Preached on Wednesday, December 25, 2024, Christmas Day, at Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock and on Sunday, December 29, 2024, the First Sunday after Christmas, at Grace Church, Anderson, South Carolina.

“In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).

Think with me for a moment on how it is that we Christians tell the Christmas story. And I don’t really mean what the Christmas story looks like––creches and angels and shepherds and all that––but the bigger question of “why.” Why is it that the Christmas story happened the way that it happened? In fact, why did Christmas happen at all?

One of our common responses to that question––the question of why the miracle Christmas happened––goes something like this: Christmas happened, God becoming human happened, because humanity had made such a mess of things that the only way to make this right was for God to come down, and not only come down, but come down to deliver. Things had gotten so bad that, if God was going to make good on His promise to be with His people, God was really and truly going to have be with His people, becoming flesh and dwelling among us. God intervened. God became human insofar as becoming human enables God to be among those whom He saves, but God is still God insofar as only God can save. Humanity and divinity are both required here. And that’s what we celebrate this day: the Incarnation was the final piece of the puzzle, the necessary move for God to make, the last and only option by which we could find fellowship with God forevermore. And God took that option, “for us and for our salvation.”

That’s how we often tell the story. That’s how we often make sense of why Christmas happened in the first place. But before we get too comfortable with all that, John’s Gospel throws another idea at us: “In the beginning was the Word.” Here, we find the Christmas story told in a different way. And I don’t just mean that John’s Gospel foregoes all of the normal trappings of the Nativity––although it certainly does, swapping out creches and angels and shepherds with this grand proclamation of the architecture of the universe, these opening verses we call “the Prologue of John’s Gospel.” But I mean that John’s Gospel tells the story of the Incarnation differently in a much deeper way. John’s Gospel says that Christmas was always the plan.

Stay with me on this. Even in just this one, brief verse––“In the beginning was the Word”––John’s Gospel declares that the Word Who became flesh and dwelt among was the same Word Which God spoke at the beginning of all things, the creation of everything that is. Redemption is foreshadowed by Creation; Creation anticipates our Redemption. From beginning to end, first to last, Alpha to Omega, the Son of God was always going to come down to deliver. This is the bare fact laid out before us in the opening few words of the fourth Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word,” and this Word has taken on flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen Him. The Word Who spoke us into existence has always been aimed at speaking us into redemption. Christmas wasn’t the last option but the first and only option, the original intention. This was always the plan [1].

And let me tell you why at least I find all of this to be comforting. There is nothing I can do or not do to prevent God from coming to be my savior. There is no thought, word, or deed, nothing done or left undone, that can force God’s hand. God’s plan is much bigger than all that. God is much bigger than all that. Whether I know it or not––and sometimes, I don’t know it––God comes to save me. Whether I want it or not––and believe me, sometimes, I don’t want it––God comes to save me. Whether I think I need it or not––and trust me, sometimes, I pretend like I don’t need it––God comes to be my Savior. God does not wait for a certain condition before acting. God does not wait for us to be good enough or bad enough to get involved. No, God has always had redemption in store for us.

And so, here is what I find especially comforting: this way of telling the Christmas story refashions our outlook on the world. We look out on the hellscape that is our world, the brokenness and frailty, the war-torn countrysides and sin-sick cities––we look out on all this and see not something that is devastatingly hopeless but something that has always had redemption as its destination. That is the point of all this: the cruelty of the world will meet its end in God. And why? Because “in the beginning was the Word.”

So, my friends, hang on to this Christmas story for dear life. Don’t let go of it. Don’t let anyone take it from you. The world will so often have us think differently. But the Gospel comes to speak this bewildering bit of Good News: that, since the beginning of time, God has decreed that all things will be brought to their perfection by Him, through Whom all things were made, and Who, in these latter days, took on “flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Amen.

[1] See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, §41 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), especially 54–56. See also David Fergusson, “Creation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, edited by John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, 76–77: “No longer understood merely as an emergency measure to counteract the effects of sin and evil, the incarnation was the fulfillment of an eternal purpose. The world was made so that Christ might be born.”