Words are not Weapons: Dec. 31, 20023

 Year B, Christmas 1                                 John 1:1-18 

                  In the first church I served, Christmas Eve featured the traditional gospel reading from Luke 2 which includes the story of Jesus’ birth with Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the angels.  You all know that one, right?  On Christmas Day, we would have this reading we heard today from the Gospel of John.  We had about 12 people who attended that worship and that is when the assistant (me) would preach.   Eventually I grew to love the Christmas Day service and preaching John 1.  However, my first year I made the rookie mistake of trying to really understand this text from John 1 and make sure all 12 people in attendance also understood John 1.  I never tried to do that again.

            This reading from John seems a peculiar text for Christmas day because not only does it not mention the birth of Jesus, it doesn’t mention the name of Jesus.  But it is indeed talking about Jesus. The Greek word that is translated as word is Logos.  The understanding of Logos predates the birth of Jesus by about 500 years. Greeks came to understand Logos as the reason, the mind of God.  Logos created the order of things.  

John’s Gospel was directed to the Gentiles, the Greeks.  He was trying to describe Jesus using language that they knew.  They had little understanding of the Messiah.  Most of them were not familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures.  But they did believe in reason, the mind of God. John was saying that Jesus brought us the mind of God on earth.  Other Gospels use the birth of Jesus to make God tangible and comprehensible.  John uses reason and logic.

            But maybe instead of focusing on logos (as I did in that very first Christmas sermon many  years ago) we should just stick with the English word for a few minutes.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” From the very beginning of time, God’s most ardent desire has been to communicate with humanity.  Obviously there are a lot of ways to communicate, but the heart of communication is words.  So the author of John wanted us all to know that bringing Jesus down to earth was another way for God to communicate with God’s people. 

And what was God trying to communicate?  The most obvious answer is love, but it was more than that.   God also communicated laws and rules---things we don’t like to talk much about in the Episcopal Church.  But these laws and teachings were meant to help humans live together in peace.  And I think we can all agree we could use more of that.

            In the Hebrew Scriptures, God communicated through the prophets.  In the Gospel of John we are reminded of Moses passing on the law of God---the 10 Commandments.  Communicating through the prophets was effective at times, but also frustrating. God knew that this method of communicating through the prophets was missing something.  God was always willing to try new things, new ways of communicating with his people.  God is relentless in his desire to communicate with us.

            There is 500 years between the last book of the Hebrew scriptures and the beginning of the New Testament.  And while every pastor will remind you that God’s time is not like our time, I like to imagine God up there (wherever there is) ruminating and wondering…how to connect with God’s people.  If not through prophets or floods, then what? So he came up with the wild idea of sending God in the form of a baby.

            “And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Now back to the Greek for a moment---if you were to look at the original Greek, a better translation for that phrase “and God became flesh and lived among us” might be: “God pitched his tent among us.”

            Just a week ago we heard the story of King David wanting to build a great temple for the ark of God, because the ark was just set up in a tent.  God said, “No thank you, I am good with my tent.”  You see, God didn’t like to be confined.  He wanted to be on the move.   Eventually they did build God a great temple, but it seems that God was just desperate to be with the people….because that was the best way to know them and be known by them.  Thus God was born as a vulnerable baby, to a girl, so that he could not merely be among the people, he would be a person.  There would be no intermediary between God and God’s people.  There would be God in the flesh, living with and among the people of God. That was God’s crazy, brilliant and divinely human plan.

            Yet the cynical part of me wonders sometimes what that accomplished. Christianity spread across the globe and God’s word was shared in almost every place we can imagine.  But sometimes I wonder if God is up there scratching his head thinking, I might just need to try something else.

            It’s hard to talk about the birth of Christ---the miraculous and wondrous birth of Christ--- without looking at what is happening in the Holy Land right now.  A land that Christians deem holy because of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection.  That Holy Land, that land touched by God in the flesh--- has never known peace.  And right now, the devastation is overwhelming. 

One of the terrifying things is that people who are removed from the situation can’t even find ways to talk about it without getting angry or hopeless.  Jesus was and is the “word” made flesh and yet we Christians are so often incapable of using our own words to bridge divides.  We hurl words across our fields of battle and just wait for them to explode on the other side.   Words are not weapons.  John described Jesus as the word for a reason….because words used well, used wisely, can bridge divides.  Communication that is well intentioned, humble and honest can transform a situation.  Yet we have come to a place in the culture of our nation and world when we fear words almost as much as we fear violence.   

As a preacher, I am obviously biased because I have been taught that when we are open to God’s wisdom---that words spoken from a place of humility and some degree of knowledge can make a difference.  Yet what I have to be reminded as a preacher is that it’s not just saying the words, it’s also listening to the words and voices of others. 

I can’t be sure, but I wonder if the reason that there is 500 years between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, is because God was busy listening and what God heard was the need for the word transformed into something that could be felt and touched.  God in the flesh who could listen as well as he could speak… and learn even as he taught. 

Let us never cease to be moved by the images of Jesus being born in a manger surrounded by farm animals.  May those images warm our hearts and charge our imaginations.  But may we also be transformed by John’s reminder that God came in the form of a human to communicate and relate---to provide us with an example that could be emulated so that instead of hurling words at one another like grenades in a battle, we learn to listen, even as we disagree.  It’s been 2000 years and I wish that God would come down and straighten us out. I also know that Jesus gave us a voices to use, ears to listen and minds to discern.  It is up to us to use our voices, ears and minds to embody the words---the word that has been given to us—Jesus the Christ.