The Rev. Noah Van Niel
December 30th, 2018
The Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill
The First Sunday after Christmas: Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7; John 1:1-18
When the author of Mark, most likely the earliest of the evangelists, set out to write down his version of Jesus’ life, he began with the prophets, specifically, Isaiah. He wanted to make sure people knew that Jesus was the one about whom they had been prophesying, the Messiah. When the author of Matthew, who was probably next, began his account, he traced Jesus’ legacy all the way back to Abraham, the father of the faithful hoping, to convince the Jews of that time, of Jesus’ firm place within the line of the patriarchs; not some foreign intervention, but a continuation of the story they knew and revered. When Luke took his shot, probably with Mark and Matthew and some other sources in front of him, he was bold enough to draw Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam, the father of all people, in an effort to expand the understanding of Jesus’ role in salvation history: not just the one to restore the fortunes of Israel, but the doorway for people even outside the chosen race, to come to know God. Their collective point, made by slightly different means, was to try and connect Jesus to who and what came before so as to create avenues of entry for all types of hearers into his story and ultimately, his grace.
John’s was most likely the latest gospel to be written down. And he goes back even further:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” Genesis 1:1-5
That’s Genesis 1:1-5. Here are the first five verses of the Gospel of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” John 1:1-5
You can hear the resonances there, right? It’s entirely intentional. John is not just connecting the birth of Jesus all the way back to the prophets, or to Abraham, or to Adam. He’s going all the way back to the beginning of creation, when, in the form of the Logos, the Word, perhaps that “wind,” or “spirit,” or “breath” that moved over the waters, something was brought out of nothing, and light shone in the darkness. Jesus goes all the way back to that, John’s arguing. That same spirit, that was present at the beginning of the creation that was the breath that animated the universe, that Word, came into the world, our world, in the person of Jesus Christ. That is what happened on Christmas day. Not just a birth, but an act of creation, the likes of which had not been seen since those ancient days when the earth was a formless void.
John has nothing to say about stables, and shepherds and stars in his account of Jesus’ beginnings. But his version of things makes those humble beginnings even more incredible. To be reminded of this you need look no further than right behind you {at the back stain glass window in the church}. I’m not sure how many of you have spent much time looking at this gorgeous rendering of the nativity since it’s located behind you when you’re sitting in the pews, but from my side of things I get to look at it quite a lot. As you can see {may remember} it’s a scene of Mary holding the Baby Jesus in her lap. The shepherds stand on one side, the Magi on the other, a common, if inaccurate conflation of events. And hovering above this famous scene, there are two parchment scrolls being held by angels a that serve as a caption. It’s hard to read, the light has to be just right to make it out, but if my eyes do not deceive me, it’s a scripture quote, not from Matthew, or Luke who are the ones whose words have made this scene so iconic. No, it’s from John. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” it says. It can be hard in the brilliant light of this familiar domestic tableau—baby, mother, admiring guests—to see just what a colossal, cosmic event this scene depicts. It can be hard in the festivities of Christmas to remember that every December 25th, our world gets rocked. And so even though these words are not describing a nativity scene, there could be no better caption for it. Because it reminds us to look at the infant Christ and see not just a baby, but a supernova, something spectacular, celestial; unheard of before or after. They remind us of the entire point of the mystery of the incarnation, the whole lesson it was meant to teach us: that God, the creator of heaven and earth, can be experienced, exemplified, embodied within the bounds of creation, within the limits of our flesh and blood.
The Word became flesh. The Word became flesh all those years ago in that little town of Bethlehem, but it didn’t stop there. As John says, “to all who received him, to all who believed in his name, [Jesus] gave power to become children of God who were born, not of blood, or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” That same power open and available to those who receive him, who believe in his name: that’s us. But for those who count ourselves as God’s children through our faith in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:26), those words serve as something of a challenge, not just a comfort. And the challenge, is to see whether that same power The Word can become flesh in us; to see whether that same Spirit, that same power that created the universe, that same eternal Word, can be born in our hearts and shown forth in our lives. As Evelyn Underhill, one of my favorite spiritual writers once wrote, “In our souls too, the Divine Charity must be incarnate; take visible, tangible form. We are not really Christians until this has been done. The eternal birth…must take place in you.”[1] The Incarnation is not just some cosmic event meant to take our breath away in its awesomeness. It’s personal, meant to give us breath and life, here and now. When God sent his Son, Paul says to the Galatians, he also sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, with a newborn’s cry of “Abba! Father!” Jesus’ birth presages and makes possible our rebirth, into children, into heirs of the gifts of grace and truth that come from faith in Jesus Christ.
Like any birth this is no easy task. To believe, to worship this newborn babe and sing his praises in happy songs, is also to be called to allow that “eternal birth to take place in you” to give the Spirit that hovered over the deep at the beginning of creation “visible, tangible form.” “We are not really Christians until this has taken place.” It is daunting and humbling, and more than a little bit terrifying. But it is also empowering, and exciting because, as Paul and John insist, “We can do this! He gave us the power to do so!” But we have to be intentional about it. We have to work for it.
We are entering into a new year in just a couple days. A turning of the page that serves as a good excuse for many of us to recommit, or restructure our lives in the form of resolutions: intentional commitments to work on bettering ourselves or through concrete actions. What if this year, instead of (or in addition to) a new diet or workout routine, we made a different sort of New Year’s resolution? What if this year our new year’s resolution is to be the Word made flesh? What if this year we find one thing, two things, three things to do so that the Divine life that we believe is in us, the same divine life that was present at the foundations of the earth, the same divine life that entered the world in the infant Christ, can take visible, tangible form? What would that look like for you? Volunteering at a homeless shelter? Mentoring a young person who could benefit from your life experience? Donating more of your money to organizations you believe are doing God’s work? There are myriad ways you could be the Word made flesh, myriad ways for your resolution to improve your life and the lives of those around you, improve even maybe the wider world. If Genesis and John are any indication of what could come from our belief in and cooperation with the kind of power that comes from faith in Jesus Christ, that wouldn’t just be a resolution that would be a revolution, because the living Word dwells in you richly, and it is just waiting to be unleashed. Amen.
[1] Evelyn Underhill Collection, Aeterna Press p. 2622