Materials
Real World Encounters with Jesus in the Gospel of John
The Longest Journey: The Word Became Flesh
John 1
by R. Todd Bouldin
The
Christmas season is filled with ironies, not the least of which is that
it is a time of both beginnings and endings. Today we conclude our Advent
series, and we begin a new sermon series on the Gospel of John. Yesterday,
we mourned the ending of a life, and today we celebrate the birth of one.
Christmas comes at the end of our calendar year, but, historically, Christmas
or Advent is the beginning of the church year. More than anything, Advent
was the beginning of Christ’s ministry, but it was the end of God’s long journey to us. At Christmas we remember that God is Emmanuel – The God who is with us.
Prayer - O come, Emmanuel, and save us. Make yourself known among us today. In our discontent and longing for home, increase our awareness that You have made Your home with us. May we not miss our moment. Give us the vision to see the light from the manger, that we may reflect Your hope into a world lost in the darkness. In The Name of Christ, amen.
Everybody has a gospel. Your gospel is what you are counting on to get you through life, and death. It is not your philosophy of life or a personal mission statement. Your gospel has more to do with how you expect to find your salvation.
The gospel truth for you might be, “If I work hard, my dreams will come true.” Or it might be, “As long as I have my health, I will be happy.” Or “You can always count on family.” Or “If I just had a job that I love, I would be satisfied.” Some tell themselves that if they just save, save, save their future will be secure. For others, just looking out for yourself and treating other people with consideration will get you where you are going.
You can affirm one gospel, and live by another, but when it is all said and done, the gospel according to you identifies some savior: money, health, a good body, loved ones, a relationship, or work. If you look hard enough at your life, you will find your real gospel, and thus your real savior.
The typical gospel formula is “If . . . then.” “If” you find the right person to marry, “then” you will be saved from loneliness. “If” you get a better job, “then” all your problems will go away. “If” you had more money, “then” you wouldn’t continually find yourself stressed and worried. “If” you could only get rid of your disease, then you could really live again. Notice that in every case, the “if” and the “then” delays your life to a time in the future. That’s when life will really begin, when your “if” becomes a “then.” Most saviors can only promise you the future, but not now, and therefore you can only prepare for the day when you will really be able to live.
One of the best ways to discern the real gospel of your life is to ask yourself, “When do I think life really begins for me?” Is it when you graduate from school or get your degree? Get married? Does life begin only when you have children? Does it begin only when the grandchildren come home to visit for the holidays? Does it begin when you finally own a home? You keep waiting for life to begin until it is over. Then one day you wake up and realize that you missed life. You will never have a good ending to life unless at some point it begins . . . until you actually start living now.
It is almost Christmas, and you are at church. You expect me this morning to tell you that life begins the moment you join the angels, wise men, shepherds, or Mary and Joseph in making your way to the manger. But that is not what the Gospel of John proclaims. John does not begin his Gospel, or your life, with mangers and angels. John begins his gospel with a whole different story. He claims that your beginning is at The Beginning – your story begins with the high drama of Creation.
“In the beginning was the Word,” John writes. And with the words “let there be” God pushed aside the darkness and chaos, creating light and beauty. God hung His world between the light and the darkness, and every day it rotates between sun and moon, between light and dark. It is something of a creation metaphor for the hearts of the creatures He placed on earth. Every day our lives are suspended between heaven and earth, between light and darkness, and we keep turning back to the darkness even when we have seen the light.
In this we find the great drama of civilization. For thousands and thousands of years we have rotated between the dark and the light. This is the great struggle depicted in the Lord of the Rings. The Ring, or evil, has great power over us, and we keep finding ourselves under its mighty sway. Sin is a great darkness that has swept over all of us. You are not living a private little isolated life. Your life is caught up in this great cosmic struggle between light and dark, between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
So, you thought your life had been reduced to job interviews, a better car, paying the bills, and a wonderful relationship. But then John reminds you that your life is much more than that – your life is a chapter of a dramatic story that began before you did, and it will continue after you’ve gone. It is a story of cosmic proportions. The great forces of the universe are battling for your heart.
The gospel truth is that life doesn’t begin with you. It did not begin with your dreams, or your expectations, or your disappointments. Life begins with the plans and dreams of God for the universe He made, and you are part of His cosmic plan. In Jesus Christ, The Word took human form so that you could see the light again, a Light that can shatter all the darkness of your life so that you can really live now.
The darkness is all around us, but we often miss it. We allow it to seep into our lives in small ways, in the choices we make every moment of the day. We do not think of the moments given to us as heroic moments where we can choose between light and darkness. Instead, we live basically to fulfill our needs, and to make ourselves happy to the extent we can, and sometimes even at the expense of others. We might engage in the great sins, but too often the darkness is most present in all the seemingly little ways we just keep getting trapped in living only for ourselves. We get angry, we fail to forgive, and we allow frustration with life to crowd out people and service.
We do not intend others harm – we just do not intend to do anything that costs us a fleeting moment of pleasure, or satisfaction, or rest. We even choose to stay in the darkness of our hurt, victim-hood and complaint. Every time we miss a moment to spread light to bask in our darkness, we allow the darkness to take hold of us until eventually we have so much darkness in our hearts that we cannot do the good we want to do. You can’t even do right by your children, or your spouse, or your friend. You are never going to pull the world out of the darkness on your own. There’s just too much darkness in the universe for you to not be overcome by it.
As the Gospel According to John continues, God could not continue to watch His beloved creatures become lost in so much darkness, especially the darkness of their own making. So He entered the darkness to find us. Now it is time to come to the manger again, where the creative Word God spoke at the beginning of the story has become flesh and dwelled among us. The “Let there be” is now here, among us, ready to create whole new worlds and new creatures, ready to pierce our darkness and calm our chaos with His light.
From the manger comes the most remarkable claim. The Baby that lies in that manger is not just a good teacher who came to show you a better way to live. Neither is that Baby just a sentimental subject of some tender Christmas songs that distract you from the darkness and help you see some temporary light once a year. That baby is much more than this, we claim. John claims, and we proclaim, that This Baby was with The Father and The Spirit at creation, shoving aside the darkness to bring light. That is what Paul claims too in Colossians 1: This Baby is the source of light in your life and The Light of the world who brings creative hope into every dark moment of your life. As John concludes, “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.”
That is quite a claim for a baby. It is an overwhelming thought actually, but the good news is that The Light that shines from the manger is just enough so as not to overwhelm you. This Light came “full of grace.” (John 1:14). Too much light at one time can blind you when you have been in the darkness for a long time. So, The Light that comes in the form of a baby is tender, and subtle, and vulnerable. When He starts to shine on you, the darkness begins to lose its grip on you, and one day you wake up and the darkness no longer makes you afraid, and now you can see a great Light coming to you, and an hopeful conclusion in the great historic and cosmic drama. The Return of the King is on the horizon, and you now know The Light will shine again where once the darkness seemed so overwhelming.
The paintings of the nativity by the great masters capture this great truth. The background of the paintings is always dark, and the only light that shines comes from the manger as it reflects on the faces of those who come near. These artists are telling you that your calling is not as much to be The Light as to get as close to the manger as you can where The Light can shine on you. It is the only way the darkened world around you will see The Light, the only way you will get home this Christmas. God has made His home with us so that you never have to settle for the darkness. You never have to wait for life to begin in the future. The Ring is destroyed. The Word has become flesh. The darkness is fading. The Christmas light is shining. Once you know that, you no longer have to be afraid. You no longer have to search endlessly for something or someone to save you. The road you have been on to find a Savior ends in Bethlehem. That is the gospel truth.
In the last days of World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself imprisoned by the Nazis and awaiting a certain death. He had been an outspoken minister and theologian of the German Resistance against Hitler’s horrific reign in Germany, and he was arrested for his writings and protest. Facing death in the new year, from his prison cell on December 19, 1944, he wrote one of his last letters to his wife Maria. Here is a portion:
My dearest Maria, I know our home will be very quiet this Christmas. In solitude the body develops organs of which we are hardly aware of in every day life. So I haven’t for an instant felt lonely or forlorn. Your prayers and your kind thoughts, and passages from the Bible, long forgotten conversation, pieces of music, books . . . they all are invested with life and reality as never before. We have been waiting for each other for almost two years, Maria. But whatever happens, do not lose heart. In life and in death, we belong to God. Here are a few verses that have occurred to me on recent nights. They are my Christmas greeting to you:
Although the old year still our hearts oppresses,
And still of evil times we bear the weight.
O Lord, bestow upon us that salvation for which our troubled souls Thou didst create.
The candles brought by Thee into our darkness, let them today burn clear, and warm and bright.
And bring us, if Thou wilt, once more together.
Thy light, we know it well, shines in the night.
By gracious powers so wonderfully protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
We are with God, at night and in the morning,
And certainly on each new day.
Once you have seen that it is God who has come among us in Jesus Christ this Christmas, then you no longer have anything to fear. You can begin really living now because in life and in death you belong to God. Joy to the world, The Lord is come!
Merry Christmas!
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