John 1:1-14
December 25, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
I hope that you gave and received some wonderful gifts. One of the joys of Christmas is that it is a time of gift-giving. And there’s really nothing wrong with offering presents on this particular holiday. After all, it was on Christmas day that God gave us the greatest present of all time—the gift of his Son Jesus, Savior of the world.
Some of you were amused when the program for the last Men’s Fellowship was on the topic, “What to Buy Her for Christmas—The Good, the Buy and the Ugly.” The topic was so popular that we had some guys who came for the first time so that they might get some ideas for their gift-giving. We swore to secrecy to what we planned to give but one of the learnings we received is that it is not so much the financial value of the gift as it is how thoughtful the giver is in giving the gift. So if you didn’t get that expensive gift this year, we were giving “thoughtfulness!”
By now, at the end of the year and in a season of giving, we are seeing articles and reports about how much charitable giving people contributed this past year. This was a big year in giving. If we didn’t know it before we all know now how to spell the word, “tsunami.” Names like Katrina and Rita trigger in our memories of hurricane disasters and the ongoing recovery of New Orleans. We had earthquakes in Pakistan. Every time when our planet is hit with a natural or human-made disaster, we invite you to reach deep down in your pockets to send aid of money, food, clothing and shelter. There has always been an outpouring of generosity in us. Those who are suffering are in our thoughts.
There was a Baptist church in the Midwest that did not send money or clothes to hurricane ravaged Florida. They sent themselves. Those in the church who had jobs took time off from work by using their vacation days. They piled into a dozen pickup trucks and campers and headed to Florida to help. They set up camp on the outskirts of a desperate little town and there they cooked meals, babysat, fixed roofs, clear debris, and became close friends with the people of the town.
Now, aid in most any form is well appreciated. But which type of aid do you think was most appreciated—money or the labor of love?
Most of you know that I along with 7 others from our church will be traveling to Thailand in January for our Thailand Mission Discovery trip. At two locations, we are scheduled to meet elementary students and orphans. The missionaries have given us a list of gifts that the children might like to have. Our team has been writing to companies to donate coloring books, crayons, little toys, and See’s lollipops. We’ll also bring along our church’s new history books, cookbooks, and even the little replicas of our church building to give to missionaries and church leaders.
We pray that our little tokens of gifts will be put to good use and that they would reflect our church’s commitment to mission and ministry. But our greater hope and prayer is not that they received something that we have to give but instead who we are as sisters and brothers in Christ.
Missionaries have shared that all of the monies and gifts that we give can all be put to good use which they are most grateful. But they are even more grateful that people from the United States would come to be with them. When visitors are rare, the work that they have with the national leaders can get lonely. They are thankful that American Christians would come to see them, stand beside them, and to stand with them.
We can bring many gifts and that is well and good. But when we travel to Thailand, the greatest gifts we bring will be ourselves.
You can begin to guess where I’m going with this Christmas message. This is a season of gift giving and gift receiving. But the greatest of gifts is personal.
A pastor was visiting an older member of his church one day in late January. He was admiring her new, very large, very expensive LCD TV. She proudly told the pastor that the TV was her Christmas gift from her son who lived in another state with his family.
“How thoughtful of your son to send you such a fine, big television,” the pastor said.
She agreed. But then she said, “Still, I’d gladly return even so nice a gift as this in exchange for just one day’s visit with him. I haven’t seen him for more than two years.”
God’s Gift
In our Gospel message for today, we read from John that God is the one who comes into the world to give us a gift. This God does not remain aloof, distant, and detached. God dares to break into creation, into history, into the darkness of our earthly existence.
The Word, the eternal Word of God—God from God, Light of all light, the one who cast the stars in their courses at creation and flung the planets into being—this God has become flesh and moved in with us. John does not say that Jesus was a messenger from God, or that the Christ was an ordained representative from God; rather, John says that he was God. The Word was God.
What we want for Christmas is not any expensive gift wrapped up in fancy paper and ribbons. What we really want even though we don’t know that, is to have a close relationship with God. All of our restless striving, our rushing here and there, our grabbing and getting, our buying and accumulating, all was an attempt to find what we need to have—light and life. We may have been too frenetic about all of the preparations for the season. We may have spent too much on ourselves and our children. We may have expected too much of the holiday.
Yet this day, as John announces to us, “In him was life and the life was the light of all people…The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world,” we realize that what we need and desire the most is God. What we need is not that which we can order through a catalogue or shop online. What we need is that which must come to us as pure gift—God himself.
And on this day, Christmas, it comes to us. God comes to us, the Word who was with God, and who is God, coming to everyone, enlightening a darkened world.
Dwelt Among Us
When the Word became flesh, the Word “lived among us” according to John. The Greek word for “live” or “dwell” literary means “tented among us.” The Word pitched a tent among us in human form so that there was no longer any more distance between God and creation. God is with us.
Things between us and God were never good, and always have been bad. God tried. God sent us the prophets to tell us the truth, gave us the Holy Scriptures, the great stories of the faith. But now God gives himself. God comes to us as Jesus the Christ.
Before this story is done, we shall see God with us, walking among us, speaking to us, teaching us, guiding us, forgiving us, raising us. God in the flesh will lead us down a path we could not, would not have taken ourselves. Then the story ends with our coming to the God who has come to us.
The last book of the Bible, Revelation, in the next to the last chapter, hears the hosts of heaven sing, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…” (Rev. 21:3)
When we read about the future recorded in Revelation, it is not so much a picture of heaven, some other-worldly place. It is a picture of this world made right, creation at last completed as God wills. At the end, our being is not being moved to some other world, but rather with the Kingdom of God, the heavenly city descending to this world, with this world renewed and redeemed. This world is important to God as we know in John 3:16.
The new world comes from God, as a descent from God, as God works in the world.
The gospel is not a story about how we climbed up to God, but the reverse: a story about how God came down to us. Our destiny is not that we should ascend to some other world, but rather that God should descend, and by descending, redeem this world with God’s full, shining presence in Christ.
That is the end of the story. The point of it all is that God will be with us and we shall be with God. When Revelation says that God’s “home” will be with us, it’s the same word that John uses to describe the coming of the Christ. God will be at home with us, will tent with us.
An Enlightening Community
Bible translators have offered two credible translations of John 1:9. The participle, “coming into the world” may either mean that “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” which is the way the NRSV puts it, or “He was the true light that enlightens everyone coming into the world” (Note b), which implies that any of us who are born into a world is enlightened by Christ. One translation would speak primarily of Christ as the one coming into the world. The other speaks of Christ as the Light of all of us who come into the world.
Christ is the light, but he does not simply shine; rather, he is the light that shines upon us, all of us who are in the world. He does not simply shine in some far-off heaven. He shines in the darkness, our darkness, in the world.
As children of the light of God, we are called to share this incredible gift of Jesus Christ that God has given to us and to the entire world. This gift is not just for us to keep but it’s for us to share.
The Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn is credited with this story. Once upon a time, there was a magic ring that gave its wearer the gifts of grace, kindness, and generosity. When the owner of the ring was on his deathbed, each of his three sons came in one at a time and asked for the ring. In reply, the old man promised the ring to each of them. Before he passed away, he sent for the finest jeweler and paid him to make two rings that were identical to the original one. The jeweler did that, and before he died, the man gave each son one of the rings without telling him about the other two. After a while, the three sons discovered that each of them had been given a ring. So they went before a local judge to help them decide who had the magical ring. The judge carefully scrutinized each ring but could not tell them apart. The judge declared, “We shall know who has the magic ring when we observe the direction your life takes.” Each of the brothers then acted as if he had the magic ring by being kind, honest, and thoughtful.
As children of the Light of God, we live with the belief that God is with us. When we seek kindness, justice, and thoughtfulness, our lives shine in our darkened world.
What we really want for Christmas is to be a Christian. From John’s Gospel, a Christian is someone upon whom Light has shined, the Light that is coming into the world. Christians are not smarter or necessarily morally better than the rest of humanity. We are simply those whom Light has shined. We have seen the Light. We have walked forward toward the Light.
Yet, though this sounds like a modest claim for believers, and indeed is a modest claim, it is a claim that makes all the difference in our lives. That is why this day is so honored by us. That’s why we sing: “Hallelujah!” because God is with us!
Let us pray.
With angels and archangels, with prophets and apostles, we come before your throne on this Christmas day, O God, and proclaim, “Holy, holy, holy! Glory to God in the highest heaven!” Despite our sin, despite the way that our world has turned away from you time and time again, you have not given up on us. For into the midst of our darkness you sent the one true Light, which is Jesus Christ. That Light has shined, and will continue to shine, forever and ever, for no darkness is able to overcome it. Therefore in the midst of the darkness that we find ourselves this day, help us to draw strength and hope from the knowledge that you are with us now and always. O God, it is you whom we really want for Christmas. Amen.