Bible Passage: John 1:10-13
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: December 25, 2023

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

There is a hymn we sometimes sing at Christmas called “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.”  It is one of the older Christmas hymns in existence.  It dates from the 1200’s.  Long before people were singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” they were singing this hymn.  The tune of the hymn is called “Divinum mysterium.”  That is Latin.  It means “divine mystery.”  That is the way the coming of Jesus was described.  It was, and is, a “divine mystery.”  It is a mystery for two reasons.  First of all, a mystery is something we would never know unless God reveals it to us.  And certainly, the coming of God’s Son into the world is something no one ever knows “intuitively.”  It must be revealed to us.  But the birth of Jesus is also “divinum mysterium” in this way:  who can fully comprehend the depth of meaning underneath the bare words, “The Word became flesh”?

The first chapter of John’s Gospel is arguably the “deepest dive” into the depths of the Incarnation in all of Scripture.  It is the most God gives us concerning the “divinum mysterium.”  This morning, we will just consider one little portion of this profound chapter.  Verses 10-13 allow us to ponder Jesus’ birth, and our own.

He [the Son of God] was in the world, and the world was made through him. (v. 10)  He was in the world.  Divinum mysterium!  True God, who exists entirely apart from, and independently of the cosmos, came “into” the cosmos.  Not only does he enter it, but he enters in the most lowly, humble, helpless mode of all – as a human infant!  A newborn wildebeest can outrun a gazelle in a day!  God in flesh couldn’t even lift his own little head.

There is more to ponder here.  The world was made through him.  John wants us to go back to Genesis 1:1 in our contemplation of Jesus’ birth.  You know Genesis 1:1.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now listen to John 1:1-3:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him everything was made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made.  Divinum mysterium!  The Son of God, the pre-incarnate Word, was the “agent” through whom God created the cosmos.

And now, here he is as a baby, in the world he made!  How can this be?  That little infant who cannot even hold up his head is the Star-Maker.  The one who designed and engineered countless galaxies coos and wiggles in a feedbox for animals.  The one who set the boundaries for the oceans must be nursed, and burped, and changed.  He who created nuclear fusion must himself be snuggled and kept warm or he will die.  Who can comprehend such a humble birth?

But the humility, and the humiliation, go deeper still.  The world did not recognize him. The stars did not rearrange themselves to make a giant celestial billboard in the sky, “God has come down in flesh!  Our Maker is here in Bethlehem!”  The mountains and the hills did not bow down toward Bethlehem when he was born.  He came to what was his own, yet his own people did not accept him.  (v. 11)  “His own.”  God had long ago chosen the descendents of Abraham to be his favored people.  The Savior of the world would himself be a descendent of Abraham.  And so the Son of God comes, born to a mother who is a descendent of Abraham.  He is born in the land that was promised to Abraham’s descendents.  Jesus’ public ministry was to the descendents of Abraham.  They were the first to hear the message from the mouth of the Son of God, “The kingdom of heaven is near!”  It got him killed.  Divinum mysterium, indeed!

So was this birth a flop?  An epic fail?  Was it all for nothing?  Was it a cosmic “swing-and-a-miss”?  Hardly!  But to all who did receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.  They were born, not of blood, or the desire of the flesh, or of a husband’s will, but born of God. (v. 12-13)

Jesus’ birth was the beginning of the biggest reversal in the history of the cosmos!  Because of the coming of the Word of God in flesh, because of his life, death, and rising, we have gone from being what Paul in Ephesians calls “objects of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) to being children of God!  Think of that!  You are not, as evolution would have us believe, merely some random assembly of proteins in this huge cosmos that just happened to happen!  You are a child of God.  Remember that!  When you feel like a big zero, when someone in this world has made you feel small and insignificant, when this huge cosmos makes you feel little.  You are a child of God.  And if you are a child of God, you are an heir of God.  You will inherit the glory that your elder brother Jesus, now enjoys!  And you enjoy that status because the only-begotten Son of God was born for you, died for you, and rose for you.  “Mild he lays his glory by, Born that we no more may die, Born to raise us from the earth, Born to give us second birth.” (CW 61:3)

Today is, and must always be, first and foremost about the birth of God’s Son, the Word of God made flesh.  That is THE “divinum mysterium.”  But as always, what Jesus did for us cannot be fully appreciated apart from its blessed result.  And Jesus’ birth means our own rebirth as the children of God!  Oh, blessed, holy “divinum mysterium”!

Amen.