This sermon was preached at Peace Hill Christian Fellowship on December 24th, 2017.

Based on the Gospel of John, Chapter One.

The incarnation is the greatest miracle and the most profound mystery in human history. Without the incarnation there is no point in even talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is not even all that unique without the incarnation – it is not the first rising from the dead in the Bible. But the incarnation is the momentous happening in history. All that we believe hangs on the incarnation. This morning, I want to make run at trying to understand, in a small way, something of the revelation and mystery of the incarnation.

The Incarnation Is Both Revealed and Mysterious.

There are Some Things About the Incarnation We Know:  When John begins to talk about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in words that are far too familiar to us, he speaks in very metaphorical language. We are used to reading these metaphors and picking out the things that make sense to us.

• “In the beginning was the Word” – We understand that the world was created by Jesus.
• “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.”  We understand that Jesus’ life, words, teaching, actions, death and resurrection give us a true understanding of God. Jesus is the clearest, central revelation of God in the Bible.
• ”The Word became flesh” – clearly means that Jesus, God’s Son, became human.

We also understand, from the Gospels, some of God’s choices about how to live…

• That Jesus chose to be born in humble circumstances.
• That Jesus taught the things God wanted to communicate to people.
• About what God is like
• About the Kingdom of God
• About our need for repentance and new life.

We understand, also, what God is like by looking at Jesus – God’s power and holiness and goodness, through Jesus’ compassion, his healing, his life and teachings, and his sacrificial death.

But There are Some Things About the Incarnation that are Mysterious:  John uses metaphors to describe something about the effect of the Incarnation.

• Metaphor of “light” used 6x in the first nine verses of John 1 – 25x in John’s Gospel.
• Metaphor of “dark” or “darkness” seven times throughout his gospel.

John’s use of the metaphor’s of light and darkness have to do with this idea of “glory” a word he uses in one form or another 22x in his Gospel – A major theme. What does it mean?

• True understanding and consequent belief?  Yes.
• Holy character?  Yes.

But “glory” means something more. Luke 2 is helpful in understanding…

• Glory means God is present: “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” (Lk.2:9).
• Glory displays the exalted nature of God: “Glory to God in the highest heaven” (Lk.2:14).
• Glory displays a particular beauty or praiseworthiness in God’s people: “…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” (Lk.2:30-32). Jesus is the one who makes Israel glorious.

We see all three of these in Jesus’ transfiguration (Lk.9:32).

The Greek Fathers, understood the coming and incarnation of Jesus to be the beginning of the restoration of human beings as “glorious” creatures… that the goal of salvation would be this transformation of darkened people into people who would display…

• God’s presence – through a kind of glory or “light of being” evident to those around them, and
• God’s praiseworthiness – through holy and honorable lives that would bless the world. Their understanding was that God became human in order to create a new kind of human being – a glorious kind.

Their conception of this came out of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ. When Jesus went up on the mountain and began to radiate light, that, for the Greek Fathers, was Jesus’ display of what human beings were created to be. It gives a whole new meaning to Paul’s comment that “We have all fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom.3:23).

John is trying to express something of this glory in verse 14 – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John is saying more here than just that Jesus shows us the right way to think about things – he is saying more – something mysterious and glorious about incarnation.

Our Response to the Incarnation is Both Revealed and Mysterious.

We Respond to What is Revealed:  How do we respond to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ?

• Jesus was born in humble circumstances – we respond by humbling ourselves.
• Jesus taught about God’s love and holiness and justice – we respond by loving even our enemies, and pursuing holy lives, and practicing justice.
• Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God – we respond by  giving our allegiance to God’s Kingdom.
• Jesus talked about repentance and healing from sin – we respond by repenting of sin.
• Jesus talked about not judging others, not serving money – we respond by following these teachings.

How we respond to the things Jesus taught and exemplified is a measure of how we follow Jesus. It makes no sense to say that we follow Jesus if we judge people, hate our enemies, don’t care about justice, or loving others, or repentance from sin in our lives, or forgiveness. Part of the point of the Incarnation is that God has come and told us what he intends us to be like – how to live. If we ignore the clear teaching of Jesus, as the Gospels say, we do so at our peril.

We Respond to the Mystery of Incarnation by Receiving and Becoming:  But there is another, more mysterious, aspect of responding to the Incarnation which has less to do with our active response to teaching and more to do with our openness to receive. This is the language that John uses – “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become…”. 

• There is a glory (an inner light of peace) that we receive when we are willing to accept that God is present with us – graciously, lovingly, personally with us.
• There is a glory (a revelation of who we are and who God is) that we receive when we pay attention to and honor God. Exalting God for who God is.
• There is a glory (a kind of nobility and joy) that we receive when we accept the fact that, to God, we are God’s image, and God invests everything in us and delights in us.

This light can actually be seen in us at times. This is Incarnation – Jesus became something – fully God and fully human – so that we could also become something – “children of light” (1Jn.2:1) “children of God” (Jn.1:12), “the light of the world” (Matt.5:).

What We Become Shapes How We Respond to What is Revealed: Incarnation, then, is the beginning point. Before we can “do” or “act” or “live out” as children of light – we have to receive! 

This morning we will practice communion with this understanding. Jesus gave us his body, not simply to seal a legal agreement to get us off the hook for sin – but as a radical way of sealing our new identity as children of light – partakers in the divine nature. As you eat and drink this morning, choose to receive the gift – ask for the gift of grace that will enable you to become a child of light.

This sermon was preached at Peace Hill Christian Fellowship on December 3rd, 2017

In this first Sunday in Advent we long for God and for the promises of what we believe God will do. We hope for the return of Jesus Christ to judge evil, to heal the world and our mortality, to bring about the eternal Kingdom of God that makes all things new. And yet, we acknowledge that this has not happened yet, and so we celebrate this Sunday with a sense of longing and mourning.

Scripture intends to train and shape our longings. Isaiah 64 is a prayer, full of longing, from a person who is in Exile, far away from his home. He is someone who is living in a land where the God he has always known as the One True God is now just one deity among many. He is frustrated by the fact that even his fellow Jews seem to have forgotten God – and God seems to be absent.

O that you would rip open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake like boiling water and tremble like twigs consumed in the fire. Come down and make your name known to those who despise you, so that they tremble before you – just like you did before when you did amazing things we were not expecting. You came down and the mountains shook. Since the beginning of time no one has known of…  no rumor has been heard of… no one has seen any God like you. You act to help those who wait for you. You help those who want to do what is right and who pay attention to your ways.

But we have continued in our sin – and you have been angry with us. How then can we be saved? We have become disgusting (unclean) and every good thing we try to do is tainted – it shrivels up. Our failures and faults sweep us away and no one even calls on you for help anymore. This is happening because you have hidden yourself from us – and have let us waste away in our sin.

But you – you are our Father! You are the potter (the craftsman) and we are the clay to be shaped. You made us and we are the work of your hands – the product of what you are doing in the world. Do not be angry with us forever – beyond measure – without end. Look on us with compassion – because we are your people.   – Pete’s paraphrase

There is Great Benefit in Practicing the Absence of God.

The Absence of God Can Awaken Our Desire for God: This morning is communion. Communion is a sign of Christ’s presence with us. And yet, we should not lose sight of the fact that the presence of Christ, in the bread and wine, also accentuates the absence of Christ. Bread is bread and wine is wine.

And for many of us Jesus, though a familiar name, and a wise teacher, is a stranger. I was struck by this in a meditation this week in Mark, where Jesus came into a synagogue and began to teach with authority that none of those listening had ever heard before… where Jesus used that same authority to cast out a demon. I can read about that, and I can pray to Jesus, and study his life. But I have never shaken his hand, nor do I know what he really looked like, or what his human voice sounded like. He is here in Spirit… in the bread… in the actions and words of this community… but not in human body. We know Jesus, but we do not know Jesus. He is both present and absent.

This is what the writer of Isaiah 64 is experiencing. He is praying to God – but in his prayer, speaking to the Almighty and believing the Almighty can hear him, he is complaining that the Almighty is absent. You can hear his longing. He is pouring out his heart to God because God is absent.

What Does God’s Absence Awaken in You?

We talk about the presence of God and experiencing the presence of God as a way of knowing God and being changed. But there is no true understanding of the presence of God unless we first are aware of how un-present God is. We do not practice either presence or absence – we practice both together – and as we do so certain desires and questions emerge…

The Desire that God’s Name Should Be Known:  This, in essence, is the core of this prayer. The prophet says, “Come down and make your name known” and mourns that “No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you.”

When we practice the absence of God, we become aware of how invisible God is to people who do not know, do not care to know God’s love and healing for them – who seem completely unconcerned to lay hold of God. We become aware of the fact that most of humanity has no thought of the mighty God who made the world and will judge it – before whom we will all stand and given an account of how we have lived our lives. Even many Christians have no notion of the “great Day of the Lord” so often mentioned in Scripture. This is what the prophet longs for in his frustration –  “O that you would rip open the heavens and come down.”

The Question of God’s Hiddenness:  God’s hiddenness is a theme, even in the Gospels with Jesus. God, in a sense, hides himself. This is not to say that God doesn’t want to be known – but there is a sense that God must be sought out… “Seek and you will find, Ask and it will be given, Knock and the door will be opened.” This is why Jesus taught in parables – so that in order to understand people would have to think about and search out what he was saying.

This is part of the lament of the prophet, “… you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.” This question is also at the heart of this prayer – God, why don’t you rip the heavens open and let people see who you are? Even your own people are turning away and because you have hidden yourself. That’s not meant just to be an interesting fact – it’s a problem that begins back in Genesis 3 where God sends human beings out of his presence – and the result of God’s absence has been disastrous!

The Question: What are You Doing? The absence of God is practiced as we recognize how fallen, how broken this world is. We practice the absence of God when we realize that the great problem of our world – its persistent evil, violence, impurity, falsehood, greed, injustice, racism, hatred, and arrogance – has to do with the fact of the absence of God.

This should raise the same question for us that it raises for the prophet – “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” – God, what are you doing? The problem we struggle with is not that God is out of control – the problem is that we believe God is in control. God is the one who shapes us and our lives and cares for us and loves us, and we are his people. Why do we experience the evil we experience? Why do we persist in struggling with sin? Why are so many people in this world starving? Why do evil dictators rule whole countries and do violence and seemingly go unpunished?

These are the questions that we ask in this first Sunday in Advent, as we prepare for God himself to rip open the heavens in order to be born into our same helplessness as a human infant.

This morning, as we prepare to come to the tables and receive communion, I want to encourage you to struggle with the absence of God as you experience the presence of Jesus in the bread and the wine.