Sermon preached on Christmas Day at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, New York: Isaiah 52:7-10; John 1:1-14.
You can listen to this sermon here.
How beautiful upon the mountains are
the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who
announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Ah!
Those beautiful feet! They make all the
difference. Really, they do.
The
sentinels have been watching, perhaps for a very, very long time. Watching and waiting for some good news. Perhaps they had heard a rumor that the reign
of Babylon was coming to an end. But, of course, rumors can be wrong.
Then
thy spy what they have longed for: those beautiful feet: feet that are running to share the news, with
a gait that can only mean this news is good.
And it
is that: News of peace, news that is
good, news of salvation (“liberation” might be the better word here), news that
what has been in doubt has now been displaced.
God is not lost. Gad has not abandoned. God reigns.
But
what does that mean? What does God’s
reign of peace and liberation mean?
Let’s search for clues in John’s magnificent poem about the incarnation.
In the beginning was the Word . . .
John
uses his words carefully here, pun intended.
“The Word” is meant to appeal to Jew and the Gentiles of the Greco-Roman
world alike.
For
Jews “in the beginning” is an echo of Genesis chapter one, which begins in the
same way. This is a beginning. And the use of “the Word” would remind a
faithful Jew of Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.”
Even more importantly, “Word” would have reminded them of the
commandments at the heart of who they were:
The Ten Commandments, which, in Hebrew are literally “The Ten Words.”
For the
Graeco-Roman world, the Word in Greek was logos, long used in Greek
philosophy to speak of the universal principle at the heart life, that which
gave order to the world.
So ,in
the first six words of this poem, John has reached out to both Jew and Gentile
and brought them together. This is the essence
of peace: to bring together disparate
parts, disparate peoples. In a divided
world, John wishes to announce a starting over.
And
this gets carried out in the rest of his poem.
“In [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of all people.” All people. This had been a dream of the Jewish prophets,
especially Isaiah. “You will be a light
to the nations,” he had said. “Let all
nations gather together.” It had not
been a popular message. The notion of God as the God of Israel alone had persisted. But John says in his poem now is the time.
John
then speaks of “the true light which enlightens everyone was coming into
the world.” And he comes with power as a gift to become children of God, with
the one caveat: you do have to say “yes”
to this vision. It can be refused and, human
beings being, well, human, John knows it will be refused. There will be men and
women who chose the darkness instead of the light.
But
they will have to work hard at it, because the light is not going
anywhere. The darkness cannot defeat
it. The darkness cannot even understand
the light, a notion that is present in the Greek verb here.
And
finally, this Word was made flesh and lived among us. Again, the words are
carefully chosen. “Made flesh,” not
“took on” flesh like putting on a costume.
This was a matter of actual creation, real flesh. And he not just “lived” among us (a poor
translation): he “pitched a tent” among
us. He became our neighbor.
John’s
vision is of a great drawing together, a great belonging, a transformation of
people and nations into a new humanity that lives by neighborliness, that lives
knowing that all people are more alike than they are different, because they
have all been given the power to be children of God: as the Book of Revelation says, “From every
tribe, and language, and people, and nation.”
Now you
do not have to think hard, or even be a pessimist or a cynic, to know that this
is not the world we live in. Oh, we all
get glimpses of this great belonging from time to time, and thanks be to God
for that. But division is too often the
order of the day.
And we
are living at a time when the vision of the Great Division is threatening the
vision of the Great Belonging. And there
are powers at work—those evil powers we renounce at our baptism—who are calling
the darkness light and the light darkness, who call division good news and belonging
bad news.
And
among these people are may who claim to follow Jesus, who see him as the great
divider between good and evil, only their personal understanding of good and
evil.
This
may not seem like much of a Christmas sermon, but it is the vision of
Christmas, that night we say that heaven and earth were joined in that cowshed
in Bethlehem.
Christmas
does not just comfort us, bring us momentary joy. Christmas calls us to make a
difference in the world, as we to are called to be the light that shines in the
darkness and the Word made flesh, carriers of the Holy Spirit, the gift of our
baptism.
We have
hard work to do to bring good news to the world. News of peace. News that is
singularly good. News of liberation and salvation. News that there is a
God who reigns, whose very name is Love.
I’ll
close with a poem from Howard Thurman, one of the great preachers of the 20th
century, who describes the message our beautiful feet are to carry as we
announce the Great Belonging:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their
flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring
peace among brothers [and sisters],
To make music in the heart.
In
Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas (Richmond, Indiana: Friends United
Press, 1985), p. 23.
No comments:
Post a Comment