John: look up 12/11/16 RUMC

John: look up

12/11/16

RUMC

 How many of you have a dog, or had a dog at one time? <<<>>>> Pet’s are special to us… and the dog… well the fact that they have been called “man’s best friend” says it all.

C.S. Lewis asks us to imagine for the moment, that the dog you have come to love, and every dog in the world, is in great pain. Then he asks something like, if it would help all the dogs in the world, would you be willing to become a dog?

Would you

•           put down your human nature,

•           leave your loved ones,

•           your job,

•           hobbies,

•           your art,

•           and literature,

•           and music, and

choose instead … the poor substitute of… wagging your tail, if it meant ending the suffering of every dog in the world?

  “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God gave up the thing that was most precious to God. God gave up part of Godself by becoming human, in order to help human beings who were suffering in sin.

That is the essence of John’s message in what we call the Prologue, or what I want to call John’s Christmas story.

•           Matthew started with the genealogy: grounding us in history and prophecy. 

•           Mark, like John, starts with the words “In the beginning” and goes on to tell of the anticipation and preparation for Christ, calling us to live our lives anticipating and preparing as well.

As we come to John, we realize again (like Mark) that there is no Mary, or Joseph, or baby, or wise men. We ask where is John’s Christmas story? It is right there in front of us.

John starts his Gospel with a beautiful poem that plumbs the heights and depths of the theology of incarnation; or as I like to say “skincarnation” because God came to earth in the skin of a little human baby.

•           John starts long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem in 4 BC.  He starts long before Israel was a nation.  He starts long before the Old Testament was written.  He starts long before the dinosaurs and  long before creation.

  John even starts long before the Big Bang saying, “In the beginning.”

This beginning is not the beginning of the world, or the beginning of time. It is before anything else began. So we might say, “Before the beginning, was the word”

 Those first three words “In the beginning,” or as I said, “Before the beginning,” point us to the first lesson in John’s Christmas story.

This story is about the eternal Christ.

•           Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was not the beginning of the story.

•           The angel appearing to Mary to announce her pregnancy was not the beginning of the story.

•           The beginning of the story is in the farthest reaches of God’s existence before anything else existed. Before the beginning of anything we know.

Jesus must have been the oldest baby ever born. I mean his human body was that of a newborn, but his Christness was much older than that. We often say of our children something like they are 5 going on 15. Jesus was a newborn, going on eternal.

Picture Jesus’ existence as this rope. Except imagine that there is no end to the rope. I could pull and pull and never find the end. The part we know about and have in the Bible is just this red part here.  And Christmas is just the black line on the end of this red part. The beginning of Jesus is way back there somewhere… in John’s words “in the beginning”

 Then John adds, “Was the word.” We have heard it so many times (In the beginning was the word) that we are accustomed to hearing it. Think how confusing that is to the first time hearer.

So what in the world did John mean when he called Jesus “the word?”

         The original Greek word for WORD was “logos.” To the Greeks, the LOGOS was the means by which God created and communicated. The WORD is the way God acts.

Let’s go back to the creation story where we first find the words “in the beginning.” How did God bring creation into existence?

•           A magic wand?

•           An erector set?

•           A box of crayons?

•           NO, God SAID let there be light.

•           God SAID let there be a dome.

•           God SAID let there be oceans.

•           God SAID let there be the sun, moon, and stars.

•           God SAID let there be animals in the waters.

•           God SAID let there be animals on the land.

•           God SAID let there be human beings.

God SPOKE creation in to existence using words. It is through God’s WORD that creation came to be. Doesn’t John say that? All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. The Word.

To call Jesus the WORD means that he is the living God, ACTING in creation

         To the Hebrews, WORD was the self-revelation of God.

•           The WORD is God’s reflection in creation,

•           the WORD of God came to Noah,

•           THE WORD of God called  Abraham, and

•           the WORD said to Moses, “Tell them ‘I AM’ sent you.”

Look at me.  What am I thinking? You don’t have any idea do you. You don’t have the faintest idea what my brain is thinking about… If I use words and say, “Oreo ice cream” my words reveal something about myself.

Think about meeting someone for the first time. You can imagine who they are and what is important to them. But until you spend time talking, or exchanging words with them, you don’t really know them at all. To Call Jesus the WORD is to say that he perfect revelation of God.

•           SO IF WE PUT THOSE TOGETHER WE CAN SAY THAT THE WORD OF GOD IS GOD’S ACTIVE SELF-REVELATION TO THE WORLD.

Jesus is God’s ACTIVE SELF- REVELATION to people like us.

All of that is very nice,

•           Jesus existed before the beginning

•           Jesus is God’s active self-revelation

 That is not all, however. There is at least one more twist here. And this is the heart of John’s Christmas story, “THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US.” Jesus Christ is the eternal God took on human flesh to act in our lives and reveal God’s true nature to us.

You have heard me say before I love the Message translation “God put on skin and moved into the neighborhood.” 

•           God was done writing commandments

•           God was done saying look here I am, let’s go this way.

•           God was done speaking to people whose ears were stopped and hearts were hard,

•           In Jesus Christ God decisively acted in human history in a unique once and for all way by becoming human.

•           And in Jesus Christ, we have the perfect self-revelation of God in all that Jesus was, and all that Jesus did. The WORD became flesh and dwelt among us.

Philippians puts it this way, though he was in the form of God,(Jesus) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 John’s Christmas story is eight words long. “THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US.” That is John’s Christmas story. Everything before leads up to that, and everything after supports it.

•           He starts with the eternal Christ preexistent before creation.

•           Reminds us that God has always acted and been revealed as the WORD of God.

•           And then John brings it right tot the manger, and the stable saying that the preexistent, active self-revelation of God put on skin and moved into the neighborhood.

Remember I asked you if you would give up the benefits of being human, if by becoming a dog, you could save all the dogs in the world? 

Christmas is God’s answer to the question “Does God love us enough to give up the pleasures of divinity in order to take on human flesh and be revealed to us once and for all?” Here’s your answer.

And the Word	And Mary
Became flesh	gave birth to her firstborn son
And dwelt among us	And wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

AMEN