Making words a reality

Christmas I 2020
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Louisville KY
John 1:1-18

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Merry Christmas to you all on this first Sunday of Christmas. Our savior is born, coming into a dark world to bring light and life and peace to us. Advent has led us to this Christmas season, four weeks of preparation for what the Gospel of John opens with: the incarnation of God as Jesus, the Christ. Four weeks is not a lot of time to prepare for Immanuel, or God among us, so if you don’t feel prepared, fear not. Hardly anyone can prepare themselves in that short period of time. I’ve come to the conclusion that while Advent, like Lent, is a fixed part of our church calendar, the things we do during those two seasons don’t have to be limited to just four or six weeks. In fact, it is much more realistic to look at that preparation as requiring as much time as we need to fully understand what we’re preparing for, and to start that preparation when we’re ready to encounter God among us.

In a week and a half, we will celebrate Epiphany illustrated by three wise men who recognized God incarnate and honored him with gifts. We have our own epiphanies where we understand something new about God or Jesus or ourselves, and it can happen at any time of the year. Likewise, we die to an old way of life, or old habits, or destructive thinking and experience renewal and resurrection at times other than Easter. We can start the work of Advent preparation for Christmas at any time, and continue them all year long or longer. During the season, though, we can explore what it means to prepare for God to enter our lives, and what it means to encounter God in the world, sometimes in the most unexpected places.  But first we have to understand what the incarnation means before we can prepare for it to be a part of life.

In three of the four Gospels, Jesus is not confirmed as God’s Son until we’re well into the Gospel or at the crucifixion or resurrection, but John lays it out boldly in his Gospel as the very first thing said about Jesus. There is no doubt as to who Jesus is: he was God and was with God from the beginning of time and now Jesus is God living among us as God’s Son. He came to us unexpectedly as an infant, born in a barn of all places. John presents this picture of Jesus in three basic parts that takes us from the beginning of time to the present: Where he came from, why have faith in who he was, and how we experience him now.

John repeats the first three words of Genesis as his first three words in his gospel, “In the beginning” to recall that everything in Creation comes from God, including Jesus. He was spoken into existence as the Word of God, the same as we hear God speaking Creation into existence in Genesis: “And God said let there be light..," and there was light and dark; "And God said let there be a dome in the midst of the waters…,” and the water in the sky was separated from the water on the earth. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the word was with God…” And Jesus came into the world.

Next, John says that Jesus was known through faith as the Son of God, something unknown by the people who rejected him, who had no faith in him. This knowledge through faith opened the way for his followers to become children of God and disciples of Jesus. We too are called to know him and God as an act of faith, rather than as a recognition of fact. By living with this faith, we see and understand the world not just in terms of facts and figures, but also in terms of God being continually present. If we know by faith that God is incarnate in the world, our reaction when we encounter God among the facts and figures is going to be different from reacting to the facts and figures themselves. That reaction to finding God in the world is the basis of our spiritual life, the life that Jesus called on us to live and taught us how to live it.

Finally, John says that we see God’s glory in Jesus, full of grace and truth and living among us. To be in the presence of Jesus is to be in the presence of God. In the past year, it has been so hard to find that holy presence because of the fear, anger, resistance, and hate we have felt as our physical, emotional, and social lives have been threatened from so many directions. Yet, God’s grace and truth have always been present in people and in those unexpected places in the world. We just have to look with faith to see them, and believe that it is possible for Christ to be in the world above the darkness we have lived with. God’s spoken creation became real, and we know that he was from God because we believe him to be the Son of God.

Jesus confirms that those who know him know God, and that those who know him will continue his ministry. Paul adds to this idea of ministry when he writes to the Corinthians that we are the body of Christ. Which means that we are the incarnation of Jesus in the world, the same as Jesus was the incarnation of God in the world. We speak and act, and God’s will becomes a reality. We are the incarnation of Jesus when we collect food for Calvary's food pantry. The people who bring us that donated food, week after week are an incarnation, too. Together, as the body of Christ, we provide food for people in Old Louisville who do not have enough. Together, we supported SEAM in many different ways when it was an operating organization. Together, we supported Sudanese refugees, welcoming them and providing for their needs, many years ago. Together, we have helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

At some point, and maybe at several points in time we went through our own Advent, and prepared as a congregation to serve the needs of others as Jesus would have. Our Advent took months, and started at a time other than the four weeks before Christmas Day. We heard God calling us to unexpected places, and prepared ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and physically to be Jesus in the world, to bring Jesus to those who needed to be in his presence. This is the work of Advent and what it means to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus into the world: to see the world and experience life as God did through Jesus. We prepared ourselves to walk to the same people Jesus did, to listen to them and love them as he did. This is the preparation we went through to continue Jesus’ ministry in the world, and then we did it. Now in the Christmas season, whenever it happens during the year, we are ready to give freely of ourselves to the world.

Our incarnation of Jesus is our Christmas gift to those who are in need, whenever they need it. God’s Word at the beginning of time did not end with Jesus' birth, and God's incarnation didn't stop in Jesus. It ends up with us, in us, and because of us. We haven’t missed the opportunity to prepare for God to be among us, because the time of understanding what that means will come again next year. Or maybe, that opportunity starts now. O maybe, we are ready to be Jesus in the world, loving, and serving, and bringing light into the darkness.