Moving Into the Neighborhood

Jan 4, 2015                                                                                       

John 1:1-18

 

A couple of weeks before Christmas, an elderly man in Phoenix telephoned his adult son in New York. He said, “Son, your mother and I have been married for 40 years, and I just wanted to call and tell you that we’ve decided to get a divorce.” 

His son was aghast. He said, “Dad, that’s terrible! Don’t you and Mother do a thing until I’ve had a chance to come and talk to you. I’ll be on the next plane to Phoenix!” 

They hung up, and the son called his sister in Chicago. He said, “Sis, Dad just called. He told me that he and Mom are getting a divorce.”

His sister said, “Like heck they are! I’ll meet you in Phoenix, and we’ll talk some sense into them.” 

She hung up and immediately telephoned her father. She said, “Dad, brother just called me and told me that, after 40 years of marriage, you and Mom have decided to get a divorce. Don’t you do a thing until I’ve had a chance to talk with you. I’ll be on the next plane to Phoenix.” 

Her father hung up, turned to his wife, and said, “Honey, both kids are going to be home for Christmas, and they’re paying their own way!”

Prayer

VIDEO: Amena Brown

I love this video from Amena Brown, it not only tells the story of God based on our gospel story, but goes on to describe what God does for humanity. I especially like the part when she says, “The word became flesh, but moved into the neighborhood.”

I also like John’s gospel for it’s refreshing look at how God interacts with people. The story’s seem to be more complete and poignant our human story… not that the other gospels don’t… but John’s seems to do this better for me. Look at the Wedding Feast… The Samaritan Woman… Nicodemus… The Feeding of the Thousands… Lazarus…  For me… the stories in John seem to have a personal aspect to them and in my view so does our story today. For me… this story is where the fairy-tale of faith ends and the flesh and blood reality of my faith begins. It’s where my identity as a Jesus follower draws its roots and the messiness of life meets the light of the world.

As David Lose says, “Christmas reminds us of God’s decision to become one of us, to take on our lot and our life that we might have hope, and to share our mortal life that we might enjoy God’s.” 

So… for me… our story from John’s gospel puts flesh and bones on my faith.

I remember when I was on internship I had to do a children’s message on this story. It didn’t go well… I mean how do you tell 3-6 year olds the Word was God… the Word was in the world… the Word became flesh? And being in an academic frame of mind… well this didn’t impress to many people.

So… what is God saying to us today?

While I’m not the brightest rock in the pile… I’d like to believe I’ve learned a couple of things over the past 10 years of being a pastor. So… kids… let’s give it a try… OK!

John is writing from a cave on the island of Patmos off the coast of Ephesus (modern day Turkey) around the year 90. He’s the only living witness to Jesus left of which there are very few of his generation left. John is writing to a Christian Community who has forgotten the identity of Jesus. This group is much more ethnically diverse & includes people who have Jewish, Samaritan, & Greek backgrounds, and this community is arguing about the identity of Jesus.

Some are claiming Jesus was not who he said he was… and that he was not the Messiah. Others are saying Jesus was not really from God, nor that he was one with God. Perhaps, this sounds familiar… we hear this a lot even today. Maybe some of you have thought this way. So… John… the last living eye witness to the real Jesus is writing to the church saying… “Jesus is the real deal.”

Therefore, John starts his gospel, not with the birth of Jesus as Matt & Luke do, and not with the baptism of Jesus as Mark does, but at the beginning of it all…. John is taking us back to the creation of it all.

In the Beginning

“In the beginning was God”…. John does this to remind the faith community he’s writing to as well as us today that Jesus goes back to the beginning and that this is the foundation of faith. Gen 1:26… God says, “Let Us make humans in our image, and in our likeness.” So John starts with the Word that was God and was with God as a means to communicate with this faith community that they have forgotten what is most important. And John gospel is fitting for us as well… because in many ways we have forgotten what is most important as well.

And We See this as God Working thru Humanity Vs 6… “God sends a man named John to tell about the light.” John is the Baptist shows up proclaiming someone is coming… So John… our gospel writer wants us to see that God is using others to proclaim what God is going to do.

God sends you & me to do this as well. Most of us dismiss this…. Most of us can’t believe God would use me. Most of us don’t see how God could use us… we’re nobody special. Look around you… I see smiles from people that you help… I see tears of joy on you when you are the face of God to someone. I see the gifts and passions you have. I see your faces when someone not part of this community gives a complete Thanksgiving Dinner to help a family in need. Because of this proclamation… John says in Vs 12…”Some of you put your faith in Him.”

Of course for me the cool part is God Moved into the Neighborhood.

Vs 14… God becomes human & lives with us.

God moved into the neighborhood.  Did anyone see the movie Avatar?… Jake a paralyzed ex-marine learns of a mission to a distant newly discovered moon of earth that is inhabited by characters called Na’vi.

To get to this place he has to become a Na’vi… in order to do this he must make an Avatar of himself to be like them. The government has MRI type machines that re-make you into an Avatar Na’vi character which takes you into the Na’vi world. Reality & the virtual worlds are meshed so convincingly no one can tell the difference. In the end… the movie is about good & evil.

In the movie… Jake sort of becomes a Christ figure… Jake comes from another world into the Na’vi world and becomes one of them. He spends time with them… eats what they eat…drinks what they drink, and loves them. Jake then sacrifices himself to save the Na’vi people. Evil is defeated and the Na’vi people live.

Like-wise God became one of us in the person of Jesus. God thru Jesus ate & drank… suffered… experience our pain… and loved us. God thru Jesus became intimately involved in our lives. This is what we have just proclaimed & celebrated over the past couple of weeks… “Emmanuel”… “GOD WITH US”

Close with a story from Jamie Clark-Soles… “If the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, if the Word of God came out of the birth canal of a woman’s body, grew, ate, went to the bathroom, sometimes bathed, struggled against demons, sweated, wept, exulted, transfigured, was physically violated and rotted away in a tomb just before being gloriously resurrected, then the Bible must have flesh on it.

If a valley of dry bones can live again, then bones and blood and bread and flesh and bodies should never be left behind when trying to understand the grime and glory of scripture. Any interpretation that denounces the material, created order, including our own bodies, should be suspect. From birth to death our bodies swell and shrink, are wet with milk, and sweat, and urine and vomit, and sex and blood, and water and wounds that fester and stink and are healed and saved and redeemed and die and are resurrected.

If you can’t glory in or at least talk about these basic realities in church while reading scripture, then haw can scripture truly intersect with or impact life? We might  as well just go and read a Jane Austen novel; though I doubt we’ll ever be transformed or made whole or saved by it.”

As we enter this new week of this New Year in which the Magi come with their gifts and God is revealed once again thru their witness… let’s be open to the newness of the good news that refreshes our hearts and minds, that we too can see God with Us in our community.