1 CHRISTMAS, YEAR B

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

THE REV. ANNE STANLEY

28 DECEMBER 2008

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Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

There’s a contrast for sure between the Christmas story we heard on Christmas Eve and what we’ve just heard from the beginning of John’s gospel, called John’s Prologue. A contrast between the Christmas Eve nativity gospel from St. Luke, rich with details: the animals, Mary, Joseph, the Baby, the manger, the star and the shepherds….and today, the majesty and grandeur and poetry and mystery sung out by St. John.

A contrast, but as I said to the Christmas Day congregation, even though we tend to think of Luke’s nativity scene as THE Christmas story, what we’ve just heard is the Christmas story, too. Both John’s Prologue and Luke’s drama make up the Christmas story.

What John’s gospel does is to back us away from the manger scene, lifting us up and away from the crèche so we can see the whole sweep of it all. Today we get a cosmic view of God in the history of the world.

And what we hear today is that God has been with us since the beginning. God didn’t put in an appearance just once, in Bethlehem 2008 or so years ago.  As one writer puts it, “Since the beginning, God has paced the corridors of heaven, burning with the hope that we would see the world as God sees it. God made gardens. We did not get it. God sent floods. We did not get it. God sent prophets. We did not get it. God sent laws. We did not get it. Finally, finally, God sent flesh, God’s own flesh, so maybe we WOULD get it.” (Nancy Hastings Sehested)

The Word that was God “became flesh and lived among us.”

God needed to come in a new way, you see, so that maybe, just maybe, we might “get it.”

That’s the incarnation, God in the flesh. Or as one little girl once put it, “God with skin on.” (a quote from a story about a little girl who wanted a God she could grasp, not just words about God, as story told by our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Shori). John’s Prologue and Luke’s nativity story both tell us about God “with skin on.”

How often have we heard and maybe used the expression “the Devil is in the details?” Well, the incarnation means that GOD lives in the details. In the very flesh of the man Jesus. Living in him. And indeed, at home and living in all things. John’s gospel embeds God into the details of the manger story and into our lives even now. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

There’s more to Christmas than the celebration of a birthday long ago, says John’s prologue. Christmas means more than the nativity of Jesus, the crèche with its animals and angels and shepherds and the Holy Family. Christmas is about God with us from the very beginning, God being born in a brand-new way in Jesus, God with skin on, and God continuing to take flesh in our midst today, in all of us who are God’s children, in all of us who make up the Body of Christ, God’s Body.  God present in the humble details surrounding Jesus’ birth, even in the dirty and frightening details. “Be ye not afraid,” said the angel to Mary and then to the terrified shepherds. “Do not fear,” we, too, hear, I hope, when we come to realize that God is deep in the humble and even frightening details of our own lives.

Look at what the one man, God incarnate in him, Jesus, did in his life, while he walked up and down Israel and its surrounding lands—he healed and fed and taught and reconciled and laughed and cried and lived and died. Maybe now they’ll “get it,” God seems to be saying.  God in human flesh.

Look at what God-in-us can do as well, when we stop and open ourselves to the possibility of trusting that we, too, are filled with God’s ongoing power and presence, even in the unpleasant places of our lives.  Maybe, through God’s life-giving energy working through us, maybe others can come to “get it,” too.

         “When the song of the angels is stilled,

                        (says the poet Howard Thurman)

when the star in the sky is gone,

            when the kings and princes are home,

            when the shepherds are back with the flocks,

            then the story of Christmas begins:

                        to find the lost,

                        to heal those broken in spirit

                        to feed the hungry,

                        to release the oppressed

                        to rebuild the nations

                        to bring peace among all peoples

                        to make a little music with the heart.”

We marvel at the manger scene and we love to gaze at the filled-up crèche. How different it is from the glorious and mysterious words from John’s Prologue.  How do we explain the mystery of John’s poetry? My advice is this: Don’t.  Just listen to it and ingest it, hear its music and its echoes, let it penetrate your soul, and trust that it is so. Which is what “faith” means, after all. As wise people often point out, faith isn’t a code waiting to be cracked but truth waiting to be experienced, waiting to be lived. The Prologue to John’s gospel is Truth reaching out to us, to invite us in, for us to experience and to live.

Jesus lived, that human man within whom and through whom God breathed life and light, the true light which enlightens the world. The light that was sent for us. We are called to the light. Can we let it fill our flesh, as it did Jesus’ flesh, and ignite us and change our lives forever?  “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.”  As the saying has it, and I believe it, “Yes we can!!”