The Light that Enlightens Everyone
We know the story of the life of Christ as relayed by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Gospel of John, however, we find a much more poetic and imaginative view of Christ’s birth and life, and we’re called to see God’s presence within the hearts of every living being. It is the deep truth of the Incarnation.
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Transcript
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So, if you happen to be here—I’ve seen a couple, I think, maybe three or four who were here on Christmas Day—you’re going to hear part of that same sermon. Just act like you haven’t heard it. Normally, what we do is we have different choices for the lessons that we use. On Christmas Day, you have a choice of three, and you can use them on Christmas Day or on Christmas Eve.
What we normally do here at Grace is take the full service, which is either from Matthew or Luke, and have that on Christmas Eve. Then on Christmas Day, when we gather for that service—which is always a smaller group of people (I think there were 24 of us this year)—we use the third choice, which is this text from John: John’s Prologue text. I’ll get to it in a minute.
To understand John, you really need to take a little time and put it in its wider context to see what the other texts have. We have four gospels, right? Here’s your quiz. There is a quiz at the end of it. They’re not in the order they were written. The order they’re printed in the Bible is not the order they were written. Mark came first. We know that because Mark is the shortest and because of how it’s written—there are clues in its writing.
Mark, for one, does not start with an origin story or a birth story. Mark starts with what? Jesus’s baptism. Mark picks up there, which makes you wonder: why doesn’t Mark actually talk about Jesus’s birth like the others do? One reason for that was that they were still figuring that out. Think about it that way. Mark was written around the year 65 to 75—somewhere around when the Second Temple was destroyed. We know Mark was written during this time and focused on something different: telling the redemptive story of Jesus’s acts and life.
The way Mark tells it gives you clues because there are phrases in Mark that are only in Mark—like “immediately,” “immediately,” “immediately.” If you ever hear someone perform Mark aloud, it’s fascinating because you can pick up on those rhythms and patterns of speech. Mark was focused on telling Jesus’s redemptive story and didn’t pay attention to how Jesus was born.
That came with Matthew and Luke. Interestingly, the pageant we all do each year never actually appears in any text. We can thank Saint Francis for putting it together that way. The Magi are in Matthew; the shepherds are in Luke—they’re never actually in the same story. Isn’t that curious? We put them together because they tell the whole story of Jesus’s birth in narrative form.
But it’s good to step back and look at that because you might start to think what it says isn’t actually what it says. There are reasons the Magi appear in Matthew and reasons the shepherds appear in Luke. There are also reasons we put them together—because kids look cute dressed up that way.
Matthew and Luke were both written roughly around A.D. 80—later than Mark. Keep in mind Saint Paul had already written his letters by then; he started writing around A.D. 50. So you had Mark written first, followed by Matthew and Luke for different reasons and audiences.
Here’s where it gets fascinating: Matthew and Luke seem to know about Mark because you can lay them alongside each other and see exact phrases from Mark in both Matthew and Luke. These stories were starting to be circulated and shared as people wondered how to make sense of Jesus—what he brought into the world, what his life meant then and now.
Saint Paul’s letters were being spread along Roman roads while Matthew and Luke incorporated portions of Mark into their own writings. But there was another source we can see when comparing Matthew and Luke—a source never found but called Q (from German quelle, meaning “source”). This source accounts for common points between Matthew and Luke not found in Mark.
This tells us there was a deep imaginative yearning to understand Jesus’s life—drawing on stories handed down through generations or told by witnesses like someone’s grandmother who was there when something happened.
And then there’s John—a different bird altogether. John isn’t in the same wheelhouse as Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Written later (around A.D. 100-110), John focuses not on historical accounts but on meaning—the deeper meaning of Jesus’s life.
John is poetry—not rushing through events like Mark does with “immediately.” Instead, John takes his time, laying out a vision of Jesus’s significance across all time and places—not just one moment or location.
You see this in today’s reading: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This echoes Genesis intentionally because John situates Jesus not just at his baptism (Mark) or birth (Matthew/Luke) but within all creation—from its very beginning.
John challenges us to see Jesus as central to everything: “In him all things came into being.” Jesus becomes our lens for understanding life itself—a grounding force.
Saint Paul picks up on this idea too, but John elaborates poetically with radical depth about who Jesus is: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Later: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
Here lies John’s radical message: every soul—every person—is infused with God’s indwelling light. Full stop.
This challenges us to question boundaries we create—categories or evaluations about who measures up or doesn’t—and reminds us how radical Christmas truly is.
Bishop Tutu once joked about bowing at church: if unsure when to bow or genuflect during service, take cues from Hindus—bow to everyone! Because God’s presence dwells within every person.
This radical notion calls us to reflect deeply on how we treat one another—a perfect message as we begin a new year. It asks us who Christ is in our lives today—and how his message transforms how we live and treat others.
That’s the Christmas message I’m left with each year: How willing am I to live into Christ’s call?
Amen.