Wednesday, January 10, 2018

The Greatest Gift (12/24/17)



He Qi, Glory to God in the Highest
This was my sermon on Christmas Eve. Instead of the familiar birth story in the Gospel of Luke, I decided that we would hear this selection from the prologue to the Gospel of John. I believe that this story invites us to consider where we fit into the Christmas story.

The Greatest Gift (12/24/17)

Sermon
          Merry Christmas! I am so glad to be here with you tonight. I want to tell you a story about one of the nicest compliments I every received from a member of this congregation. In true Mon Valley style, it was an unintentional compliment. This member me how long I’d been in ministry. When I told her that I’d only been ordained for about a year, she was really surprised. She said, “I thought you’d been doing this for a long time!”
          I guess when you see all of my gray hair, it’s easy to make that assumption. Luanne’s response really meant a lot to me, because as much as I project confidence from the pulpit, I’m still learning how to do ministry.  But the longer I do this, the more I realize that the most important lessons were the ones I learned before I entered seminary.
          In my last full-time job, I worked for a consulting company in Wexford. My job title was instructional systems designer. That sounds really cool, but it doesn’t tell you much about my job. The company that I worked for created online training courses for large corporations; I helped to organize those courses. I would take highly technical information, break it down into manageable chunks, and then put that information in a logical order. I would work with the experts from our corporate clients to make sure I had the right information, translate it into plain English, and then present the information in a way that made sense to lots of different people. In a sense, I was a translator.
          It turns out, my work background was good preparation for preaching on the Gospel of John, which presents a very deep and rich theology. That’s the nice way to put it. Another way to put it is that John doesn’t say anything simple. John’s theology is very dense and it’s difficult to translate John’s Greek into English. He packs a lot of theology into a few verses.
          The Gospel of John doesn’t begin like the other gospels. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke begin with birth stories and genealogies—they need to show that Jesus is descended from King David. Mark offers the simplest introduction: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
          But John is different. John begins by talking about the Word. In fact, John mentions the Word several times in this passage—and if you’re following in your Bible, you’ll notice that Word is capitalized, just like Son. The gospel writer also tells us that in the Word, there is life, “and in the life was the light of all people.” What’s more, there is a person sent from God, who is not the light, but who has come to testify to the light. Then in verse fourteen, the evangelist tells us that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” The gospel writer doesn’t even use the name Jesus Christ until verse seventeen, and then only in verse eighteen is Jesus identified as the Son of God.
          Of course, we all know that Jesus is the Word and that John the Baptist is the one who was sent to testify to the coming of the Christ. We’ve already heard the other gospels. We’ve heard the birth stories; we’ve heard Mark say, in one simple verse, that Jesus is the Son of God. So why does John make it so complicated?
          The Gospel of John was composed much later than the other gospels. Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection probably occurred in about 30 AD. The letters of the Apostle Paul were probably written some 25-30 years later. The Gospel of Mark likely came a few years after Paul’s epistles. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke came a generation later. The Gospel of John was composed somewhere between 100 and 125 AD. These dates are approximate, but you can see the pattern: John’s gospel is the last of the four gospels to be written. Christian communities have already been established around the Greco-Roman world. And those communities may already be aware of the other gospels and Paul’s letters. So, John does something different; John offers a detailed theological interpretation of who Jesus is. The fancy seminary word for this is Christology. John offers a deep theological interpretation of the person of Christ. And what John says is earth-shattering!
          “In the beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was god.” In the beginning: these are the opening words of Genesis 1. In the beginning. . . What John is saying is that the Incarnation—Jesus’ coming into the created world—is as big of an event as the creation of the world itself. Think about that for a second. That’s an enormous claim.
          The first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—tell the story of creation and God’s selection of Israel as God’s chosen people, and the covenants that were made between God and Israel. The Gospel of John says that Jesus was with God from the beginning of time and that Jesus is also God. What’s more, those who receive Jesus, those who believe in his name, have been given the “power to become children of God.” In the Old Testament, only Israel, God’s chosen people, were included in God’s covenants with humanity. But now that Jesus has entered the created world, we may all be included in God’s covenants. All we have to do is believe in the name of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, and then Jesus will make God known to all of us who believe. This is earth shattering; this is the announcement that God can accept any of us who believe in the Son! God is made known to humanity through “God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart.” Above all else, God is revealed to humanity through the incarnation of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.[1]
          To put it another way, John is writing all of us into the story of God’s chosen people. Before Jesus came into the world, there was Israel and there was everyone else. But through Jesus Christ, we are also God’s chosen people—we have been written into the story!
          I think many of us miss the enormity of this message. Maybe it’s because most of us have grown up inside the Christian tradition. We’re already familiar with the story, so it’s not new to us; we don’t hear this in the way that the original audience for the Gospel of John heard this piece of Scripture. It’s a radical declaration of Christ’s nature and identity.
          Also, I’m not sure that we fully appreciate that we are a part of this story. A few minutes ago, I told you that in my old job, I was a sort of translator: I took dense technical materials and broke them down into manageable chunks of information, and then I arranged those chunks in a logical order so that other people could understand the technical information. After that, I talked about the Gospel of John and the deep, rich theology that is presented in this reading, and I tried to break some of that down for you. What I didn’t tell you, and, in fact, what I didn’t realize when I was working at my old job, is that God was shaping me for this job, for what I’m doing right here, right now.
          There’s something else I didn’t tell you: I spent many years outside of the church. Sure, I was raised in the Presbyterian Church and I went to church most Sundays until I went off to college, and then I drifted away. I didn’t go back to church until I was in my mid-thirties. But God wasn’t done with me. No. God was still shaping and forming me. It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I began to appreciate all of the ways that I was being formed, even when I was ignoring God’s call. Very often, we don’t realize the larger things that are going on around us or the forces that are acting on our lives.
          When I got to seminary, I learned to put language around my own experiences—I learned to translate. I learned to translate Greek, and I also learned to translate my experiences with God, the things that I had felt as God was acting in my life, and put those feelings into words that I could share with others. I learned to use fancy seminary words like Christology and spiritual formation, and then explain those fancy words to others. This is exactly what we expect from our pastors. However, I do not believe that the work of translation belongs only to our pastors. Creation is an ongoing process, so is formation. God is constantly creating and re-creating, shaping and forming each of us. This is momentous.
          The Gospel of John tells us that we may all be written into the covenants. But here’s the thing: we have to write ourselves into the story, and then we have to tell that story to others. Each one of you is a unique witness to God’s love and faithfulness. I can work at translating the Gospel of John to you, but I am not equipped to tell your story; I cannot translate your experience of God to anyone else. I can help you to tell your story; I can offer you fancy theological terms, if you would like; but only you can fully tell your own stories.
          This morning’s reading from John tells us that through Jesus, we have received grace upon grace; grace and truth come through Christ and through Christ we may know God the Father. I have no doubt that each of you have experienced God’s grace and truth in some way. Please go out and find ways that you can share your experiences of God’s grace and truth—with people here in the church, and also with people who are not members of this community. Translate your experiences so that others may be enriched by your faith! Thanks be to God. Amen!
  
Benediction
          Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world today. We are called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!



[1] Guthrie, Shirley C. Jr. Christian Doctrine. Rev. Ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 53.

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