A Sermon preached on 25th December 2017,
Christmas Day, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 52:7-10, Hebrews
1:1-4, John 1:1-14
The latest Star
Wars film has just reached the theatres: The Last Jedi. I haven’t seen it yet,
but I will, I’m a fan! This is the eighth main movie in the series. First, we
had the three original films ending with the – seeming – triumph of the Force
of good. As at that time at least George Lucas felt the original story was
complete, so they were not followed by a sequel, but instead by a prequel: 3
new movies explaining what happened before the original story. Where the
characters came from, how they became who they were.
I suppose we could
also call the text we heard this morning from the Gospel of John, his prologue,
a prequel. It is a prequel to Matthew and Luke’s birth stories because it tells
us what happened before the birth in Bethlehem. Who are the characters? Where
are they from? What are they here for?
The story of Jesus
did not begin in a manger in a stable in Bethlehem. The story of Jesus begins,
John tells us, before time itself! Jesus, called the Word in the prologue, is the
instrument of creation, the creative Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ….
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing
came into being.” (John 1:1-3) This idea is not unique to John’s Gospel. As we
also heard, the author of Hebrews has a similar explanation: God “has spoken to
us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created
the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's
very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:2-3)
So, Jesus is not simply
a human being adopted by God, or someone given a task like a messenger or a
prophet. That is the role of the other character introduced in the prologue:
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to
testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not
the light, but he came to testify to the light.” (John 1:6-8) John the Baptist is
a human witness who brings a message from God and who points to the light that
is God in Jesus. And light, as we know from the Genesis creation story, is the
first thing God calls in to being: Let there be light.
John’s prologue,
or prequel, next tells us that this light was coming into the world. God
becomes human. This is the Christian answer to the age-old
question that Jewish teachers had long grappled: “How can the one true God be
both different from the world and active within the world? How can he be
remote, holy and detached, and also intimately present?”[1] The
idea of God’s Word, already instrumental in the creation story, things are only
created when God speaks, and of the character of Wisdom, who we find for
example in the Book of Proverbs, were their ways of answering this question.
They were the means by which God acted in the world.
But the Word as we
understand it is not some abstract principle, but a real person. “And the Word
became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1:14) The word for flesh, sarx does mean that – flesh or meat – it
also stands for a living creature. And in the Greek original the Word, now a
living, breathing human being does not just live among us, but makes his
dwelling among us, puts up his tabernacle. The creche we put up at Christmas is
one image of that dwelling, as temporary as the tent that God occupies in the
Exodus story. In it Jesus is venerated by people from near and far, by poor and
rich, by shepherds and kings or wise men, and also by animals – representatives
of all creation. They are not just cute figures, they symbolize Jesus’ power
and importance, they remind us at all things came into being through him.
What are they here
for? John as we have heard is a witness. His role is to testify to Jesus so
that all might believe through him. In his short life, tragically cut short by
the jealousy of Herod’s wife and by Herod’s own insecurity, he was certainly
successful – multitudes made the hazardous journey through the Judean
wilderness to the river Jordan to see and hear and be baptized by him.
What of the Word
made flesh? Why did God come into the world in this way?
First, as we have
heard, to bring light. Light’s function is to show us the way. Light lights up
paths, a light is something we can aim for in darkness. In this sense the light
that Jesus brings is the truth about God, God’s desire for us, God’s love for
us, God’s longing for reconciliation.
But Jesus does not
just talk about God, Jesus reflects God.
When we see Jesus’ glory, we see God’s glory. Jesus’ character, is God’s
character. Jesus is described as being full of grace and truth. A phrase that
reminds us of the Old Testament descriptions of God as being rich in kindness
and fidelity or full of mercy and loving-kindness. We can know God: through
the father’s only son.
Finally, Jesus
empowers us. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave
power to become children of God.” (John 1:12) St. Paul uses the term children
of God too in his letters, we are children of God through faith in Christ Jesus
(Gal. 3:26), and through the power of God’s Spirit within us (Rom. 8:14, 16).
And Paul often combines this with the concept of being heirs: “Now if we are
children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” (Rom.
8:17) So to be children of God is on the one hand an extension of the blessing
God had given to Israel to cover all of humanity. No one is excluded from this
offer. On the other hand, to be children and heirs, together with God’s only
Son, is not something passive. To be an heir encompasses responsibility and a
duty. We are empowered with a purpose.
In the story that
John goes on to tell in his Gospel, a story the prologue already hints to,
Jesus demonstrates his power again and again in a series of signs, and yet is
often rejected: the world did not know him … his own people did not accept him.
But many did, and as we also hear in the Gospel were renewed and transformed by
the process. Then Jesus is killed, the ultimate rejection, but his light is not
overcome by the darkness of death, and his death is not the end of the story.
Nor is his resurrection the end of the story, because the story was not and is not
over yet. We do not just have a prequel, and a main story, we have innumerable
sequels. For every Christian, for everyone who receives Jesus, the Word, the
light, this becomes our story, ours to live in the light of God’s word. What might that be? Here is one version of
how the story must go on, in Howard Thurman’s poem “The Work of Christmas[2]”
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
Amen.
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