Christmas 1, 2019

Sermon Notes Christmas 1, Dec. 29, 2014 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. Many years ago our friends gave us a live Japanese Fir tree, with its roots wrapped in burlap, to be our Christmas tree for that season. We brought it in the house, decorated it with lights and ornaments, and as soon as Christmas Day was over, planted it in the yard outside. Each day now as I enter our house by the front door I look up at that tree, now well up into the sky, and reflect on the Christmas Tree it once was and the Christmas Tree it’s now become. When we read John’s prologue at this time of year I have something of the same reaction. It’s meant to be read on Christmas Day, after the celebrations of Christmas Eve. After the angels and shepherds and lowing cattle and Mary and Joseph and the manger, we return to church to hear, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. It’s like the live Christmas tree that lives on after the merriment of Christmas is past to tell us what’s true and lasting underneath all those ornaments. And what we find here is Salvation history made into poetry. What we learn is that Salvation history began before natural history, that the Word God breathed over the formless void entered the world as a man, Jesus; and that somehow we are destined by all that history to inherit the Kingdom of God. If you want to know how all that works out, you need to read the rest of the Gospel of John. For our purposes today about all we can do is a little Mary inspired pondering. What does it mean to say, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us?” One commentator pointed out that until these words John’s prologue could have been read in any Jewish synagogue and the people would have said “Amen.” But to say the Word, that is the very Spirit of God, became flesh, was a new and dangerous and blasphemous statement. Proverbs 8 gives us a picture of Wisdom with human attributes existing simultaneously with God the Creator: The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. A passage that ends with: then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. So the concept of a primordial companion of God as helper and enactor was not foreign to John’s hearers. But that’s a long way from saying He lived and walked among us as flesh, as a man like us. God’s immanence and transcendence, his ability to be at once remotely powerful and personally close was a mystery acknowledged by the pious Jew. But to give God’s Spirit flesh went beyond the pall. Yet that is exactly what John affirms. The great stumbling block, the line of demarcation between pious Jew and believing Christian is the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. To put it in the context of our season, we celebrate the event of God breaking every rule of separation to become one of us. It’s still the line of demarcation. If we don’t believe Jesus was God incarnate, then the cross is just a tragic end to a good man’s life and not the means of our salvation. The story of our salvation begins for us at Christmas even though for God it began at creation. How is John so sure of this? Because he’s seen it. He’s been Jesus companion as a man but it’s the revelation of God in the person of Jesus that convinced him. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the father’s only son.” Here’s a major difference between the Gospel of John and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, who gave us the Christmas story. They pass on to us what they’ve been told about Jesus. John tells us what he’s seen being with Jesus. John’s is a first person narrative. Our understanding of who Jesus is comes from all the Gospels, each contributing a unique perspective. But John stands out like the story teller who after everyone else repeats what they’ve heard stands up as says, “I was there…” He saw God’s glory in the person of Jesus. He was an eye witness to the truth the others write about. We must come to appreciate how little he makes of himself in the light of his privileged closeness to Jesus. He never even identifies himself in his Gospel. His closeness to Jesus allows him to be reflective of Him, not possessive. He’s humble to the point of being oblivious. It’s in his letters and the Revelation that we come to know something about John himself. And in this prologue where he tells us what it is he’s come to know about God and Jesus. As is fitting for a poem on the incarnation, he models the relationship between a father and his only son. The glory of the father is reflected in the son, so that the son’s glory ultimately points back to the father. And how to describe that glory? Again, words are inadequate, but full of grace and truth is how he experienced it. The Christmas message for us is in the eternal incarnation that continues to open up and reveal Jesus before our eyes, even as He revealed himself to John. Like that tall Japanese Fir beside my house, it just keeps getting bigger with every year. Yet it retains in it the original seed cone from which it came. I think Karl Barth said it especially well when he wrote: “When we say Jesus Christ, this is not a possibility which is somewhere ahead of us, but an actuality which is already behind us. With this name in our hearts and on our lips, we are not laboriously toiling uphill, but merrily coming down.” 1 I wish you a Christmas of merrily coming down to find Jesus. Amen. 1. Redman, R. (2009). Theological Perspective on John 1:1–14. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C (Vol. 1, p. 144). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.