A very happy Christmas to you all, and to your families.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a poor man and his wife. They were so poor that one day they found themselves with bare cupboards and nothing to put on the table for supper.
So the wife, who incidentally wore the trousers in this particular household, decided to send her hen-pecked husband off with his fishing rod to the local lake. “If you don’t catch nuffin’, there’ll be no dinner tonight,” she said.
So off he went, desperate to land some sort of catch. After five hours of miserable failure, he finally reeled in, against all the odds, a decent sized fish. In fact it was so big, he had a bit of a struggle pulling it out of the water.
Finally he managed to master it and place it on the bank of the lake. He was just about to whack it on the head when, the fish began to talk, pleading with him. “Please don’t kill me. If you throw me back into the water I’ll grant you three wishes, whatever you want, you can have it.”
The man thought that would be great, so he let the fish go and returned home empty handed, excited about what his wife was going to say.
“Well, what did you catch for our dinner, lazy bones? You ain’t done nuffin’ have you?” she said. So he explained what had happened. “You and your tall stories, I don’t know, what do you think this is, Jack and the beanstalk?”
So he says, “Watch! I wish… I wish that a magnificent four-course meal would appear before us right now.” And sure enough the table is filled with the most exquisite delicacies and fine wines. “You idiot!” she screams, “you could have asked for anything, a flashy sports car or a luxury yacht.” “OK,” he says without thinking, “I wish for a new Rolls Royce.” Immediately, a gleaming new Rolls appears before their eyes.
“What? Are you totally stupid?” she says! We can do better than this. Don’t say anything. For your last wish, ask for a royal palace… No! Wait… Ask for a dwelling fit for God himself.” So he does, and instantly they find themselves surrounded by farm animals in a dark barn, with a cattle trough for their bed. The sumptuous meal has turned into humble flat bread. And, outside, the brand new Rolls Royce is now a donkey that’s seen better days.
God in Human Likeness
Christmas is the celebration of God taking human form in Jesus Christ. In our Gospel reading tonight we heard the following words;
The word became flesh and blood and lived among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, sent by the Father, full of grace and truth. He lived among us…
…or literally ‘pitched his tent in the neighbourhood.’ God becoming one of us is one of the deepest and most weighty mysteries of the Christian faith. It blows the mind to think that the creator of all that is, he who spoke vast galaxies into existence and who sustains all things by the word of his power, became a dependent infant who needed to be fed, changed, burped, loved – and everything else we associate with newborn babies.
Verse 12 of our Gospel reading explains what we have to gain if we respond to this event in the way God wants us to.
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.
How an infant sleeping in his cot can be begotten, not created, and how he can be very God of very God, remains an unfathomable mystery.
But God became a child so that you can become a child of God.
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name…
And so we embrace it by faith, or we don’t really take it seriously, as if it were a fairy tale, like the one I told a minute ago.
But if it is true, if God really did come down to earth, what would he be like?
Our reading talks in philosophical - almost abstract - terms. If your daughter phoned one night and told you she had a new boss, and you said, “Oh, what’s he like?” And she said, “Well, to me, he’s the word incarnate, he’s the true light, he is in the world, shining with glory, full of grace and truth,” let’s be honest - you’d want something a bit more concrete. It’s very conceptual, and we like things to be a bit easier to grasp.
Well, it’s like this: the infinitely awe-inspiring glory of God was concentrated in one person, who immersed himself in our wearisome humanity.
The landlord became the tenant. The club owner became the centre-forward. The headmaster became the pupil in reception class. The supermarket chairman became the checkout assistant.
He laughed and cried; he got hungry and thirsty and tired. He suffered humiliation, rejection and derision.
If anyone wants to know what God looks like, take a look at Jesus. You see straight away that God is not bitter, or frustrated, or miserly. He is larger than life, he eats and drinks with outcasts, he heals people the doctors gave up on and he leaves stuffy hypocrites speechless. Kids love him, bullies fear him.
But he was more than a great man. We talk about Charles the Great, Alexander the Great, Napoleon the Great, but not Jesus the Great. Jesus is above greatness. He is unique. It was dark at midday when he died, and it was bright at midnight when he was born. No one has ever been like him before or since.
In v2 John says that Jesus was already there before time began. In v3, 10 and 11 we read that Jesus was behind the whole of creation. Everything that exists traces its origin and raison d’être ultimately back to him.
We know John wrote his Gospel, in Greek, in Ephesus in the first century.
In the beginning was the word. All things were made through him. The word was with God. The word was God.
“Word” there is our English translation of the Greek word logos, but logos means much more than ‘word’.
Five centuries before Jesus was born lived a philosopher - before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - called Heraclitus, who by a remarkable coincidence also wrote in Greek, in Ephesus about this logos. Heraclitus was way before his time. And ‘the logos’ was his big thing, it was central to his quest to understanding what made everything tick.
In his thinking, the ‘logos’ meant the principle that explains why things are the way they are, it’s where we get the words logic, logical, logistics. It’s not an ivory tower philosophical idea, it practical. It means the reason why. What is the reason why the rain and the wind come and go? It’s the meteo – logos (meteorology). What is the reason why people behave the way they do? It’s the socio – logos (sociology). What is the reason why planets spin round the sun? It’s the cosmos – logos (cosmology). Every discipline of human understanding and learning comes back to its logos, the explanation why it is like it is.
So when John wrote his Gospel, he deliberately picked up this language from Heraclitus – he said that Jesus is the logos, he is the reason why. All things find their true sense, their ultimate meaning in him. He is the reason why you were born and have life. He is the reason why you can know God. He is the reason why you can know that God loves you. Life, the universe and everything; Jesus is the reason why.
You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to see the fullness of Christ, or the emptiness of life without him. But the God of the whole universe was living down the road, in the neighbourhood, and most people totally missed it!
A few years ago I read about a farmer called Maurice Wright who bought an old painting in 1975 for a few quid at a car boot sale and hung it up in his barn. Over the years it collected cobwebs and dust until one day an art lover noticed it on the wall. They talked about it and the farmer asked if he thought it was worth anything. So the art lover took a photo of it and went to see an expert at Christie’s. A few weeks later he learned that it was the work of a 19th Century artist named Edward Thomas Daniell. Collectors knew that this picture existed but assumed it had perished years ago. It had been missing for over a century. When the farmer put it up for auction and it sold for £100 000!
The ‘reason why’ was in the world but (like that painting in the barn) the world did not recognise him. He came to his own and his own did not accept him. But those who did receive him, to those who believed in him, he gave the right to become children of God.
Ending
Do you accept him? Have you received him? Do you believe in him?
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
After all, one of his 92 names and titles is Emmanuel – which means God is with us. So if you’re searching for God, don’t bother looking in great palaces or splendid castles – discover him, if you will, in an inconspicuous barn in a quiet corner of a modest road in an insignificant backwater province of a mighty empire.
It’s not easy to find. You have to search. But if you seek, you will find. You’ll find him surrounded by farm animals, with an eating trough for his bed. Ignore the gleaming Rolls. Look for the donkey that’s seen better days waiting outside.
Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 24th December 2011
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