Merry Christmas from Advent Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Arlington, Texas.
Sermon
My Christmas message, “Merry Wordmas” is based on John 1:1-14.
Given the more informal nature of the Christmas Day service, the sermon was not recorded. You can, however, read the manuscript.
Excerpt
If you are like most people when you think of the Christmas story you remember it a lot like the children presented it in this morning’s video.[1] This version of the story is set in Bethlehem with a star and a manager. It features a cast of characters from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, including Mary and Joseph, wise men, angels. It’s an account that includes no room in the inn as we were reminded a few nights ago in our bilingual Las Posadas service.
Many of us know and like hodge podge pageants that freely blend elements of two stories to create one new unified account. And we are mostly okay with a few modern additions tossed in here and there that cannot be found in Matthew or Luke.
For many of us this story is as much a part of how we celebrate as is gathering to worship in a candlelit sanctuary while singing Silent Night.
And to all of this, I say: Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas. Our celebration is well underway. These stories are an important part of our shared story.
Now, I invite you to join me in also sharing the less familiar greeting, “Merry Wordmas.”
Go ahead. Let’s try it. Merry Wordmas.
I’m wondering if that phrase doesn’t feel quite right for you. Perhaps it seems off. Maybe it is a lot like our Gospel reading.
John’s account of Christmas is well . . . different. It’s highbrow. It’s philosophical. It’s beautiful. And, it is an account that focuses on word rather than on Mary and Joseph.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.[2]
The first verse in the first chapter of John’s Gospel sounds a lot like the first beginning – the one recorded in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible. In Genesis the first words we read are “in the beginning.”[3]
John tells us that in the beginning was the word. John wants us to know that the arrival of God in human flesh has taken much longer than nine months.
Presbyterian Pastor John Buchanan puts it this way:
In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning is God’s impulse to speak, to communicate. God speaks and creation happens, which, because it is a product of God’s self-communication, contains the reality of God: God revealed in sun, moon, stars, in lakes, and oceans, and forests. God revealed in nature. But there is more to it than nature.[4] And now John is telling us in this first verse that God didn’t arrive first in a cradle but at creation.
[1] St. Paul’s Auckland. “The Christmas Story.” Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zduwusyip8M
[2] John 1:1.
[3] Genesis 1:1.
[4] John Buchanan. “The Light.” Available from www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2002/011302.html