“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” The baby was born. The angels rejoiced and glorified God. The shepherds came and found the baby, just as the angels had described him. While Mary pondered in her heart her experience of this strange birth, the shepherds returned to their flock, rejoicing at what they had heard and seen. Yes, we heard it all on Christmas Eve – together with a story about an angel that doesn’t occur in Scripture! Yes, Christmas Eve was wonderful! But where is the baby now? Why, on this first Sunday after Christmas, do we not hear more about him and his miraculous birth? Actually, perhaps some of you are heaving a sigh of relief. Perhaps you are like those who toss out their Christmas trees the day after Christmas, saying, “Thank heaven, we’re done with that for another year!”
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” Strangely, perhaps, we hear details of Jesus’ birth only in the gospel of Luke. The gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, begins with Jesus’ adult ministry. The gospel of Matthew prefaces the birth with the wonderful story of Joseph’s discovery that Mary is pregnant, yet of the birth the gospel relates only that Joseph and Mary didn’t have sexual intercourse until after Mary had given birth. We also hear no birth story in the gospel of John, whose opening eighteen verses you just heard. Instead, the writer of this gospel asks us to ponder a much deeper mystery than that of the miraculous birth of a child. We are asked to ponder who it truly was that was born: a precious baby or something much more mysterious and awe-inspiring?
The opening words of this gospel plunge us right into that mystery: “In the beginning….” Do those words sound familiar? The original hearers of this gospel would have recognized them immediately. They are the very first words of the Hebrew Scriptures. The very first words of the book of Genesis, the first book in the Hebrew Bible, are “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Indeed, the very first word of the Hebrew Bible, bereshit, literally means “in the beginning.” The first hearers of John’s gospel would also have remembered that “in the beginning” the first thing that God created was light: God swept God’s spirit over the formless waters and said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God pronounced the light good.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The first hearers of John’s gospel would also have recognized the Greek word, logos, which we translate as Word. They would have known that in using that word the Evangelist was reminding them and us that the God in whom we put our trust was not like one of the Greek gods, not like those disdainful deities who looked down on the struggles, heartaches, joys, and fears of this world with supreme detachment. Rather, John was reminding his hearers that the God whom they and we worship was not only unknowable mystery but also the driving force behind all creation. This God was also the construction foreman, if you will, of the whole creation project. And, more miraculous still, this logos, this Word, this God, was so involved, so caring, so loving, so giving, that he deigned to join himself body and soul with humanity, he dared to “pitch his tent” among us.
And more. This construction foreman of creation, this activator of God’s light, this logos who was now inseparably joined to humanity, was the light of the world, that light that “shines in the darkness,” which the darkness has never extinguished. The Evangelist reminds us that John came to testify to that light and to prepare us to receive that light. Because the Word took on human flesh and moved into our neighborhood, into the neighborhood of every living being, we who live in the light that he brought are not only children of God but have received from God more grace than we can ever fathom.
My friends, this is why we celebrate the birth of that baby. We celebrate Jesus’ birth, because, even though we are frail, limited, broken human beings, we do not live in total darkness. Even into our “dark streets” the “everlasting light” penetrates. The light that came into the world with Jesus still shines on us wherever we are. And where are the dark streets in our lives? Do you need me to name them? There are dark streets wherever there is war and conflict: in Iraq, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, the West Bank; on the streets of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, in Boston, Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora Colorado, in shopping malls in Nairobi and Logan, Ohio. There are dark streets wherever there is enmity and conflict. There are dark streets wherever there is estrangement: especially within families, between parents and children, or among siblings. There are dark streets wherever there is addiction. There are dark streets wherever there is sickness, or when people are unemployed, homeless, or despairing.
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” The baby was conceived, born, executed, and raised to life again. Now we, who are privileged to be members of his body, are filled with his light. The Word now becomes flesh within us. We too are called to spread the tiny flame of the everlasting light that we carry into the dark streets around us. We too are called to join with others and create new communities of love that continue his ministry into a dark world. For another miracle happens: when the Light of the World shines on the children of God, a new community comes into being. Now we suddenly see those around us as friends. Now we find the night sky dotted with the lights of the homes of neighbors. Now we see a community of love ready to reach out to those in need. When the Light of the World shines on us, we see the truth of Mother Teresa’s reminder: “It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you – yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand.”
This is a true story. It ran in the New York Times the day after Thanksgiving.1 There was a thirty-three year old cabbie who tied his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail. About five years ago, the cabbie “prayed to God for guidance on how to help the forgotten people of the streets who exist in life’s shadows.” He heard God tell him, “Make eight pounds of spaghetti, throw it in a pot, give it out on 103rd Street and Broadway with no conditions, and people will come.” He did, they came, and now he goes from door to door giving people food to eat.
God is probably not asking us to rush to New York and give out spaghetti. Today, we at St. Peter’s give dinners to the hungry every month. Like the New York cabbie, we offer people dinner with no conditions. And people come. This month we are also offering hats, scarves, and gloves. To what other ministry might God be calling us? Might God be calling us to offer spiritual sustenance to those around us? Is there anything else people need from us besides a free dinner? What else might God be inviting us to act on “with no conditions?” How are you personally and we as a parish being called to be living lights for others?
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” Let us pray,
Holy One, sender of the Word made flesh,2
So many in our world still wait in darkness and long for your light.
In the midst of darkness, enkindle our hope.
As we long for lasting peace in the midst of war, be with us.
As we long for families to be reunited, be with us.
As we long for enemies to be reconciled, be with us.
As we long for cures, healings, and freedom from addictions, be with us.
As we long for decent jobs and economic security be with us.
As we long for love and community, be with us.
Fulfill the deepest longings of your people and dispel the darkness in our hearts and in our world. Teach us to take your light into the dark places of our world. And let your Word ignite the hope the world needs to bring to life your love and justice. Amen.
1. www.educationforjustice.org
2. Adapted from “Advent Prayer Service,” Education for Justice, www.educationforjustice.org
Showing posts with label First Sunday after Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Sunday after Christmas. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Sunday, December 26, 2010
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.
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.
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