"The Word Became Flesh for Love's Sake"

 

I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to handle preaching on the opening to John's Gospel. It has such an otherwordly quality that I find it hard to grasp the best way into it. But with prayer and lots of wandering around...I finally got to a place of "a-ha." And it seemed to really strike a chord with a number of people in the congregation. 

See what you think.

Text: John 1: 1-18

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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Whenever I hear this prologue from John’s Gospel….I feel myself getting plunged into an otherworldly sea of poetry.

Unlike our other evangelists…who either give us a timeline of Jesus’ bona fides as the promised Messiah from the House of David…or a Jesus who’s already starting his adult ministry and preaching a one sentence sermon right off the bat…John traces Jesus back to the very beginning.

The beginning that sounds like the Book of Genesis:

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the deep…”

John wants us to know that Jesus was present with God and the Holy Spirit even in that very beginning.

The Word was there.

And the Word was with God…and the Word is God.

And this Word became more than just a Word.

This Word became flesh and lived among us.

This Word that was at the beginning when God was creating the heavens and the earth…has now come into the realm of the earth…bringing heaven together with the earth into a human form.

This Word was born through the same way most everyone is born.

The Word was made flesh and blood…bones and ligaments…and coming to life thanks to the strength and courage of a young woman who said, “Here am I. I will be this mother of the Savior.”

As one commentator put it…this incarnation of the Word made flesh is a moment where humanity and divinity has a group hug.

Because the Word becoming flesh is the ultimate testament about a God whose entire being and language is one of Love.

Why else would God have become human?

I mean…God could’ve manifested as great ball of fire…or some magnificent creature.

But rather than coming to us in some terrifying way…God came to us as a vulnerable baby.

That’s true Love.

I remember the time when I felt that Love so profoundly.

My father had died and we had had his funeral and burial in New Hampshire.

But because my parents had briefly relocated to Tallahassee…and my father had been one of the favorites at his assisted living facility…and so many of my friends wanted to have “something” to remember my dad and support me and my mom…we held another memorial service at St. John’s in Tallahassee.

My mother had been attending church there…and thought the woman associate rector was the bomb…and that I needed to meet this priest.

But I could’ve cared less about the church…or women priests…or St. John’s.

After all…St. John’s for much of the 1990s had been the home of the most virulent homophobia I’d ever heard coming out of an Episcopal Church.

Reluctantly…I agreed to having a memorial service for my father on All Saints’ Day…which was a Thursday.

That following Sunday…St. John’s had a tradition of processing banners with the names of the departed.

My mom asked me to come back to church and carry my dad’s banner.

So…again…reluctantly…I went back to St. John’s to process this banner…which they then gave to my mom to take home.

Now…I had been in church three times in about a month and a half….the most I had been to an Episcopal church in more than 15 years.

I figured… I was done.

I’d completed all my obligatory good daughter deeds and I could go back to doing crosswords and drinking coffee on Sunday mornings.

But the Word which became flesh became a DJ…spinning all the greatest hits from the 1982 Hymnal in my head.

No matter where I was or what I was doing…I was hearing all the hymns from my childhood growing up in the church.

I bind unto myself today that God is working his purpose out as we crown him with many crowns the Lamb upon his throne…(incidentally the second line of that last hymn ironically says: Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own!)

I could not hear anything but the Episcopal hymnal.

When the following Sunday came around…I woke up with a booming voice in my head that commanded me to “Show Up!”

I showered.

I got dressed.

And I went back to St. John’s.

And for the first time in 39 years of being an Episcopalian… I heard every word of every prayer and every hymn and every line of Scripture and it all said one…unmistakable…and overwhelming message:

“You are loved. You always have been loved. And I will always love you.”

There was no asterisk.

There was no “I love you if you do x-y-z.”

This love was deep…and broad and wide.

The Word became flesh…so that the Word could use that opportunity to infuse all flesh with this Love.

To wrap all of us up in this cosmic hug that says, “You are so loved that I want to be with you…live with you…live within you. Experience your joys….and endure your sorrows…and bring you through the foggy darkness of a world that rejects and belittles people to show you the light that leads you to better days.”

The Word…The Love…came to us for this purpose.

As we hear in John’s Gospel: “…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

We who gather here and come to this table every Sunday are God’s adopted children.

Through faith and grace we have become part of God’s loving inclusive family.

Now is the time for us to take what has been given freely and lovingly to us…this Word…and make it tangible for others.

I see that happening all the time here at St. Barnabas.

We bring the experience of Christ to others through such loving gestures as preparing our bags of loving kindness to those who are without a permanent home.

I see it in the way we take time to bake cookies for service members living away from their families during the holidays.

I see it in visiting with those who are homebound.

And there are so many other ways in which we manifest the light of Christ for others and remind those who are seeking to know this Love that they do matter…they are valued…and they are so loved that God sent God’s Word into the world not to condemn it…or call it rotten.

But to rejuvenate it…and remind us that the One who we call our Creator…who we say made all things…declared them…us and all of creation… good.

This One…this Word…wants us to live…and become agents of Love through grace upon grace.

 May that Love that put on human flesh at that First Christmas grow and spread like wildfire through us.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.