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Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1-4)
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. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 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. (John 1:1-14)
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It is Christmas morning! And so we sing our carols and join our hearts with the angels and the shepherds to celebrate God’s new dawn. Christmas comes every year, and we hear again and again the story of the young couple, traveling to Bethlehem, burdened by something as unsentimental as a census when they would much rather be preparing for the birth of a baby. We know well the picture of the crowded city, the stable full of animals, and the baby Jesus lying in the manger. We can recite the message of the angels to the shepherds, and we know from which direction to look to watch for the arrival of the magi.
It’s a wonderful story, and one that has made its way into the fabric of both our faith and our culture. But the danger is that the baby and the angels and the star of Bethlehem have become so common to us, so rehearsed, that we lose touch with the overwhelming wonder and mystery of God coming into our midst.
It’s Christmas Day, and on this day, we don’t hear the Christmas story, at least not the way we usually hear it. John, in his gospel, doesn’t tell the story in the same way that Matthew and Luke do. He takes a different approach, dispensing with narrative and coming at us with straight theology. He strips away away the shepherds and the manger and gets at the very heart of the Christmas message: that God came to us as a human being, and that God came to us for the sake of our salvation.
John tells us, “the word became flesh and dwelled among us.” This means that the very power of God – the power of God that created the world – was born as a baby at Christmas. The fancy word for this is incarnation, which literally means “embodied in flesh,” and tells us the basic and amazing truth that the fullness of God’s glory came to earth in the human person of Jesus.
And the baby whose birth we celebrate is fully human – in the course of his life, Jesus laughed and cried, felt joy and felt fear, and even experienced pain and death. There is no question that the Word became flesh. And yet, at the same time, Christ is, as Hebrews tells us, “the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.” Christ, who entered completely into human existence and experience, is at the same time the divine creator and sustainer of the universe.
The word became flesh, not on a whim, but with a marvelous, grace-filled purpose: to save the world and draw all creation back to God. God loves us so much, even in our brokenness, that he sent Christ to dwell with us for the sake of our salvation. An old Latin text calls this a “wondrous exchange:”
O wondrous exchange!
The Creator of the human race,
assuming a living body,
has deigned to be born of a Virgin:
and, becoming man without human seed,
He has bestowed upon us His divinity.
John speaks of salvation in terms of light and life. In Christ was life, he says, and the life was the light of all. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
A few years back, I unearthed some old paints and brushes from an art class I had taken in college. It was winter, and evening, and the long nights and short days of the season had rendered me particularly sensitive to imagery of dark and light. I painted for a while, no plan in mind. I started with dark colors – deep blues and indigos and purples that veered on black. When the background dried into bumps and swirls of shiny darkness, I instinctively mixed on my palette the colors of light – pale yellows, streaks of gold and orange, faint pinks and white. I swirled some yellow onto the black, pulled some gold across the page, let the brightness of the colors encroach upon the darkness.
Of all the things I painted in my one college art class and beyond, this one is my favorite. Not because it’s necessarily any good, but because I love how, to me, it looks like the light is moving in and swallowing the darkness.
As soon as I finished painting it, I thought of the opening sentences of the evening prayer liturgy: Jesus Christ is the light of the world; The light no darkness can overcome.
These words have been sung and spoken for centuries, its origins in monks who prayed the hours, blessing God for the morning light at the opening of the day, and asking for the light of Christ to illumine the night’s darkness at the close of the day.
In the dark of winter, in the dark night of the soul, we yearn for light. We look at the brokenness in our world - the poverty, the hunger, the injustice, the racism, the fear, the disease, the war, the hate - and we long to see the kingdom of God. We want to believe John’s words when he assures us that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” God’s salvation shines in this world, and there is nothing – not sin nor death nor fear nor pain – that can overcome it.
Marcus Borg, in the book The Meaning of Jesus, says,
Light shining in the darkness is a central image of [Jesus’ birth story]….The symbolism of light and darkness is ancient, archetypal, and cross-cultural. It has many rich resonances of meaning. Darkness is associated with blindness, night, sleep, cold, gloom, despair, lostness, chaos, death, danger, and yearning for the dawn. It is a striking image of the human condition. Light is seen as the antidote to the above and is thus an image of salvation. In the light, one is awake, able to see and find one’s way; light is associated with relief and rejoicing that the night is over; in the light one is safe and warm. In the light there is life.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 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.”
John gives us a beautiful image of salvation: light overcoming darkness, life overcoming death, hope overcoming despair, grace and truth reigning over all creation. John makes it clear that God took flesh for one sole purpose: to give us light and life. God became human so that we would be saved.
The wondrous exchange is the promise of our salvation. Life may be messy, unpredictable, and complicated. But grasping God’s promise is as simple as gazing at the sweet Jesus child and seeing in his face the hope of the world, for in this child we see the word-made-flesh, who came to dwell among us, to give us life and to be the light of all people.
Full of joy and light, we can proclaim the good news of the gospel on this Christmas day: Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the sun of righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise each child of earth, born to give us second birth.
The word became flesh, and dwelled among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory as of God’s only son, full of light and grace and truth.
The snow falls and swirls outside as I sit to write these thoughts. Trying to ponder and write about the meaning of the divine Word who brings life and light to the world, I have created a mood for myself here in my office: the bright, harsh fluorescent lights are turned off. I rely on my desk lap and a table lamp and a few candles to illuminate the space. And in the dimness of the office, the cold chill of winter, the meager warmth of a scarf and a hot cup of tea, I am left thinking of light.
It’s hard to talk about light. It is something ungraspable, ethereal, fleeting. Light is a presence rather than something we can touch or taste or smell. We may hardly think about it when its around us, but we certainly know and feel it’s absence.
We know the blindness of waking up in the middle of the night and waiting for our eyes to adjust to the dark before we get up to get a drink of water. We miss the sun during these long nights of winter. We take darkness for granted. But against the backdrop of darkness, light shines yet brighter. It takes a deep black sky to truly see stars. It takes a dark and stormy sky for us to appreciate the brightness of lightening. We must wait for the sun to set late on a summer night before we can enjoy fireworks.
Advent is near its end, and we are longing for a word of light and hope to break through our darkness. We have been waiting for the light of God’s promise, and look eagerly to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when the light of the star of Bethlehem will flash across our eyes, when the angels will appear in the night in dazzling array, and when the glow of a new mother’s face will brighten the stable where Christ, the true light that gives life, has come into the world.
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.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
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. (John 1:1-14)
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.
I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.
Christmas is nearly here, and by now, many of us have encountered (in one way or another) that jolly, red-velvet-suited man more commonly known as Santa Claus. He showed up here in the church office today, actually, en route to the preschool Christmas program.
I grew up in a Santa household. Matt didn't.
We've had a few conversations about whether, when we have kids, we will do the Santa thing or not. But for all the reasons to do it and all the reasons not to - for all of the reasons that our parents made their decisions about it - never once did it enter our minds to frame the discussion in terms of whether or not we want to lie to our kids. I'm not sure that it occurred to us to think about parents who encourage belief in Santa to be terrible parents who lie to their children.
Chad Skeleton, "Curious Dad" columnist for the Vancouver Sun, certainly thinks of the problem of Santa in terms of lying, and turns the question of whether to perpetuate the Santa myth into a matter of the parental ethics of lying to their children. Not only is this a pretty extreme way to frame the question, but he really comes off sounding like a first-class grump in the three-part series he wrote to discuss the question:
Is the Santa Claus myth good or bad for children?
Is it wrong to lie to your children about Santa Claus?
Should Christians tell their children the truth about Santa Claus? Should athiests?
I think that I'm most troubled by two things in these articles.
First, I am frustrated by how quickly he dismisses the argument that Santa Claus is less a lie and more a fantasy - that Santa Claus has any relation to the other fictional, imaginary, mythic, playful characters that are a part of children's worlds. The first article confirmed that there is no psychological damage done to children by perpetuating the Santa myth. But I feel like we are damaging our children if we are too hasty to squelch their imaginations and discourage their fantasy lives. There are plenty of ways (not just the Santa question) that parents try to turn their children into little adults, rather than letting them act and think and believe in ways appropriate to their ages.
Second, I am actually pretty offended by his shallow caricature of belief in Santa vs. belief in God. Apparently, he believes that both types or parents (Christian and atheist) are stuck in a similar conundrum: Christian parents have to reconcile for their kids why it's okay to stop believing in Santa but not okay to stop believing in God, and atheist parents have to reconcile for their kids why it's okay to believe in Santa when it's not okay to believe in God.
I grew up in a faithful family...we believed in Santa...my sisters and I all outgrew our belief in Santa, but none of us outgrew our belief in God. So I'm not sure that I'm ready to agree with his overly-simplistic belief that Santa is necessarily damaging to either faith or non-faith.
Mostly, I am surprised that he's making a big issue out of this. Did this really warrant three different posts? Did we have to turn a conversation about Santa into a conversation about the ethics of parents lying to their children? Did we have to turn Santa into the #1 threat both to faith and to atheism? Mountain, 1; molehill, 0.
(Of much greater concern should be the creepy mall Santas that too many of us have encountered!)
How about all of you out there? Did you believe in Santa as a kid? If you have kids, are you going to encourage belief in Santa or not? What are your reasons?
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD. (Zephaniah 3:14, 17, 20)
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. (Philippians 4:4)
John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Luke 3:7-9)
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The movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are was released this fall. In its opening scenes, we see Max outside playing in the snow. With our own first major snow of the season happening this week, we all know the joy of playing in the snow. Snow is magical – it floats to the ground and creates soft, white drifts. Each flake is delicate and wondrously different. We know the secret smile that fills our hearts when we look outside and find our world transformed by a blanket of white.
So we feel Max’s joy when he runs around in the snow, kicking it up around him and starting construction on a kid-sized snow fort. He works with excitement to pack the snow into a mound and to carve out a tunnel that he can slide into. His diligent work is nothing but joy. When he finishes building up the walls and slides into his fort for the first time, we get the sense that he is warm and safe inside, protected from the cold and the outside world.
He uses his fort as a safe space to build snowballs, which he then throws as his older sister and her friends as they leave the house to go drive around town. With child-like glee, he hurls snowballs across the yard, and begins a big snowball fight. Everyone is laughing and having fun at first. But as the fight continues, and as Max begins to find himself on the losing end of the battle, he again dives into his fort for protection. Without thinking, his opponents pounce on the fort, collapsing its roof and crumbling the whole structure. In an instant, Max’s joy comes crashing down around him.
This is how today’s readings feel. We listen to Zephaniah’s words of promise and hope in our first reading. We hear the joyous news that God will renew and save and heal his people. More than that, we hear in Zephaniah that God himself will rejoice over his people and exult over them with loud singing!
We then hear Paul’s words to the Philippians. “Rejoice!” he tells them. Rejoice in God’s assurance and peace. Rejoice, for the Lord is near.
And then, John the Baptist comes along. Like the big kids who stomp all over Max’s fort, John shows up and stomps all over the joy of the first two readings, with his biting accusations and strong exhortations. Just when we most want to hear from him a word of joy about the coming Messiah, he instead preaches what feels like some pretty serious hellfire and brimstone.
We know that Advent is a season of waiting, but we always expect Advent to be a time of joyful waiting. So how do John’s harsh words about repentance fit into this season of hope and joy? How do they fit in with Zephaniah’s exhortation to “Sing aloud, O Israel; rejoice and exult with all your heart?”
Max comes in from the cold, mad at his sister for ditching him, and mad at her friends for crushing his fort. Max spends the evening mad at his single mother for beginning to date again. His whole world seems to be crashing down around him, and so he runs away. He finds a small boat at the edge of the pond, gets in it, and rows himself to the land of the wild things. This is a land that he hopes will be a new home – a perfect, wonderful place immune to things that hurt him, confuse him, or make him sad. He hopes that this new land will be a place of joy.
We and the crowds in today’s gospel aren’t so different from Max. When times get tough, when things look bleak, we want to put our trust in our own lands of wild things. We hope that we can rely on ourselves, our world, our traditions, our wealth, or our power. We, sinners, have all strayed from home, hoping to find elsewhere the things will bring us joy.
Max learns quickly that life among the wild things isn’t all he hoped it would be. His status as “king of the wild things” doesn’t make him invincible. His wild friends are a precarious mix of love and brokenness, just like his own family back home. Away in a distant land, betrayal and hurt and sadness feel more profound and life feels more unpredictable. So, disappointed and homesick, Max journeys back to the real world, back to his own street and his own house.
John’s words are for all of us who have ever journeyed to the land of the wild things and found it wanting. John’s words come to us when our souls are lonely and our spirits are longing for home. John’s words come to us when we have relied on ourselves, on others, on this world for joy, and have come up short. In spiritually homesick times, John encourages us to do the hard work of self-reflection and repentance. Repentance, after all, means “to turn,” or “to turn back.” Repentance means coming home to God by dying to sin and rising in Christ.
In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther tells us that “ the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Small Cat. IV, 12; Trigl. 551; BSLK 516). And in a different piece of writing, he says “Because our Lord and Master Jesus Christ says: Repent, he wants the whole life of his believers on earth to be a constant never-ending repentance” (first thesis of 1517). This is the sort of life that John the Baptist is talking about – a life where we daily turn and return to God.
When Max returns home, he runs into the kitchen, where his mother is waiting up for him. Instead of being angry that he ran away, instead of punishing him for his day’s anger and mischief, she instead rejoices at his return! And Max can be joyful because of her joy. This is what we hear in Zephaniah. God rejoices in his people’s return, and thus gives them cause to rejoice. God promises to be in the midst of his people. God promises to lift oppression, to heal the broken, and to gather all people together. God promises to bring his people home and to give them joy.
The joy of coming home to the one who rejoices in us – this is where John’s words fit in with the optimistic words of the other readings.
Max, Zephaniah, and John all show us that there is joy in returning. Zephaniah’s audience takes joy in the promise of returning home. Max finds his joy in returning to his house and his family. We find joy in returning home to the God who jumps for joy over us. John tells us to return to the manger and to the cross, for the birth of the Christ child is our promise of salvation, and the empty tomb is the fulfillment of that promise.
John’s call to repentance is really a call to remember the joyful news that God saves his people. His exhortations call us to remember the joyful news that we are already forgiven, bound up forever in God’s love and grace. His words ask us daily to remember that God rejoices in us, his children, and that God always keeps his promises.
At the end of the day, Max finds himself home, in his own chair at his own kitchen table, a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of milk waiting for him. His mother, wrapped in a blanket, watches lovingly as Max eats, with relief and peace washing over her face as she knows that her lost child is again home, warm and safe.
There is a chair for you at this table - the communion table. It is your chair and it is your table. It is the warm, familiar kitchen of your childhood. It is the center of God’s home and God’s promises. We are all God’s wayward and returned children, and God feeds us here with good things – the body and blood of Christ. God is present at this table, watching us with joy and rejoicing that we who were once lost are now found. Whenever we find ourselves lost, whenever we find the walls of our safe spaces crumbling, whenever we feel broken or judged, we can come to this table, to the warmth of home, to the joy of God’s promises and the assurance of God’s hope for our future.
For we have a God who says to each and every one of us, “I, the LORD, your God, am in your midst. I will rejoice over you with gladness; I will renew you in love; I will exult over you, and I will bring you home.”
