances are that they will fall away from the church. They may have been dedicated church members back home, but in this new place, they simply drop out. Maybe they go to church once or twice, but it just isn’t like home, so they don’t go back. That is symptomatic, you see, of the sense of rootlessness that is part of our whole American culture.

But even if you live in the same place most of your life, the world around you changes. Science, technology, society, communication, transportation—all rapidly advance. Twenty-five years ago, who would have predicted the legalization of same-sex marriage? Fifteen years ago, how many of us had even heard of artificial intelligence? Ten years ago, who would have anticipated a global pandemic? And with the swirling changes in the world come changes in values. We used to think we knew right from wrong, but now we’re not so sure. We don’t seem to have any clear grasp on where we are as a society, or where we are going. In short, we are nomads. We may live in comfortable houses, with lots of apparent stability in our lives. But we still find ourselves in many respects every bit as unsettled and rootless as the ancient Hebrews three thousand years ago.

God with us
And even so, in the midst of all that change and uncertainty, in Jesus Christ God is pitching his tent among us! Even so, in the middle of all that rootlessness, in Jesus Christ God is living among us! Even when we feel that nothing is the same anymore, and we can’t rely on anything anymore, there is one thing we can rely on—and that is that God is with us! No matter where we go, no matter how far we wander, no matter how lost we may feel, in Jesus Christ we

know that God is with us, and that when we move, he folds up his tent and comes right along too!

Can you grasp just how freeing that is? Just how comforting that is? He pitches his tent among us! He not only never leaves us, but we can never leave him! He follows us, stays with us, lives with us. He is Emmanuel, God with us! In the 139th Psalm, it is said this way: “If I ascend to heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me.” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us: And even now, he lives among us, pitching his tent among us, moving with us through all our journeys, traveling with us into this new year, and into all the future days and years before us. God has made our homelessness his home. He has come to us, and he abides with us. He is indeed Emmanuel, God with us.

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
their great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Emmanuel.

Pastor Richard O. Johnson
Webster, NY
roj@nccn.net