John 1:1-14 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Christmas Day Thursday, December 25, 2025 “Holy Infant so Tender and Mild”
If you have been to enough Christmas worship services here at Grace, perhaps you’ve noticed something that the worship leaders and planners have been aware of for some time. If you’re here on Christmas Eve, in the darkness, with candles lit, the songs tend to be a little more quiet and subdued and reflective. We sing Silent Night. It sounds like a lullaby. The whole mood of the service brings us to the side of the manger to see a tiny baby wrapped in cloths. Christmas Day feels different. O Come, All Ye Faithful is not a lullaby. Instead of singing Silent Night, we sing Joy to the World. The trumpet sounds out. The sun shines. It feels different. Whether you’ve noticed that before or are just realizing it now, if I told you that the theme of our Christmas service is “Holy Infant so Tender and Mild,” would that sound to you more like a Christmas Eve lullaby or more like a Christmas Day trumpet? Wouldn’t you say Christmas Eve? Doesn’t it seem a little unusual that this is, in fact, our theme for today on Christmas Day? It’s also a little striking to use that theme for a sermon based on John chapter 1, a section of Scripture that never mentions an infant specifically. It also doesn’t say anything about tender or mild. What it says is, this is the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God and has been from before the beginning. In the beginning, he was. It is not a coincidence that John begins his Gospel in the same way the entire Bible begins in Genesis, “In the beginning.” In fact, John by God’s direction points us right back to the powerful work of creation, and it puts this Word right in the middle of all of it. Through him everything was made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made That sounds like the loud and powerful sort of message that we might associate with Christmas Day. That sounds like a trumpet blaring out an announcement. This is the Creator. This is the almighty. This is God who has done unspeakably more than all we can imagine. You can see his power and wisdom all around in every functioning system and every beautiful vista and every piece of creation. This is the one God who created us. He made all people to be his own and serve and honor him. This is a Joy to the World kind of message shouting at you. It always has been. But thousands of years removed from the creation of the world, things sure looked different. Things sure were different. This Word of God that first spoke light and all things into existence was shining forth as the light of mankind, the crown of his creation. But mankind turned away. Mankind lived in darkness instead of light. From almost the beginning, people stopped listening to God’s Word and listened to God’s enemy. They became enemies of God. And now when we look around, it is easy to see the darkness of sin. So many around us reject God and his truth and his direction and his love. And how often our own hearts are inclined the same way. God’s light shines out, but we live in darkness. God directs our paths, but we ignore his direction. He wants nothing more than for us to give him the place in our hearts that he deserves as our Creator, yet we spend all sorts of time throughout our days and weeks and years barely even aware of his existence. We pray to him when we need something. We think of him when it is convenient. We set aside an hour or two per week, and sometimes more on very special occasions. This darkness has been around for a very long time. This line of darkness extends to the first people and from them all the way to the present. But at one point in that history, when God had prepared the world according to his good plan, when everything was prepared just as he determined it should be, he stepped into that history. The Word. The Creator. The almighty. And he did not shake a mountain with thunder and smoke. He did not come to terrify with a glowing light at which no one could gaze. He did not come with the loud announcement he deserved. He did not overwhelm. He came wrapped in the flesh and blood and bones of an infant. He spent months in the womb of his virgin mother just as the people he created do. Only a select few saw and heard the announcements of his birth: an