Second Sunday of Christmastide
January 3, 2010
John 1:1-18

Word Made Flesh

I am about to attempt something terribly presumptuous. I’m going to try to preach a sermon on the prologue to the Gospel of John. This could be a great mistake.

The writer of the Gospel of John was a poet, and the prologue to his Gospel is one of the finest passages of poetry ever written. I, on the other hand, am not a poet, but merely a preacher, and preachers tend to be terrible hacks. We are apt to reduce the sublime to the ridiculous by turning good poetry into bad prose. A wiser person would not attempt a sermon on this text.

But, like most preachers who learned Greek, I cut my exegetical teeth on this text, and I find it irresistible. I’ll wager that if you asked the ministers in this room to recite the first few words of John’s Gospel in its original language, they could still do it.

                    Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

If that English sounds familiar, it should. The Book of Genesis begins in much the same way. "In the beginning was God . . ."

While the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke begin their Gospels with stories about Jesus’ birth, John takes us back to the beginning of everything – to that moment when God spoke, and it was so. God said, "Let there be light . . . and there was light."

The Jews in John’s first-century audience would have been familiar with the idea that it was with God’s word, God’s dabar, that God made the heavens and the earth. In Hebrew thought, nothing came into existence apart from the word of God. To say "God’s word" was almost another way of saying "God."

There is nothing particularly surprising in this poem so far. You might remember Lady Sophia, the personified Wisdom of God. She was present at creation, according to Hebrew tradition. John has put a slightly new spin on an old idea, but he hasn’t yet dropped the bombshell. But wait. It’s coming.

In this Word, this logos, says John, was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. In other words, the darkness couldn’t contain the light of God’s Word, couldn’t capture it, couldn’t pin it down.

And even though this Word, who at this point in his poem has become personified, was Light, not everyone recognized the Light. The Word’s own people did not accept him. As we will learn in the course of John’s Gospel, the very people who should have welcomed the Word, rejected him. They ridiculed him, spat upon him, laughed at him, and crucified him. The darkness tried its best to overcome the Light, but failed.

And now the bombshell: The Word, the Light, the Life 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.

No one has ever seen God, John says, but in this Word made flesh, God has made God’s self known. Whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9).

It’s clear by now that John is talking about Jesus. Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Life, the Light, the Truth, the Glory of the Father. In Jesus is the Life of all people.

In his own, very distinctive way, John is singing a Christmas carol. No shepherds here, no angels, and no wise men bearing gifts. But it’s a Christmas carol none the less. The Word made flesh is Jesus. The babe of Bethlehem is the Light of the world.

The Apostle Paul never read John’s Gospel, but he uses much the same language:

. . . the same God who said "Let light shine out of darkness" . . . has shone in our hearts to give the light of   the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2Cor. 4:6).

John does not expect us to accept what he says about Jesus merely by hearing the prologue to his Gospel. These are bold claims he is making – radical claims. If what he says about Jesus is true, then Jesus God’s path to humanity.

People in these post modern times are encouraged to try any number of paths to God. They can take up meditation, join a support group, or go to a sweat lodge. Or they can select a bit of this and a bit of that from that ever-expanding smorgasbord called "religious diversity." A helping of Hinduism, a small taste of Taoism, a zest of Zen -- choose whatever you like, but be sure to steer clear of dogma. Dogma ruins everything. You are the designer of your very own designer path to God.

But the gospel says we can’t get to God on our own. The whole point of John’s witness is that God has to come to us. What John and Paul call "knowledge of God" does not come from our efforts to be good or wise or even holy. We can know God only so far as God reveals God’s self to us. Jesus is that self-revelation. He is the mediating Word of God to us.

As we read through John’s Gospel, we discover what John means. Everything Jesus says and does brings God closer to humanity. Jesus forgives sins. He heals what is broken. He casts out the demons that keep us from being fully human. As with the Samaritan woman at the well, he knows the ugly truth about us, and tells it to us straight, but he doesn’t then turn away. He offers living water and bread that satisfies.

In Jesus the attributes of God – goodness, justice, love, compassion, forgiveness – are not mere abstractions, but actions. Jesus does what God does and speaks with God’s own voice. If you want to see the unseen God, look at Jesus.

Words, after all, are just words until they take on flesh.

For instance, a man can say that he loves his wife, but until he puts his love to work, his so-called "love" is a mere abstraction. Real love takes out the trash, changes the diapers, performs the tasks she least likes to do.

Or a woman can say she’s in favor of justice, but until she writes that letter to her member of congress or joins that picket line, her talk of justice is just that – talk.

Words are just words until they take on flesh.

Did you read in the Christmas day edition of the Democrat about Naomi Nelson? She’s 81 years old, lives in a rent-subsidized apartment, suffers from severe asthma and a number of other ailments, and gets around in a wheel chair. Members of this church bring her a Meals on Wheels meal every day. If you were looking for a picture of the word "generosity," you probably wouldn’t start with Naomi Wilson.

But that’s were you’d be wrong. Naomi has been crocheting since she was 3 years old. She can crochet with her eyes closed. Back in 2002, Naomi decided she’d like to help children, so she started crocheting slippers for an organization called Operation Christmas Child. The slippers are sent to poor children all over the world. Naomi’s got pictures of some of those children. I’m sure she’d like to show them to you. There’s a Chinese girl wearing an orange and yellow pair, and Vietnamese boy in a snazzy blue and electric green, and an Indian girl with purple and magenta. (Naomi prefers loud colors.) She’s made quite a few slippers since 2002 – a little over 2,400 pair.

You see? "Generosity" is just a word until it takes on flesh. If you want to see the face of generosity, look at Naomi Nelson.

The gospel of Jesus Christ works in something like the same way. The words point toward the reality, but they can’t get us there on their own. They have to take on flesh and come to us, and when they do, we cry out, "Now I get it! So that’s what God’s love looks like. That’s what God’s justice sounds like. That’s what God’s forgiveness feels like.

God’s forgiveness is the hand of Jesus extended to lift us from a pallet of helplessness and self-pity. God’s voice is the voice of Jesus calling us to follow him. God’s love for the world is Jesus – Jesus in the manger, Jesus overturning tables, and Jesus on the cross.

We Christians cannot explain to the world how we know this. All we can say is that, of all the myriad things we don’t know and can’t know about God, this much has been revealed to us: Jesus is God’s Word and Light and Truth and Glory, made flesh. We know this not because we have plumbed the mystery of God, but because God has come to us in Jesus.

The truth of John’s strange Christmas carol is a truth to be lived, a truth for which the world hungers and thirsts as much in our day as in John’s. John’s words about the Word made flesh are beautiful, but even they cannot capture the light. Our own words about Jesus can be a kind of Christmas carol, but only as they take on flesh do they shine the Light of the world.

 

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