Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis December 28, 2008

John 1:1-5, 10-14

“What Difference Does It Make?

Scripture:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it....

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of human will, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father's only son, full of grace and truth.

Sermon:

Well, it won’t be long before the leftovers from Christmas dinner are finished up, the decorations put away for another year, and we’re back into our routines. Aside from a couple more pounds we’re carrying around on us, will it make any real difference that we celebrated Christmas?

The answer to that depends on what the Christmas story means to us. If it’s just about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay, it will be a nice story that we’ll want to sing about and watch the kids enact next year. But it won’t affect how we think or act when we get out of bed, look in the mirror, and go about our day tomorrow.

So what was Jesus’ coming all about, really? Let’s look at how the different gospel writers handle that question. Matthew introduces the birth of Jesus by tracing Jesus’ genealogy. I’ve never used this as a scripture lesson, and you’ll see why when I read the first 3 verses:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar....( Matthew1:1-3).

This is about as interesting as reading the telephone book...unless you know some of their stories. Take Tamar. Tamar was a Canaanite woman, and women didn’t belong in any proper genealogy in that partriarchal culture. A non Jewish woman kind of blemishes the pedigree of a Jewish Messiah. She got into this genealogy because her husband died young and left her childless, without an heir to inherit her husband’s property. By Jewish law, her father-in-law Judah was supposed to provide her with another one of his sons to be her husband and give her an heir. But he didn’t. So Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to trick Judah into having sex with her so she could get pregnant. So she’s part of Jesus’ ancestry.

Rehab was an actual professional prostitute who made it into Jesus’ genealogy. She was a Canaanite living in Jericho who helped the spies sent by Joshua scope out the city before they destroyed it.

Another foreign woman in the list is just called “the wife of Uriah,” maybe because Matthew is embarrassed to tell us it’s Bathsheba, the woman whom King David seduced and whose husband he arranged to have killed in battle so he could have her for himself. Jesus is descended from the house and lineage of David as a result of David’s most grievous sin.

What does it mean that the Son of God is a mixed-breed mongrel whose family tree has at least as many skeletons in its closet as our own?

The gospel-writer John takes the opposite approach to introducing Jesus. He begins with the creation of the universe, as we heard in our scripture reading. John identifies Jesus with “the Word,” an imperfect translation of the Greek word Logos, which meant the divine animating force that has created and ordered the universe. John says that this divine power, through which all things came into being, “became flesh and lived among us.”

And how did it become flesh? Luke “fleshes out” the incarnation with the familiar Christmas story about Jesus being laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn. This story has become so familiar it has lost all its original punch. If it had happened today, it might be about Maria and Jose, an unmarried couple who had lost their apartment when Maria was pregnant. Their story might say that Maria gave birth in a garage and wrapped her first born son in rags and laid him in a cardboard box, because there was no room in the hospital for people without insurance. And lo, in that neighborhood there were garbage men picking up trash by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and said, “Don’t be scared. I’ve got great news for you. To you is born in yonder garage a Savior, Jesus Christ; he’s the real deal.”

That’s something like how this story sounded to the poor, oppressed people who heard it first.

So what is the Christmas story about? It’s about the creating, life-giving, ordering power of God coming into the world in the humblest way, as one of us–as one like us in every human respect. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” as John put it.

Quinn G. Caldwell wrote, “God was so hungry to be close to us that nothing--not eternity, not power, not immortality--was too much to give up, and nothing--not time, not weakness, not a mortal body--was too much to take on.” That’s what the Christmas story says about God.

But when this baby Jesus grew up, he started saying some pretty amazing things about us. Jesus never used the term Son of God to refer to himself, but he repeatedly turned to God as his Abba--Father, or more like “Papa” in Greek, and he taught us to do the same. Jesus didn’t use the word “abba” to send a message to future feminists that hey, God really is a male. He used this term to send the message to everyone that they are the sons and daughters of God, as intimately related to God as a child is to her or his own parent.

Jesus told us that the kingdom of God is within us and among us. It is at hand–within our reach. He said this right in the face of the kingdom of Rome, whom anybody could see was controlling the world. But no, Jesus said, that’s not the whole story. We have the power to transform this kingdom of greed and power and exploitation into the kingdom of God.

Start with yourself and what you can do, he said. If a Roman soldier says, “Hey you, Jew boy, carry my pack for me for the next mile,” because the oppressive laws of the empire allow him to do that, turn the tables on him and carry his pack a second mile. For the first mile, he gets to be the oppressor and you the powerless victim. For the second mile, you can take the initiative and define this relationship in a very different way. What if you defined it as two human beings walking side by side talking about your lives? What if you both talked about the burdens you carry under this oppressive system that uses everybody for it’s own ends? What if by the end of the second mile you’re not seeing each other as conqueror and conquered, but appreciating the unique struggling human beings you are beneath the roles you’re playing–and maybe seeing other people that look like each other differently now? Would you not have created a little pocket of the kingdom of God right there where the kingdom of Rome thought it was in control?

In so many ways, Jesus took the raw materials of the struggling, suffering, strife-torn world around him and reworked them into a higher order of reality. For example, in his culture, Jews were higher than Gentiles, righteous Jews were higher than the so-called “sinners” who didn’t diligently observe the Law, men were higher than women, the healthy were higher than the lame, etc. Jesus created a whole new order by exposing the hypocrisy of those on top and openly embracing and including those on the bottom. Inspired by Jesus’ example, his followers created a radically different kind of community, where there was “neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female; for all are one in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:28). They had created a pocket of the kingdom of God where human power positions dissolved away.

Where anger and resentment put up walls of animosity between people, Jesus suggested we try loving our enemies, and praying for the people who are persecuting us. From our ego’s perspective, that makes no sense. You should punish them and teach them a lesson. Which of course then provokes them to punish us and teach us a lesson. Which is what we see going on between Israel and Palestine, among other places, with no end in sight.

Loving someone requires understanding them, seeing the situation through their eyes, knowing what they’re afraid of and what they need. Doesn’t this open your eyes to how you might be triggering their fears and depriving them of what they need? And praying for them requires that you hold up their needs to God as you hold up your own, and prompts you to look for ways that everyone can have what they need. There’s another pocket of the kingdom of God in the making.

Jesus didn’t come to show us the wonderful things that he could do. He came to show us the wonderful things that we could do as the loved, forgiven, freed, spirit-filled sons and daughters of God. He said, “Greater things than these shall you do.” We don’t have to be anyone special or powerful. We can be like the woman who secretly kneaded some leaven into a big batch of dough, until it was raised. We can raise the world around us to a new level, not by taking over the bakery, but by quietly kneading the living yeast of Christ-like compassion, generosity, peace-making and service into our homes, our relationships, and our work.

“What has come into being in him was life,” John says. Creative, hope-filled, abundant, generative life came into being through him and came into our beings through him, and comes into the world through him working in us. “And the life was the light of all people.” When we are energized by that life, Jesus told us that we, like him, are the light of the world. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” As has been said, “There is no darkness so deep that can overcome the light of one single candle,” even our own little candle shining out with faith, hope and love.

So what difference does Christmas make--this celebration of the incarnation of this light and life that created and orders and redeems the universe? It doesn’t make much difference for us or for our world unless we allow that dynamic light and life to be incarnated in our minds and words and actions and life too. That’s what Jesus came to show us how to do, by living it out in the flesh for us to see.

And as Jesus’ own birth reminds us, the Word, the divine Logos, finds humble, unpretentious places to be born in. There just doesn’t seem to be room in places of pride, power, smugness, and self-sufficiency. We don’t have to be pure. We don’t have to have a good pedigree. If all we have is an empty manger or a cardboard box, that is enough. And an invitation, in the form of a prayer or a sigh or a longing, that calls out to something we can’t see or understand, and says, “You are my Source. You are my Light. You are my Life. Empty me of me, and fill me with You, that I might be in You and You in me.”

Maybe we have to get past the Christmas rush to find that empty place in our souls. Maybe the best time to celebrate what Christmas is really about is in all the ordinary, humble days after Christmas. Because it was into ordinary days and humble lives that Jesus was born.