Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Isaiah 63:7-9, John 1:1-18

Today’s Gospel reading is the opening verses of the Gospel we call John - a gospel that is considered to be written later than the other gospels, primarily because of what is called its “high Christology” – like all the Gospels, it was written to answer the question “Who was Jesus and what does that mean for us?” I love John’s Gospel, and part of why I love it is because of those issues – it is a gospel that grapples with the who, why, how of Jesus at both the head and heart levels. A case can certainly be made that it is the most theologically sophisticated of the Gospels – on almost every page the gospel wrestles with who Jesus is, and what that means for us. Everyone who encounters Jesus in this Gospel - disciples, Pharisees, ordinary women, kings – is trying to figure Jesus out. But this is not the kind of intellectualizing that holds Jesus at arms’ length. This is a Gospel that is all about relationships – the relationship between Jesus and God, the relationships between Jesus and those who are hostile to him, and the relationships between Jesus and those who would follow him. To the latter, to us, Jesus says in this Gospel: abide in me. And he reminds us that how we relate to him will impact how we relate to others: Love one another as I have loved you.

So as I considered this text, the John text, as a day-after-Christmas text, I thought about it as a text of hope. The light shines in the darkness, John writes, and the darkness did not overcome it. For the folks who first heard John’s gospel had some of the same issues to grapple with as we do, and certainly were as vulnerable to despair.

In our time, Yeats’ poem “Second Coming” makes sense to many of us – part of it reads:

… Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity….

Things do fall apart, and some of us are feeling chronically de-centered, while others of us only feel that way from time to time. So where do we get hope? And today, the day after Christmas, I’m wondering: how does Christmas create or nourish our hope?? And not surprisingly in Christmastide, I’m considering Jesus, and I’m remembering the speaker I heard at a Youth Ministry training event I attended at Princeton Seminary 10 years ago – a speaker I later brought to Illinois for a high school and college student event, a speaker who has become one of Brita Hansen’s favorite professors. Presbyterian theologian Cynthia Rigby, who teaches at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, asked the question 10 years ago in Princeton: was incarnation something Jesus did? Or is it something Jesus is?

Christmas is sometimes known as the Feast of the Incarnation – it is the celebration of the incarnation of Jesus. Incarnation is enfleshment – as Lutheran professor David Lose described incarnation, it’s “God con carne” – God with meat, God in the flesh, God-with-us, Immanuel. Incarnation means that God stands with us, that God has taken a stand for us, that God always and forever stands among us. As the Isaiah reading points out: “God said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely’; and he became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” And so we know (not only from this verse) that incarnation is something that God in Jesus IS – it wasn’t a 33 year experiment, it is a fundamental dimension of who God is. God is with us, God is for us, God is among us and within us and, in our better moments, God is through us. Always and forever, incarnation is part of God, and: God is part of us, we are part of God, and in God, we are part of each other as well.

And it turns out that engagement is essential in our response to Jesus….. Presbyterian theologian Daniel Clendenin wrote an article reflecting on this passage from John, and asking what a passionate commitment to Jesus might look like in the 21st century? He came up with 4 rules of life that I think are pretty spot on, so I’d like to share them with you:

First, love the least – Jesus Christ stands with us, to be sure, and in his ministry he showed that God stands with those at the margins, on the margins of society, on the margins of the economy, on the margins of wellness, on the margins of holiness. And he told us that we will be judged by how we treat “the least of these” who are the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Pretty clear instructions, from a guy who was often not entirely clear. Incarnation means that this isn’t just some abstract love, but a love that considers the needs of peoples’ bodies: loving the least means that we care in concrete ways for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the ill, the lonely, the imprisoned..

Second, marvel at the mystery – although we are called to love concretely, we don’t need to understand everything in mechanical detail. Our understanding will always and forever be partial, and so we need to claim humility as the place where we stand. And humility is a distinctive trait of Presbyterians – for we understand that our understanding is more perfect when formed in community, by listening to others, and by listening for God in others. When Jesus walked among us as one of us, he did not attempt to explain everything – his presence and his words were as often an occasion to deepen the mystery! Once we accept mystery as part of the joy of faith, we can be more open to surprises, to new dimensions of ourselves and others, and more open to the reality of God…even though we can’t always analyze our experiences of God.

Third, embrace everyone – Jesus was open to all people: children, kings, insiders, outsiders, his friends, strangers. Jesus certainly incarnated the inclusive welcome of God’s love – in him, we saw everyone welcomed. We don’t have to like everyone or agree with everyone – even with everyone in our church. But we are commanded to love – and that is a matter of our actions more than our feelings. So let’s choose love – and remember that our actions speak louder than our words.

And perhaps most critical to our ability to adapt these behaviors is our ability to adopt the last practice: befriend brokenness – in ourselves and in others. As a people, and certainly as individuals, we need to acknowledge our imperfections, accept that we are always and forever on the way, and as we accept our own brokenness, God gives us the ability to grow: sometimes in developing the ability to change, other times in growing to a deeper acceptance of ourselves and others. As we befriend brokenness, we become gentler and less judgmental, and we find that God often reaches us and others through our weaknesses instead of (as we prefer) through our strengths.

And to Clendenin’s four practices, I would add a fifth: relish relationships – truly we grow in our faith, in our joy, in our love as we engage more deeply with God and with others. Some of us find relationships more difficult than reflecting on our faith, but the doctrine of the incarnation teaches us that it is in the nitty-gritty of real relationships that our faith is grown, challenged, deepened, and made real. Engagement is essential for Christianity – engagement with God, engagement with others, engagement with the earth. Christianity is not a set of doctrinal propositions, but a way of life. Real relationships are challenging – real people are hard to really love. But Jesus came among us as one of us to show us what God’s love looks like in real life, and it always looks like relationship.

Let me share a story of relationship that another preacher shared. He writes:

My friend’s grandfather was a strict Calvinist preacher, a Primitive Baptist for those of you familiar with that tradition--stern, severe and, joyless. The gospel he preached was also joyless, uncompromising, and he preached it with thunder, lightning and hellfire rising most every time.The preacher had two children, one of them a daughter, who in the course of time was found to be pregnant. She was unmarried, and as best I remember also unsure as to whom the baby’s father might be. The preacher was furious—and also deeply wounded. He put her, immediately, out of the house, did not speak to her again. She had sinned, after all, shamefully, had fallen short of God’s glory and of her father’s expectations.Surely his own sense of failure was as great as his anger, his grief real…but all of it hidden under the hard shell of his uncompromising theology.So the girl was on her own. Did the best she could. Must have found a place, somewhere—maybe in a cave or something—where, when her days were accomplished, she brought forth a child. And some days after that, long months later, in fact, she came home again, in hopes of coming home again. She and her child stood at the door and knocked, hoping to find forgiveness and shelter under her father’s roof.His wife answered the door when her daughter knocked, went in and told her husband, the old preacher, that his daughter had come home. He did not speak, just turned his chair away from his wife and his back to the front door where the girl stood weeping, cradling her baby. The preacher’s wife, the girl’s mother, went back to the door and took the child from her daughter’s arms. She walked back into the room where the stern old preacher sat with his arms folded. She put the baby in his lap, and she said, “This is your grandchild.”Now it was the old preacher who was weeping. Took hold of the child and rocked it for a while, the tears streaming down his face…just rocking and crying.It would be nice if the story ended there, if the baby and that moment had changed everything, had melted the old man’s heart and mended that poor family, so broken by anger and grief and shame. But the baby changed nothing; not really. For a moment…but then the moment was gone. There were tears but the tears did not cleanse the wounds or soften the old man’s hard heart. In fact he remained to the end of his days as stern and severe as he ever had been, refusing to welcome home his prodigal daughter; when he died, they were still estranged.The baby changed nothing, really… and let those with ears, hear. Let those with eyes, see: what is God doing this time of year? I suggest that God is trying to put a baby on the world’s lap, in hopes it will change us really. God is trying to put a baby in the church’s lap, too, in hopes we will not only shed a tear or two over the beauty of the angel’s song—“Peace on earth, and goodwill among all God’s children”—but also that we will begin to live into that benediction, let go our anger, our fear and our shame so that we can embrace the Baby.It would be nice, come January 7, if Christmas were not over, not hardly, but just beginning—that we ourselves were beginning, or beginning again, to be peaceful and peaceable, to demonstrate our goodwill toward all God’s children, and not just those who agree with us, or stand with us.We are so stern, most of us. So afraid. But “Do not be afraid,” the angels sang, “for I bring you good tidings of great joy for all the people…” Did you hear that? Do not be afraid? For God has given us his Son, a Child, for all the people. God had put a baby in our laps, in hopes he will be born, or born again, not just in Bethlehem but also in our hearts and lives, our thoughts and our politics, our giving and our doing.God did, and is doing, amazing things in the world, and everyone is invited to hold the Child: old women and young women, old men and young men, common folk and royalty—the news is good news for all people, and yes, there are crazy, murderous, nightmarish people loose in the world. But these Christmas stories are full to the brim with hope and peace and light that no darkness can overcome.

Thanks to the Rev. Tom Steagald of Shelby, NC for that story.

Until and unless we really engage with God and the real people that God really loves, our faith will always be abstract, disconnected from real life, and we will not be able to claim its transformative power. Relationships are hard. But as we engage more deeply with the living God and the real world in authentic ways, we will find ourselves becoming people of hope, people of the light, a light that the darkness will not overcome. Amen.