Christmas Eve meditation (John 1.1-23)
Christmas Eve meditation (John 1.1-23)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, 2018
Tom James
We have been waiting. Waiting is a crucial part of what it means to be human. It’s also an essential feature of the Christian faith. We wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises. We wait for the coming of the Messiah. We wait for the end of the story, when, we hope, it will all make sense.
Tonight, we remember that the key to the story of human history has already been given. The Christmas message is Immanuel, God with us. And so, tonight, we sing carols and we tell the story of Christ’s coming. There are several versions of the story. One of them is the Gospel of John. This version has none of the familiar features we associate with Christmas pageants and the like—no shepherds, no angels, not even a Mary or a Joseph. Instead, we focus on the themes: what the story means, mixing into our telling of the story both Scripture and song…….
john 1.1-3a
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Jesus comes to us as the word. Jesus is the word because he is the expression of God’s heart. John’s Gospel tells us that the word was involved in the creation itself. God does not exist without the word. God is never without something to say. According to the book of Genesis, the world itself comes into being through what God says. And the aim of what God says is love. God creates the world out of love. God liberates Israel from slavery out of love. God sends prophets out love. And it all comes to fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus is the best expression we have of love, the most fully articulate expression of what God has been saying all along.
john 1.3b-9
What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
We’ve all heard the saying that Jesus is the “light of the world.” It comes from another passage from the Gospel of John. Here, the phrase is, “the light of all people.” What strikes me, though, is that, in this passage, “the light of all people” is a way of describing something else. First, we are told, in him was life. One of the most important things we can say about Jesus is that in him was life. Not just that he was alive, but that, with the coming of Christ, life appeared. It is as if all the living that was done before him was just a dress rehearsal, and now it is time for the real thing. Jesus is life, the true life of humanity that we were always meant to have and to be. That is why the life of Jesus is the light of all people: his life, from its very beginning, shows us what true life is. If we follow the story out, true life is being a healer rather than a destroyer and a user; true life is crossing borders and boundaries to share humanity with others; true life is attention to the least of these; true life is faithfulness; true life is a willingness to give life.
john 1.10-13
10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
Jesus wasn’t supposed to be rejected. The coming of the Messiah was supposed to unite the people and lead them, like Moses, to liberation from their colonizers. At least that’s what many people thought. After Jesus was arrested and handed over to the empire to be killed, his disciples searched the scriptures to see if they could make sense of what happened. What they found was that, far from a rebuttal of his status as Messiah, being rejected by the people was actually part of the job description. The Messiah was always going to be rejected. The true life of the world wakes us from our sleepwalking, our zombie existence. The true life of the world challenges us and calls us to cross borders and boundaries, to give attention to the least of these, and experience life by giving it away. Not everyone will be up for that. But with those who are, Jesus shares his life, and his power, and his grace. To those, to us, he gives his power to be children of God.
john 1.14-17
14And 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.’”)16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The title, “Son of God,” is not often used in the gospels. By itself, it only means someone who is faithful to God. Kings and prophets and various people of God may be called “sons” or “daughters” of God. But, here, John’s Gospel tells us that we have seen the glory as a “father’s only son.” There is something unique about Jesus. He is “son of God” in a special way. It isn’t just that he is faithful, but that he fully carries out God’s purposes. And that is his glory.
We should recognize something stunning here. Again, follow out the story. What does Jesus do, and where does the story lead? After border and boundary crossings, after healing and offerings of forgiveness, after teaching and preaching and criticizing corrupt leaders and officials, Jesus’ story leads to betrayal and execution. And that is glory. From ignoble beginnings in a feeding trough, because there is no proper room for him, to an ignoble end on a cross, behold the glory of God. Irenaeus, one of the great theologians of the early church, once said the glory of God is humanity fully alive. Once again, we come back to what it means to be truly and fully alive as a human being. Not only does it mean crossing borders and boundaries, paying attention to the least of these, healing, forgiving, and loving—apparently it means risking oneself to betrayal. It means giving oneself for the sake of love. That’s how we are children of God.
john 1.19-23, 29
19This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” 21And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” 22Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.
29The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
John the Baptist represents the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. He points to the Messiah in the same way that the hope of Israel has always done. But he goes a step further. He says, “here he is.” And not only that, he goes far beyond our expectations. The reality here exceeds what we have imagined or hoped for. It is not only Scripture that reveals the Messiah, but it is also experience, history—life itself. To say that Immanuel is here—that God is with us in the flesh—means that who he is and what he means for us can only be known as we experience him. Jesus is revealed—the Word of God is spoken—not in a vacuum, and not to prophets or scholars or priests, but to us, in our lives, in our experience.
This is the meaning of Christmas, friends. The savior is not a character in an old story or a topic for a sermon. The savior is not even a few words in our favorite carol, but a living reality in our midst. The savior is the power of salvation that we feel in our bones tonight, calling us to life, enabling us to cross borders and boundaries, to pay attention to the least of these, to heal, to forgive, to give, and to love. The savior is one who is born in us today. Amen.
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