That Boy, Ain’t from Around Here!

January 4, 2026

We are still in the season of Christmas, so it is still appropriate and essential to ask who is this child born in a manger so long ago? The gospel of Mark doesn’t answer the question at all but only begins in his adulthood. The gospel of Matthew answers the question with a long list of Jesus’s lineage. Making the clear claim that Jesus is descendant from Abraham and Sarah through David and Bathsheba, and on all the way down to Joseph, his father. So, it would appear that Joseph is the father of this child. The gospel of Luke tells us who Jesus is by way of what others like angels and shepherds and magi say about the child.
But the gospel of John, which is the most deeply theological of the gospels goes in a very different direction. And just a sidenote, here when I talk about theology in this context, I mean, talking in a way that is not storytelling as it were, but is rather is more poetic. Theology in this case doesn’t give answers. It gives images and feelings in a much more cosmic rather than specific way to answer to questions. So of course, John talked about Jesus as being connected to an ancient power which our biblical ancestors called Wisdom. And although we cannot see the gender translation ‘wisdom’ in Hebrew is always in the female gender. Listen again to what the reading from Book of Sirach says of Wisdom: 

I am the word spoken by the most high.

I covered the Earth like a mist. 

I made my home in the highest heavens, my throne on a pillar of cloud. alone, I walked around the circle of the sky and walked through the oceans beneath the Earth. 

I ruled over all the Earth and the ocean waves over many nations over many people. 

I looked everywhere for a place to settle, some part of the world to make my home. And then the creator told me where I was to live.

The first few verses of John mirrors words like this, as well as the very first words of the book of Genesis. In the beginning… In the beginning before the world was created there was the Word. The Word of wisdom, creation, love, and light. Through that light, the Word gives life to creation itself. This is a power beyond angels and shepherds and Magi. It is so powerful that it is beyond comprehension. The writer of the gospel of John, then says something very unique about the power of that Word which is to make children of God from earthly people. Indeed, John, foreshadows the power of God to make of us humans, God’s own children. Interestingly, in the gospel of John, the word or wisdom moves from being a female gender to a male gender. But hear how John describes the Words power in verse 12 through 13. 

Some however, did receive him and believed in him; so he gave them the right to become God‘s children. They didn’t become God’s children, and this is important, by natural means, that is being born as the children of a human father; God himself was their father. 

So, that power that we see in verses 12 and 13 John now is connecting to Jesus, and who this child Jesus is in verse 14. Saying,

The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the father‘s only son.

Like I said a couple of weeks ago Jesus’s divinity doesn’t have to rest solely on biology. God through the power of Wisdom can make God’s children out of the likes of you and me. What makes Jesus unique according to the gospel of John verse 14 is that Word or Wisdom takes on human flesh and in that flesh we see the Glory of God.  And nobody before or since has shown that glory so clearly. 

I consider this to be John’s version of the birth story of Jesus, akin to what we find in the “Christmas stories” at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. Through the metaphorical imagery of poetry, Jesus who is of a specific time becomes timeless. His beginning is not at his birth but rather it rests in the mysteries of creation. The ending of his life does not rest at his death but rather he has no end because you cannot kill that power which brough him into being. In so many ways we can see that this child ain’t from around here. He isn’t just an old soul he is the oldest soul. Of-course his wisdom is beyond anything we can comprehend. We are so deeply connected to this moment we can barely grasp at a wisdom that is more than 28 generations old. And yet this ancient wisdom has chosen to make us God’s children. 

Not by God fathering us but by God giving us the right and the responsibility to be God’s children. We celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus but it also reminds us that the glory of God shown in Jesus can also shine in us. 

Amen