Year B

John 1:1-18

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

There was once a cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker magazine. It showed the building which housed the pressrooms of The New York Times, and from the windows of the building, oozed words, words, words like streaming waterfalls down into the street to form a floodtide of words, words, words. The cartoonist surely must have decided on his satirical sketch after leafing through the Sunday Times for five or six hours. In one picture worth a thousand words, the artist commented forcefully on our age of verbal overkill. We have been deluged with words, words, words, written and spoken, loud and soft, stupid and wise, frivolous and poignant; talk, talk, talk; words, words, words.

But, just what is a word? A word according to the dictionary is the visible expression of a thought.  It is a letter or group of letters that has meaning when spoken or written. In the words of an amazing hymn today, John captures the visible expression of a thought of God and everything that Christians want to say about Jesus. John provided us in these words a glimpse of the whole story of his gospel and the beauty of the whole of Christian faith is summed up.  Even in our day, when words can be cheap, John’s words are eloquently beautiful, for they speak of the one true beauty. The Word, the self-disclosure of the God who is beyond words and thoughts, enters into the condition of being human. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.

The God of the universe who created everything by simply speaking became the God of humanity by embracing that which God is not: human flesh. Jesus is the very thought of God embodied. In this holy season of Christmas we hear the stunning truth of the message of Christmas that God has come among us and lives with us, loving us. God’s loving heart, God’s eternal fellowship, that includes God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, spilled over and made a world, knowing full well that world would miss the point, and be reluctant in reply. Yet, despite our running from God’s love and acceptance, God still loves us.

The late Anthony DeMello in his book The Song of the Bird in one of the meditations he tells of a Christian who could not find the courage to look straight into the eyes of Jesus. Something inside this person made such an encounter almost impossible. Perhaps it was the memory of some failure. Perhaps it was the fear that comes with any act of believing. Perhaps it was a lack of self-esteem. Whatever the reason, the Christian simply feared to have the Christ peer into the depths of his or her soul. One day, the individual happened to meet the Lord Jesus on the street. At their meeting, Jesus invited the person to look into those deep and powerful eyes.

At first, the Christian was more than timid. But slowly, and only slowly, their eyes met. The Lord looked long and warmly in return, seeing in this disciple exactly who and what was there. And to the complete surprise of our fearful Christian, Jesus simply said, “I love you.” Like the believer in this meditation, we also need to catch the stunning and brutal truth of the message of Christmas, that God has come among us and lives within us, loving us despite our fear and sinfulness, despite our running from God’s acceptance of our very selves. And it is this message, this truly good news that is at the heart of God’s words to us today. It is good news to know that the failure of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to trust God is overturned; and sinful humanity is once again made whole.

Knowing this should give us great joy and cause us to turn our lives around to a new way of living. But sadly, oftentimes this is not what happens and if we were to ask ourselves the question, “Has God really embraced my flesh?” we might have to answer that it is hard for us to believe this basic understanding of our faith. We have a tendency to want to run far from the love that constantly seeks to make us whole despite our sinfulness. And when we look to our world, we can be tempted toward dark despair when we see violence, hatred, and war. It can be difficult to see the “beauty” of Christmas in the homeless, the abandoned and those who are socially excluded in our society.

And yet the Word which we celebrate today has become flesh and this does take a leap of faith to believe. It means trusting in something not quite understood. To believe in Jesus Christ as God in the flesh means relying on something within us that allows one to trust. It means opening up the heart to believe that God has so much love for humanity that God wants to walk in our shoes. God chose to live as one of us-to be one with us out of love. And out of that love, power and initiative of God, Paul tells us today in his letter to the Ephesians, we have been chosen for relationship with God. This relationship is not bound by time, but was forged in eternity. “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him…so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.”

We have not only been chosen and loved by God but also entrusted to convey that glad gospel. We are to be the messengers to the world. If no one could see it but God, and no one could accomplish it but Christ, no one but we can witness to it. We are those who have been “chosen for praise to God.” Chosen to show God’s praise, for; if the message of Christmas is that the Word became flesh and lives among us and in us, the meaning of the season is that our flesh becomes the praise of God, and we show forth this praise, by loving and serving all whom God loves. And, if our reading today from John’s gospel means anything for us at all, then it must remind us that the presence of God is to be found deep within the human heart: in its joy as well as in its ugliness.

The word this day compels us to examine the refusal in our own eyes to see the Christ in all of God’s children. We are invited to look into the eyes of the Lord Jesus. We must look into the eyes of Christ even when timid and fearful, for he brings us the gift of reconciliation. And, when Jesus tells us that we are loved to the depths of our being, then we come to know the full meaning of reconciliation. So after our eardrums have been assaulted long enough, after the nerves have been frazzled again and again by words, words, words, and we ask “Is there today, amidst all the words, words, a word from the Lord?”

In fact, the very Word of God himself would speak with us. The Word offers us God’s grace upon grace and reconciliation. And when we look at this strange word, reconciliation, we discover it comes from the Latin meaning “eyelash.” Today we stand on this first Sunday after Christmas eyelash to eyelash with God who sees and loves us enough to be one of us. The “Word” Jesus, the very visible thought spoken by God become flesh and lived among us to reveal to us the creator of the universe which is beyond anything we can imagine.