From Manger to Cosmos

Tonight, as we read these familiar texts and sing hymns about the birth of Jesus—born in a humble manger, in a small and insignificant town, to poor people displaced from their home—I want to pause and talk about the New Testament itself. I want to talk about how the earliest followers of Jesus wrestled with this event long before it became the familiar story we know today.

It’s a story about vulnerability—about a young couple doing the best they can, about exhaustion and uncertainty, about life arriving in the middle of disruption. And many of us come tonight carrying something similar. We come with hopes and joys, yes—but also with grief, worry, loneliness, or fatigue. Christmas doesn’t wait until life is settled. It comes right into the middle of things, just as it did that night. This is the story that our texts invite us to experience tonight.

So let’s pause here and breathe in the crisp night air of that Bethlehem night.

When we enter deeply into these texts and how they were written, we begin to see how the story of Jesus grew and expanded over time—and what that expansion is trying to tell us.

The earliest writings in the New Testament are not the gospels at all, but Paul’s letters. And the first gospel written was Mark. It’s important to remember that the gospels are not newspaper accounts reporting bare facts. They are symbolic teaching texts, written for communities of people, using images and stories those people would understand.

This use of particular symbols is why, for example, the Magi—the wise men—appear only in Matthew. Luke knows nothing about them. And the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds appear only in Luke; Matthew never mentions them.

I don’t share this to plant seeds of doubt. Quite the opposite. This awareness invites us to go below the surface meaning, to ask what these symbols are communicating—and how that meaning grows richer with each telling.

These writers weren’t trying to shrink the mystery, like so many modern people seem to want to do—they were trying to stretch it wide enough to hold what they had experienced of God in Jesus.

Let’s pause here to breathe in wonder.

When we meet the God of all creation, those encounters are so huge that we can’t hope to communicate them adequately through limited language, and so our texts often struggle to express the deep truths they reveal.

Mark, the earliest gospel, begins not with a birth story but with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Mark seems to know nothing about a miraculous birth or Jesus’ childhood. For him, the story truly begins when Jesus is baptized, anointed with the Spirit, and revealed as God’s messenger—the Christ.

Paul, writing even earlier than Mark, also knows nothing of a virgin birth. Paul never met the human Jesus at all. Instead, he encountered the risen Christ in a blinding, mystical vision after Jesus had been executed by the Roman Empire.

From that encounter, Paul knew that something far bigger than one life was unfolding—something of cosmic significance.

Matthew and Luke, writing later, say in effect: this is even bigger than one man’s birth or baptism. This story reaches back into Israel’s history—into the law, the prophets, the covenant promises made to God’s people in exile and suffering. And so Luke tells the story with angels singing to shepherds—the lowest hearing from the highest. Matthew tells of a star that draws wise ones from the East, signaling that the entire cosmos and even foreign nations are involved. They’re saying: this matters. This, Jewish readers, is part of our history and it changes everything.

For Mark, Matthew, and Luke, this Jesus and this risen Christ are good news for Israel. But Paul goes further. He insists this is not just for the twelve tribes, but for all nations, for all people everywhere. And then John, the last gospel written, stretches the story further still.

John doesn’t just connect Jesus to Israel’s history or to all human nations. He connects Jesus to the very beginning of the entire cosmos—to the Word, the Logos, the Wisdom of God present at Creation itself.

This is no longer just a story about one man in first-century Palestine. It’s not even only about resurrection. It is about God’s purpose from the very beginning of the universe—indeed, from the first moment of creation—and it is for all of creation. That’s why scripture says the whole earth rejoices: the heavens, the seas, the thunder, even the trees of the forest shout for joy.

Paul sees this too. He calls Christ the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. This Christ is for all people, all creatures, all matter. Through Christ, God will be All in All.

Let’s pause here to breathe in the joy of all the earth.

This is the work of Christ: to reunify heaven and earth, the human and the divine, matter and spirit, in one real human life.

A life willing to walk through suffering, crucifixion, abandonment—trusting God’s love even there. This is the great transformation: suffering into joy, death into life, separation into communion. And this was never God’s plan B because humans messed up.

As Richard Rohr says, Jesus was not a mop-up operation. This was always God’s intention—to draw all things back into oneness, not by erasing difference, but by filling all things with God’s Light and Love.

And the astonishing good news is that this work is already done. It doesn’t depend on our belief to make it true.

It’s already been accomplished in Christ. But when we allow ourselves to fall in love with Jesus, when we let his life and love awaken something in us, that completed work comes alive here and now—in community, in compassion, in shared love. And it hastens the movement toward that final oneness.

When that love comes alive in us, it looks like mercy where there has been judgment, courage where there has been fear, and connection where there has been isolation. It looks like refusing to believe that suffering or division gets the final word. Even the smallest acts of love participate in that great movement toward wholeness. The Light of the World is good news for all.

Let’s just pause a moment here to breathe that good news in, deeply.

The Light of the World, the Great Love Story of God, comes to us tonight through the vulnerability of a tiny child, born in an unimportant place, to ordinary people. A story so small—and yet vast enough to hold the whole universe. Amen.