We had a guest preacher this Sunday, Victoria Larson. What is written below is her inspired proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, on this 2nd Sunday of Christmas.
John 1:1-9, 10-18
According to the Journal
of Clinical Psychology, people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times
more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.
I resolve not to sleep in
past 9. 30.
I resolve to walk the dog
at least three times a day. Even when
it’s cold, or windy, or raining. …I
resolve to walk the dog two times a day. I resolve to send
thank-you notes for gifts, including Christmas presents, in a timely manner.
Those of you who are with
me on this last resolution will be glad to know that technically, it is
still Christmas. It is. Really.
Still. It is the eleventh day of
Christmas. I asked our music director if we could get
eleven pipe-players in here in honor of the fact, and he informed me that traditional
organs HAVE pipes, and while we only have one organist, we have way more than
11 pipes, so it all shakes out to be about the same.
It is the eleventh day of
Christmas, and the second Sunday of Christmas, and today’s gospel,
believe it or not, is a Christmas story.
This is John’s version of the nativity.
It’s not a sparkly or as
nice-smelling as Matthew’s with its magi and myrrh, its gold and glory, its
frankincense and flaring stars. It’s not as animal-friendly or as earthy as
Luke’s with the shepherds and the sheep, with the angels singing over the
Bethlehem fields.
Instead of describing an
infant birth, John presents the coming of the Word is this cosmic story of
EVERYTHING, time and creation and humankind, and in the midst of it, God
becoming flesh and living among us, tangled up in it all, in and among
the whole confusing mess.
Which reminds me…
I resolve to finally sort
through the mess of papers where my desk used to be.
I resolve to start paying
off credit card bills with something besides other credit cards.
I resolve to be more
organized.
Our neighbors are
depressingly organized. Many of you may
know that this year my parents moved into a house near the
house in town known for
all the Christmas lights. Man, I loved those lights. We take the dogs on an after-dinner walk, and we changed our route so that we—OK, I—could look at those lights every night. But as of two nights ago, no more lights. Our wonderfully festive neighbors are ready to take them down and store them in what I’m sure is a vast organizational system.
When I look at the
darkness where their Christmas lights were just blazing, I have this hollow,
sad feeling that is only marginally to do with the disappearance of that soft
golden glow. The gaping blackness stands
in stark contrast to all the buildup to December 25th, that
beautiful day where peace and goodwill seemed to reign, where we met together
here and heard the words and sang the songs about the baby who would change
everything. But then…nothing did seem to
change. Christmas trees began appearing
on the curb. Wrapping paper filled the
trash cans. The local newspaper’s
festive headlines reverted to ones announcing the ongoing pain and suffering of
the human race. Prominent among them was
news of the Episcopal bishop of Maryland, who killed a cyclist in a hit-and-run. Of all things. Of all times.
Of all people.
It’s hard enough to get
Christmas to last one whole day, let alone twelve. Which is why the new year comes as something
of a relief. When the crab drops, it
seems as though we have a chance to make the world better…or at least, to make
ourselves better. And in the midst of darkness
where the Christmas lights were blazing, we’re even more aware than usual of
how dramatically we fall short.
I resolve to spend more
time with family.
I resolve to fall in love.
I resolve to be less
stressed.
I resolve to lose weight
and get fit.
I resolve to quit smoking,
to drink less.
Ok, those weren’t actually
mine. I borrowed them from two lists:
the first was the 10 Most Common New Year’s Resolutions. The second was the 10 Most Commonly Broken
New Year’s resolutions. The same ones
were on both lists.
No matter how hard we work
to improve ourselves, whatever success we encounter is always held in balance
with the pervasive experience of disappointment and failure. That’s what I thought of as I digested the
news of the Episcopal bishop and her hit-and-run. Even while thinking that that our vocations
and relationships with Jesus—whether you’re a bishop or a confirmand—are
supposed to make us better, more prayerful, more righteous, we know we’re still
human. We’re still sinful. We still break our very best resolutions to
be better.
I offer this not to
absolve Bishop Cook. Nor to cause you to
lose all hope when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. I offer it because it points to a painful
irony that we’re wrapped up in right now: it is in the last days of Christmas,
that season of joy and light and the proclamation of salvation, that we are
most aware of how profoundly we fall short of being the people that we long to
be. That society expects us to be. That God, through the 10 Commandments and the
law, has ordered us to be.
Maybe that’s why John
doesn’t go with the whole baby-in-the-manger picture of the nativity. Matthew and Luke give us the stories and
images that are easy to visualize: the shepherds kneeling at the manger, the
star shining, the angels singing, the magi drawing near. They’re easy to picture, and easy to pack up
when Christmas is over. John, on the
other hand, uses grand, cosmic, abstract language that defies our best efforts
to contain it in a picture: Light.
Life. Truth. Grace upon grace.
It’s as though John knows
that we like to take down our Christmas lights early and pack up the nativity
by New Year’s, so he breaks out these words that don’t fit into plastic storage
tubs, and he folds them into a story of the Word coming to live among us.
And he does it through this
amazing jumble of words that spin and fill the air until it is unclear whether
it’s the world coming into being or the Word coming to give light or people
becoming children of God or God becoming flesh or ALL things coming into being or
EVERYONE being enlightened or ALL of us receiving grace upon grace because God
came down And pitched her tent in the middle of this messy, muddy existence Until
you couldn’t tell her apart. Until God looked just like you and me Like just
another fool in need of a new year’s resolution. But instead he was the
resolution. The one who would stand between us and our yearning to be better, to
be so much better,
to be good enough, and
make known to us a God who has loved us beyond all yearning,
beyond all vulnerability, beyond
all expectation or deserving or reason or justice.
This is God the only Son,
Who is close to the
Father’s heart;
Who is of the Father’s
heart;
Who has shown that heart
to us:
Beating with a love beyond
all telling,
A love that saves
Redeems
Transforms
Forgives
Makes new.
I invite you to consider a
new resolution: the only one John tells us is necessary:
Resolve to believe that
all of this is true. That this is true for you: That God is present and
among us in a way that changes things—not for one day out of the year. Not even for twelve. But every single day. Forever.
It’s a resolution that
seems to me at times incomprehensibly difficult. To believe all of that? To believe that that
cosmic vastness, the Word that was with God and was God and through whom all
things came into being, actually fit into the human form and walked among
us? The one without whom not one thing
came into being consented to come into being?
The one who gives us the power to become children of God became a child
of Mary?
On the days that it
doesn’t seem too difficult, it seems too easy:
All we have to do is
believe?
Really?
Isn’t there
self-flagellation or something?
Don’t we at least have to
promise to be better people?
No. No.
This is the scandal of the gospel.
The resolution to believe holds you in relationship to a God who loves
you mysteriously, unremittingly, and without condition; with a Word who claims
you, saves you, and looks out at you from the face of strangers; and with a
Spirit who convicts as much as she comforts and will lead you into action
beyond your wildest resolution.
You cannot profess Jesus
with your heart and expect that you will remain unchanged, that the love of God
will not transform you into a lover of outcasts and sinners, of widows and
orphans, of lost sheep and the least of these.
But that is not the reason God loves you. God loves you without reason, and
without measure. We know this, because
God’s own heart was made known to us in Jesus Christ, who loved us even to the
cross.
That is the light that
shines in the darkness.
And the darkness does not
overcome it.
Thanks be to God.
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