This sermon was preached originally on January 3rd, 2010, at All Pilgrims Christian Church. I preached an updated version of it on January 2nd, 2011, at Magnolia United Methodist Church. The manuscript is from the 2010 worship service, and the audio is from the 2011 worship service. As usual, I recommend listening if you are able, because vocal tone and inflection is important in the preaching event.
Audio: Word of God; January 2011 Sermon by Katie Stickney
The Word of God
Text: John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. 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. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
These are the first words of the gospel of John, the only gospel that starts out with such cosmological, poetic language. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tell the story of Jesus’ life in much more down-to-earth ways. These gospels begin with stories of people doing things in the world. Some talk about Mary’s pregnancy, Jesus’ birth and early days, others include lists of Jesus’ ancestors. John begins with the cosmological language: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
If these words have a familiar ring to you, it’s probably because they also begin the first book of the Scriptures—the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter one, verse one, begins: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” and the passage goes on to describe what God did each day of the first seven “days” of creation. Genesis starts out by saying that in the beginning God created. In the beginning, God existed. In the beginning, God simply was. John, who is attempting in this gospel reading to convey to the hearer who Jesus was, refers back to the early language of Genesis. For John believes that Jesus, being God’s son and being God himself, was always with God. John’s claim here is that the person of Christ existed always, not only during the life of the man we know as Jesus. That Christ was present back in that creation story recorded in Genesis, and even that everything came into being through him. John says: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
All of the gospels tell us about the life, ministry, and love of the man Jesus. John in particular focuses on the divine nature of Jesus, on the belief that Jesus was himself fully God. Church tradition tells us that Jesus was simultaneously fully human and fully God. Frankly, in some of the other gospels, one might not even get the “fully God” part of that. It is in this book of John where the “fully God” part of Jesus’ nature is really expressed. This is who John believes that Jesus is—fully one with God in heaven, fully divine, but emptying himself of part of his divinity for a period of time to come and dwell among us on earth.
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. This part of the passage would have been the most shocking to the original hearers of this message. In those days, that which was of the spirit and that which was of the body were sharply divided. “flesh” was the term used to describe that which was of the body, and it signaled by definition that which was devoid of God. In this category folks would put our desires, our sexuality, our hungers, and our sin. One of the primary tasks of the religious folks of this time was to try to rise above “the flesh” and be spiritual, which was synonymous with being loving, self-denying, and holy. To say that God’s Son, the Christ, took on the flesh was quite a radical thing to say. In that sense, John was disagreeing with folks who want to make this sharp distinction between the flesh and the spiritual. No, John is saying, the flesh is not something that we should try to run away from! Jesus himself came to us in the flesh so that we could better understand God’s love for us.
Better understanding God’s love for us was the primary purpose of Jesus coming to us. This is why Jesus here is referred to as the Word. Jesus’ presence with us was a way for God to communicate with us that God loves us. The Greek word used for “Word” here is logos which could be translated in many ways, including simply “word,” or speech, discourse, language, thought, reason, message, account, document, or book. All of these involve communication. All of them involve trying to convey a message from one person to another. Jesus is the Word of God and that word is Love!
Jesus demonstrated love to the people he was with. He unconditionally accepted and loved everyone around him, even when they abandoned or betrayed him, even when they were caught in sin. He even asked God to forgive those who crucified him! But his life wasn’t the only way that Jesus demonstrated God’s love for us. Just coming at all was a demonstration of this love. If Jesus was truly with God, and was God, always, then choosing to come to earth in the flesh was a choice Jesus made to limit himself. There is a term for this, which theologians like to use, called kenosis. Kenosis is the Greek word for emptiness and when used to describe Christ it means that he emptied himself of certain aspects of his divine nature in order to assume a human nature. By definition God is infinite—we can’t pin God down with language or images, because whatever we use to describe God, God is always so much more than that. By choosing to reveal Godself in a human form, God had to give up some of the infinite nature.
There are three things we need to address here in talking about Jesus emptying himself and coming to us in human form.
First, what I am describing to you here is one way of understanding the person of Jesus, and not necessarily every Christian believes these exact things. You don’t have to believe or agree with everything I’m saying here. In fact, what’s important is not so much whether this is all exactly how it happened or not, but rather the important thing is the truth this story conveys about the deep and unconditional love that God has for all of us. This story has been with us for centuries, that God became limited so that God could communicate God’s love to us.
Second, this isn’t just a pretty story. Jesus’ choice to empty himself of some of his infinite nature, some of his divine power, was not just in being alive as a human man but also in dying a human death because the “powers that be” in his culture were not able or willing to accept the truth of his message. The love Jesus demonstrated here is not just a warm fuzzy feeling. It is truly a love which is willing to experience hardship, sorrow, and pain in order for others to find ways of truly living. As John describes it, Jesus was the light shining in the darkness, and the darkness had not overcome the light—we know that, because we know that Christ is still alive and with us today. And yet Christ also did not eradicate darkness. There are still many ways we all experience darkness in our lives, and it can often be very difficult to accept the message of God’s love for us—not only because it is often hard to feel worthy of that love, but also because that love often challenges us in our comfortable places, to go out and do things that are scary or painful. The kind of love that Jesus demonstrates is the kind of love that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable… but most of us here in this room have some areas where we are afflicted and some areas where we are comfortable. God’s love is there to comfort us in areas where we are experiencing oppression and pain… but God’s love also challenges us in areas where we have gotten too comfortable or experience too much privilege. The reward, though, of accepting and responding to this healing and challenging love is that we become children of God, adopted into a heavenly family that is full to the brim of the unconditional love that all of us seek.
Third, it is important to answer the question: Why would God have to be limited to communicate God’s love in the first place? Why must there be a Word at all?
The answer to this question is simply that we are finite, embodied creatures. We have bodies that have clear boundaries. We exist in this form for only a short and finite period of time. We do have sparks of the divine in us; the Holy Spirit dwells within us, but we also experience the world in embodied ways, through touching, hearing, tasting, and seeing. Because we ourselves are embodied, we can only experience God in embodied ways. Thus God came to us in the person of Jesus as a human being that we could touch, see, and hear. While Jesus could not stay alive foreve in human form, his words were written down for future generations—that’s us!—to have something tangible to pick up and read (pick up Bible if possible).
Jesus isn’t the only Word of God. Sometimes we refer to the Bible as the Word of God. We don’t mean that the Bible contains the literal words of God, we mean that just as Jesus was a physical embodiment of God’s love, so too is the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God insofar as it provides an experience of the living God and God’s love for us. And the Word of God can be communicated through all sorts of other ways too! You don’t often hear it in these terms, but truly, wherever we encounter an embodiment of God’s love, something that stirs us change our lives for the better, to help those in need of help, to be more loving, to seek justice, that is also a Word of God. That means that music can be a Word of God. A book, whether it’s written by a Christian author or not, can be a Word of God. A website, a blog, a text message, a phone call can all be Words of God. The beauty of creation in the changing color of the leaves can be a Word of God. A pet that provides us comfort and companionship when we are lonely can be a Word of God.
And the coolest part is that this means that WE too can be Words of God for each other! I had a professor in seminary, Fr. Keith Brehob, who said, “Each of you is a sacred Word of God, spoken only once.” God spoke each of you into existence, with unique gifts, talents, and passions, and only you can love the world in the unique way that God made you to love the world. As we enter a time of silence I invite you to think about what specific ways God may be calling you to speak God’s love into the world right now. You are a sacred Word of God, and you have been created to speak God’s Word of love into the world.