There was no livestream for this service. (Preaching on a Mark series that parallels the Historic Lectionary texts, the Christmas sermons utilize 1 Peter, since there is no Christmas story in Mark and Mark’s gospel was telling what Peter was remembering as eyewitness.)

THE WORD MADE FLESH TO REDEEM US

Sermon Text, St. John 1:12-14; 1 Peter 1:18-23.

Dear people loved by God in Christ:

St. John tells us that Jesus Christ is the “Word.” He tells us that this Word was there in the beginning. That He was at the Father’s side creating. That you can’t find one thing that is made, created, that wasn’t made by Him.

Creation is a loving act by God. Our catechism teaches us to say: “I believe that God made me.” It’s a gift. Life is a gift. But then there’s a problem; that problem is sin. This is why “the Word became flesh.” Because of sin. He did this for us. “For there, O Lord, doth lie the Word made flesh for us,” we sang. This is the gift, that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The gift is summed up in one word by St. Peter: “redeemed.” This word is about cost. It means purchased. We think of some thing to be bought. Many people think like that about God. They think of salvation as a transaction, some thing you get – to get forgiveness, to get saved.

But you know what happens to this. The same thing that happens after the Christmas presents are opened. If it’s just some thing you get, at some point it will lie unused and forgotten in the corner – which happens all too often to our faith and salvation, and what we think of God’s forgiveness.

But God is not just purchasing something for you. He is purchasing you.

That’s what St. Peter says here: “you were redeemed …” Martin Luther put this into the catechism, explaining the 2nd article, what Jesus means, by using Peter’s words: “He has redeemed me, purchased and won me …”

Then he says what you might not expect to hear on Christmas Day. This redeeming, Peter says, was “not with corruptible things, like silver or gold … but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” You know these words because Luther used them too: “He has purchased and won me not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”

This is how He purchased you. This was the cost. The little baby in the manger is there to go to a cross someday. “Nails, spear shall pierce Him through, The cross be borne for me, for you.” (ELH #145:2) To us it’s old news. We hardly take notice. But it’s horribly unnatural. Mary must bear a baby and raise a boy whose life must end in torture, suffering and a horrific death.

At Christmas we don’t want to think about this. But even though it’s Christmas you think of things you rather wouldn’t. You think of the dangers in the world you live in; there is no world peace. You think of the people who have died, and at Christmastime their absence leaves not only an empty place but a hole in your happiness and your heart. There are homeless people, and food insecurity is a thing. Others are afraid of what’s around the corner because of debts. Then there are your own sins. You aren’t the person you want to be. You live with unresolved guilt. Tension with family members isn’t just their fault. You know what you’ve done.

So the world of sin and its consequences crowds its way into your Christmas. You’re reminded that you’re under the power of sin, death, and the devil. They drag you where you don’t want to go.

We aren’t so silly as to think we can buy our way out with “silver or gold,” but look what else Peter calls it: “corruptible things … your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers.” In other words, the way of the world. Which is to think you can handle it, or find a work-around. You can be in control. You can learn to be better by your own willpower. You deal with death by ignoring it. You can work for peace, or at least follow the safeguards where you are so as to keep catastrophes away.
Only after all our efforts, we still find ourselves under the power of sin, death, and the devil. What we need is someone to “purchase and win me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil.”

As Peter sits in a Roman prison, he answers this question in a shocking way: Such a Redeemer isn’t a lion but a Lamb, not one who sheds others’ blood but who offers His own blood to be shed.

It’s this little Baby. We know that He is not here to be served but to serve. He is not here for us to take care of Him but for Him to take care of us. Even as He lies in the manger, He is without sin, “without blemish and without spot,” and so He is redeeming us.

This redeeming continues into what He does for you now. Just as He was lying in the manger in His baby flesh that contained the whole Godhead, now in the Lord’s Supper lying in the bread and wine – just as humble as His manger – is His whole Godhead and His same human body. Just as Peter says “you were redeemed with the blood of Christ,” as you drink His very blood in the Lord’s Supper He is redeeming you from sin.

He says that you no longer belong to the devil, or sin, or death. You belong to Him. He’s redeemed you. He’s purchased you to “be His own.”

This is what Christmas means! You’ve “received Him,” John writes. It’s by faith. And yet He has received you, taken you over. John then says to think of it as being “born of God,” and Peter echoes this: you “have been born again through the word of God which lives and abides forever.”

You’ve been given a new life, a new lease on life. You can picture it as the character Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, where he is really a new man. “People laughed to see the alteration in him.” He’s so excited to have a second chance, he says, “I don’t know what to do,” and then he goes out and does every good thing he can think of for every person he meets.
That’s how it is when you know how Jesus has redeemed you, purchased you, to be His own. You haven’t just been given this or that, you’ve been given a whole new being, a whole new life, a new purpose, to serve Him.

On Christmas we ask Jesus to “be born in us today.” He is! But He is born in us so we are born again, and it changes us: so that we no longer live but Christ lives in us. It’s to live for Him, as Peter says, to “love one another with a pure heart.” This is living “with faith and hope in God.” Amen!