Becoming a Christmas People. John 1. 1-18

I love narrative preaching: to explore truth through story.  This is the biggest story ever told... “Once upon a time.” Or rather, “once upon an eternity”, before time began, God was already there: The Father of all things.  The Spirit, hovering over the face of the deep. And the Word, proceeding from the Father's heart and bringing  a  universe into existence....  A good world, but a world very quickly spoiled, filled with darkness. 

 John loves to make contrasts: light and darkness; Jesus and Moses.  He wants to show that Jesus is better than Moses.  It's as if he knew the Papa Charlie Parker blues song that says, “Your baby ain't sweet like mine!”.  Light for our darkness; sonship for our alienation. Fullness for our emptiness; truth for our ignorance, grace for our sins.  All of this happens when the Light comes into the world. This Word is life and light. The transformation that needed to happen in the lives of men and women, happens through him.  The light shines. 

Proxima Centauri.  Public Domain Image

But then there is “once upon a time...”  The Light-word came into a darkened world.... How did God come?  How did the light come?  As a blaze of shekinah glory, maybe?  Blinding the eyes that don't want to see, and laser-like, burning away the wrongs and injustices?  Light travels at 671 million mph.  That's amazing!  Our nearest star is over 4 light years away.  That means its light takes 4 years and 10 weeks, travelling at 671 million mph to reach us. But Proxima Centauri stays 4.2 light years away. That's not how God's light came.  He didn't just shine from the distance.  The source of the light came into the world.

Christmas People are missional.
 God comes.  Coming is the other side of giong. .  Coming and going is at the heart of His mission and ours.  It's interesting that John sees God's mission from our viewpoint.  You see, whether someone is coming or going depends on the viewpoint of the observer.  When I leave the house Pam says to me “Where are you going?”  And when I arrive at your house you say “Thanks for coming to visit.” 

Christmas People are incarnational.
The word became flesh. That's how the light came. Veiled in flesh.  We beheld his glory.  He entered our experience.  He became human.  Mission is not just about words.  It's almost hard-wired into our Scottish Baptist psyche that we need to tell people they are sinners in need of a Saviour.  Yes, that is the Truth that will set people free.  But in order to enable people to receive that truth, Jesus came, not simply to take on flesh and then die for sins, but also to live a life that demonstrated the truth – putting father’s love visibly in front of people.  Light, present with them.  God's Word, become flesh.  And if we are going to help people receive that truth, we need to clothe that truth in flesh, we need to be present among men and women.

Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas has a reputation for hate-based campaigning. In the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut School massacre, they wanted to hold a “praise service” praising God for supposedly “judging America” through these killings... Dr John Drane, a Scottish theologian and mission specialist, asked on Facebook: “What are Scottish Baptists going to do to distance themselves from this bunch? The average person in the street won't know the difference.”  I liked the answer of the Pastor from Girvan.  “basically we do everything we can to show the love of Jesus to all in our community, whether they live like we'd hope they would or not. That way, when folk around here read about Westboro Baptist, the 'average person in the street' recognises the difference.”  That's the answer.  Its' about incarnation.  

Christmas People are developing. 
They know coming involves becoming.   Mission means a transformation of us, a becoming.  Here's something difficult to grasp. God, who is complete, perfect, full of knowledge became flesh.  Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, became flesh. The lamb slain before the foundation of the earth, became flesh.  God is allowing something to happen to himself. God who is eternally perfect, adds frailty to his perfection.   He did it in order to bring light to our darkness; he did it in order to bring life to or death, grace for our sins. 

We can never ever do that for another human being. We don't have to because Jesus did it all, once for all.  But Jesus said – and John recorded it – “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”  Mission for us will be patterned on what we see in Jesus.  Mission is incarnational.  And mission involves becoming... We learn; we grow; we understand; we adapt; we build bridges; we pay the cost.  We change.  How many Baptists does it take to change a light-bulb?  One answer:  “The majority at a Church meeting.”  Another answer: “Baptists – change?” But I'm not talking about superficial change – putting the service half an hour earlier. I'm talking about becoming.  Becoming like Jesus. Becoming like our neighbours.  Incarnation is at the heart of mission. 

Christmas People know mission is uncomfortable.
Becoming, change, is painful. Living internationally among people is painful.  Jesus knows this. He has experienced it. He came to his own and his own received him not.        There will be moments when we feel ill at ease in our world.  There will be moments when our world feels ill at ease with us.  How do we fit in while maintaining faithfulness to God's word?

I sometimes feel very uncomfortable in the world we live in.  On Christmas Day we woke up about 8 and I listened to Radio 4 at 8.30 a.m.   The discussion was about using Christmas leftovers.  Someone says “Everyone has ham, so why not make turkey and ham pie?”  This in a  world where 1/5 of the population have less than 50p a day to live on.  How do I live generously among my family while living radically among the poor?  How can we be an inclusive community and remain faithful the Biblical teaching on sexuality? 

Christmas People are expectantly generous.
v. 12f. “He gave  the right to become children of God.”  Christ comes full of grace and truth. He gives to us, grace upon grace. He transforms us – through generosity.  He became flesh so that we could become sons of God.  Have you spent some of your time amazed at the generosity of your heavenly Father this Christmas?  I was talking to our Pete after last Sunday  and he was saying that a couple of the carols brought tears to his eyes – and it wasn't my dodgy keyboard playing, it was the majesty of God's grace.  I know it wasn’t my playing because it happened to me on Christmas eve: “Silent night, Holy night, Son of god, Oh how bright love is smiling from they face, strikes for us now the hour of grace, saviour since Thou art born!”

To be Christmas people means generosity. We give like God gives.  One grace after another.  Grace is more than just undeserved favour. That's mercy.  Grace is joy-giving, generous, pleasing, thankful, makes the other person thankful...  and when one pleasing, generous favour is worn out, there's another one in its place.  That's how God gives and how he wants us to give.

Grace (charis) is charismatic.  The giving of a generous missional church is done in the expectancy that a miracle will happen, a rebirth not of flesh or of the will of man but of God.  A miracle happening in the life of the other person, just as it has happened in your life by God's grace. 

And the resources for all of this? 

 That's where we need to get back to the beginning. In the beginning was the word.  The word was God.   God could do it because he is God.  And God can do it with us – because he is God.  Because we have received of his grace, because the supernatural has touched or lives, grace upon grace, we can be the means by which words become flesh; we can live incarnationally, generously, in an uncomfortable world.

That's Christmas.  The word became flesh.  That's God's mission: not just words, but words become flesh.  And that's our mission too.  God calls us to be a Christmas people.  The world needs to see us come among them; making Gospel words become flesh.  And the glorious thing is that it is possible.



© Gilmour Lilly December 2012