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SURVEYING THE SITE—John 1:1-18
It’s really hard to survey the site this week because it is
dark. I would say that we are at the beginning of time, but time does not exist
yet. We are at that place of the beginning—no landscape, no horizon, no sound—just
God. We are standing at that place of non-existence without the primordial soup
that will lead to our being. And then the Word, from the silence of nonbeing, was
spoken, and it sounded like a clap of thunder or a baby crying, demanding
recognition of what was accomplished; and it was good.
READING THE BLUEPRINT
The ex-nihilo creation, the creation out of nothingness,
comes to us courtesy of John’s Gospel. It is not from the book of Genesis, but
the idea may have come from there. First, there was nothing, and then, through the
Word, everything came into being.
But this is not the first creation that we are hearing of. John’s creation story involves the eternal Word, the word who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus the Christ. This Word is present at the beginning (how many years ago is that?). This Word is revealed to us in the person of Jesus walking among God’s people in the first century. And this Word is with us today, in the 21st century, and, into the future, in the presence of the Advocate and known to us in the resurrection shared in the body and blood shared at the altar.
The incarnate Word is unbound in time and therefore includes, but is not limited by, Jesus’ life. It includes and embraces the bodily resurrection of what we call Life. This Word of life is life, and the life is the light of all people, “The Light, in the darkness, shines.”
According to John, the Incarnate Word came into the world that was created by the Word, but the world did not know him. Even the chosen people did not accept him, but, by adoption, he claimed those who did accept him as the children of God with an identity that is beyond blood, or the will of the flesh, even the will of man. To be a child of God is only through the will of God.
Lest we get ahead of ourselves, the will of God is that God creates humanity in God’s image (Gen. 1:28), and God loves humanity from the beginning. In John, we learn that God’s love continues. The Word became flesh and tents, that is lives, among us. The Word is full of grace and truth.
ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE
This “lived among us” word has so many layers to it. In the NRSV
translation we read, “The Word became flesh and “lived” among us.” The Greek
word translated “lived” is the word for “tented”. Some say “tenting” refers to the
skin of human bodies stretched over the human skeletal frame, like a tent,
creating the person of Jesus.
But I believe the concept of “tenting among us” is much more complex. The Israelites’ identity and understanding of God comes from their lived experience. The covenant with Abraham is known while he is a nomad tenting. The gift of the law is given through Moses while the people are tenting and wandering in the wilderness for forty years.
During those forty years, God’s presence was made known to them through the tabernacle, a special tent. It makes a strong statement of God’s presence within the camp, amid the people. It demonstrates that God’s presence moves with the people wherever they go. “Tenting among” is intentionally intimate. As a people living in tents, to have God present as an equal with a tent, like the rest, speaks of equality hitherto unknown.
Now in John, Jesus comes to live in our midst as the presence of God among God’s people, tenting among us. This tenting is more than looking like us. It is being us, with our vulnerabilities, and, through the power of the resurrection, we are intimately claimed. Christ not only tents among us, alongside us, and with us, Christ’s tenting is his presence and shelter for us. This incarnational passage is more than a baby lying in a manger; it is the full person of God’s creating word living with us today that gives us life.
PUTTING UP THE WALLS
Please find a comfortable place to sit or lie down. Close
your eyes while you think about how you might know and recognize anyone or
anything in your world. How are you able to know and recognize them in your
eye-closed state?
God’s relationship to the unseeing world begins with speaking. God continuously speaks through the Word, and the many processes of our cosmological multiverse exist. God’s Word creates everything we can taste, smell, hear, touch, and see. It is through Word that we communicate with one another and God.
Our entire world is God’s love song for us—trees and the products derived from them are part of God’s creation Word; our food that comes from plants and animals is part of God’s creation Word; the great waters of the earth and the air we breathe are part of God’s creation word; the clothing we wear is part of God’s creation word; and our partners/spouses, families, our neighbors, the world community is all part of God’s creation word. When we pray, “Give us our daily bread”, we are praying for all creation, in Luther’s words, “Everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”
The world does not accept it at the time John writes this, and there are many who still cannot accept it. John bears witness to this love song of creation saying that he is not the one who is the love song of creation, only the singer, the one who can point to the one who is creation’s love song of God’s salvation Word.
Yet here, we are given the words of the love song and are invited to sing along. Knowing this, should we be surprised to hear, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…”?
HANGING TRIM
In this prologue to John’s Gospel, we discover the incarnate
Word, and we are challenged to see God’s incarnate word among us today. We are
told that the light, in the darkness, shines, without looking into the darkness
to see light shining. It is through this incarnational presence of Christ among
us that we can see “need” as Christ’s light. When you see others’ need, you are
seeing the darkness of neglect and Christ’s light of ministry possibility
shining. Where there is hunger, thirst, oppression, imprisonment, you have the
privilege of seeing the darkness of inequity and the incarnational presence of
Christ shining among us.
We are reminded of this incarnational light when we hear, “Whenever you are in relationship with the least of these, you embrace the incarnate Word of God (Matt. 25:40). So, where are we seeing Christ’s incarnational light in need in the darkness of our world today? “O come, let us adore [the incarnate Word of God], Christ the Lord.”
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