Day 384 - The Gracious Deeds of the Lord

A Sermon Given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN, December 29, 2013
OT Reading: Isaiah 63:7-9
NT Reading: John 1:1-18

Sometimes fortuitous things happen. I begin this sermon by thanking Billy Crowe for asking me a week ago for some notes to use in a talk on John.  My preparation for Billy caused me to think over how this lectionary text and the whole Gospel of John fit into the Christmas story.

When a person distills the history of a Gospel into a short summary, things take on a different perspective and one begins to see how the pieces fit together. Today I would like to share some of those thoughts on John that do that.

If you sit down and read Matthew, Mark and Luke one after the other, you will find some differences but overall you should realize you are hearing a fairly consistent Gospel Story. We find most of the same parables, most of the same events and relatively similar language and timeline.  The major differences are Matthew and Luke fill in details about the birth and about the post resurrection of Jesus that Mark does not mention. Overall you hear three versions of the basic story of the Good News, so we call them the “Synoptic Gospels.”

One author¹ says that if you then pick up John and read it, your reaction might be like leaving your home for a long vacation and returning to find the house has been remodeled and all the furniture rearranged. It is the same house but everything looks different. The Gospel of John poses dramatic differences from Mark, Matthew and Luke. Some events are missing, The timeline is much longer, Jesus stays in Jerusalem longer at the time of the crucifixion. There are many more I could list. However, my purpose is to explain how John is powerfully faithful to the Gospel story.

When we read the first 18 verses didn’t you get a sense of sweeping, grand imagery?  Frequently in the Psalms we read a deep theological statement and find the word single selah appended to it. For example Psalm 85: 1-2: “LORD, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah.”

One of my old pastors, Rev. Charles Evans, who was a professor at Shorter College in Rome once said in a sermon, we really don’t exactly know what that Hebrew word selah means but the closest we can get to it is the strong exclamation, “How about that! Let’s stop and think about what was just said.” Isaiah 63:7-9 captures the spirit of selah.

Another minister² says you cannot preach these eighteen verses, you can only open the Book, stand it up on the pulpit, knell and pray about it.  Maybe we should place selah after verse 18 and just do that?

If you do step back into that prayerful stance reading John, you come to the sense that John is the story of the Good News told from a perspective that the message of the Good News is far more important than the physical perspective presented in Mark, Luke and Matthew.  John seems really not so much a book for missionaries and one-on-one conversion as it is a book to build and uphold the faith of practicing Christians. These 18 verses underscore that view.

My sermon would run way over the time if I talked about all the interesting details of these verses. I want only to leave with you several points about God and Jesus for your thoughts this coming week.

John gives us his perspective of the salvation of the world.  He starts with what is almost certainly a very ancient liturgical hymn of the earliest Christian congregations. It captures the whole Christmas story and also the entire relationship of God to humanity from the preexistence of time (the reality that existed before time began) until this moment.

John uses the word, “Word” in a special way. The Word means the revelation or communication by God of God. Word, Jesus Christ and God are one in the same, and not. By “The Word” John means Jesus is the revelation and communication of God to humanity.  In verse 18, John tells us that Jesus is the only way we know God. This is a subtle but important point that moves us towards our later idea of the Trinity and I’ll return to that in a minute.

The word “World” is a translation of the Greek cosmos. Cosmos does not mean just the earth but everything that exists and is sensible from the dust under our feet to the stars in the most remote part of the sky. (Quite literally by using a word to define everything that is known, the Greek defines all that is not known - “everything else.”)  When we read verse 10, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him,” we could say “in the beginning the system was in place and it was God.” In other words, everything exists because of, or as God’s Divine plan.

When John writes in verse 12 and 13, “ ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of Day 3 or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God,” The word flesh does not mean carnality or sensuality but simply human existence.³ The believer is not born of human existence but of God.  Selah!

Verse 14 (and 10) says, “the Word (=Jesus=God’s revelation) lived among us,” but the actual Greek (and Hebrew) actually reads, “When he pitched a tent among us.” John is connecting the Jesus, the Word, to ancient Jewish theology, Joel 3:16-17 “The LORD roars from Zion, …and the heavens and the earth shake. But the LORD is a refuge for his people so you shall know that I, the LORD your God dwell in Zion, my holy mountain.” and Ezekiel 43:7, “He said to me: Mortal, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet, where I will reside among the people of Israel forever.” It recalls the ark carried by the Israelites as they fled Egypt to the Promised Land.

So you see, this hymn is a grant summary of our existence connecting the heart to Jesus. It captures the core of our faith. How does the John’s gospel begin?  It begins with the exact words of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here is Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,  2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” With this verse John drives home the point that Jesus was the Word (revelation or communication of God) in the beginning, which means he was before time began, He was (in) that wind that swept over the deep; Jesus is God. Selah! (Do you get what I mean about John and Selah?)

Even more profoundly important, this passage declares that all that exists now is a fulfillment of a preexistent Divine plan, a plan that has been in existence in the beginning, or before time began. Of course you know I like those words if you remember I often tell you we all have a calling, a vocation that rests in the preexistent Divine cosmic plan.

Verses 3 -5 say, “ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people…and the darkness did not overcome it.” This verse hearkens back to Gen 1:4, “And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”  That is, Jesus brought all things into existence from the primordial darkness that was before everything. The words “he was the light of all people” means Jesus is the revelation of God to humanity and we are all part of that light.

Then we reach the core of Christian belief in verses 10-13.  “He came into the world through God, the world did not know him and his people did not accept Him but to all who do accept him and believe in his name receive the power of God’s children who are born not of flesh and blood but of God.”

We find the last message in verse 16, ¹From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace,” in other word, God did this because he loved the world, his creation. Do you recall John 3:16, where John writes, “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life?”

Then John cements in our minds the Divine power of what has just been sung (remember this is a Hymn), “ (17)…Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (18) No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”  It is only through Jesus that we know God, and now that Jesus is gone and sits beside God, we have the Holy Spirit to inform us.

John has captured the whole Christmas story, down to John the Baptist preparing the way as the lamp holder for the coming Light and the Easter story. (1) Jesus was with God forever, eternally. (2) Jesus brought all things into existence from the darkness. (3) John the Baptist prepared the way as a lamp holder. (4) Jesus lived in the world as human among us and was unknown or denied by his own people but he gave grace of life to those who believed in him because (5) God loves the world. As I said at the beginning of this sermon, sometimes the best we can do is read these words and just think of the blessing of grace we have received in this Christmas season and say selah! 

Let’s step back and take in a bit of information about who we think was John’s community. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, the Jews were once again left only with the Law as happened in the Babylonian Captivity. As is often the case when the existence of a religious group is threatened it turns to a very conservative perspective of its religious belief and holds it tightly against any dilution or change since it is all it has left as spiritual identity.  After Rome crushed the Jewish rebellion in 70CE many of the Jews who had embraced Christianity and remained faithful Jews in the synagogues became objects of persecution as polytheistic heretics. The priests and Pharisees of the synagogues chased them out, excommunicated them from fellowship and even martyred some.

Although the book clearly speaks to Gentiles  (I am preaching from John today), its original intent was to buttress the faith and hope of those Christians who were chased from the synagogue and under siege. John gives them the message “Do not worry, the existence of the faithful is guaranteed.” That is what it says to us today.

Many of us feel the modern church is under siege, or perhaps a better way to say it, feel that the pressures and temptations of the world undermine faith. We might take this Word of John as a sign for us today that we have not lost our identity or way when Jesus ascended into heaven. We have no need to fear loss because the kingdom of God is here. We are part of that Divine preexisting plan. The world cannot defeat Christianity. Our job is to hold onto that faith embodied in the two greatest commandments and always look for ways to reflect the light of Christ into the darkness of the world.

The greatest value of history is that it is a record of mistakes and successes. Its study helps us avoid the errors and build on the successes of the past.

We celebrate the founding of this congregation 185 years ago on Dec. 1, 1828; the congregation we affectionately call, “Our Zion.” As Dr. Fowle says in the foreword of its history, it was the first non-Indian church in the area and has faithfully been the “Torch of the Gospel.” I wonder if this is not a good time to re-read John 1:1-18 and think about where the torch of “Our Zion,” First Presbyterian Church, has traveled and where God wants us to take that light today?

John tells us our only path in this world is through darkness so we may bring His Light. The book of Revelation tells us God will take care of his people, he will take care of his church until he comes again. Let us open our ears and minds to the only Son, the Word, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known and find the strength to carry on. Selah!

1. Carl R. Holladay, A Critical Introduction to The New Testament, The Gospel of John, Abingdon Press: Nashville (2005)  198

2. George Hermanson, http://www.holytextures.com/2010/11/john-1-1-9-10-18-year-a-b-c-christmas-2-sermon.html

3. Brian Blount: http://jointhefeast.blogspot.com/2008/12/jan-4-2009-john-11-9-10-18-brian-blount_1920.html

Note: Scripture is NRSV from the Oremus Bible Viewer.