Sermon

Nobody ever said that scripture was straight forward.  There are four gospel books in the bible, but pre-assigned lectionary lists only use three.  Matthew, Mark and Luke are known as the synoptic gospels because they see from the same eye, so to speak.  Whoever created the lectionary, used primarily one of those three in each of the three years of the lectionary.  Why is that, you might ask?

Well, because the fourth gospel, the non-synoptic, starts like this.  Something about a Word, a person being a Word?  Everything and nothing, light and not light, darkness that is light.  A man sent to talk about the light, but he wasn't the light himself, but was sent to talk about the true light.  Light?  What happened to the Word?  And, isn't this book supposed to be about Jesus?  It sounds a little like “Who's on First.”  

The script writer for the British mystery series Father Brown, has an understanding of this kind of religious confusion that I can get behind.

In one particular episode, a thief is trying to convince the detective priest Father Brown, that he, the thief, is also a priest.  The thief/priest must have read this prologue to the gospel of John and therefore understood that all of religion was this confusing.  Or maybe he was like many who understand religion to be about telling us exactly what to think.  The thief/priest is unsuccessful in fooling Father Brown.  Evidently the thief gave himself away when he must have thought “it was the religious thing to do, to gaze reverently at the heavens and claim not merely that the mysteries of the universe exceeded our understanding but that they made reason itself, “utterly unreasonable.”  Surprised that his disguise as a priest didn't work, he asks Father Brown how he knew he wasn't a priest.  Father Brown says, “You attacked reason.  It's bad theology.”  “Reason and justice,” he affirmed, “grip the remotest and loneliest star.”

Many Christian religious traditions at first left the reading of the actual scrolls, writings, study to leaders or those who had studied the languages or in other ways had the tools to read scripture and explain it to the laity.  Certain traditions only began allowing for others to have access a little bit at a time, over time.  Imagine then, if once given access to read scripture for themselves, people ran across this opening from John 1.  We could understand how someone like the thief/priest would think that priestly thought did not include reason.

As different as this text from John is from the other gospel writers, it is not at all different from older texts that the audience for the gospel would have known.  In Proverbs we find many saying much like this one, referring to Wisdom.  Proverbs 3:19 says, “The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.”  Proverbs 8:22-23 says, "I, wisdom, was with the Lord when he began his work, long before he made anything else. I was created in the very beginning, even before the world began.”  This Wisdom tradition goes back to antiquity, so it would have been a short leap to hear the words of this gospel.  The writer of John's gospel uses a familiar hymn to Wisdom and changes it just a bit.  Instead of “I, wisdom, was with the Lord when he began his work…” John writes, “In the beginning was the Word.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  

We have been experiencing the gospel writings through Luke and Matthew most recently.  Adding this part from the gospel of John doesn't subtract from or add confusion to anything we celebrated last night about the birth of Christ.

On this Christmas Day the gospel of John expands on the world of the other three gospel writers and places the entry of God into the world of humanity from before everything.  Much like a genesis story, the gospel writer reminds us that God in Jesus, who came into the world just like you and I did, is the God of the creation readings in Genesis.  In the beginning.

Jesus wasn't a new God, a better God, a more recent God.  Jesus is THAT God.

Here is where I will repeat part of yesterday's sermon.  I invite you to hear these parts again, this with the realization that Christmas, the birth of Christ, isn't the beginning of God's journey with us.  The birth of Christ is the continuation of God's journey with us.  

Last night we read from Isaiah, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”  We talked about walking in darkness, living in a land of deep darkness of people from around the world and in our own country.  We talked about our own darkness, saying,

As terrible as COVID is and has been, leaving families without loved ones, leaving people with long term effects of being ill, it is not the only thing that has so many just exhausted right now.  We're exhausted on top of exhausted.  Nadia Bolz-Webber reminds us that nobody started 2022 with a full tank. When the world shifts and indeed groans with deep inward pains, we can be at a loss for how to be.  I invite you to take a moment right now, and close your eyes if it helps to imagine, naming the things you are worried about, the anxiety you might have, the grief that won't let you go, the guilt at feeling needy at such a “happy” time of year, the weights of the world you might carry.  As you hold those things in your mind, hear these words:

     Although you walk in darkness, you will see a great light.  Although you live in darkness, on you a light will shine.  The yoke and bar and rod of the burden have been broken.  For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon the shoulders of this child, and he will establish endless peace.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness forevermore.

Hear those words, realizing just how long this has been God's wish for us.  Jesus' birth was just another way to help us reach that light.  The Isaiah text from today is such a poetic description of the peace that comes from that light that shines in the darkness.  Hearing the words aloud, you can almost hear the gentleness of the truth.  “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

It's like falling backwards and realizing with relief that you are going to land on a soft pillow, and then realizing that the pillow will be even softer than you thought.  The difference between the promise of Christmas Eve and the promise of  Christmas Day is that today, the babe has been born.  The promises of Isaiah, of Proverbs, of the gospel writers are widened to include right now this very moment and everything before, all the way back to before everything.  The God of all time, is the God who has been sent to us as a babe.  I'm not sure why that makes me feel better.  It's as if Jesus wasn't a beginner, Jesus came with experience.  I'm more trusting of someone with more experience.  That's me trying to understand.  Trying to put human linear time and sense onto an experience of trust and love and light that goes beyond anything you or I can understand.   Not because we aren't capable, but because we are constrained by time and space and gravity and natural laws that for us move in linear fashion.  

God does not.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray,

“He came to a world which did not mesh, to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.  In the mystery of the Word made Flesh the Maker of the stars was born.  We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our songs with joyful voice for to share our grief, to touch our pain, He came with Love. Rejoice! Rejoice!

(Madeleine L'Engle)

Amen.