The story goes on

A Sermon preached on 25^th 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.

---

[1] Tom Wright: John for Everyone

[2] Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations

God’s plan for salvation

A Sermon preached on 17^th December 2017, Advent III, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11, 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24, John 1: 6-8, 19-28

For the second week running, the lectionary offers us an introduction to John the Baptist, this time you heard the version from John’s Gospel. But I will avoid the temptation to revisit last week’s sermon and talk about John’s role, and the role of prophets in general again – though I hope you remember what I said about that role (“comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.”)? Instead, my focus, as is Isaiah’s, is on Salvation: what this means and how, and through whom, we obtain it.

It is always interesting to start with a dictionary definition. The Cambridge dictionary offers the following: “Salvation, noun: (a way of) being saved from danger, loss, or harm. In the Christian religion, salvation … is the state of being saved from evil and its effects by the death of Jesus on a cross: The Gospel message is one of personal salvation.”

That is a reduction and simplification that I can’t agree with, although I know it is a view held by many Christians. Salvation in a biblical sense is so much more than just personal, spiritual salvation, and is by no means restricted to what happens after we die, to the question of whether we head up or down. Salvation is also physical, it includes being saved from danger, loss, or harm in this life too. Nor is our salvation just brought about by the death if Jesus on the cross. But one thing at a time. 

A Concordance is a sort of dictionary, it lists all the passages in the Bible in which certain important words occur. Not surprisingly, the word ‘Salvation’ gets a lot of mentions, 138 times in my version. But the two books with the most mentions are from the OT: The Psalter followed by Isaiah. Isaiah is the prophet of salvation. The salvation he describes, as we heard this morning, is “total” – it is both physical and spiritual, and both individual and social. It includes liberty for captives, and release for prisoners; the rebuilding of ancient ruins; the restoration of a just society. 

On the spiritual side, when this chapter was written, the Jews had already returned from the exile they believed was a result of their faithlessness, so were sure they had been forgiven. Isaiah tells them that God now promises an everlasting covenant, one not dependent on their behavior, but on God’s own faithfulness. They are to be an example to all nations, an example for God’s blessing. All God wants in return is their faithfulness to God: that they put on the mantle of praise, rather than the uncertainty of a faint spirit. Out of this faithfulness they are called to live lives that reflect the God they follow. In Isaiah’s poetic language, he hopes his people will be called oaks of righteousness: as strong, solid, visible, and long-lasting witnesses.  

This is not just an Old Testament reference, not just something for our Jewish brothers and sisters. The beginning of this passage from Isaiah was the text Jesus chose for his first recorded sermon, which we find in Luke’s Gospel. There we hear how Jesus went to the synagogue, stood up to read, found the passage we just heard (or a version of it), and after reading it “began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:21) Jesus took the words of Isaiah and made them his own. In his Gospel, Mark just tells us that Jesus travelled through Galilee saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ (Mark 1:15) But we can be sure that the good news Jesus taught was in part the good news that he, Jesus was sent “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) 

Jesus practices what he preaches, releasing those held captives by demons, disease and exclusion, healing the blind, rescuing people from certain death, even bringing them back to life: saving them, in other words, from danger, loss, or harm.

There is of course a spiritual side to this offer of salvation too. When Jesus proclaims a year of God’s favor, and on other occasions announces the coming of the kingdom of God or heaven, he is proclaiming and promising reconciliation with God. The forgiveness of our sins, whether real or imagined, allows us to overcome our self-imposed fear of and separation from God, to return from our own exile so to speak. The salvation Jesus brings is also total: physical and spiritual, individual and social, now and forever. 

How do we obtain salvation? We don’t – it is already there. It comes from God and is freely offered. Our problem is that we, as individuals and as a society, do not always see and acknowledge our need or ability to be saved. Either we think we can manage without God, and have all the power we need, or we resign ourselves to our fate, and accept the world as it is, believing that a change for the better is not possible. Both are wrong. 

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul urges them to take part in God’s plan of salvation by rejoicing always, praying continually and being thankful to God.  Paul also encourages them to listen to the words of the prophets and to act on them, to take a close look at the world as God sees it, with the Spirit’s eyes, to identify what is good and what is evil, and to act accordingly in holding fast – and facilitating – what is good, while abstaining - and fighting – every form of evil. 

Mary, Jesus’ mother whose great song of praise we read together this morning instead of a Psalm, agreed to take part in God’s plan of salvation by acting as the “God bearer.” In the Magnificat she prays that God will cast down mighty from their thrones, because they are the ones who cause oppression, who take away liberty, and make prisoners of the innocent, all the things that the prophet and Jesus say they have been sent to change. 

Isaiah calls upon his people to take part in God’s plan for salvation by rebuilding Jerusalem, by recreating a kingdom in which God is the judge, the ruler, and the king (Isaiah 33:22) and which will be known among the nations as symbol of righteousness and a blessing to the world.

Jesus is God’s plan for salvation, his whole life, and not just his death. He becomes human to tell us that we need God, and to be God for and with us. He becomes human to sanctify, to save the human condition, to make all of us – spirit, soul and body – sound and blameless. (1 Thess. 5:23) He becomes human to show us that we are all children of God and that we have a role in implementing God’s plan for salvation. 

Saving this world and the people in it from starvation, deprivation, sickness, discrimination is our job. It is not impossible at all if we follow Jesus’ example, if we live in love, and if we trust, in Paul’s words, that the one who calls us is faithful and that he will do this with us. (1 Thess. 5:24) Our trust and our strength and our power come from our knowledge of God’s love in Jesus, and from the assurance of forgiveness given even at the moment of his death on the cross. In that sense, the Gospel message is one of personal salvation, but meant not only as a promise to each individual, but also as inspiration and encouragement to cooperate together in God’s plan for the salvation of all.

Amen.