Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sermon: First Sunday of Advent 2010


It does not seem, to me, like it should be Advent already. Didn’t we just begin the season of fall a couple of weeks ago? I think part of the confusion of my internal clock in relation to Advent might also have to do with Daylight Savings Time being moved back until November in recent years. It seemed by this time of year, with Black Friday and Thanksgiving behind us and Christmas ahead, that there would not be so much light.

It is strange for me, even though I have lived in Colorado for a number of years, to think about Advent starting this week when just a couple of weeks ago it was 70 degrees, and everything was still bright and cheery. Jennifer and I both grew up in more northern climates, and near larger bodies of water. Which meant that often by this time of year it was even darker, because it was further north, and it was also much greyer when the sun came up. Advent candles and Christmas carols went with big warm sweaters and hot cider, and rain drizzles or snow in the air.
Advent and Christmas have many symbols. Trees with ornaments. Wreaths. Gifts. Candy canes. Stables and babies wrapped in swaddling clothes.
But perhaps most prominent in the time of Advent is the presence of small flourishes of light in dark places. Lights on a Christmas tree and strung around a home. Stars shining to guide men to a room full of animals and a new born baby. Even the advent candles that we light ourselves. Each remind us, through the cycle of the seasons and the symbols that we choose, that God is at work when the air is cold, the trees are dormant, the lawn is brown, and natural light seems to be waning.

Advent reminds us that during dark times, light is present among us. It is coming soon again. Advent reminds us that God’s grace and truth are like a light in the darkness. Advent hat Jesus is invading our frightening, frigid and dark world with the light of his truth, and the hope of his presence. Advent reminds us to prepare for this coming light of hope, and to equip ourselves to share it with others.
So this year, we are looking at Advent and Christmas through the eyes of the gospel of John, who illumines us to the truth of Christ as Creator, Light of World, Gatherer of a New Kind of Family, and as one who dwells among us.

We will be repeating the text of John 1 often, in different ways, hoping that like light and truth it makes its way through the blinders we have put around our heart, and helps us to know, see, and understand Jesus anew again. And hoping that you sense the light of Christ more and more this holiday season, instead of just the neon lights advertizing sales, and the noise and business that calls us from one activity to another. Let’s read the first few verses we will focus on this morning



JOHN 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

In the beginning.

That is how the gospel of John starts: In the beginning.

Each gospel tells the story a little differently, the story of how Jesus came into the world. Matthew tells about who Jesus was related to. Matthew tells the lineage of a promised king. Jesus is the answer to the promise and hope for the Messiah that the Hebrews had been longing for and praying for.

Luke locates Jesus in a certain place and at a certain time. Jesus comes to the City of David, at the time of a census, during the reign of Caesar Augustus in a manger, nearby where shepherds graze their flocks. Luke is a very good historian. He wants to get the facts nailed down. He does not want anyone to mistake Jesus as some sort of mythical person.

Each of these ways of approaching how Jesus came to earth are factual. They are just telling us who Jesus is from a different perspective.

When John introduces us to Jesus, he does not want us to forget the big picture. John wants us to see cosmic, universal, global picture of who Jesus is and what he is about. He wants us to remember that Jesus in not just fully human, he is both fully human and fully God. He is God in human form. At the end of his gospel, John tells us that he wrote his gospel so that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:31)

In the beginning.

These first words are shared by the book of Genesis, which begins all of Scripture, and the book of John, which tells us about Jesus.

In the beginning, John says. “In the beginning was the Word.”

From the start, John says, from the start of creation, Jesus was there. When the universe was formless and void, the Word was present. As the world was being born, Jesus was there. As the mountains were being carved out, Jesus was there. As the night and day were created, Jesus was there. When the first cat meowed, Jesus was there. When the first flowers sprouted from the ground, Jesus was there.

In the beginning, John says, “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God”.

Interesting way of describing Jesus that John uses, this moniker, “the Word”.

It has several layers of meaning. When God creates the world, he speaks it into existence. When God wants to make something out of nothing, he uses a Word.

When John calls Jesus the Word, he is saying that all the power that created the world is present in his person. He is also saying something bigger. When John calls Jesus “the Word” he is doing the same kind of work as he was doing in creation. By showing up personally, in our flesh and blood world, he is continuing to create and recreate our lost and rebellious world.

When the Hebrews talked of the Law of God, they spoke of it as “The Word of God”
When the prophets shared what God had inspired them to say, they declared, “Hear the Word of God”And when the writers of Proverbs spoke of the way of wisdom and the way of folly, they spoke of wisdom as a person. A Living Word with flesh and bones.

So when we hear that Jesus is the Word we are hearing that when we see and hear Jesus, we are hearing the truth of God as set from the foundation of the world. Jesus’ words are God’s words. If we want to see what God is like, we can look at the person of Jesus. Jesus is the expression of who God is in a way that we can see and understand.

Pagan philosophers also used the word for “word” found in the gospel of John. The Greek word for word was “logos”. And for many Greeks, there was this idea that if they just found the right word, the right insight or idea, than all of creation and all of life would make sense to them, and everything would come together. John turns this idea on its head. He compels people not to look for some grand philosophy to guide their life, some amazing insight, some book like “the Secret” to have everything make sense. Because the “logos”, the word of insight that helps everything makes sense, was not a philosophy or an idea. It was a person.

So when John says Jesus is the Word, he is saying that all of creation was about Jesus and leading toward him coming in human form. And that when he came he came as the pure expression of who God is and what he says. When Jesus came he came as the one who was there from the beginning, and who makes sense of everything that has come before and come since. Everything comes together in this Word, who is the very person of Jesus.
In the beginning. John says. In the beginning was the word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

You need to pay attention. Jesus was God. Jesus was not simply a great teacher. He was not just a moral example for us to follow. He was God.

Some people, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, try to say Jesus was “a god” with a little g. Jesus was not a God. He was THE God in human form. Or, as one lesson I heard put it, “Jesus was God in a bod”.

Some people, such as those in the Mormon church, teach that Jesus and Satan were brothers. They believe that we can all, if we are good enough, become Gods in the sense that Jesus is God, eventually being Lord over our own world and our own planet.

This says that Jesus was there in the beginning. That nothing was made without him. And that even the angels were made through Him. There is only one person that was God in human form, and that is Jesus. We will never become Gods. We were not there in the beginning. We are not the Word that spoke the world into existence. We are simply the creation Jesus came to save.

Some people, like many New Agers or Eastern Mystics, will say that Jesus is one of many gods that can be worshipped. That many spiritual leaders have divine insights. The Bible says that Jesus is THE WORD. Not a WORD. The Word.

Jesus is God. He is the final authority, because he is the author of everything that is. And when the fullness of time came Jesus took on human form and dwelt among us.

But what does this mean and why does it matter?

Well, it means everything to us and it matters more than everything.


We may think we are just this glob of cells and goo that somehow have sprouted up and made its way to this place.

This passage tells us that we were created. This passage tells us that we were created by this God who did not just make the world and take his hands off the wheel. We were created by a God who has spoken to us and continues to speak to us. A God who created us while we were in our mother’s womb, and who continues to create and speak to us even now.

We were created by a God who has a plan and a purpose in this world. We are created by a God who speaks, and keeps speaking to us. We may plug our ears. We may only be willing to hear what we want to hear. But God has spoke and continues to speak to us through creation, through the world around us. But most of all, God speaks to us through THE WORD. The person of Jesus.

The WORD who made everything in existence wants to speak to your heart. He wants to speak his truth into your situation. The WORD who created everything wants to create in you a new heart, and wants to make a new reality out of the tattered fragments of your life. He wants to speak new hope into those situations you find hopeless, and new life into those parts of your life that feel dead and broken.

He made the rivers and the trees, the mountains and the canyons. I hope you will let him make your life something even more beautiful.

Amen.

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