| Christmas Eve Service, Dec. 24, 2004 Excerpts, Part One |
| Published December 30, 2004 |
What Child is This?
HOMILY: The Word ... (Text Below)
| The Word ... [1] John 1:1-8 Rev. Matthew M. Fry |
As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Transforming Word, You speak, and mountains are formed, and night is separated from day, and humans are created and cared for. Speak to us again, so that we might be re-formed into your work and will. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.
Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the gospel of John. Listen. John 1.1-8. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.
It was Thanksgiving about 15 years ago or so. I wasn’t coming home, so a friend invited me to eat. It was just his family and me. But, it was a holiday, so I accepted the invitation. “What should I bring?” “Just yourself.” “But I can bring a favorite dish of mine to share.” “Don’t. My family likes to cook, and would be insulted in a small way if you brought something.” That was tough. I had to accept the invitation not for my merit, but for the graciousness of the inviter. “Well, what does your parent’s house look like?” “You can’t see it from the road, but you won’t have any trouble finding it, our name is right there. And don’t go too fast, it’s a main road, so you might be going too fast and go right by.” With those words, I set off to find my friends parent’s house. I drove slowly down his street, and found the gateway. People behind me weren’t too happy, but so be it. Sure enough, their name wasn’t on the mailbox as I had presumed; it was hanging over the gateway. I turned into the driveway, didn’t even pass it and have to turn around. He never told me that his place was like this. I couldn’t see the place for the trees, the flowers, the landscaping. The driveway was also far too long to see any house at the end of it. I followed the driveway around the curve, then another curve, and a final curve. I gasped.
In front of me was the house, if you could call it that. 18th Century manor was more like it. And at the front, my friend, emerging from between the pillars, smiling to greet me, inviting me in to eat with his family. It was glorious.
The beginning of John’s gospel is a little like arriving at a grand, imposing house. Many Bible readers know that this gospel is not exactly like the others. You may have heard, or even discovered, that’s it got hidden depths of meaning. It has been said that the gospel of John is a pool safe enough for a child to swim, deep enough to cover and soak an elephant. Though the gospel of John is imposing in its structure and ideas, it’s not meant to scare anyone off. It makes you welcome. Indeed, millions have found that, as they come closer to this book, they find a smiling Friend coming out to meet them.
“In the beginning was the Word…”2 It ought to sound familiar. I don’t think for one second that John didn’t know that he was starting his gospel in a manner similar to the first book of the Pentateuch, Genesis. In the beginning. Every Bible reader can recognize that phrase. As we start the gospel of John, he rings the sound of the opening words of the bible. Whatever John spends the rest of his 21 chapters writing about, he wants the reader to find his gospel as a continuance of the story of God and the world, not just a story of one character in one place and time. This gospel is about the triune God working in a new manner with God’s beloved creation. It is about the way in which the long story which began in Genesis reached a climax that the creator had always intended.
And this will happen through the Word. In the Old Testament, God regularly acts through means of God’s Word. What God says, happens. God said let there be light, and there was. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” That’s Psalm 33.6. Often, after I read the text for the sermon, I’ll say, The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. That’s from Isaiah 40.6-8. The fact that God’s Word creates, sustains, and empowers life is probably part of why John chooses to use that phrase.
Many Jewish teachers had grappled with a couple of questions for centuries. How can the one true God be both different from the world and active within it? And the other question, how can God be remote, holy and detached, and also intimately present? Some had come up with the answer, through God’s Word. When God speaks, the word of God affects the world, and therefore makes God present in the world. The limitation of that line is that it is abstract and impersonal. Some spoke of the ‘word’ as a principal of rationality, to be understood. But the Word that John describes isn’t an abstract principal at all. God doesn’t just interact with creation in a convenient and easy manner.
One thing we do know about The Word is that it is not only from God, but it is God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This isn’t just a word like we think of words. This is some sort of mystical powerful thing that was with God, from the beginning, and somehow was God. And the idea that all of this is so abstract and only known through theory and only in the hypothetical realm is only enhanced.
God, who has always been hard to know, and is now even more so, and this Word are the same. Okay, I’ll buy that. But what does it matter? All we’re talking about is abstract theory. God gets involved, but it’s not like God is in the world.
To be continued…
2 John 1.1
