John 1:1-14
Psalm 2:7
Listen to Sermon
“Eternally Begotten,”
Pastor Tom Johnson, December 25, 2019
Our readings this morning help us see that Jesus was born a child but also that was not his beginning. He was born into time and into humanity. But that is not the beginning of his story. It is the continuation of his story. The writer of Hebrews says that he is begotten of the Father in timeless eternity. He quotes Psalm 2 to explain this profound truth. The Father says, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” There was never a time he was not the Son. His relationship with God the Father is, was, and will always be one-of-a-kind in heaven and earth. The Son is God. He is the second person of the Holy Trinity. He is not created. He has no beginning. He has no end. The “today” in “today I have begotten you” is the eternal now—the timelessness of the Kingdom of Heaven in which God dwells. The Father “created the worlds through the Son.” “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all this by his powerful word.” His years will never come to an end. And one day—on our timeline of history—he will come back in glory to make all things new.
In our reading from the Gospel of John, he is the Word, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being...And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Christmas is the celebration of God’s eternal gift intersecting with our time and our space in human history. But it is also a celebration of God’s eternal gift that still intersects with our today—in this moment and in this place. This is the mystery of the incarnation—the Word made flesh—eternal God taking on our humanity by becoming a baby in a manger. But he still comes to us by his Spirit through Word and Sacrament. It should humble us that we cannot fully understand these profound truths with our finite minds. “He was in the world,” John says in his Gospel, “and the world came into being though him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
Sometimes we do not trust what we do not understand. Or we reject the faith because we do not recognize what was under our noses all the time. The Word became flesh. But if the miracle escapes us, we will remain in unbelief. But he is “the true light, which enlightens everyone” and has come into the world. He takes the initiative to enter our world and give us spiritual rebirth. He is the eternally begotten who is now born into time and space—our time and space. He is with us in our today just has he is in God’s eternal now. Jesus is the reason for the season. He is the reason for every season not just these few weeks each winter. He is born into hearts when God adopts us through the Water, Word, and Spirit of Holy Baptism. He is born into our nows through the word of Scripture. He is born into our relationships through our Christian fellowship. He is born into our weeks through the Bread and Wine—the Body and Blood of Holy Communion. He is born into our todays through our daily prayers. He is the eternally begotten One. And the day draws near when we will be born anew in the world to come—when we fall asleep in Jesus and leave this world or when he comes back in glory to make all things new.
This is He whom seers in old time
Chanted of with one accord
Whom the voices of the prophets
Promised in their faithful Word
Now He shines the long-expected
Let creation praise its Lord
Evermore and evermore.
(“Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” LSB 384 v. 3)
No comments:
Post a Comment