Christmas Day 2025
John 1:1-14
Here we are on this Christmas morning to reflect on Christ’s birth and presence with us. I love the change in tenor as we move from the hoopla and mystery of the Eve with emotions running high in the darkness of night to a more normal-feeling worship in mid- morning Christmas Day. It seemed as if we had concluded a long and brilliant novel that came to a climax on the Eve and returned to earth again on Christmas Day. Everyone is more subdued. The pressure is off. Christmas Day is like a big sigh.
And yet, the Gospel reading for Christmas Day contains all of the most difficult theological assertions Christians ever hear. John 1:1-14 asks us to believe in the unbelievable notion that God became human. More than that, it says that Jesus existed before time began, before anything was anywhere. Jesus was “in the beginning … ” and we don’t know when that was or where or how time began except for the faith that God created with breath and a word and love.
This short passage assures the unity of all things, but it also introduces the idea that disunity exists in the midst of unity. Unity and disunity are, so to speak, hand-in-glove —paradoxes locked together.
- Unity: What came into being was brought into being “in him.” “He was in the world (the cosmos) … ” “He came to what was his own … ” We can say this two ways: the Word—the Beloved, Jesus—is in the world, and the world is in Jesus.
- Disunity: Light “shines in darkness … darkness did not overcome it … ” The text suggests that light and dark oppose each other. Darkness is capable of “overcoming” the light, even though the light does not allow that to happen.
We find this paradox in the prayer found in our prayerbook attributed to St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Paradox names the conundrum of the incarnation. The risen Christ is by the birth of the divine as flesh and blood.
A translation of “Word” is from the Greek logos and emphasizes the simultaneousness of the one who was born of Mary and the Word: “The Word was present to God from the beginning.” (John 1:2) “Through the Word all things came into being … ” (John 1:3) “Though the Word came to its own realm, the Word’s own people didn’t accept it.” (John 1:6) This language of “the Word” engages our imaginations with the expansive “truly divine” side of Jesus’ identity.
The incarnation of God is the stumbling block as Paul refers to it in (1 Corinthians) because it is inconceivable that the infinite can be contained by the finite. How can stars fit in a quart jar? Martin Luther helps us to see the inhabitation John’s prologue announces:
“God is substantially present everywhere, in and through all creatures, in all their parts and places, so that the world is full of God and He fills all, but without His being encompassed and surrounded by it. He is at the same time outside and above all creatures. These are all exceedingly incomprehensible matters; yet they are articles of our faith and are attended clearly and mightily in Holy Writ … For how can reason tolerate it that the Divine majesty is so small that it can be substantially present in a grain, on a grain, over a grain, through a grain, within and without, and that, although it is a single Majesty, it nevertheless is entirely in each grain separately, no matter how immeasurably numerous these grains may be? … His own divine essence can be in all creatures collectively and in each one individually more profoundly, more intimately, more present than the creature is in itself; yet it can be encompassed nowhere and by no one. It encompasses all things and dwells in all, but not one thing encompasses it and dwells in it.”
In the Isaiah reading, this huge dichotomy—God-beyond and God-within—is stressed. Both truths are key assertions at Christmas because, as we celebrate one part of the majesty of Christ on this day—the birth—we cannot fathom its importance without its inconceivable enormity which we will remember on Good Friday and celebrate on Easter.
The primary message of these texts on this day when much of the world is glowing with Emmanuel–God with us (for those with eyes to see and ears to hear) is the incredible end to dualism. God has inhabited our Earth, our flesh. We have cause to look around us with awe. We have reason to be flattened with admiration for the creator when we simply stand in the rain or bite into a carrot or hold someone’s hand. It is all miracle — not only that we are here to behold this marvel but that God’s own presence attends our every breath.
How might we, then, see Christ in every person? How might we comprehend this presence in trees and rocks and water? What might we pause to consider the enormity of our own words when we speak them? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the Word continues to dwell in us today. In all things, at all times, and past these days of celebration, God is with you, God dwells within.
Magdalena's Musings 