What is worth seeing at Christmas? John has seen glory like no other, and wants us to see it too.
Christmas glory
John 1:14
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This transcript has been automatically generated
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
But to all who believe— who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Glory! Have you seen it?
Maybe this year you travelled and you saw that stunning view that simply took your breath away. It was glorious. Maybe you made it to Paris for the games of the 33rd Olympiad and glimpsed glory. Maybe you were there at that performance where the atmosphere was simply electric. Glorious.
Maybe your team at last won the cup in style, and that was glorious. If you witnessed glory like that this year, I take it you’ve been telling everyone ever since.
Or maybe for you, you’ve experienced a more personal highlight, maybe a wedding, your own or someone you love. Maybe an achievement. Maybe you reached a milestone celebration of some kind, a reunion. Maybe just to be there, just to see it, to share in it. Glorious.
And again, you’ve been talking about it to whoever will listen.
A man named John once experienced glory. He saw it, he heard it with his own eyes and ears. This is the John who for 3 years got to live alongside Jesus Christ. He describes his experiences for us in this Gospel account from which we’ve just heard that first— that last reading. Because the reason he wrote— John has something that he really wants to tell the world about.
He wrote it down as best he could so that others like us this evening could see this glory. We’re going to focus on just one sentence from that opening section. It’s printed on our service sheets for ease of sight. I’ll read it again. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So John is saying he and those with him have seen it. And this glory, he’s not talking about some abstract, hard-to-grasp quality. No, John wants us to know this glory is very much, we could say, down to earth. In fact, as he says here, he calls it his glory. It’s the glory that belongs to a person.
Person here with the name the Word.
Now John opens that account speaking of the Word who was there in the beginning. That is, we are stepping back into eternity past. The Word, John tells us, was there with God. In fact, he was God. And I can see already your eyes are glazing over.
Eternity past? It seems so distant, so remote, so cold, so unknowable. Outside my experience, it just doesn’t connect. And anyway, who’s to say it was like that? Mere speculation.
Except John wants to tell us this Word did not stay in eternity past. No, the Word became flesh. That’s Christmas.
We live, don’t we, in a stunning, glorious universe. The heavens and the earth, light and darkness, sun and stars and moon, sea and sky, the fantastic flora and fauna in all its vast array. And the claim is that this Word who brought all this into existence stepped into the world flesh and blood. A baby crying, wriggling, feeding, sleeping. But far from being a distant deity, the eternal Word became one of us.
We’ve heard this storey many times before. It’s maybe dulled our critical faculties to realise we are thinking tonight, and John is making a staggering, a assertion? Why should we take it seriously, even for a moment? And John wants to say, glory. If the Word really is the Creator himself and he’s actually stepped into our world, well, John says, don’t walk on by.
Hang on, let me show you his glory. And John speaks with conviction. Notice he says, we have seen his glory. He’s not making it up. Now, he never saw Jesus as a baby.
John came onto the scene maybe 3 or so decades later when, as John says here, Jesus dwelt among us. He’s talking about himself and his fellow disciples. They walked with this man, they talked with him, they watched him, and in those years they came to see glory. So John wants us to pay attention. He’s saying, don’t leave Jesus behind each Christmas as the perpetual baby.
Come back next December and he’s still a baby. Now let John tell you what he witnessed from the grown-up Jesus, because if you do, you’ll see, John says, glory. What kind of glory? You might be wondering, what does glory even mean? Well, John points the way, doesn’t he?
Even in this sentence, he says this is glory as of the only Son from the Father. So is there a God? Who can tell? If he is there, what is he like? John says, let me show you.
Look to Jesus. For a start, look at what he did. He says all this in this account. I’ll abbreviate it. A wedding, there’s no drinks.
Water turned to wine, gallons of it. A son about to die, but Jesus says the word. A lifelong paralytic hops on his feet. A man blind from birth but can now see. A man called Lazarus, he died, he was buried, he was rotting.
Outside the tomb, Jesus cried out to a decomposing corpse with no ears, with no breath in its lungs, Lazarus, come out! In full view of them all. That’s just what he did. It’s glorious, like nothing else seen before on earth or since. And it wasn’t just John, it wasn’t just him and the other disciples.
Literally thousands witnessed these things. So the works of God but done by Jesus, that is glory as of the only Son of the Father. So that’s the actions, but John says listen to the words as well. No one before ever spoke like this, with insight, compassion, authority. Jesus’ teachings have been pondered and followed many years, 2 millennia, by all sorts of people from all different cultures, because they are the words of our Maker.
Glory as of the only Son from the Father. John’s point: with Jesus, we are no longer in the dark about God because the glory shines.
But John may say, I’m really not into all of this. I’m really not into God at all. Why are you telling me this? Why does it matter even if it’s true? Well, look at the end of this sentence: grace and truth.
We do care about the truth in this world of confusion and spin and lies.
And there is truth, but we’re not talking abstract truth but personal truth. In fact, a person, Jesus, is the Word. Who is the truth, and he speaks it. Don’t you want to know the way things really are? Why we are here?
What matters? What it’s all about? Then listen to Jesus.
Except, of course, we don’t, and we won’t. Far from paying attention to this Jesus, our world rejects him. Why is that?
Just recently I’ve been reading the bestseller An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Listen to this paragraph from the book. The deep ocean’s consummate darkness creates a problem for the scientists who want to study its creatures. Researchers can’t see what’s around them unless they turn on their submersible’s lights, but doing so is devastating for creatures that have adapted to a lightless life. Even moonlight can blind a deep-sea shrimp in a few seconds.
A submersible’s headlights will do much worse. Some deep-sea animals end up doing kamikaze runs at subs, Startled swordfish ram them with their swords. Other creatures freeze or flee.
Well, that scramble on the ocean’s depths reflects what happens up here on dry ground when the light of Jesus breaks in. We, humanity, hit out against it. At the very least, we flee, we run for cover. We’d rather not have the light of Jesus exposing the dark corners of our lives. So we give Jesus a hostile welcome.
How does he respond?
John wants to say the glory shines even brighter. That brings us to that last word that we haven’t considered yet in our sentence: grace. Grace means compassion to the undeserving. So what does that look like then with this Jesus? Well, in John’s account, we’ve heard of the astonishing works.
John says those are glorious, but they’re actually just the start. John says there’s more glory to show you, keep reading. But if we do, actually the atmosphere darkens. There’s opposition and rejection and death. But John is going to tell us, don’t you see?
Jesus is lifted up on that cruel cross to be on display to all the world. John wants us to see that at the cross, Jesus’ glory shines brightest of all. How can that be? Well, you need to read his account, but he will explain how lifted up on that cross— well, it was a choice Jesus made willingly to die the death that this world deserves. Jesus giving what was most valuable, his life, for the sake of the undeserving is called grace.
John himself gives a little helpful explanation sentence which is now quite well known around the world. It says this: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. What is eternal life? Well, bring to mind again your highlights of 2024, your best moments. The writer C.S.
Lewis, in his address The Weight of Glory, says this of experiences like that: They are not the thing itself. They are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited.
Because John will tell us life in all its glory is to know this Jesus Christ now and forever. And that is possible because of Christmas. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
