The Word Moved into the Neighborhood

Hey, wait a minute! It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas for twelve whole days in the church! What happened to the baby, the angels? Where’s the manger? Why, on the day after Christmas, are we hearing the prologue to the Gospel of John? Well, lest we get too mushy and sentimental, lest we focus too much on that adorable baby and his gracious mother, the prologue to John’s Gospel helps us to understand the meaning of the Christmas event. As you know, John’s Gospel is very different from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The writer of this Gospel especially wanted us to understand Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son, and so there’s more explicit theology in this Gospel than in the others. The first eighteen verses, which you just heard, summarize the Gospel for us. And if there’s one verse that summarizes the whole prologue, it’s this one: “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.” That’s it. That’s the whole Gospel in a nutshell.

Sometimes it’s hard to hear the power in a sentence like that. If we’ve been church members a long time, perhaps the words are too familiar to have any punch left. Or if we’re relative newcomers, perhaps the words are so strange that they have little meaning. So let’s hear these words differently. Some of you know that I like an alternative translation of the Bible. It’s Eugene Peterson’s The Message. So let’s hear how Peterson renders this verse: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.”

I love that translation. The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. When I hear the word “neighborhood,” I think of the neighborhood where I grew up and the people there. Think for a minute about where you grew up. Picture it: the people, the houses, your school, your friends, what you did after school. [Query the congregation.] All of us grew up in different neighborhoods, some in rural areas, some in cities, but we can all remember real people living real lives. When I think of “neighborhood,” I think of Levittown, New York. Some of you know that Levittown was built between 1947 and 1951 as the first planned community. That’s where I grew up, and I can still see the modest houses lining both sides of winding streets. I remember the families of postal workers, like my own father, police officers, secretaries, nurses, construction workers, teachers, sales people, and accountants. The father of one of my friends was even a seaman in the Merchant Marine, and he came home only every six months! I remember my friends, almost all of whom lived on my street and rode to school with me. After school and in the summers we kids played tag, or stick ball, or hide-and-seek in the streets, or perhaps we cruised around the neighborhood on our bicycles. “The Word was made flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”

The Word was made flesh and blood and moved onto Elbow Lane. The quarters were pretty tight in his house, and his folks didn’t have a lot of money for extras. Hardly where you’d expect the Son of God to turn up. But Jesus moved in anyway. Jesus became one of us. When the Word moved into our neighborhood, he had a special aura about him, a something that everyone could see. He was generous inside and out. He was giving and loving to all of us, no matter who we were. He wasn’t generous and loving because he was trying to impress us or because he wanted to curry favor with those in power. There wasn’t anyone like that in our neighborhood anyway. He was generous and loving because being generous and giving was part of his true nature, the nature he had inherited from God the Father. And he was “true from start to finish.” He had integrity, honesty, and wholeness. He was faithful and sincere, complete and undivided, true from beginning to end. What was most important, he showed us, by who he was, something about God. Because the Word loved us so much, we realized deep in our hearts that God truly loves us. He was – and still is – the best possible neighbor.

And the Word wants to get know us better. He want us to know him well. He doesn’t want to be one of those neighbors we nod to as we head out the door, perhaps only exchanging at best a hurried “How are you?” He wants us to become good friends, just like those best friends we had when we were children. And because he’s such a wonderful neighbor, we want to get to know him too. Do you want to do that? Do you want a closer relationship with him? We’re about to start a new secular year. Instead of your usual New Year’s resolutions, try these: developing a richer, fuller friendship with the Word, through studying the stories of his life, regularly partaking of his Body and Blood in the sacrament, praying, and taking care of all his friends, rich and poor alike.

Because the truth is that Jesus is everyone’s best possible neighbor. Jesus still moves into every neighborhood, from rural farm communities to urban inner cities, from Fifth Avenue to Harlem, from trailer parks to McMansion-land, from Darfur to Dubai. The Word dwells with all of us, whoever we are and wherever we live. And because we know how much he loves us, and because we’ve signed on to his program through baptism and confirmation, we often feel called to follow him wherever he goes, perhaps even into some of those neighborhoods where we don’t feel entirely safe.

I recently read Kent Annan’s book, Following Jesus through the Eye of a Needle. After working with refugees in Eastern Europe, Kent went with his wife Shelley to Haiti in 2003. Kent and Shelley literally followed the Word into the neighborhood. First they spent seven months in rural Haiti living in one room in a small family house. They learned Creole, interacted with their host-family and neighbors, and began to understand how Haitian people live and think. After that, they went to Port au Prince to begin working in non-profit organizations. They could have lived in one of the affluent neighborhoods that foreigners typically live in. Instead, they moved onto one of the mud-covered hills surrounding Port au Prince, into a neighborhood accessible only on foot. They spent many months having a simple house built, a two-room affair, built, in the Haitian way, of concrete, with minimal electricity. They lived side by side with their Haitian neighbors, entering their lives as fully as possible. They only moved back to Florida when Shelley became pregnant. Kent has since founded Haiti Partners to foster education in Haiti and still travels regularly to Haiti. Kent and Shelley followed the Word into the neighborhood.

To what neighborhoods has the Word already gone ahead of us? Into what neighborhoods is the Word asking us to follow him? Are there places even here in Gallipolis where the Word has already gone and is expecting us to follow him? Are there places where we, who have caught a glimpse of God’s great love for us, are called to share that love with others?

Ultimately, that is what this Gospel is all about. Yes, God is powerful. Yes, God created us. But what we need to remember most is that God comes into the neighborhood, your neighborhood and mine, because God loves us. Love and compassion bring God into the neighborhood. The Word was born out of God’s love for us. It is this love for which I am so immensely grateful. It is in praise of this love that I can sing with all my heart, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come.” Joy to the world, the Word has moved into the neighborhood.