"What's The Good Word?" - Christmas Day

The Nativity of Our Lord - Christmas Day
Saint John 1:1–14

“What’s the Good Word?”

For over thirty-years I have been climbing into this pulpit and for thousands of years rabbis and pastors have been mounting platforms of one kind or another because we knew the power of “a good word.”
  
You know it too.  You know that words that are put together carefully and come at just the right moment can do a world of good.  Words that are strung together in anger can do a word of hurt.

Some of you may have been hurt even this week of Christmas by someone’s words that were said in haste.  Words that were said in haste and judged you and can never be taken back. 
 
I pray that most of you heard some words that were so tender and caring that they filled your heart so full you almost heard angels singing. 

Think about the difference four little words can make.  The words “I love you deeply” can bring peace on earth to you.  The words “You are not good enough” can cause your whole world to seem, well, not good enough.

From the beginning God used words as a creative force. 

Remember how the whole biblical drama begins. 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 1

God’s word was the creating force.  It caused light to shine but that was not the end because we know that in this world there is also darkness. 

As one Eucharistic prayer puts it “when we brought on chaos, cruelty and despair” the struggle started between God’s light and our darkness.

As someone who watches a lot of news I can see everyday this struggle being played out.  We can watch now on our television screens how everyday the world seems to turn away from the light back into the darkness. 

And we can see it in our own lives too.  It’s a struggle to keep our face turned the light but we do it because everyone of us in this room have known people whose have so much darkness in their hearts that they know more about fear and anger than they do faith and love.

The Gospel of John tells us that God does not want us to live that way.  God wants us to live  and so sent someone who not only taught us how to live in the light but was the light. 

You see, a word like that just can’t be spoken it has to have flesh and bone, body and blood.  It has to be real.  It had to be a person.  It had to be Jesus.

Last night we heard his story from Saint Luke’s gospel.  It was full of people like you and me wandering around in the darkness. 

A couple looking for a place to stay in a crowded city. 

An innkeeper wondering and worrying if he is going to have enough provisions for his over crowded inn. 

Shepherds who sat around looking at a dark night sky. 

That was last night’s story.

This morning, in the light of day, we have John beginning his story before time even began.
Knowingly, I think, starting his gospel with the same words that began the creation story, he writes:

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. 2

The Word we get from Saint John is a word that is unafraid of the darkness.  It is a Word that can pierce the darkness with hope.  It is a word about love and forgiveness.  That’s what you get in Jesus.  According to the biblical drama, your life began not with the words “It’s a boy!” or It’s a girl!” but “In the beginning God...”

And so, according to Dr. M. Craig Barnes when he was pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church,
 your life began with the words, “In the beginning God.”

So the gospel truth is that your life began not with your own dreams, but with God’s dreams. And from the beginning, a God has dreamed of being your Savior in Jesus Christ. Before you started making decisions or even mistakes, before you even decided you needed a savior, Jesus Christ has been at work in your life. As the Son was with the Father and the Spirit at creation, shoving aside the darkness to bring light, so has he been at work in your life bringing creative hope into every dark moment.

Dr. Michael M. Brown, the marvelous new Senior Minister at the Marble-Collegiate Church in New York gave a wonderful example of how this works in a recent sermon. 

He said that as a little guy he was afraid of the dark and so his mother and father would, after he said his prayers and they said good-night, leave his bedroom door ajar.  He could see the light from the living room and hear them talking or quietly watching television and he would take comfort in the knowledge that if he needed them they would be there for him in a second.

Then he said, when “the word became flesh” God was no longer down the hall but in the room with him.

When the “word became flesh” it means, he said, “The one in whom we believe, the one who is our pathway to God, the one to whom we pray is became one of us to live as we live, laugh as we laugh, hurt as we hurt, cry as we cry.  So that when we call out “Kyrie Elaison” “Lord, have mercy.”  “I can’t take this anymore!” Jesus is in the room with us saying, “I know.  I know.”

 No matter what happens to you this next year those may be words you may want to hold onto from the Word that became flesh. 

That in Jesus Christ, “God knows.  God knows.”  Amen.

_______

1. Genesis 1:1–3.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

2. Saint John 1:1-4.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

3. M. Craig Barnes, “A Word of Hope.”  Sermon preached at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh.  November 30, 2003.

4  Michael Brown, “Why a Baby?”  Sermon preached at the Marble-Collegiate Church of New York City. December 4, 2011.