Specificity

2026-06
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 28, 2025

Isaiah 61:10-62:3 ; Psalm 147:13-21 ; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7 ; John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Oh, the joy of ancient Greek! The beauty of these words: “En archen en ho Logos, kai ho Logos en pros ton Theon, kai Theos en ho Logos.” And while not all biblical scholars agree on how to interpret that phrase—“and the Word was God”—the proximity of Jesus to divinity is super clear.

He was in the beginning with God.

Did you hear that? Christ has always been—even from the first verse of Genesis.

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

And Christ is a creator. It’s not just God the Father who creates the world. Christ is an intimate master-worker alongside with the Father.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

What does Christ create? Life! Awareness. That which animates everything, and without which the universe would be merely a cold, dead, unknowable process of physics.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

It’s all metaphor, isn’t it? There is literal light and darkness in the cosmos, yes. But in this sentence they are opposed to one another. Light good, darkness bad. Light victorious, darkness defeated. The light is still shining; the darkness has failed. You don’t have to tell it that way every time … but this author tells it specifically that way, this time.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

Well, that deescalated quickly! We were talking about literally everything, and now we’re just talking about … one guy? Who is this John? Did he write this gospel?

He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

Ah! No, he didn’t write this gospel. That’s a different John and may not even have been named John. This John you can see in icons, a wild man dressed in camel hair, holding a staff, and always pointing upward with one bony finger. What’s up there? we ask. The light. The light comes to us from above, does it not? Both literally and figuratively.

He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

John isn’t pointing to himself. He’s pointing to the light. Look! He’s pointing away from himself. Don’t look at his finger. Keep following the geometric ray that it traces, all the way to the very rays of the sun and beyond, into the uncreated Light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

“Wake up!” John cries. “The night is ending, and the long-awaited morning is here!”

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.

John is frustrated. “Why won’t you listen to me?” Some do. Many don’t. Most never know he existed—not before he is brutally murdered by the state.

But in reality, this verse isn’t about John … it’s about Christ. Through Christ comes the world, created by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We’ve snapped right back to the cosmic things. Those who are created do not recognize their Creator. And this presents a problem for the writer.

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

The gospel writer’s bias is showing! He’s frustrated, too. He’s writing decades after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the Romans destroy the temple, and after both Jews and Christians begin, out of necessity, to reinvent themselves. The writer is referring to the Jewish people, and he’s angry. The Jews say, “You are no longer our people, and you have taken in a whole bunch of folks who never were our people. We don’t believe the things you’re saying.” There is heartbreak and anguish. Why doesn’t everyone just get on board with the Christian program? Can’t God just fix this?

But for nineteen centuries afterward, followers of Jesus will keep departing from the way of Jesus and persecute God’s Chosen People instead. We have the benefit of hindsight. It was never about making sure everyone’s right. Did the gospel writer forget how cosmic this all was? Everyone is safely delivered into the Creator’s loving arms. You said so yourself. None of us ever has permission to take out our frustrations through violence.

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Who are the “children of God”? That’s you. You have the power to become children of God through a birth that doesn’t involve the bursting out from a woman’s womb. You have the power not through your own will, not because you decided for Christ, but because Christ has implanted this power in you. It is inescapable, and one way or another, it will out! This solution is indeed cosmic.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

The world has witnessed these things, and the writer now shares them with all of us in his own way, a way that’s different from that of Mary Magdalene, Paul, Peter, James, Mark, Matthew, Luke. They have all left the stage. Here is a new generation of people, both Jews and Gentiles, who want to know how any of this could possibly be. What is this “glory”—this bright majestic splendor? How can we see it and touch it and taste it and know it? Teach us, please! We want to become children of God!

(John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")

And so we are yanked back once again to the super-specific John the Baptizer. He’s speaking in paxadoxes, in riddles. Do you get it? Don’t try too hard. Just let the words wash over you, and then hold them up against your own super-specific life! That specificity is the point. We love to tease people and say, “It’s not about you.” This is about you! The only-begotten, the Christ, the one who is also God, has arrived in the world, and thus also in your life and mine.

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

All of us. Not just as a worldwide group, but as individuals as well. Grace upon grace. Gift upon gift. Twelve days of Christmas means twelve times as many gifts. Twelve is a much bigger number! Keep the gifts coming. Multiply by twelve and by twelve again, and then by a thousand. Receive 144,000 gifts! Receive forgiveness seventy times seven times! You are being showered with God’s glory, with God’s grace. Could it ever really end?

The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No child should be raised without rules. But there comes a time when we have practiced the rules so well that they have become a part of who we are. We still break them—frequently—but at least now we know them, and we know what is expected of the chosen people of God—of the children of God, grafted onto the vine. We need that law in our souls. We need grace and truth to reconcile us beyond the mere rules, so that we can always be assured of the repentance and forgiveness that together help us grow.

No one has ever seen God.

Have you never seen God? Really? I hear the writer’s claim, and I understand, but still I quibble. Had I never seen God, I wouldn’t be standing with you here now. I see God all the time!

It is God the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

And now we receive the deepest depth of gifts. If we ever thought before that we had never seen God, we can see God now. Look at Christ. Look at the super-specific Jesus of Nazareth. Look at the baby lying in a feeding trough. Look at the wonder in the shepherds’ eyes. Look to the distant east, from which numerous Zoroastrian astrologers are processing in solemn joy. Look at the hard-bitten hands of the carpenter stepfather. Look at the youthful face of Mary the mother, beads of sweat dripping down her forehead as she cries out in pain and then is relieved of that pain and delivered into a mother’s joy.

They all see it. They share that knowledge with us today. They see a specific newborn infant in a specific place and time. They will come to know him better. We all will.

My friends, a very merry fourth day of Christmas to you this day. Amen.