In the Beginning

John 1:1-3

Introduction

How does your family deal with Christmas decorations? Are you a family that decorates as soon as possible or as late as possible? In homes that I have lived in, we have had the tree up as early as the beginning November and as late as December 20-something. We will not debate that this morning, but with today the season of Advent starts and this is a time for the church to prepare for Christmas.

Going back to Christmas decorations, there are all sorts of things that are brought out beside Christmas trees. One of my favourites was always the nativity scene. As a child, it was almost like action figures for the Bible. Who would be present in the manger scene? Obviously baby Jesus with his parents Mary and Joseph. Then there would be the animals, since a manger is where animals eat. Then we have the angels as the heavenly representatives and the shepherds and wise men as the earthly representatives. It is all very wonderful.

The problem is that most nativity scenes are presenting as if there is one Christmas story with all of these elements here. There is no passage in the Gospels that describes both the shepherds and the wise men and it is likely that they were never there at the same time. What we call the Christmas story is based on two different versions, one found in Matthew and the other found in Luke. Matthew, who is the one who has the wise men, presents the story from Joseph’s perspective and Luke, who gives us the shepherds, presents the story from Mary’s perspective. They are not contradictory stories but they are different stories that we artificially blend into one story. Some people tend to prefer the Matthew version and some prefer the Luke version. Which one do I prefer? I happen to really like John’s Christmas story. John’s Christmas story? John never describes Jesus as a child, much less a baby. John does not talk about Bethlehem or the shepherds or the wise men or the star or any of the other things that we associate with the Christmas story. And yet I would argue that what John shares is actually the foundation for all of the other things that we think of when we think of Christmas.

Jesus as the Word

Let’s think about why Christmas is so moving for so many people, both for people inside and outside the church. If we go back to that nativity scene, we can start pulling away each of the figures, but the one person we cannot remove is that of Jesus. Little baby Jesus. One of the most popular Christmas carols is Away in a Manger. We still often hear it in malls and on the radio, even with the secularization of Christmas. The first verse says:

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay,

The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

Here is why people of different religions and even of no religion can find some meaning in Christmas. Even if we don’t know much about history, we know that back then, as today, was a time of violence and injustice. The land in which this story was taking place was occupied by a foreign power. In the midst of that is born a beautiful, sweet little baby. There is something so innocent about a newborn baby that tugs at our heart strings. We see in that image of a baby a reminder that somehow, everything will be all right.

While I can understand that dynamic, John gives us a totally different perspective. Normally when we think of going back in time with Jesus, we think of moving from Jesus in his 30s healing the sick and performing miracles to being a baby in the manger. John takes us much farther back, going back to the dawn of time.

“In the beginning.” Many people think of Genesis 1 and the creations of the heavens and the earth when we hear those words. And we should. When John begins his narrative about Jesus, he takes us back to that same “In the beginning.” The origins of the person we know as Jesus are not in a manger in Bethlehem but go back to eternity. Jesus is not called Jesus here but the Word. How did God create as described in Genesis? “God said, let there be light.” God created with his Word. What does John say here about what Jesus as the Word did? “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3) The first miracle by Jesus was not turning the water into wine but turning nothing into the universe. 

This can be hard for us to understand if we are used to thinking of the manger as the first appearance of Jesus. But the Bible is clear that Jesus is part of the Godhead, co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit.

John’s Christmas story makes us rethink that little baby Jesus in our nativity scene. That baby is much more than just a symbol of innocence and hope. That baby is the Creator of the universe embracing creation in a completely new way. The one who created DNA is now a human being with his own unique DNA. What John says about the Word of God, the Word that is God, begins to reveal how radical the first Christmas really was.

The Word in Our Midst

So what? That is the question that we need to ask. What if there is more than meets the eye when it comes to little baby Jesus? What if he is more than just another cute baby?

We live in a difficult world. That is not something that is new and that has just started with a pandemic and war in Ukraine and runaway inflation. This congregation just celebrated its 160th anniversary. If we went back to 1862, we would see all sorts of bad things happening back then. Here’s a secret. There is no such thing as “the good old days.” Life has always been tough.

What is God doing about that? He could send a prophet. He could create an organization like the Church. He could give us a book like the Bible. All very important things. But the message of John’s Christmas story is that God gave himself. The Word was with God and the Word was God. That Word of God became a baby two thousand years ago. Is the world all fixed now? No, but the appearance of Jesus did much more than just give us a starting point to start counting our years. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with Us. Jesus is the presence of God with us, not just for a few years of his earthy ministry, but even today. This Jesus transforms lives. Many people can tell you the story of how they encountered Jesus and the change that made. Jesus can do that because he is not just baby Jesus all grown up but the Creator of the universe. This is the real reason why we celebrate Christmas, not so we have an excuse to give presents but because in Jesus, God has come among us.

Conclusion

At some point this Christmas, you are likely to encounter a nativity scene. There are all sorts of styles and details. All of it is designed to make us think about what happened way back then. I hope that you will remember two things. One is that those scenes are blending the stories of Matthew and Luke and historically it may not have looked quite like that. But more importantly, when you look at that little baby Jesus, that you think of the Gospel of John. While Jesus was a real human baby with all of the vulnerability that goes with being a newborn, Jesus was also the Word. The Word of God who in the beginning created all that exists. This Jesus is so much more than a beautiful image. This Jesus is the power of God at work in our lives.