221225 Sermon comparing John 1 with Genesis 1 (Christmas Day)

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

I’d like to show you some purposeful similarities between what John said in our Gospel reading and the beginning of Genesis. I’m going to be kind of flipping back and forth between the two.

We can begin by how they share opening lines: “In the beginning…” John says in the beginning was the Word, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity. The Word was with God and the Word was God. Genesis says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John actually fills us in about that creating we hear about in Genesis. He says, “Through him, that is, through the Word, everything was made. Without the Word, not one thing was made, which was made.” Everything that is spoken about in Genesis chapter 1 comes about through the Son, the Word.

And, in fact, this corresponds with how Moses describes God’s creation. God speaks it into creation with words. It says in Genesis: God said, “Let there be light, and there was light…” “Let the earth produce plants—vegetation that bears seed, and tress that bear fruit with its seed in it” and so on. There is all manner of Words. God said, “Let there be,” and there was. So, as John says, all things were created through the Word and there wasn’t anything created apart from the Word who became flesh, the one we know of as Jesus.

There is a strong focus on the light in our reading from John. It says, “The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The true light that shines on everyone was coming into the world.” This is not accidental.

No listen to the words of Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was undeveloped and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good. He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ There was evening and there was morning—the first day.”

When God created the heavens and the earth it says that the earth was undeveloped and empty. Another way of saying this is that things were chaotic and disordered. And so in creation, God, through the Word, the Son, set about creating order as the Holy Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters. The first thing that God does to put the earth into order is to create light. Then he separated the light from the darkness, organizing things. He called the light day and the darkness he called night.

And this was before he created the sun, moon, stars, and so on, which were not created until the fourth day. God separated and organized the light from the darkness without the aid of what we believe gives us our light, what we believe are the sources of light.

Thus and so God organized in the beginning. Light came so that there was not just darkness, and God separated the light from the darkness, thereby bringing about order.

Listen now to what John says: “In the Word was life, and the life was the light of mankind. The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. … The real light that shines on everyone was coming into the world. He, that is, Jesus, was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not recognize him. He came to what was his own, yet his own people did not accept him.”

You can hear from what John was inspired to say the same kind of thing that was going on in Genesis, but on a different level. In Genesis we hear about created light and how God then puts things in order. In John we hear about the uncreated light, the true light, the life of mankind. Genesis has a kind of darkness. The darkness in John is the spiritual darkness of unbelief and alienation from the life of God. Jesus came as the light, to bring light, to put in order that which is disordered.

This is precisely what we see Jesus doing in the Gospels. Jesus puts in order that which is disordered in the body so that the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, and so on. More deeply and fundamentally Jesus heals that which is disordered in the soul. He casts out demons. He binds up the devil and plunders him of his spoil. He redeems sinners from the devil, purchasing us from the devil with his death.

When John speaks of the Son of God being the true light who shines on everyone, this is what he is talking about. The darkness is not just physical darkness. This darkness is much more sinister. It is the darkness that brought about the death of Christ. God sent his Son to rescue us from the darkness by plunging him into darkness. This separates us from the darkness, putting in order that which is disordered.

The way that God does this recreating, ordering, life-giving work in Christ is unusual. That is to say, it was not by normal means. The normal way for disorders to be healed is to study the laws and principles involved for how things are supposed to work. Through normal, natural means doctors, for example, have come a long way in helping the deaf hear, the blind see, and so on. They’ve figured out how these things work and acted accordingly. The normal means for making someone better morally is by laws and principles too. Teach them so that they learn what is good and bad, right and wrong, and then get busy implementing those things.

There is a lot of power in the use of these normal means for setting things right. Doctors help a lot of people with the problems they have with their bodies. Psychologists help a lot of people with problems they are experiencing. We always have to manage our expectations with these normal means. Doctors can only do so much. There comes a point in time when they can’t prevent a person from dying. Psychologists and psychiatrists have their limits too. In a way, even the very best and most advanced healthcare is only something of a band-aid.

The recreating, ordering, life-giving work of Jesus is different.  Listen to how John describes it: “He came to his own, yet his own people did not accept him. But to all who did receive him, to those who believe in his Name, he gave the authority to become children of God. They were born, not of blood, or of the desire of the flesh, or of a husband’s will, but born of God.”

The highpoint of what is said here is that we may become children of God. We’ve maybe heard this often enough so that it doesn’t sound too strange to us, but it is strange. How can anybody be God’s child? How can anybody be born as a child of God? We can’t even become a different person. Even if we were to enter our mother’s womb a second time to be born, that still wouldn’t make us a different person. That which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. As Jesus says in John chapter 3, in order for anyone to see the kingdom of God we need to be born again by the water and the Spirit.

That means that children of God are born through baptism which is then held to by faith. Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Mark: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Paul in Titus chapter 3 calls baptism the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This is very deliberate “birth” language that corresponds to what we heard from John. Those who receive Jesus, who believe in his Name, have the authority to become children of God. Such children of God are born not by natural human seed, nor by any human striving, nor by any father’s determination to create a child. We are born of God by baptism and faith, which he must do and create.

Such siring and birthing may sound strange, and, frankly, it better sound strange otherwise you are not paying attention. Literal children of God are born through baptism? Entering into our mother’s womb a second time is at least something we can somewhat visualize even if it is ridiculous. There’s no visualization of this birth that Jesus talks about except a childlike acceptance of faith: Jesus says I am born again. Jesus says it is a second birth by water and the Spirit. Jesus says whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Jesus makes it so that I die together with Christ in baptism, and therefore I will also be raised as Christ was raised.

Although this be strange, it is God’s prerogative to do things the way he wants to do things. We might want God only to work in ways that we preapprove and understand, but what would that makes us in relation to God? Wouldn’t we really be the ones who are God, telling him how he has to do things? If we don’t understand something as well as we would like, it’s as though we can then just dismiss it, reject it, or ignore it.

Let me mention something else in this regard that’s already come up. God created light on the first day. He separated the light from the darkness. The light he called day. The darkness he called night. There was evening and there was morning the first day. And yet the only sources we know of for light weren’t created, weren’t further organized by God, until the fourth day. How could there be light without the sun, without the moon, without the normal means? I can’t fully visualize what that first day must have been like. I can’t visualize a day without the sun as the source of light for it. But that’s okay.

What so often happens, though, is that pseudo-intellectuals—whether those pseudo-intellectuals have advanced degrees or didn’t even graduate high school—pseudo-intellectuals will rise up and declare Moses an idiot, the Genesis account a myth, and the only so-called proof they really have is that if they were God, they wouldn’t have done it that way. They wouldn't have made light on day one and not make the sun until day 4. It’s as though Moses should have caught that error while he was proof-reading.

Unfortunately the same pseudo-intellectualism happens with Christmas too. People reject the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Why? Because they have some proof? What proof could they possibly produce one way or another? There is no proof possible; there’s only belief and unbelief. All that’s going on is that they are using that big brain of theirs, and they figure that if they were God, they wouldn’t go about things the way that it is described. They’d make it understandable and accessible. They wouldn’t talk about being born again or death and resurrection. They’d be a better writer than the Holy Spirit.

Set aside your shallow judgements and petty criteria. Your thoughts aren’t nearly as infallible as you think they are. Listen, instead, to what the Holy Spirit says through the apostle John. In Jesus is a re-creation, higher and profounder than the creation of Genesis. The light is not created light. The Light is the Son of God, through whom everything was made. He came to bring order out of chaos, life out of death, light out of darkness. He promises you grace upon grace, a new life, and the ability to see God.

The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us is what we consider at Christmas, and it is profounder than what is talked about in Genesis.