Our family has a game called Cranium that is filled with brainteasers, including one called Zooma, where the object is to identify everyday objects from an extremely close-up photograph. When you look at a close-up of a flower petal magnified fifty time, it is really hard to tell what you are looking at.

When it comes to the Christmas story, we can zoom in so tightly on certain events that we miss the big picture. We get so close to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi that we can’t see anything beyond them.

So, today, we are going to zoom out to a much wider angle. Instead of magnifying parts of the story, we are going to try to get a panoramic view of the whole. It’s not that the birth of the Child isn’t beautiful and instructive—it is. But a big problem with Christmas in America is that we insist on keeping Christ in the manger. We don’t want him to grow up. We are touched by a baby wrapped in swaddling and lying in a manger, but we would rather not be tapped by the Lord of heaven and earth to do his will. That is a different story. We prefer the one that keeps the baby tucked quietly in a manger.

I say, “That is a different story,” but it’s not. It is the same story. If you pan out from the Baby in the manger you will find the Savior on the cross. The Christmas Child that people are so ready to adore is also the Man that people were so ready to crucify. The manger and the cross are different chapters in the same story.

Today, we are going to attach our widest-angle lens. We are panning way out, beyond Bethlehem, even beyond Calvary. We are telescoping through time to the very beginning. Today we will see worlds bursting into being, and suns exploding with light. We’ll see Creation, with its immensity of space and its unplumbed depths of time, form; and it is dizzying.

And yet it is still the same story. We see the one who already was before the worlds began; we see the one who was born a helpless baby to a homeless family; we see the one who died the horrible death of the condemned. And he is the same person. He is there in the Beginning. He is there in the manger. He is there on the cross. But he is not, by the mercy of God, still there in the tomb. He is on the throne, and the story continues.

We are in John chapter 1. Before we drill down into this passage, I want to make a couple of preparatory remarks. First, this is a remarkably important passage. Whenever someone asks my opinion of a new Bible version, I look first at the opening verses of John 1. They are the touchstone of a translation’s integrity.

Second, this is a theologically rich and complex passage. It is profound and sublime, and my expository skills cannot do it justice. When I preach this passage, I know that I am out of my depth. I’m afraid we may all feel out of our depth this morning, but I won’t leave us floundering. We’ll get back to solid ground.

Third, it is good to keep in mind that John used great care in choosing words that would communicate to two very different cultures. There is no question that he is speaking to the Jewish world of Law and prophets. The text betrays Semitic sentence structures and makes numerous allusions to Old Testament themes. John, for example, intended his opening line to remind Jewish readers of the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Bible’s very first words read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

But John’s choice of terminology is also meant to evoke ideas familiar to Greek readers. For example, he uses the term “The Word” three times in the first verse and then again in the fourteenth verse. It is a term that even then was rich in history and brimming with meaning. It was used by the philosopher Heraclitus almost six centuries earlier, to describe the wisdom that steers the worlds.^[1] Then the Stoic philosophers took it up and used it to denote the Divine Reason that is behind the existence of all things. Like John, they taught that something called The Word brought creation into being. A Greek reader would recognize these terms and feel right at home in the prologue to this Gospel.

Look at verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word.” John intentionally did not say, “From the beginning was the Word,” but “In the beginning.” He was also careful in the verb tense he chose: the imperfect tense, which is far less common than the aorist, present, and prefect tenses. It conveys this idea: “In the beginning, the Word already was.”^[2] John’s wording is intended to prevent us from doing just what some groups have done: Suggest that this Word was a created thing. John is telling us that the word predated Creation. The Word was already there in the beginning.

 John wants his reader to understand how important this Word is: “The Word,” he writes, “was with God.” His choice of terms is, once again, intentional and precise. He uses the Greek word, pros, which is very dynamic. It intimates a face-to-face relationship. If in Greek I wanted to say, “I brought the book with me,” I would use the preposition para, which would suggest proximity, not relationship. But if I wanted to say, “Our sons are with us for the holidays,” I would use the word John chose. It connotes relationship.

At this point, both Jewish and Greek readers could nod in agreement. The Word was “in beginning” and it was “with God.” They could buy that. But the next phrase upsets the apple cart for both Jews and Greeks. “And the Word was God.”

It is important to remember the author of these words was fiercely monotheistic. He believed in one God, and one God only. Monotheism was the fundamental tenet of John’s faith. It was the foundation of Jewish belief, and yet John applies the term God to the One he calls the Word.^[3]

Now the same group that says that the Word was a created being has trouble with this part of the verse, too. They say, “Wait a minute. The Greek says, ‘The Word was a god,’ not ‘the Word was God.’” They will tell you that the article in Greek is missing from the noun “God,” making it indefinite.

What they won’t tell you is that in New Testament Greek the article is routinely missing when a definite noun precedes the verb, as it does here. It is called “Coleman’s Rule.” They are trying to make the Bible fit their theology, not their theology fit the Bible. John is saying that this Word relates to God (which implies some kind of distinction) but also that the Word is God (which speaks of unity).

If you’re treading water right now, or are sinking into the depths of sleep, here is a lifeline to sum up the first part of our text. There is a being John calls “the Word” that has always been with God. And though John can speak of the Word being with God, he can also say the Word was God.

In verse 3, he goes further: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The word made here has the idea of something “coming into being.” Everything that came into being, came into being through the Word. It is a tenet of Jewish belief that God himself is the Creator of the world. Here we read that the Word that was with God, that is God, that is God’s Word, brought everything that exists into being.

If I am clever, I can entertain people when I speak. If I am accurate, I can convey information. If I am pedantic (like this morning), I can put people to sleep. But when God speaks the Word, life comes into being. When he speaks, suns blaze and planets twirl, and oceans swarm with creatures; dinosaurs romp, birds sing, and dogs howl at the moon. When he speaks, people think and laugh and love. My word, your word, is a poor, thin, anemic thing. His Word is robust and teems with life. When he speaks, the dead spring to life and things that are not come into being.

The one that John has been calling The Word is the source of life in the universe: “In him,” verse 4, “was life, and that life was the light of men.” The life that comes from the Word gives direction, purpose, understanding – it is light – the light we so desperately need to make sense of the world and of ourselves. That light, John writes in verse 5, “shines.” Notice the change of tense here. It is intentional. Every verb before verse five points to the past. But in verse 5 we learn that the life-giving Word is still shining. It shines even now.

Verses 6 through 8 are a parenthesis introducing John the Baptist. In verse 9, the author comes back to the light that emanates from The Word. That light was coming, he says, into the world. Not just shining on the world, as the Divine Reason might, guiding humanity from afar; it was coming into the world.

Now look at verse 10: “He” – that is, the Word, the true Light, the being that was with God and was God, through whom all things came to be – “was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

Perhaps it is not surprising that the world did not recognize him – the world is a big place. But he came, verse 11, to that which was his own, and even his own did not receive him. The words, “that which was his own” are sometimes used idiomatically to refer to one’s home. For example, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he gave the care of his mother over to the apostle John who, we read, “From that time… took her into his home.”^[4] The words, “his home” are exactly the words we have here in verse 11. “He came to his home, but even the folks at home did not receive him.”

The word receive is an important one. John uses it again in chapter 14, where Jesus says, “I will come again and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.” Or, literally, “I will come again and receive you unto myself.”

 If you were a first-time reader of this Gospel living in the first century, you might think, “Hang on a minute. The Word, this being that was with God at the beginning, that was God, through whom everything that exists came into being, supposedly came into the world and people did not recognize it or accept it. When did this Word come into the world? How did it come into the world?”

Our first century reader might not know, but we do. John is talking about Christmas. About the birth of a Baby. For the remarkable news is that the WORD of God, that is God and with God is also God with us. “The Word,” verse 14, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The WORD, the Divine Reason, the Creative Power, the Source of life, the Light of men became flesh! The word translated, “made his dwelling” is literally, “he tented” among us. John chose this unusual word to evoke a memory among Jewish readers. The word he uses is the Greek word for Tabernacle; the Tabernacle was where Israel worshiped God for centuries. The Tabernacle housed the holy place and the Holy of Holies, where God revealed himself to his people. At that time, when people wanted to meet God, they went to the Tabernacle. But now that the Word has become flesh and tabernacled among us, if we want to meet God, we must go to the Word, in whom God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell (Colossians 1:19).

But has anyone ever seen the Word, the Creative power of the universe, the expression of the mind of God, the Fountain of life, and the light of men? Yes, they have. Outcast shepherds saw him. Pagan astronomers saw him. Well, has anyone heard this Word? Oh, yes. His mother for one, and more than a few others. What did he say? What wisdom did he offer? What mysterious words of power did he speak? Well, he didn’t exactly say anything at first. He cried. Cried like a baby. The Word that brought all things into being cried because he was hungry. The Word, the Divine Reason that steers the planets and stars, cried because he needed his diaper changed. Here is the wonder of Christmas. Look at it and be awed: “The WORD became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The eternal, omnipotent, creating, sustaining Word is now a human: Jesus of Nazareth. Ancient Jewish teachers – the kind of people who might have read John’s gospel when it was first written – vigorously argued with the Gentiles that humans never can and never will become God. With that, we agree. But it never occurred to them that God might become human! And not just human, but a baby, a crying, hungry, helpless baby!

Did you notice the connections between our passage and the Christmas narratives in the other Gospels? Both have a light that shines and gives guidance to men. Here, in verse 10, people who should have known their Creator failed to recognize him. In the Christmas story, the scholars who knew all about the prophecies concerning the Messiah did not know him when he came.

In verse 11, his own did not receive him. In the Christmas story, Joseph brings his new bride to Bethlehem, where his extended family lived. By custom, they should have welcomed their wayfaring cousin into their homes and, under normal circumstances, they would have done so. But they did not receive Joseph because his bride carried this Child. His own received him not.

Yet there were some who received him. There was his Mother, Joseph, an old man named Simeon, and an old woman named Anna. There were outcast shepherds and foreign astronomers. Not everyone refused to receive him. Verse 12, “Yet to all who received him…”

Now let’s wind this up. John says that “To all who received him, to those who believed in his name (that is, who trusted in him, had confidence in him), he gave the right to become children of God.” A few moments ago, I mentioned that John uses the Greek word for receive again in chapter 14. There, Jesus says, “Trust in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms – if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again to receive you to myself.”

If we refuse to receive Jesus – if we will not take him to be with us in our homes, our hearts, and our lives – it is sheer presumption to expect Jesus to receive us into his Father’s house. If we don’t want to be with him for a short time here, what makes us think that we would want to be with him for an eternity there? This bears thoughtful reflection.

This morning, we have been looking at Jesus’s story through a wide-angle lens. Perhaps we need to use that same lens to look at our own stories. We spend our brief time on life’s stage in close-ups: today’s needs, yesterday’s hurts, tomorrow’s requirements. But if we were to pan out, we would see the parents and grandparents and ancestors who came before us and shaped our lives. We would see the children and grandchildren who come after us, over whose lives we will have profound impact. We would see our births and, if we dared, our deaths. We would see moments we have enjoyed and moment we have regretted. We would see times when we responded to God as he spoke through Bible, conscience, or preacher. We would also see times we ignored God. We would see ourselves, beyond death, standing before God the Judge, face to ineffable face.

Just as you can only see Christ aright by panning out, from before the cradle to beyond the grave, so you can only see yourself aright by panning out. This is you: God’s creation, belonging to him, redeemed by him and for him, and responsible to him. From that wide angle, can you see yourself in the past receiving the Word made flesh, Jesus, the Son of God? If not, what about in the present? Will you take Jesus as your Lord and Savior today?

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^[1] Leon Morris, Expository Reflections on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker)

^[2] Cf. Barclay’s translation

^[3] Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John, The new International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1971. p. 78)

^[4] John 19:26