Isaiah 52.7-10 Psalm 98 Hebrews 1.1-12 John 1.1-14
I think it’s safe to
say that everyone here knows the nativity story. We love the nativity. It is a
narrative we embrace, it is a narrative that brings us comfort and tradition;
it is also a narrative that should surprise us.
When
we think about it, the nativity doesn't seem ‘godly’. A stable? A manger? Ick.
Imagine the smell, the terror, the lack of help. No midwife, no group of female
relatives to help with the delivery. Wrapping a newborn in whatever meager and
manky scraps of fabric happened to be lying around a stable. Putting that baby
into a manger –a feeding trough – while the animals who eat there were
literally beside you. Not quite the majestic entry we likely would have planned,
if the story had been up to us.
If we were in charge of this birth, we would have made it
something spectacular. The best care, the best location, the most comfortable
surroundings. Tons of attention and treatment worthy of a king. My goodness,
consider what the world did for the birth of Prince George earlier this year...
Specialists prepared for every possibility, a separate wing at the country’s
best hospital, round the clock media attention, banners and buntings and
parties in the streets. For an earthly child who happened to be born to a royal
family.
So imagine how the world would plan the birth of the
Messiah. Wow.
And yet... that's not how
it happened. That's the exact opposite of how it happened. We might be tempted
to think that Jesus coming to the earth, in human form, happened as an
afterthought, as an amendment to God’s original plan. Really, we as humans
would never plan for the birth of the Christ child to be so mean and crude...
certainly neither would God!
Yet, God did. God intended for the birth to be just as it
was. The nativity was exactly how God planned it, even from the beginning of
time. From before the beginning of time. That’s what the gospel tells us
tonight, very clearly. In the beginning was the Word. “Word” with a capital
“W”. Word made flesh – Jesus. In the beginning, was Jesus. With God, As God,
bringing all things into being. Jesus as life, the light of the world. Foretold
by the prophets, announced by John, come to save the world full of sinners even
when we - the world – do not know him.
This was intended. This was the good news and comfort
that Isaiah spoke of: “The Lord has bared his holy
arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth
shall see the salvation of our God.” This is the good news of
righteousness that the Psalmist invites us to hear as we sing joyfully when
“All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” This is the
good news of the reign of God on earth, who Paul in his letter to the Hebrews
described as the “reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very
being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.” This was, undoubtedly,
the plan of God to show God’s glory to the world.
So the birth of Jesus, in that stable years ago, is more
than just the one-time event. It is the embodiment of what had been happening
all along as part of God’s plan. Theologian John Dominic Crossan describes it
this way: “A mighty river pushes steadily
against a logjam, but cannot break through except in trickles and rivulets.
Then, one day, it breaks through fully and floods forward on it’s way. It broke
through at a specific moment in time, but it was not created at that moment. It
was always there, pressing, pressing, pressing.”[1]
And that is what we are celebrating today, We’re
celebrating that one moment – not as a singular moment, but as a defined
moment. We’re celebrating that the pressing was happening in the world before
the incarnation of Jesus; we’re celebrating that the pressing continues as we
wait for Christ to come again.
We know that we
cannot even begin to imagine what God has planned for us, or what God has
planned for the second coming. We didn’t expect it the first time, we can’t
expect that we, as humans, have gotten better at anticipating God’s embodied,
revealed presence here on earth.
But we can recognize God’s dream. We can embrace that
“eternal and generative dream”[2]
for a world full of peace and justice, of love and joy, of hope and promise. We
can hear the mystical words of John tonight and celebrate God’s activity in
bringing the Christ child into the world – to a specific time and place. God’s
activity was in the years before the birth, it was in the time Jesus was
wandering the earth in sandals, and it continues now as we wait again for the
Christ to come.
The good news tonight is that God’s dream has never
ended. God’s dream lives on in us. When we choose to come together to worship
God; to love and serve our friends and neighbours, when we choose to seek out
goodness and reject evil. God’s dream is living on every time one of us makes a
connection to that peaceful, just, healthy world. It does not depend on us, but
it lives within us. It inspires us to seek out new joys, new possibilities to
share the love of God that we feel deep within us, that someone else has shared
with us.
God’s dream lives on
every time our lives are touched by goodness; every time we choose to see the
light that is shown and known in the world; every time we celebrate that it is
for the redemption of sinners like us –you and me - that the Christ child was
born. God’s dream lives on when we open our hearts and minds and souls to the
wonder that we cannot fully understand but that we can always appreciate. God’s
dream lives on every time we delight in being received as children of God, and
living out that role. Gods dream lives on every time we rejoice in the glory
that is shown to us – in the birth of the Christ child, in the promise of
redemption, in the grace and truth that sustains us. God’s dream lives on in
the world, in each of us, continually pressing, pressing, pressing, because the
truth of Christmas can never be contained.
1 comment:
wonderful sermon wish i could be there to hear it delivered, but alas I will be in Christ Church The Pas with rev.Rebecca.
michael dickens deacon christ church thepas
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