"Visited" - Christmas 2B

 Saint John 1:1-18

About this time every year Christmas seems to have run its course. The radio station that has been playing Christmas music non-stop since the beginning of November is back to its regular play-list.  Gaps seem to be appearing in our neighbour’s strings of lights.  Some of our friends have long since forgotten to plug-in their lawn inflatables leaving the Santas and the Snoopys looking as flat as pancakes.

Yet the church is right in the middle of its Christmas celebration. As a matter of fact we are on the tenth of the twelve days of Christmas.  It’s time to look under your tree for those “Lord’s a Leaping!” 

Most of us have moved on from our Christmas celebrations which, for many, were as flat as one of those lawn inflatables.  Many of us are already done with New Year’s too hoping only that 2021 is better than 2020.  It has to be!

And we are never more mindful than on the next couple of Sundays that the “church always seems to be in a different time zone, providing both a challenge and an opportunity to slow down, ponder, give thanks.”1

To begin our pondering of the “meaning of the birth of Christ we could have no better guide than the poetry of John I.”2

John doesn’t bother with Mary or Joseph, Shepherds or Angels, there isn’t even a baby Jesus in his account.  He is dealing with the cosmic Christ; the one who has come to redeem the whole world.

What the evangelist is trying to tell us is that

The Word, the eternal Word of God – God from God, Light of Light, the One who set the stars in the courses at creation and flung the planets into being – this God has “become flesh” and moved in with us.3

 Or, as Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”4

In Jesus we find that “God does not remain aloof, distant and detached. God dares to risk entry into Creation, into history, into the darkness of our earthly existence.”5

In Jesus, no less than God is coming among us.  This is a moment so unique that only a very special world can help us understand it.  We get stuck translating into any language how this works so we use the words “the only begotten” but the Greek word is superbly helpful.  It is monogenes.

Even the Gospel writer probably didn’t understand the fullness of its meaning as well as we can.  Mono, of course means, one and “genes”, we know better than Saint John what those are.  Genes are the stuff that makes us unique.  Genes makes me me and you you.  They come from our parents. 

Do you get the beauty of this?  Jesus is of the God gene pool.  He and the Father have the same genes!  

To put it more simply you have heard people say: “She looks just like her mom.” Or, “He is a spitting image of his dad.”  We say that because they have the same gene pool.  So it is with Jesus.  He is of the same gene pool, he is monogenes, with God, the Father.

As cool as that is it still may leave us wondering why somebody with that kind of background and breeding would want to move into our neighbourhood.  This is regentrification at his very best!  Why would God choose to do this?

In 1957 J.B. Phillips, writer and Bible translator, wrote a short story entitled “The Visited Planet.”  Phillips imagined a tour of the universe by two angels, one as old as creation, and the other newly formed amidst the host of heaven.  The older angel showed off wonder upon wonder, the birthing fields of stars, nebulae thousands of light years across, distances and depths beyond imagining.  At length, as the attention of the young angel began to flag, they entered a back lot of the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes our sun.

As the two of them drew close to our star, and its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis.  It looked dull as a dirty tennis ball to the little angel whose mind was filled with the size and glory of all he had seen previously.

“I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

“Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel.  “What’s special about that one?”

“That,” replied the senior solemnly, “is the Visited Planet.”

“Visited?” said the little one.  “You don’t mean visited by...”

“Indeed I do.  That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and perhaps not over-clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory.”  And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

“But how?” queried the younger one.  “Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendors of His Creation, and millions more that I ‘m sure I haven’t seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball?  Why should He do a thing like that?”

“It isn’t for us,” said his senior a little stiffly, “to question His ‘whys,’ except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers as you seem to be.  But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that.  As to why He became one of them...how else do you suppose He could visit them?”

The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”

“I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice.  For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them.

Phillips concluded his story with these words: “The little angel looked blank.  Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.”6

It is almost beyond ours too.  That God would not only visit us but move into our neighbourhood to stay with us.

While such thoughts may be beyond our comprehension for the present all we need to do is open our hearts and minds and accept that the visit did occur and all because God loves us.  

It’s amazing I know but it’s the story of Christmas. As the carols fade and the decorations come down may you keep Christmas in your hearts all through the coming year knowing that you are loved.

___________

1. Julie Peeples, “John 1:1-18. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the Word,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 149-151.

2. William H Willimon, “The Beginning,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1 (2021): pp. 3-5.

3. William H Willimon, “God Gets Local,” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 4 (2005): pp. 61-63.

4. Saint John 1:14. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

5. Willimon, loc. cit.

6. J. B. Phillips, “The Angel's Point of View (or 'The Visited Planet'),” Grace and Truth, March 25, 2014, https://graceandtruth.me/2014/03/25/the-angels-point-of-view-or-the-visited-planet/.