December 28, 2008
(First Sunday after Christmas)
God Among Us
by
The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 • Psalm 147 • Galatians
3:23-25;4:4-7 • John 1:1-18
(From The
Lectionary Page)
God dwelling among us, as one of us. What a strange concept. We here from John today that God is the light, the life. He was in the beginning. All things came to be through him. And yet he comes among us, as one of us. We get so used to the story of the Incarnation that we are always at risk of losing sight, of its fundamental sense of strangeness, it wildness. We even begin to think that we understand it, that it is fully explained in two or three carefully measured and theologically correct sentences. We forget the possibility that God among us can be both Luke’s infant and Lewis’s lion. The problem is, that this forgetting can keep us from the experience of the incarnate God in our own lives. And if there’s one thing that we need most in this time of seemingly gathering darkness, it is God among us.
God’s presence among us is the fulfillment of the most basic human desire. But this is not a tame desire. To borrow words from an unlikely source, Bruce Springsteen once said of such a deep human longing that, “we want for the earth to shake and spit fire. We want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.” He went on to qualify this by adding that, “It’s embarrassing to want so much, to expect so much…,” and yet it is the human desire.
But it is God’s desire as well. “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” The Greek word for “dwell” used here, is related to the Latin word “tabernacle,” and to the Hebrew concept of “sanctuary.” It shows up in Scripture first in Exodus, where we are told that God instructed Moses to have Israel to make a sanctuary so that he could “dwell among them.” And from of old, God’s Word incarnate was descriptive language for the experience of prophets, folks who brought God’s presence near in the darkest of times.
A favorite author of mine once wrote that “though the world grows dark, still there is much that is fair, and while in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” The presence of this kind of darkness in the world can seem oppressively powerful. In fact, that seems often to be its chief characteristic – that it imposes on us its presence and power. So it’s not just what this darkness achieves of its own accord that we’re talking about, but also, if not mostly, the effect that this presence and display of power has, on us. It saps our energy, and it drains our very will, replacing our hope with fear. It can make the hope that we place in God and in God’s promise feel immeasurably small, almost insignificant – even quaint. This darkness is all too measurable; we can feel it – it is quite real.
The light, however, as described in the beginning of John’s gospel, is altogether different. The author of the gospel of John tells us that, “The light shines in the darkness.” The image evoked here is one not unlike a candle in a vast chamber, a light that can be perceived in the dark, but is yet surrounded by darkness. It doesn’t overcome the darkness in this image, but it is simply said to resist the power of the darkness to extinguish it. It continues to shine. But in it is the light of all, our hope, even our very life. It is what we cling to in the midst of the darkness. And we do not cling to this light in vain.
Over the coming months, or even years, we are told that our lives will become increasingly difficult as a result of the darkness of the economy. That it will touch most of our lives is given. That it will result in life-changing hardship for some of us is likely. However, that we will continue to hope in a promise that will be fulfilled is our life, regardless of its apparent insignificance and smallness.
In fact, this smallness and seeming insignificance of the hope we are given, points to the wildness, the resistance to measurement, of God’s presence in the world. The world did not know Jesus because he did not measure up to what the Messiah should be. As Sue made reference to a couple of weeks ago, set and measureable concepts of God that people in 1st century Palestine had, kept them from seeing him when he came among them. This presents us with a challenge: do we see God today when God comes among us? It all depends on what we’re looking for, doesn’t it? But it also depends on how much room we’ve left for God to surprise us. Is there a certain way that God has to behave in order for us to recognize him?
Nikos Kazantzakis wrestled with this question in a parable he created. “Once upon a time,” he wrote, “there was a marble throne at the eastern gate of a great city. On this throne sat three thousand kings. All of them called upon God to appear so that they might see him, but all went to their graves with their wishes unfulfilled. Then, when the kings had died, a pauper, barefooted and hungry, came and sat upon that throne. ‘God,’ he whispered, ‘the eyes of a human being cannot look directly at the sun, for they would be blinded. How, then, Omnipotent, can they look directly at you? Have pity, Lord, temper your strength, turn down your splendor so that I, who am poor and afflicted, may see you!’
“Then, listen – God became a piece of bread, a cup of cool water, a warm tunic, a hut, and in front of the hut, a woman nursing an infant. ‘Thank you, Lord,’ the pauper whispered. ‘You humbled yourself for my sake. You became bread, water, a warm tunic and a wife and a child in order that I might see you. And I did see you. I bow down and worship your beloved many-faced face.’”
This parable, like today’s gospel from John, reminds us to expect signs of God’s incarnation without creating expectations about what it should look like. What does it mean to us, that in response to the overwhelming darkness in the world, God comes to us in the humility of a helpless infant, in a man who told us difficult truths at the cost of his life, who conquered the world not through measures of power and force, but through love and forgiveness? As we thank God today for the Incarnation of His son, let’s consider how we might experience that incarnation today. A perfectly healthy person lies in a hospital bed, suffering the pain of bone marrow donation for a complete stranger. A young man leaves his comfortable job and spends his life teaching inner-city school children because they need him. A group of people from all walks of life gather in a church on a cold December morning, glorifying and praising God for all they have heard and seen.
In the time that I’ve been with you, I’ve seen some amazing things, and I expect to see still more. The Word has become flesh and lives among us still, and we have seen His glory.
Amen.
