Merry
Christmas! I realize that by this afternoon most of the world outside these
doors will consider Christmas to be over. I knew someone once who put her tree
up on Thanksgiving Day and took it down Christmas Day in the afternoon. By
tomorrow, many people will dismantling their Christmas trees and some will
already be discarded at the curb on December 26. But here, in church, for
twelve whole days, we concentrate on appreciating and entering into the mystery
of God come among us in human flesh. This morning’s gospel whisks us away from
the manger however, and into a world of power and poetry. John’s gospel asks us
to enter a powerful mystery: the mystery that God became flesh and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth.
Contrasting
strongly with Luke and Matthew’s familiar Christmas stories of angels and
shepherds and mangers and beasts and a baby, John’s gospel is a startling piece
of work. John’s gospel whisks away our ideas of the nativity and replaces them
with the vast reality of the universe.
The words of
John’s gospel, paint a different reality from the manger and the angels and the
shepherds. The reality John’s gospel paints is a poetic and powerful way of
telling us that the mystery of Christmas is vast; far greater than shepherds
and angels and mangers, and even Christmas trees that end up at the curb.
John’s gospel gives us the same mystery that began in the opening of the very
first book of the bible: Genesis.
In the
beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless
void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept
over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was
light.
Can you hear
the echo of what we heard from John’s gospel this morning?
All things came
into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What
came into being in Jesus was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This is a different picture of
Jesus than the ones we get from Luke and Matthew’s gospels. There are no
shepherds or mangers or angels here. Instead we get powerful poetic imagery
that draws us into a vast universe created by a powerful and awe-inspiring God.
Can this be the same God in the pictures we get from Matthew and Luke? Can the
same God who separated the light from the darkness really be born as a tiny
helpless baby?
That,
indeed, is the most awe-inspiring thing about the story of Jesus’ birth. That
the God who separated the light from the darkness is also the God who became
helpless flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. The Christmas
mystery is not wrapped in a package under the tree. The Christmas mystery is
the powerful God who sometimes seems so vast and so far away, and yet in the
birth of Jesus comes closer than we could have imagined.
The
Christmas mystery is a powerful and poetic mystery for us to embrace and hold
close. God is indeed “out there,” making the stars, separating the light from
the dark and living closely and recognizably with us. And God is indeed still
“in here” lying in a manger, waiting to be worshiped and served. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2017
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