Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Word Became Flesh and Lived Among Us Version 2

First Sunday After Christmas – Year C (RCL)
Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18
Sunday, December 27, 2009 – Trinity, Redlands

[N.B. This is a slightly modified version of my Christmas Day homily, created for the First Sunday After Christmas.]

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Wait a minute! This is Christmas! What happened to all the drama and pageantry we heard about just a couple of days ago? What happened to Mary and Joseph? Where’s the child in swaddling clothes? Where’s the manger? Where are the shepherds? And what about the choir of angels singing “Glory to God in the highest?” Just a couple of days into the Twelve Days of Christmas and we’ve already moved on?


After all the build-up of Advent, all the hype that we have endured since Thanksgiving, if not before, is it too much to want more of the well-known and beloved story of Jesus’ birth in a manger in Bethlehem? Does the drama have to end after just one night? Do we have to leave the much-beloved imagery of a young girl giving birth to her child, the Son of God, in low and meager conditions, surrounded by cute and cuddly animals, under the adoring eyes of lowly shepherds and the heavenly host of angels alike? Can’t we go back to Luke’s portrayal? After all, it is so much more heart-warming and touchy-feely than the way John portrays it, with all his talk about the Word this and the Word that. It’s so cold. It’s so . . . so theological.

Sorry, but no. Life goes on. Big events in life can’t last forever – even something as big as the birth of God’s Son. We all know that, no matter how much we don’t want it to, those warm and fuzzy events in life must eventually come to an end. There’s always that let down after a big event. But is John’s portrayal of the coming of the Messiah, with all his cryptic talk like “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and about how “the Word became flesh” really a letdown?

After all the hustle and bustle leading up to Christmas Day, after the pageantry of Christmas Eve, after all the pomp entailed in “Glory to God in the highest” and “Joy to the World,” the remainder of the Christmas season is, in many respects, the time for settling in, for adjusting to the life changing event that happened on Christmas Eve. It is a chance for us to stop and catch our breath, to take a few moments and reflect on what it all means. Maybe we need the more esoteric, less sensory loaded imagery of “the Word became flesh and lived among us” to give us the space we need to take it all in, to catch up, to live into what all this really means. As the narrator noted at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve pageant: “The Father uttered one Word: that Word is His Son – and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And the soul, to hear it, must be silent.” Maybe that’s why we have twelve days of Christmas – to give us the time we need to be silent, at least interiorly, to let it all sink in.

After the bucolic imagery surrounding the humble birth of our Lord and King, maybe the time is right for something a little more abstract, more enigmatic, something entailing the language of mystery that is befitting such a profound, if not unfathomable, event. This is the time to reflect, and to realize that life following the events of Christmas Eve will never be the same again – life in the aftermath of the birth of the Messiah will never be the same.

No, the Prologue to John’s Gospel does not meet our expectations for drama, but it provides something even more profound – even more profound than the scene at the manger. The very fact that the Word became flesh proves that God does not conform to our expectations. Before this day, we knew God in more of an indirect, abstract way. We knew God through the revelation of scripture. We knew God through second-hand information, through the words of the prophets. Through such second and even third-hand accounts, we were able to come to believe in and worship God who was unseen, and who seemed, in so many ways, to be out there, out of reach, just beyond our grasp. But now, through the Word-made-flesh, we know God in a different way – we know God in the flesh. God-made-flesh is God manifest in body so that we might have a conception of the unseen Father, so that we might know God as we ourselves are.

But “the Word was made flesh and lived among us” means so much more. The term we translate as “lived” is more properly translated as “pitched his tent.” Or as “tabernacled.” Just as the glory of God tabernacled, lived among, the Israelites as they wandered through the wilderness, guiding them all along the way. John is telling us that in the Christmas event, God was not just born into human form. Rather, God came to be in our midst, to travel with us, to be an on-going companion on our journeys through life, just as he was with the Israelites.

But even for the Israelites, with whom God dwelt, tabernacled, God was still a mysterious houseguest at best. There was so much about God that was unfathomable to them. God may have been in their midst, but was still not truly known. There was still a distinct separation between God and worshiper, between divine and human. The Prologue of John’s Gospel indicates that such separation, such dichotomies are inherent in creation. Creation contains many things and concepts that in our limited human nature, we cannot fully fathom – heaven and earth, Creator and created, human and divine, light and dark, eternity and the time-bound, life and death, death and resurrection, acceptance and rejection, mortal life and eternal life, exclusivity and inclusivity, fallen creation and creation as God meant it to be. Such are the mysteries of the creation of which we are a part. Such are the mysteries of the One who created all things.

The Prologue reveals that all creation, along with all these dichotomies came to be through Jesus Christ, the Word. Yet, it is this same Word, in the Word-made-flesh, in the birth of Jesus, that serves as God’s act of reconciliation breaking into time and space, reconciling the dichotomies present in creation and beyond creation – reconciling those mysteries that separate Creator from the created. As such, in the Word-made-flesh, God is not just come among us. Rather, it is through this act of becoming flesh that God is allowing himself to be known to humanity in ways that He has never been known before. God is no longer an unknown and unknowable deity, but becomes a physical, flesh and blood companion, capable of knowing us and being known by us – God has come to reveal the fullness of himself, dichotomies and all. God becomes an intimate companion who wants to fully know us and who wants to be fully known.

As such, the Prologue from John serves to move the church beyond the singular birth event portrayed in Luke’s Gospel. As one commentator notes, “this passage speaks to the very heart of the Christmas message by answering the question ‘Who is the child of Bethlehem, and why should we care about his birth?’” (Bauman, 188). This passage moves the theology of the Church from “birth” to “incarnation” – to an ongoing state of God with us – a God who is no longer unseen and out there somewhere, but instead, is now God-made-flesh, who is with us, in the same form as we ourselves are. The point of the Gospel of John is that God became human through Jesus, and that as a result, He is one of us. He is truly known to us and by us. As a result, God is not distant, uninvolved, impersonal, static. Rather, God is ever-present, involved, personal, dynamic.

In the Word-made-flesh, in God-made-human, God is brought to our level, seeing humanity as we are, experiencing humanity as we do, in all its fullness – in the joys and the sorrows, in the good times and the bad. And the flip side is that in Jesus, God reveals His vision of what humanity is supposed to be. He provides the ultimate example of what humanity can be. Jesus reveals the way to true human life – to what we are intended to be. And in the Word-made-flesh, in God-made-human, we see humanity as God sees us. We see how much God loves us and cares for us, to come and be among us, to share with us that which was previously unknowable. God did not have to do this. But God chose to do it out of sheer love. That’s the true miracle of Christmas. That is the unfathomable mystery of Christmas.

This is why we need, in these days immediate following the birth of our Messiah, to hear such abstract and mysterious language as the Word-made-flesh – to let the message sink in. The event of Christmas Eve, despite all the pageantry, all the beauty, was a one-shot deal, a singular event. On the other hand, the mystical language of Word-made-flesh, the revelation of Incarnation, of God come among us, and all that that entails, is an ongoing event – the ongoing gift of our God living among us, sharing our lives with us, sharing himself with us, the ongoing assurance that we are not alone, the ongoing gift of our God who loves us unconditionally.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – God-with-us, the ultimate expression, the ultimate glory, of God’s love, given to each and every one of us, his beloved children.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


References
Bauman, Stephen. “John 1: (1-9) 10-18, Pastoral Perspective.” In Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year C, Volume 1, Advent Through Transfiguration. Edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.



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Friday, December 25, 2009

The Word Became Flesh and Lived Among Us

Christmas Day – Year C (RCL)
Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12); John 1:1-14
Friday, December 25, 2009 – Trinity, Redlands


“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Wait a minute! This is Christmas! What happened to all the drama and pageantry we heard about last night? What happened to Mary and Joseph? Where’s the child in swaddling clothes? Where’s the manger? Where are the shepherds? And what about the choir of angels singing “Glory to God in the highest?”

After all the build-up of Advent, all the hype that we have endured since Thanksgiving, if not before, is it too much to want more of the well-known and beloved story of Jesus’ birth in a manger in Bethlehem? Does the drama have to end after just one night? Do we have to leave the much-beloved imagery of a young girl giving birth to her child, the Son of God, in low and meager conditions, surrounded by cute and cuddly animals, under the adoring eyes of lowly shepherds and the heavenly host of angels alike? Can’t we go back to Luke’s portrayal? After all, it is so much more heart-warming and touchy-feely than the way John portrays it, with all his talk about the Word this and the Word that. It’s so cold. It’s so . . . so theological.

Sorry, but no. Life goes on. Big events in life can’t last forever – even something as big as the birth of God’s Son. We all know that, no matter how much we don’t want it to, those warm and fuzzy events in life must eventually come to an end. There’s always that let down after a big event. But is John’s portrayal of the coming of the Messiah, with all his cryptic talk like “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and about how “the Word became flesh” really a letdown?

After all the hustle and bustle leading up to today, after the pageantry of Christmas Eve, after all the pomp entailed in “Glory to God in the highest” and “Joy to the World,” Christmas Day is, in many respects, the time for settling in, for adjusting to the life changing event that has just happened the night before. It is a chance for us to stop and catch our breath, to take a few moments and reflect on what it all means. Maybe we need the more esoteric, less sensory loaded imagery of “the Word became flesh and lived among us” to give us the space we need to take it all in, to catch up, to live into what all this really means. As the narrator noted at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve pageant last night: “The Father uttered one Word: that Word is His Son – and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And the soul, to hear it, must be silent.” Maybe this is the day we need to be silent, at least interiorly, to let it all sink in.

After bucolic imagery surrounding the humble birth of our Lord and King, maybe the time is right for something a little more abstract, more enigmatic, something entailing the language of mystery that is befitting such a profound, if not unfathomable, event. This is the time to reflect, and to realize that life following the events of Christmas Eve will never be the same again – life in the aftermath of the birth of the Messiah will never be the same.

No, the Prologue to John’s Gospel does not meet our expectations for drama, but it provides something even more profound – even more profound than the scene at the manger. The very fact that the Word became flesh proves that God does not conform to our expectations. Before this day, we knew God in more of an indirect, abstract way. We knew God through the revelation of scripture. We knew God through second-hand information, through the words of the prophets. Through such second and even third-hand accounts, we were able to come to believe in and worship God who was unseen, and who seemed, in so many ways, to be out there, out of reach, just beyond our grasp. But now, through the Word-made-flesh, we know God in a different way – we know God in the flesh. God-made-flesh is God manifest in body so that we might have a conception of the unseen Father, so that we might know God as we ourselves are.

The well-beloved story from Luke deals with the birth event of God-made-human. The Prologue from John serves to move the church beyond this singular birth event. It moves the church theology from “birth” to “incarnation” – to an ongoing state of God with us – a God who is no longer unseen and out there somewhere, but instead, is now God-made-flesh, who is with us, in the same form as we ourselves are. The point of the Gospel of John is that God became human through Jesus, and that as a result, He is one of us. As a result, God is not distant, uninvolved, impersonal, static. Rather, God is ever-present, involved, personal, dynamic.

In the Word-made-flesh, in God-made-human, God is brought to our level, seeing humanity as we are, experiencing humanity as we do, in all its fullness – in the joys and the sorrows, in the good times and the bad. And the flip side is that in Jesus, God reveals His vision of what humanity is supposed to be. He provides the ultimate example of what humanity can be. Jesus reveals the way to true human life – to what we are intended to be. And in the Word-made-flesh, in God-made-human, we see humanity as God sees us. We see how much God loves us and cares for us, to come and be among us. God did not have to do this. But God chose to do it out of sheer love. That’s the true miracle of Christmas. That is the unfathomable mystery of Christmas.

This is why we need, on this day following the birth of our Messiah, to hear such abstract and mysterious language as the Word-made-flesh – to let the message sink in. The events of last night, despite all the pageantry, all the beauty, was a one-shot deal, a singular event. On the other hand, the mystical language of Word-made-flesh, the revelation of Incarnation, of God come among us, and all that that entails, is an ongoing event – the ongoing gift of our God living among us and sharing our lives with us, the ongoing assurance that we are not alone, the ongoing gift of our God who loves us unconditionally.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” – God-with-us, the ultimate expression, the ultimate glory, of God’s love, given to each and every one of us, his beloved children.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

No Ordinary Visit

Fourth Sunday of Advent – Year C (RCL)
Micah 5:2-5a; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:510; Luke 1:39-45(46-55)
Sunday, December 20, 2009 –
Trinity, Redlands


In today’s Gospel lesson, we have the story of the Visitation – that beloved, yet somewhat strange, story of Mary, mother-to-be of Our Lord, making an impromptu visit to Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptizer. The content of their conversation notwithstanding, I say strange because of the overall circumstances involved. Yes, Mary and Elizabeth are relatives, but aside from the fact that they are both pregnant, and the circumstances surrounding both pregnancies are a little strange in and of themselves, they have little in common. Mary is a poor young girl from the outback. Elizabeth is an old woman who is presumably somewhat comfortable (after all, her husband is a priest in the Temple), living in the hill country near Jerusalem, the big city. Yet, upon hearing from the angel Gabriel that Elizabeth is also pregnant, Mary hastily makes the arduous 80-some mile trip, presumably by herself, to go see Elizabeth.


What we don’t really know from the Gospel lesson is why Mary went to visit Elizabeth in the first place. Did she go to offer her congratulations to her relative and fellow servant of God? Did she have questions or even doubts about what was happening and maybe needed a little reassurance from someone who was going through a similar situation? Did she have second thoughts about saying “yes” to God and was in need of some sort of confirmation or encouragement that she was doing the right thing? All these are certainly possible under the circumstances.

Maybe upon being visited by Gabriel and learning that Elizabeth was also pregnant, Mary was able to connect the dots and see the bigger picture of what God was doing through these two women. Maybe she felt a need to convey this to Elizabeth, to keep her in the loop. Maybe she felt a need to get Elizabeth’s take on all this, to maybe fill in more pieces of the mysterious and wonderful puzzle that was slowly being revealed.

Or maybe Mary just now begins to ponder what all this means. Given the fear and shock she would have undoubtedly experienced at being suddenly visited by a messenger from God, she probably did not really have a chance to think clearly in the presence of the angel who announced her pregnancy. In the moment she only acted out of pure trust in God, knowing that if God was asking such a far-fetched thing of her, it must be important. Afterward, she has time to think through the rational implications of what she has agreed to. Maybe she needs some time away to process, to sort out what all this means for her and for her unborn child.

Regardless of her reason for making such a trip, in her joy, in her confusion, in her questioning, Mary goes to Elizabeth – to someone whom she knows and loves, to someone who knows and loves her. Regardless of what she is thinking and feeling, Mary knows she cannot deal with it alone. She knows she needs connection with someone whom she knows, loves, and trusts.

So, the visit begins. And with Mary’s arrival at Elizabeth’s house, we have one of the most power-packed encounters in Scripture. As soon as Mary greets Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s child leaps in her womb due to some mystical recognition of Mary, but more importantly, of her unborn child. At the mere sound of Mary’s voice, because of the proximity of the as-yet unborn Lord, this six month old fetus recognizes that it is in the presence of the one who is yet to come, the one whom he himself would one day herald as Messiah.

And this encounter with the one who is to come not only affects Elizabeth’s unborn child, but also affects her. We are told that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit was what facilitated or provided the baby’s recognition in the first place, resulting in him leaping with joy. So the Holy Spirit had a double impact on Elizabeth. First, she had the physical response of feeling the baby leaping in her womb, and a spiritual response of recognition of who Mary is and more importantly, who the baby is. In response, she is moved to offer her blessing, both of Mary and of the baby. Even though at this point, she has not had the opportunity to hear the full story of Mary’s encounter with Gabriel, she knows through the Holy Spirit that something wondrous has happened – something wondrous is about to happen. The Holy Spirit has revealed to her what up until now was only known by Mary. She knows and acknowledges that the unborn child in her midst is her Lord. And she is able to recognize what it means for Mary to have said “yes” to God’s request that she become the mother of God’s son. She blesses Mary for the selfless gift of herself in agreeing to bear the savior of the world.

Her blessing is wonderfully poetic, not just in its language, but in what it foreshadows. The prophet Isaiah may have foretold the work of John the Baptizer, but it would be John’s mother who would provide the example. Elizabeth’s blessing is a prophetic utterance, proclaiming the impending birth of her Lord, just as her own unborn son would one day be “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord” – the one who would prepare the way for the world to receive its Messiah.

Women aren’t given much of a place in the Bible. And we hear even fewer speak. But you have to admit, when women in the Bible are allowed to speak, they get some pretty awesome lines. And there is none more awesome than Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s blessing. After Elizabeth recognizes the ones in her midst – Mary and the unborn Son of God – Mary delivers some of the best-known words in all of Christendom: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.” In the Magnificat, Mary acknowledges Elizabeth’s blessing and takes it to the next level. Elizabeth has acknowledged the wonder that is about to happen, that this young girl will give birth to the Messiah. But just as Elizabeth’s son would one day only be able to point the way to the Messiah, so too Elizabeth can only point the way to the wonder that will ultimately be revealed. As Jesus will one day pick up the story where John must out of necessity leave off, so too does Mary pick up where Elizabeth leaves of by telling of the ultimate meaning behind the miraculous event that is yet to come.

In her response, the Magnificat, Mary highlights the world-changing ramifications of what is to happen with the birth of her child, God’s Son – the fulfillment of God’s mercy, the manifestation of God’s strength and power, the provision of God’s abundance, the expression of God’s grace. While at the time of her speaking, Jesus has yet to be born, while his revelation to humanity as Emmanuel, “God with us” has yet to occur, while the ultimate results of his coming as God incarnate have yet to come to fruition, Mary speaks in the past tense, as if the these things have already happened. God has fulfilled, and is still fulfilling, salvation history through her, through her selfless gift of herself, and through her as-yet unborn son, the one who is to come. What she proclaims transcends time. Past, present, and future merge together. The coming of the Messiah, both in the birth of Jesus and in Christ’s Second Coming, become one, as only can happen in God’s time. As one scholar notes, “Mary proclaims the promised, topsy-turvy future of God as an already-accomplished fact—possible because that future can already be glimpsed in God’s choice of Mary as the bearer of the Messiah” (Campbell, 95).

Mary bears witness to the goodness of God, to His grace and mercy, to God’s covenant faithfulness to His people – to all people. Through her proclamation in the Magnificat, Mary is the first human to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. And she proclaims it not only with words, but with her whole being. With her body, in having agreed to be the God-bearer. And in her very soul. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Or, as Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, a contemporary language paraphrase of the Bible, renders the first line of the Magnificat, “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing with the song of my Savior God.”

Put the two pieces together – Elizabeth’s blessing of Mary and Mary’s song of praise – they, and we, begin to see the fullness of what God is doing. We see the fullness of the meaning of Advent. In Elizabeth’s blessing on Mary and her unborn child, she is heralding the birth of the Messiah. And in her song of praise, Mary is revealing the fullness of what will be accomplished through the life of her unborn son, of God-made-flesh. While she cannot know it at the time, what she proclaims about God cannot be immediately fulfilled. Such tangible displays of God’s grace and mercy as scattering the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, will not happen right away. First, the one who is to come, the one who’s birth is heralded by Elizabeth and then by John, must ultimately die, be resurrected, and ascend to heaven in order for these things to begin to happen – to happen through the Body that would be left behind, the followers of this one who came and is yet to come. And these marvelous acts, these demonstrations of the awaited Kingdom of God, can only be brought to their fullness in the Second Coming.

Theirs is no ordinary visit between relatives. As a result of their visit, Elizabeth and Mary come to see themselves not in terms of their isolated, personal selves, but as a part of something larger – of God’s purposes for them, for their as yet unborn children, for humanity. Together, they see more clearly, more fully. In them, God is at work in deeply personal ways, affecting each woman uniquely and profoundly. But in these two women, God is also at work in a way that will forever change the world.

Their story carries a crucial lesson for us, for we who in this season anticipate both the birth of our Messiah and his Second Coming in glory. In bringing about these awaited events, God has used two marginalized women to proclaim and bring about the greatest news ever given to humanity. Each had their part to play. But together, they were greater than the sum of the parts. So it is with us. We each have our part to play in this, as the Body of Christ. God uses all of us, no matter how great or how small. Each of us has a message to proclaim. Each of us has work to do. But just as with Mary and Elizabeth, when we come together, our message, our work, is greater and more powerful than it would have been had we tried to go it alone.

As we come to the end of this Advent season, anticipating the one who is to come, both to a manger in Bethlehem, and to all the peoples of the world, and finally at a day and hour that we cannot know, let us rejoice in the example of two lowly women of yore, who show us what can happen when people of faith come together in community, and who together give us the hope and assurance of the glory that is to come.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


References
Campbell, Charles L. “Luke 1:39-45 (46-55), Homiletical Perspective.” In Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year C, Volume 1, Advent Through Transfiguration. Edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.


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