First Sunday after Christmas Day
December 30, 2007
Isaiah 61:10-62
Psalm 147
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Well, merry and blessed Christmas to you. Now, I know we celebrated Christmas a few days ago, and I don’t know about you, but I still feel like Isaiah, rejoicing in the Lord. The Christ child has been born and all my gifts have been opened, but Christmas still seems new to me. It still seems that there are gifts to be opened. Now I know this is not true, at least with family and friends, but one thing I know for sure: there are still gifts to be opened at the manger. They have already been given to us, and they are available for us to open every day of our life, any season of the year. But we need to go to the manger to receive them. However, if you are like me, I probably don’t go to the manger as often as I should in the days and weeks and months after Christmas.
I think one reason why I don’t go to the manger as often as I should is that I sometimes forget that God continues to have gifts for me to open there. Of course there are those times when I do revisit the manger, but I am not interested in the gifts God offers to me there; so I just put them aside and walk away. But there are also those times when I simply won’t go to the manger because I don’t believe God has any gifts there that I would want or need. The times that bother me most, however, are those times I am afraid to go to the manger. I am afraid because I fear what I might find when I open the gift I receive from God. Afraid of God’s purpose in giving me that gift. Afraid of how it might change my life. Whatever the case, I know that long after I have opened my gifts from family and friends, long after they have been used or put away or discarded or they just plain wear out, the gift of the Christ child is a gift which keeps on giving—a gift I can have every day of my life if only I will receive it, and open it, and find God’s purpose for giving it to me.
Now, gifts being what they are, we generally do not know what they are until we open them. But the prologue to John’s Gospel is very clear about the gift God wants us to receive. It is the gift of God’s presence. It is God with us. God’s coming to us in the flesh to live and die as one of us. Now, it is hard for me to imagine what it required of God to become a human creature in order to be present among us. I don’t even like being present with some of the human creatures God has placed in my presence. Sometimes I don’t even like being present with myself. But this glorious, exalted God was willing to humble himself to become human so that humankind—people like you and me—might become more like him. It was this God, born of a woman, who came to be in relationship with us so that he could make a difference in our life. And one thing is true about all of the gifts God gives us by his presence; they are meant to make a difference in our lives.
Perhaps the greatest differences God can make by his presence in our life can be found in a story about a little girl who awakens in the middle of the night from a nightmare. She is afraid of the dark and afraid to go back to sleep. Her mother comforts her by telling her that she is not to be afraid of the dark, that God loves her and will protect her. Not comforted by her mother’s words the child cries out, “But, Mommy, I need God with skin on.” Well, that’s what we got at Christmas. A God with skin on, and that is very comforting, indeed. But this God with skin on came into the world to do so much more than comfort us. He came to challenge us by his presence, as well. He came to challenge us to become more like him; he came to give us the courage to become the person he created us to be.
John presents God’s challenge to us in these words from his prologue to his Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word became flesh. But what does John mean when he describes God’s presence as “the Word?” Well, John seems pretty certain about what he means, and this is my take on it. John wants us to know that God came to us to restore us to our rightful place in creation. And what is our rightful place in creation? John would have us know that God’s human creatures are meant to be co-creators with God, so that we can fulfill God’s purpose for the life he has given us. A fourth century church father, Irenaeus, captured the meaning of John’s prologue in these words: The glory of God,” says Irenaeus, “is the human person fully alive.” And another early church father, Athanasius gives us this variation: “God became human so that we might become divine.”
In John’s account of Jesus’ birth, he tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” But what is John revealing to us about the nature of God as Word? And what is John telling us about the power of creation? Well, if all things created came from the Word, then it seems to me that all things are created by a powerful act of communication. And at least one of our creation stories in Genesis verifies that fact. If you remember, every time God spoke, creation happened. So I think John is telling us that every time we communicate, by our words or by our actions, we are creating ourselves Think about it. I have been your priest long enough for you to know something about who I am. But how is it that you know anything about me? The only way you can know anything about me is by what I say and by what I do. My words and actions create an image of me in your mind that you will identify as Donna. I have the power to create myself. I have the power to create different images of myself to fit particular purposes or occasions. However, no one of these images can define me. Yet they all say something to you about who I am.
So, you already have a good notion about who I am as your priest. On the other hand, I cannot know who I am by the power of my own creation. I can only know who I am by the ways you reflect me back to myself. Much like a mirror, you have the power to help me create an image of myself by the ways you respond to what I say and do. For example, a child who is told over and over again that he is bad will believe that he is bad, and he will often fulfill the expectations of badness that are reflected back to him by the words and actions of others. These powers of creation are powers which resided with God from before time. A power which resided with God from before time. But God’s purpose for creating himself and the world into existence was to serve God’s good. But as we well know, we do not often serve God’s purposes for good. We often misuse and abuse our creative power for hurtful and destructive purpose. This is why God needed to come into the world himself, so that we might turn our own power of creation into good purpose for us and for our world. But communicating ourselves into life cannot happen in a vacuum. We cannot see ourselves or others for who we are except by reflection. Only light can reflect an image. We need light.
So John tells us that when the Word became flesh to live among us, Light came with it. “The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world,” says John. The light which can never be overcome by darkness. Now, if you have ever been in a totally dark environment, you already know that where there is no light, you will not see anything. This is why the power of the Word for creation depends upon the truth of Light. The world cannot communicate itself to us in darkness, nor can God. Darkness causes us to lose contact with our source of creation. Without the light of God’s presence in our life, our power to create and reflect becomes limited and distorted by the dim light of self-serving human and worldly purposes for creation and reflection. Such self-serving powers of creation and reflection causes us to live in the darkness of sin and separation from the light of God’s goodness and the good we can see in ourselves and others.
John would have us know that we can never know ourselves without being in the light of God’s knowledge of us. It is only in God’s light that we can see each other as we really are. It is only in God’s light that we can create ourselves in his image, and become the persons God yearns for us to be. It is only in God’s light that our life in God can light the way for others. But it is not easy to live in the light. You have to be willing to see your life for what it is and you have to be courageous enough to begin living it in the light of such knowledge. Unfortunately, the sad truth for us in this world is that it is easier for us to live in our darkness, in our illusions and distortions of ourselves and others. Easier not to have to know who we are, and what we might become. Easier, maybe, but not life-giving. Not liberating. Not authentic.
What John wants us to know about the power of God to create and the power God has given to his human creatures to create is that creation is life-giving. Being co-creators with God is life giving. When we live in the knowledge of God’s reflected Word we become liberated to be a difference and make a difference in how we live in this world. Living in the truth of God’s reflected Light, we become more authentic in the ways we communicate ourselves to each other.
This is why Christmas happened. This is why God came to us. To bring us out of our darkness into his Light; to restore us to the good purposes he created for by the power he gives us to co-creating our life with him. Do you remember the little girl I told you about who told her mommy she needed God with skin on. Well, by our own creation and birth, we are people with skin on. We are God’s skin. And we are all God has to communicate the power of his Word and the Light of his truth to the world. But we cannot do it by ourselves. We must return to the manger every day of our life. We must return to our source of light and truth to receive God’s gift of Word and Light, and live in it.