Writing our Christmas story

 Sermon for Christmas I, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: John 1:1-18

On Christmas Day, I realized that I was responsible for today’s sermon. This shouldn’t have been a surprise because I make the sermon schedule, but so much else was going on that it slipped from my attention. That's my story. We just heard the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke four or five days ago on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve, and it is very familiar to us. We have Luke to thank for some of the details that we see everywhere in images, movies, and crêches because it tells us where Jesus came from. There is another version of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Matthew that focuses on Joseph resolving the problem of being only engaged to Mary, who was pregnant. It has the three wise men visiting from the East, but not the manger scene. It tells a different story than Luke, and presents Jesus’ identity from a different perspective. The Gospel of Mark starts with John proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, with both John and Jesus as adults, and the Gospel of John has no mention of Jesus’ birth at all.

Or does it?

Reading this passage from John called the Prologue, in a mild panic on Christmas Day, I saw Luke’s Christmas story in it, just without Mary, Joseph, and animals. Christmas is an opportunity to see where Jesus is, or could be in our lives. It’s a story about how we can be more present in the world by loving neighbors, caring for the poor, and seeking justice. To do that, we need to start a story about ourselves, and part of that start is found in the gospels. The beginning of Luke’s and Matthew’s stories take place before Jesus was born, introducing Mary, Joseph, John the Predecessor, and John’s parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah. But the Gospel of John jumps right into the identity of Jesus in the first sentences. He traces Jesus’ existence all the way back to when God was about to create the earth and all that was in it. We hear that in the beginning was God, who created the world as we know it before the Earth had form and when it was empty. This is the beginning of John’s story of Jesus where God created a second time, this time to bring Jesus into the world. John the baptizer, who precedes Jesus, comes next, proclaiming the coming of Jesus, and not just in the Gospel of John, but in all of the Gospels. John is a crucial figure in Jesus’ story, introducing us to Jesus within the story, and telling us that he would take our rule-based, dogmatic relationship with God to a new place beyond our understanding and experience.

And finally in the Prologue, Jesus comes into the world, not to be doted on as an infant, but to show God’s grace and truth that rises above the confined space that the religion around him had been built to define God. Jesus threw that out and said later in John’s gospel, essentially, that God is love. That is all you need to know in the beginning because everything, from worship, to inclusion, to meeting people in the marketplace, comes from that love shown to us by God. And what better way for us to be introduced to that love than to present Jesus’ infancy story in Luke. You’ve seen how people react when they are around newborns, right? It is hard not to love a newborn, who has not done anything to elicit that love, and that is the earthly experience of God’s love that we are familiar with. That is the beginning of Luke’s story of Jesus. But John has a different story to tell, and he makes that point about love three chapters into his gospel.

John takes us to the core of Jesus’ identity and being while Luke indulges us in the question of where did Jesus come from, and what was his origin. Luke then goes on to tell us how his divinity unfolded as he went through childhood to adolescence, and then to adulthood. But John tells us right away who Jesus is, and why he is so important to this encounter with God. Abraham encountered the three visitors who told him that Sarah would give birth to Isaac. Moses encountered the burning bush that told him he was to rescue God’s chosen from the Egyptians. And the disciples and later Christians encountered John the Predecessor and John the gospel writer to tell us that God was among us, as flesh and blood. In each case, it was God speaking through an intermediary to get someone’s attention and say, “I am here, in this world. Listen to me.” As we read the Prologue, we hear God saying this through God’s incarnation, Jesus.

So, John’s Prologue really is a Christmas story when read in the context of Christmas, but instead of telling us about how Jesus came into the world, John tells us who came into the world, and what they brought to us. Reading both Luke and John within a few days of each other gives us a more rounded and complete picture of Jesus. This is the picture we need to understand to start our story as Jesus’ disciples, sent into the world to continue his work. Our birth as disciples comes at our baptism, and our spiritual birthday celebration is whenever we renew our baptismal vows. The story of our ministry in and to the world begins at Christmas when we celebrate Jesus’ birth as a human like us from Luke’s story, and we understand the complex nature of Jesus, as God incarnate from John’s gospel Prologue. Each of our stories will be different as we encounter Jesus in unpredictable times and places and as God calls us individually to minister to the world according to the gifts given us. But our stories all have something in common, that the Son of God was born and has brought light into the world, so that we may see our story unfold in the world, so that the words of our narrative will be visible to others. As a child of God with God present in you as the Holy Spirit, how does your story start?