Christmas Eve Sermon (2025)
Nuclear Baby Jesus
John 1:1-14
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Merry Christmas – I’m about to blow your mind!
Let me first refresh your memory about what the Holy Scriptures say about God's holiness:
The Bible declares that God is holy, and God's holiness burns so hotly against sin that no one can see His face and live (Exodus 33:20).
God warned Moses at Sinai that His people Israel must not approach the mountain, because if they forced themselves through to see God, they would perish (Exodus 19:21).
Much later, the prophet Isaiah despaired of his life, for his eyes had seen "the King, the LORD Almighty" (Isaiah 6:5).
St. Paul described this holiness as an unapproachable light" (1 Timothy 6:16),
and when St. John realized in the book of Revelation that he was looking at God Himself enthroned in splendor, he passed out cold (Revelation 1:17).
When St. Peter witnessed the miraculous catch of fish, he fell at Jesus' feet, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:8)
But, let me ask a question: How is it that someone like St. Peter was not immediately destroyed in the presence of God? In the Old Testament, if you saw God, you would not survive. So what happened?
Jesus was born in the flesh. That's what happened.
As John reminds us in his Gospel: "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."
Let me try to explain this by talking about something that I know almost absolutely nothing about - nuclear power.
Now follow me here. From what I understand, nuclear power gets generated when a high-speed neutron strikes an atom and splits it in half. The resulting energy is so violent and so destructive that entire special containment buildings must be constructed around the nuclear reactor just to control its wrath.
Well, if that is so, how is it that God's wrath against sin, unimaginably and infinitely hotter and more violent than any man-made nuclear explosion could possibly be, doesn’t immediately destroy Peter or John or Mary or Joseph or the shepherds?
Well, there has to be more than meets the eye going on here. My point? There is!
Truly, God is an all-consuming fire, and you and I in our sin are like an oil slick and you know what fire would do to an oil slick. So I submit to you that in order for God come to be present with us in the flesh, a special containment building had to be built to house God and to hold this all-powerful divinity - whose presence ferociously destroys sin - in check, so that He could save us.
And so God did just that. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. What did God do? He gave us Jesus. He built Him. He knit His eternal Son in the womb of an earthly mother. An infant child who sleeps in a hay-filled manger and suckles on His mother's lap. Here – in this Holy Infant - IS the special containment building that God provided so that we would not be obliterated during His special forces operation to save us from ourselves by becoming one of us!
When this Child was miraculously conceived in Mary's womb, it is as if our God said, "You know what?!? Mankind cannot see Me and live. Therefore, I must bury My holiness and hide it somewhere so that they will not be afraid of Me any longer. I will conceal the fullness of My godhead and my holiness here in the flesh and blood of this woman’s Son." And so the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
You see, Jesus' physical body became the covering and the shield by which Mary and Joseph and you and I are all protected from the righteous wrath of God. Everything that God is and does now reduces itself to the confines of a baby boy.
Would you like to see the God of eternity? Do you want to see the One through whom the heavens were made? Do you want to experience in front of your very eyes the one who fills all things? Well here He is! And guess what? He really is some 8 pounds and 6 ounces. According to St. Paul, "...in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." (Colossians 2:9).
You know, some people fear their earthly governments or those in power. But what does the Almighty and all-powerful God - who created the very heavens and the earth - do for you? He comes to earth in the most helpless and harmless form of all - the form of a baby.
And this little infant - a tiny fleshly containment building - holds in His clenched little hands the full scope of your existence! He possesses, beneath His swaddling cloths and his well-sucked thumb, the divinity and might necessary to overcome every enemy who would oppose you. He is God Himself, but not the God who comes to inspire your fear, but the God who hides and conceals everything you might fear about Him so that instead of having destroy you with His wrath, He can destroy everything that makes Him seem so fearsome in the first place – including your sin that would damn you from His presence if you were left in it.
Dear, dear loved ones, when Jesus takes your sin from you and carries it upon Himself, God's wrath no longer burns hot against you. When He robes you in His holiness and washes you with His perfection, nothing unclean remains in you that would stir God's holiness against you. And when He cradles the very body and blood of this His one and only begotten Son, in, with and under this bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, He feeds you His very self and builds you up from the inside out.
Does this seem simply beyond comprehension? Good, cause it is - even nuclear science can’t begin to define it, Openheimer can't blow it up, and Elon Musk can't send it to Mars either.
The bottom line is that Christmas doesn't matter because Jesus is soft and cuddly, all babies are. Christmas matters because this one is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, through whom the World and all things were created. He has pierced his own creation and not only become like us, but He has done so without having to obliterate us with His eternal naked energy so He can fulfill all things and save us from sin, death and the power of the devil.
Dear friends, there is no greater miracle than this – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Our all-powerful and all loving God has come to you in the only way that He could without destroying you! He has done it all in the person of this holy infant Jesus, who is both True God and true man.
This Jesus, this holy child, is God's special containment building - a shield and defense for you - who has come to you righteous and having salvation. Joy to the world…the Lord is come...
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
