John
1:1-18
1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in
him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in
the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from
God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so
that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came
to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was
coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being
through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own,
and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who
believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were
born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of
God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his
glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John
testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, "He who
comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' ") 16 From his
fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever
seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has
made him known.
By
now the leftovers have likely disappeared. The ornaments have found their way
back into their boxes. The tree is either out by the road, hauled off to burn,
or dismantled and placed back in a box that has been put back in its place in
the attic, basement, garage, or closet. The stockings are gone. The shepherds,
Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus have been wrapped in newspaper and put away in a
shoebox. The lights have come down off the gutters and from around the shutters
(though this is Alabama, so maybe they’ve been there through the year). And the
music in your playlist has lost titles having to do with winter, snowmen,
kings, and nights ranging from silent to divine. Tomorrow, students and
teachers will return to their classrooms and those of you who’ve been on
vacation will probably be getting back to work. Even though we are still in the
liturgical season, it no longer feels like it is Christmas.
Strange
how that happens, isn’t it? It seems to take so long for Christmas to get here
that we even use that as an expression: “No use waiting on her, she’s slow as
Christmas.” Christmas seems to take its sweet time getting here, but around the
first of November we begin to drag out the decorations, make lists, and start
planning get-togethers. Those few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas seem
to stretch themselves out over an eternity, but when the day finally arrives,
when Christmas morning comes, it seems to disappear in a flash. After the New
Year celebrations everything just sort of gets back to normal as our schedules
settle back down, and life finds its pace and rhythm once again. Christmas then
just becomes a date on the farther end of our new calendars.
It’s
sad really—and not just because the festiveness has lost its luster, not
because the cookies are all gone, and there are no more presents to give. It’s
sad because when we put the decorations away in the attic, when we tuck the
tree in the closet, when we turn the lights off one last time, and put the
nativity scene back in its box, we often forget everything we’ve celebrated in
the birth of Jesus.
Now,
don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to say that we forget Jesus, that we put
Christ in a Tupperware tote along with the Santa hats and green plastic
garland. No, we still interact with Jesus throughout the year: we’ll see him in
the waters of the Jordan with his cousin John, healing folks as he walks around
Galilee, teaching about the coming kingdom of God , telling stories and riddles
to those who think they’ve got it all figured out. We’ll see Jesus again as
he’s betrayed, tried, executed, and resurrected. You’ll hear all about Jesus at
least once a week so long as you find yourself here. So, I’m not saying that
when the “Christmas spirit” wears off we forget all about Jesus until next
December. What I’m saying is (after Christmas comes and goes) I think we tend
to forget what the birth of Jesus really
means, so then we miss seeing the fullness of who Jesus is when we see him
throughout the year, when we hear the testimony of Scripture regarding his life
and ministry. That’s one reason why I think it’s so important to include the
Fourth Gospel’s “Christmas story” along with Matthew’s Magi and Luke’s
shepherds.
At first, the prologue of John’s gospel may
not sound anything at all like a Christmas story: there’s no mention of Mary or
Joseph, no angels, no manger—not even a baby. The first eighteen verses of the
Fourth Gospel read like some mysterious retelling of the creation story from
Genesis chapter one (that’s not an accident). These verses tell of the
existence of the “the Word” and its presence “In the beginning…with God.”
This doesn’t sound like any of the carols we sing in December; this isn’t
exactly a story that can be turned into a pageant with little boys in the
daddies’ bathrobes and little girls with homemade angel wings. But these words,
this prologue with all of its mysterious language, says more about what
happened that first Christmas morning than either narrative version we have
from Matthew and Luke.
You see, the prologue to
John’s gospel tells us of the magnificent glory of God’s Incarnation, of God becoming
human. The gospel tells us in verses
1-4: “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning
with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing
came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was
the light of all people.” And in verses 9 and 10we hear: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was
coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being
through him; yet the world did not know him.” Then, in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen
his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”
These words tell of God’s coming to
dwell among us, as one of us in the form of his Son, Jesus. The importance of
these words cannot be overstated. Believing these words, the truth they convey,
changes everything.
You see, these words tell
us more than plot points; they tell us more than who was there when it
happened; they tell us that when Jesus was born, it was more than the birth of
an extraordinary child, that his birth was more than the arrival of a
supernatural teacher or powerful prophet. These words in John’s Gospel tell us
that the birth we patiently await during the season of Advent, the birth we
celebrate every Christmas, is the birth of God into history, the arrival of God
in the flesh, God with us, Emmanuel. The
words we’ve heard this second Sunday after Christmas are words that proclaim to
us that this baby whose birth we celebrate every 25th of December is
God Almighty, the Maker of the universe. When we allow that truth to really
sink into our souls, when we embrace the reality of God’s presence here on this
planet in the form of his Son, then everything we read about Christ in the gospels
is amplified, empowered by the eternal truth that Christ’s actions and Christ’s
words are in fact the actions and words of God!
Yet I worry that when the
Christmas decorations are put away, our faith in the Incarnation, the
indwelling of God in the flesh of Christ, is stored away as well. When we hear
the stories of the Jesus in the gospels throughout the year, do we hear them as
words of an important teacher, of another prophet, another messiah? Or do we
hear those stories as they are—words that testify to the true Word of God,
words that testify to the living God in the person of the living Christ?
It is a deep mystery to
comprehend, that the eternal, almighty, creating God would walk ground the same
way as you and me. It is indeed a wondrous thought to think of how the God who
sets the planets on their course, the God who breathed life into the world, the
God who wields the power to create and utterly destroy, the God who was there
in the beginning, “lived among us.” What’s more is that the God who lived among
us, came to us in the most humble way, for the Incarnation (God taking on
flesh) could have happened anyway God chose. God could have chosen to dwell
among us in power and riches, to appear to us as a mysterious stranger with
powers beyond our imagination, yet God chose to dwell among us in the flesh of
his Son, born into this world by Mary, raised like so many millions of
children, taught to talk, walk, play, and work like every person before and
since. God could have come to us in any number of ways that reflect God’s power
and majesty, and though we may tremble to think of it, God could have very well
decided not to come to us at all. But the Word that was God became flesh and
lived among us and made God known to us.
Those words call us to believe;
the words of John’s prologue place before us a choice. We can either believe
that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person, a great teacher and prophet, a leader
of men and women, a revolutionary figure of human history—but a human being all
the same. We can believe that Jesus was this sort of man and manipulate his
words to fit our desires, to satisfy our need for comfort and complacency. We
can believe that Jesus was an extraordinary child born in an extraordinary way,
yet he was only a child who grew to be an influential man. Or we can hear these
words before us today as a testament to the eternal nature of God in Christ, a
testimony to the reality that we are able to see the fullness of God in Jesus
because the fullness of God is
Jesus.
When we take hold of that
wondrous truth, that Jesus is God in the flesh, then his life takes on a whole
new meaning. Jesus’ words are illuminated with the eternal light of God’s
glory. Christ’s death and resurrection mean so much more because it is the self-emptying
sacrifice of the God of Creation saying to that us, “I forgive you. I love you.
Death and sin no longer have any power over you.”
“In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here and now the Word is among us.
The Spirit of God is here with us. God has been made known to us by the
presence of Christ in our midst. May we all remember that Christmas is about
the Incarnation of God in the Son, Jesus Christ, that the words and actions of
Jesus are the words and actions of God. May we be encouraged by the reality
that God has indeed gone before us, by the presence of God who is (even now) with
us. May the presence of God in this place, the Spirit of God, and the love of
God in Christ transform you more and more into the likeness of the Word of God,
Jesus our God and our Friend. Amen.
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