“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Do you know what this writer saw? Can you imagine what Mary and Joseph saw? What did those shepherds see? What did the wise men travel so far to witness? They saw God himself in the flesh. Can you imagine what they saw?
I can tell you. It’s true. I can tell you what they saw. I will attempt to express for you the awesome glory, the glory of God, full of grace and truth. Are you ready? Take a deep breath. You’re lucky that your pastor is willing and able to share this wondrous picture for you. I can tell you what they saw. When they saw Jesus, they . . . saw . . . a baby. A normal, human baby. That’s it.
Jesus was born a baby. He was not glowing from what we tell or at least nobody mentioned that in any of the stories. He had no visible halo like the drawings show. If he was smiling, it was because of gas, because he was a baby—a real one, and newborn babies don’t smile they just stare at you for the first six weeks.
Depending on how soon after the birth those shepherds came, baby Jesus would have been pretty red and swollen from labor and all that comes with that. Mary would have had a natural birth, no planned C-section. He was probably wrinkly, maybe with some of that cheesy langua stuff all over his little face and in his armpit creases. Depending on how long the birth lasted, baby Jesus may have been a conehead for all we know. That, my friends, is the glory of God, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. He probably looked like your kids when they were babies.
In fact, he had better look like your kids and my kids or else the whole story would be one big lie! Because, as the gospel of John puts it, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Jesus became one of us. He would have looked like us, smelled like, felt like us and (despite what the song Away in a Manger says) eventually he would have cried like us too. Because if he didn’t he wouldn’t have been a real baby! The glory of Christmas is that Jesus WAS a real baby. A real human being. If you’d like to see God in all his glory, you need not look any farther than Jesus nursing at his mother’s breast. It’s in that helplessness, in that humility, in that picture of complete fleshiness that we see God’s glory!
The book of Hebrews says that Jesus, “was made like us in every way” The glory of God full of grace and truth was born and would eventually. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he mighty destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
This Christmas, you each have an opportunity. The same opportunity people had back on that first Christmas Day. You can begin a relationship with God in the flesh. Not with a God of fear and judgment with a long white beard and a loud booming voice sitting on a heavenly throne, but with God the infant who giggles, and burps and cries. You may already call yourself by his name—a Christian—one of Jesus Christ’s. But I pray that tonight, God has drawn each of you into this place to build a relationship with that same Jesus. I pray that God plants within your heart a faith to believe that newborn baby is your Savior.
You have another opportunity to get to know God in the flesh. He’s no different than you are except that he has the power to do something you and I could never do. You see, as we grow up we hurt one another, we destroy ourselves with addictions, we make mistakes and choose evil even when we’d said we’d stop doing all that. Jesus grew up with those same temptations and yet he lived a perfect life in God’s eyes. And so, when he died on the cross, God promised to forgive all of your sins. Jesus died in your place so that you might be forgiven. If you can believe, even for a moment, that Jesus was really born and truly died to save you from your sins, then you might begin to see how glorious that day was this baby, Jesus, was born. For yes, Jesus was born just a baby, and that was wonderful, but even more fantastic than that, he was born, God in the flesh, to save you and give you eternal life.
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