The sermon for December 25 was based on John 1:1-14.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The cover of my January issue of Scientific American reads, in large letters, "The First Human Clone" and the photo on the cover is of the genetically manipulated blastocyst itself. In all fairness to the scientists who's work is reported in this journal, they were not trying to create a living person by cloning someone but their work will be used by others who intend to do just that.

It has long been our ambition to create and recreate... ourselves, quite apart from any divine input. The difference between cloning and self-help, of the kind offered by certain public speakers and sold in volume by pulp book stores, is one of degree, not kind.

We have never taken God's warning about the necessity of being in line with His will. Adam and Eve refused to believe what He told them about the forbidden fruit. Yet from the moment of their first sin their very bodies became disconnected from the Word of God by which they had been created. God's word had called Adam from the dust and Eve from the rib of her man. But once they rejected that Word they rejected its life-giving and life-sustaining power. Death came to them, and pain and suffering and weakness and lust and envy and sickness.

God, Himself, had to clothe their bodies because they could no longer even look at each other without sinning. Having been cut off from the will of God, they became objects to one another, things to use up. We are entirely too familiar with that brutal and killing disconnect. How many little babies do we murder each year on the deeply cursed premise that a woman's body is beholden to no one or nothing other than her own personal will? We kill each other for no more valid reason than that its convenient to us. If we'll kill our babies... we'll do absolutely anything.

Probably none of you here supports abortion on demand. But the disassociation of our bodies and God's Words has killed and condemned you and the people you love just as surely. Because we have refused God's will for ourselves, our bodies have taken on a life of their own, albeit a bizarre one, and we've discovered that our own wills are too weak to master even our own flesh. We say "mind over matter" but it never works. It's always, always, matter over mind. You can't will your cancer away, you force a smile but you can't force yourself to be joyful.

You can wish all you want that you were a better person but wishing won't make it so and neither will all the hard work you dying little body can offer. In fact, we're so disconnected from God's Word that we have no real idea what our lives should even look like, only that they aren't what they were intended to be. God's Law, handed down at Sinai, and given to us in the Bible provides us with a kind of looking glass, but all it tells us is how ugly we are and how monstrously deviant we are from what we should be. It doesn't really show us what we ought be.

We hear that Law, we see that gruesome reflection and it makes us hate God even more than we did before but it also makes us hate ourselves. Ironically, it turns against the very bodies for which we rejected God. It makes us think that all of our problems arise from our flesh. If there was only some way we could get rid of this meat, we imagine, then our spirits would really shine. And every time we have such thoughts, whether at the gym or in our hospital beds or while needing desperately to be 2 or 3 places at once, the devil laughs. He would love nothing better than see our souls parted from our bodies. He knows all about that. It's called death. He loves it.

And just about the time we've had it with our flu plagued, arthritic and otherwise uncontrollable bodies, its Christmas again. And lo and behold, God Himself takes on the very flesh and blood that we're about ready to crawl out of. All of the sudden we remember that we're not gnostics. We can't blame our predicament on our bodies. We're humans. We're supposed to have bodies. The problem lies with the fact that we refuse to let God be the master of either our bodies or our souls. But little Jesus, lying in the manger, shows us what we are supposed to be.

His body doesn't rebel against Him because He doesn't rebel against the Father. Jesus didn't inherit the sin with which we are born because, He wasn't conceived in His mother's womb by a sinful man but rather by the Holy Ghost. He is Himself God, God the Son, and there is no division between His will and the Father's will. To look at Christ is to see more clearly what God intended, indeed, intends for us. He is at peace. He is quiet. He is content. He is healthy. He is kind and compassionate and generous. He is powerful and at the same time utterly selfless.

Today we celebrate His arrival among us, the nativity of Christ, the incarnation of God. If He has done nothing more than be born, it would be an occasion for wonder and amazement. But He came to us with a purpose. He came to save us from sin and from death and from the power of the devil. He came to conquer the devil, the world and yes, our flesh. He came to subdue them, to subject them again to the benevolent rule of God our Father. He applies the strength of His truly and divinely united body and soul to the threats that face you and me.

The devil can't succeed in tempting Jesus' body in the wilderness because Jesus' body cannot be separated from the Word, with which our Lord drives Satan away. The devil cannot keep Jesus in the grave because Jesus' body is perfectly united to the word and will of God which always gives life and vitality to the innocent. Because Jesus' is what He should be, true man and true God, He is invincible. And He's born today to share that invincibility with us. He isn't willing to keep His prefect humanity to Himself. He wants us to have everything He has... so He gives it.

You might be thinking to yourself, if only I had a body like that. Stop right there. You're not thinking big enough. You don't want a body like Jesus'. You want Jesus' body and His blood too. And wonder of wonders, He wants you to have it. Here at this very altar He gives you the selfsame body and blood once wrapped in swaddling cloths, once crucified for the forgiveness of your sins, once bound in grave clothes and now resurrected and glorious beyond our comprehension. He also wants you to have His will, the same mind that is in Him.4D This He gives you in Baptism when He fills you with Holy Ghost and unites Himself to you through His death and resurrection. Then, to keep you secure in your union with Him, Jesus also provides you with the proclamation of the Word and the very great blessing of Pastoral Absolution. Through these means of grace, you are strengthened and preserved. This is how we are recreated. It has nothing to do with test tubes. There aren't 12 or 10 or any steps we have to go through. We cannot do this to ourselves or have it done for us by anyone but Christ.

Through His means of grace, Christ is knitting our body and souls back together. He's repairing our damaged parts with parts of Himself. On the surface that sounds like what the geneticists are trying to do. But it couldn't be more different. Science always seeks to increase our master over the world. The Gospel makes us children of God, in a very real and specific way.

When you look at the manger and see the Christ Child, you are looking at yourself. The flesh you see there is the flesh He's given you. You've eaten that very Body. You've drunk that very Blood. When you consider that particular Child of God you are reflecting on your own adoption as Sons of God. When next your body fails you, when next your soul disappoints, do not resolve to become your own master. Rather rush to be forgiven for having forgotten who you Lord really is, and then receive the comforting assurance that your rebellion has been absolved. And when you come to the end of your strength, or when you find yourself at the deathbed or even the grave of someone you love. Remember that because of Jesus' incarnate work, death is nothing more than the last thing we suffer before Jesus completely finishes knitting our bodies and souls back together. Amen.

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008