Sermon: “I Have Become One of You”, John 1:1-14, December 25, 2025
Scripture: John 1:1-14
Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka
Title: “I Have Become One of You”
“In the beginning,” begins our Christmas Day gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” No Bethlehem. No angels, no shepherds, no stars. No Mary no Joseph, no sweet baby Jesus. But our Christmas Day gospel begins at the beginning. Before even the creation of the world. Another one of those Christmas things you can’t really depict in a nativity set.
Though it begins at the beginning of time, we do in fact get to Christmas, by chapter 14.
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The Word made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.
While this doesn’t look like our traditional nativity, we might think of it as the nativity under a divine microscope. What was happening in Bethlehem in Jesus, at the level beyond what we can see. The assertion here is that Jesus wasn’t just a remarkable human being. But when he was conceived in the womb, the Word that was spoken at the beginning of Creation, that same spark that ignited the Big Bang, bringing our universe into being, was not only speaking again, sparking again, but was taking on flesh itself, becoming a part of the action. C.S. Lewis—author of the Chronicles of Narnia and lover of all things literary, of course—described it as the author of a story becoming one of his or her own characters.
In Jesus God was taking up residence in our world. “Nobody’s ever seen God,” says John in the verse after our reading. But anyone who saw Jesus did see God. Anybody who sidled up to the stable looked into his eyes in Mary’s arms. Anybody who shared a table grace with him gazed into the source of all galaxies. Anybody who beheld him as he laid hands on their wounds was witnessing heaven. The glory of a Father’s only Son—which is to say, God’s spitting image. Chip off the ol’ block. Even those who whipped him, spat on him, mocked him. When they stared him down as he gave up his last breath on a cross. Even then they were staring into the eyes of eternity.
With these words, John’s pulling back the curtain of the Nativity play for us to show us what’s going on behind the scenes in Bethlehem. At Christmas, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Now, why would God do such a thing? I mean, it clearly wasn’t just to spend some quality time with humanity. Or like an alien to learn our planet’s culture and customs first hand. Considering how we ended up treating God while God was here? Why would God do such a thing?
Well, the answer is love. Not love in the sentimental, sign you can get for your bathroom at Home Depot kind of way. But true love. Self-giving, sacrificial love.
Maybe you’ve heard the story of Father Damien. Damien was a Belgian priest who, in the late 1800’s, became a missionary to Hawaii. There he ministered to people struck with leprosy. Leprosy is a contagious, long term bacterial infection that can cause permanent nerve damage. This nerve damage may result in a lack of ability to feel pain, which may lead to infection or loss of limbs because the person doesn’t feel the damage.
It’s contagious, so people who’ve got it have usually been sent away to colonies, way from other people. But the thing about Damien is that he went to live with them. He wrapped their wounds, he built a reservoir, and even helped them dig their graves. Most importantly, though, he shared his table with them. He ate with them, touched them, shared life with them. In ways that no one else would. Or could.
Of course, in spending time with these people, Damien himself would inevitably contract the disease. One day he put his foot in a bath and realized he couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold anymore. He, too, had become a leper. And he, too, would eventually die from the disease.
In spite of what was undoubtedly a terrible diagnosis to him, he still stepped into the pulpit that Sunday to lead worship, and to preach amid the fellowship of lepers: “Now,” he began his sermon, “now I too, am one of you.” “Now, I, too, am one of you.”[i]
Damien had refused to stand idly by while these people suffered. Regardless of the risk, he still went to be with them, to love them, to suffer with them, to share in their loneliness, to take on their suffering and their pain as his own. He became one of them for their sake. Even to the point of his own death. “Now I, too, am one of you.”
In that moment, Father Damien was an image, an icon of the incarnation. An image of Jesus, and helps us to illuminate the meaning of Christmas.
John tells us that at Christmas, the Creator of the universe, like Father Damien, out of love came to us. He came to us, not only in our physical ailments, but came to our souls infected by the powers of Sin and Death, and evil. People overwhelmed by sadness, failure and despair. As Damien came to the lepers, God came to us not only in our loveliness, and gentleness, but in our full human lives. In our ugliness, selfishness, our brokenness, too. And like Damien, God came to us, to share our burdens, to take on our suffering, our pain and our sin as his own. Even to the point of death.
For you and for me this is a great comfort. Why? Because it means that we haven’t been abandoned to our own devices. The WORLD hasn’t been abandoned. We’re not alone in our suffering and our sorrows. We’re not alone, either in our sins, in our sickness. Because in Jesus Christ, God says, “I, too, have become one of you.” Christmas means that, like Father Damien, God in Jesus Christ has pledged to never abandon us, to be with us and for us no matter what state we’re in. It’s a source of great comfort and great strength. No matter our darkness, it can never overcome his light.
It’s a source of great comfort and great strength, but it’s also even more. Because it’s also a source of great hope.
Because there is one major difference between Jesus and Father Damien, or really any of us, is Easter. Because at Christmas God not only came to be with us in our desperate plight, but he came to put our plight to flight. He came to bring us a cure. Again, in John’s language, “to give us the power to be children of God, to be reborn not by the will of man or by the flesh, but by the will of God.” Of if you like Christmas carols, “mild he lays his glory by, born that men no more may die/born to raise the sons of earth/born to give us second birth.” And that’s what the scriptures tell us that he did.
On the cross, Jesus Christ took all of the sins of the world into himself. Every last one of them, yours and mine. Every unkindness, every transgression. Every guilt, every shame. When Jesus was struck down by our disease on the cross, he took our disease into the grave with him. Not only that, but he took death itself with him into the grave, ultimately overcoming it for good in his resurrection. “Now I, too, am one of you,” Jesus says. “I, too, am one of you, so you can be one with me. Now and into eternity.”
I mean, undoubtedly, this is the hope that inspired Father Damien to minister and persevere. That he could minister to broken bodies because his own body, stricken by disease, would one day be healed. Made entirely new like the Lord’s body once stricken on the cross. Thanks to this great hope, he was already being reborn even as he took his last breath and died.
And this is the hope, thanks to Christmas, that is ours, too. Because on Christmas, God not only came to be with us, he came to bring us to him, to heal all our ills, and to raise us with him to new life forever. He came not only to be with you, but to bring you to him, to heal all your ills, and to raise you into new life forever.
It’s something world celebrating not only once a year, but every day, and every year.
Hail, thou ever-blessed morn;
hail, redemption's happy dawn;
sing through all Jerusalem,
Christ is born in Bethlehem![ii]
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] This story is taken from Michael Mayne, “Now I am One of You,” from To Trust and to Love: Sermons and Addresses, London: Darton, Longman & Todd), 9-14.
[ii] Edward Caswall, “See Amid the Winder’s Snow,” Voices United #76.