God is with us in Word and Sacrament

The Nativity of Our Lord

The Nativity of Our Lord

John 1:1—14

+ IN NOMINE IESU +

St. Anne’s Church in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, known as the Sistine Chapel of America, is a towering neo-Romanesque church whose interior vaults and domes, walls and panels, are covered with frescoes of sacred art. The French who laid the first stone of the church 100 years ago finally got around to filling it with color, story, symbol, theology and Scripture—with beauty, with wonder. So they hired an Italian from Quebec to come down and cover it with beauty. He arrived in 1940 and spent eight years there, painting during the warm months and drawing sketches during the cold months. He worked on scaffolding up to eighty feet high. He painted hundreds of human figures: that of the Father, the Son, angels, saints, prophets, priests, and kings.

Each of the figures was a portrait of one of the parishioners of St. Anne’s. The girl who modeled for the child St. Mary passed away only a few months ago. The reason I bring this up is that the people of St. Anne’s parish, we might say, not only had their souls, their hearts and minds, uplifted by hearing God’s Word and receiving His Sacraments, they also themselves were lifted up. Their hair and cheeks, and their eyes were lifted up—even their chins and noses. Through the passion and sweat of the painter and the many carpenters and plasterers who alongside him, the people themselves were, by this act of devotion, lifted out of time, beyond the confines of their own days and deeds.

And this dear friends is what God in Christ has done for us. This is the outcome of His incarnation. St. John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1—2, 14). And as we confess in the Athanasian Creed, “although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ; one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God.”

That means that when Christ was born, God not only became a man, born of a woman, born under the Law, that the Second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God from eternity, entered time and space, became a part of history, but that mankind, that humanity itself was raised up out of time into eternity to be redeemed from under the Law.

The incarnation of the Son of God lifts our humanity up into the Holy Trinity. This is a most blessed exchange and the joy of Christmas. God is a man. He is one of us. our kinsman redeemer, fighting the powers of darkness and sin as our brother. God becomes a man, so that men can become like God. He takes on our flesh, so that His Spirit may be given to us. He takes on our sin, so that we may be given His righteousness. He was forsaken of His Father so that we would return to Him as His own children. And He did it because He is a God of love.

God loves you. He gives Himself to men that men might then give themselves to Him, that men would be whole, be men again as men were meant to be, free and clean and full of praise, zealous for good works and service to neighbor. He has redeemed us. He has rescued us out of death, out of gloom and despair.  And though we still mourn, though we still weep and still know some touch of anger and frustration, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. We know the Truth. The Word became Flesh. We’ve seen the Light on sacred page and heard it in sacred song. We’ve felt the watery Hand of God and His Name is upon us. We are His.

The Word became Flesh, and our frail flesh will soon leave behind the corruption of this present age and be like the angels in heaven: holy, alive and good, full of pious mirth because the Word became Flesh. Now Flesh endures because the Word that endures became flesh. God as Man laid once in a manger. He laid once also in a borrowed tomb. But no more. He is not a Baby. He is not dead. That Man of Flesh sits at the right hand of the Father. He ushers in all believers, pointing to the blessed marks on His hands and feet and side, advocating, mediating, shepherding men through death and into life. The Word became Flesh, and the Word endures forever, so now the corruptible becomes incorruptible and the mortal becomes immortal.

He is not done. The Last Word has not yet been said. Still the waters of Baptism wash over His people; still the Word of Grace comes from His ministers and absolves the penitents who seek it; still His Word calls bread and wine to be Flesh for food and for Life, that Flesh once laid into a manger and nailed to a cross, made alive out of death again, is laid upon the tongues of men and makes them Temples of the Holy Spirit. His Word does what it was sent to do. He calls us back. He speaks us clean. He forgives our sins and gives us faith. He cannot be stopped. Still, He is not done. The Word is cast, the Word made Flesh, He enters into the hearts of men by way of the ear and the mouth and the skin and declares them good. He gives of Himself. He joins Himself to men. He brings them by the Spirit to the Father, as a Bride immaculate and pure, purchased and won with the Blood of God’s Word made Flesh out of the Virgin’s womb.

This is the whole point. This is the reason for the season. It’s not just about Jesus. It’s about Jesus born for us to redeem us from death and hell, to save us from our sin. You are His reason for the season.

And even though we have not frescoes painted on our walls, ceilings, and arches, and none of our stained-glass windows picture members here, look to the manger that has the image of God, God made flesh, lying in a manger; look to the cross that has the image of God, God made flesh, hanging upon it; look to the chalice and the paten that has the image of God, God mad flesh, cradled in and upon them. And consider this: He became what we are to make us what He is. God is one of us. And because of this, we shall be like Him by grace through faith. That is why we celebrate this day. That is why we sing and make merry. The Word became flesh. We have a Savior. Amen.

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