Text: John 1:1-18 (Revised Standard Version)
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life,[a] and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.
9 The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. 11 He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. 15 (John bore witness to him, and cried, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.’”) 16 And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only Son,[b] who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
We have just stepped over the threshold into a new year. We have the better part of a year – 362 days – stretching before us like an unknown country. It makes me think of Tolkien’s poem “The Road Goes Ever On” –
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Where will we have travelled when we meet back here a year from now? What will we have experienced? What joys and what sorrows?
None of us can foresee the future. One thing we do know for certain – this is an election year. That means we are pretty much in for it. But the good news is that this, too, shall pass. All politics is temporary.
What we do here, on the other hand, week after week, is eternal, with eternal implications.
So it seems appropriate today for us to ask ourselves some questions. The first question is: What does it mean to be a “Christian”?
This might sound like a silly question, but I don’t think it is. How many times in just this last week have you heard this or that candidate, or some talking head on TV, go on about his or her Christian faith? There seems to be a wide divergence of opinion and attitude, doesn’t there? After hearing all of these different points of view as to just what it means, it’s easy to feel confused.
Attempting to answer the question by saying “Being a Christian means that you follow Christ,” is a good start, but it doesn’t quite go far enough – I mean, lots and lots of people claim to follow Christ, but the way that many of them do it is not the way we do it, is there? Does that mean they’re all wrong? No. Does that mean we’re getting it all wrong? Well, no. So what are we to make of all this?
This is where today’s Gospel lesson from John can help us “walk the question back” to some basics.
First, a little background. The earliest Christians, like Jesus himself, were Jews. That’s a fundamental fact that often gets lost. Early Christian thought can’t be understood without taking that into account. But within the first 30 years of Jesus’ earthly ministry, there were possibly 100,000 Greek or other Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians for every Christian Jew. [1]
Jewish concepts and ideas were completely foreign to the Gentiles. Even the concept of the Messiah, the core belief of Judaism, as well as the core belief of Christianity, was utterly alien to them.
Enter John the Evangelist. He lived in Ephesus around the year 100, and was deeply concerned with proclaiming Jesus and the salvation he offered to the Greeks who surrounded him. Eventually, he hit upon the fact that both the Greeks and the Jews had a common concept in “the word.” To the Jews, a word was not just a sound, it was an action that did things. To the Greeks, the word was the Logos, or the reason and logic of God. So, taken together, the Word was to both Jews and Greeks the very mind of God that brought order out of chaos. “John went out to Jews and Greeks to tell them that in Jesus Christ this creating, illuminating, controlling, sustaining mind of God had come to earth. He came to tell them that men and women need no longer guess and grope; all they had to do was look at Jesus and see the mind of God.”
The bottom line here is, I think, that being a Christian means at the very least making the attempt to look at Jesus and see the mind of God. Being a Christian means not only that you are changed on the inside, but that you recognize it; that you realize that you are not controlled from the outside, not really, even though it certainly might seem sometimes as though you are not in control of your own life. Though your daily existence might be in the hands of others, your spirit is not; your heart is your own. So being a Christian means that your heart has been changed by the presence of the indwelling Spirit of God. It does not mean that you are required to fulfill a set of “faith rules” or adhere to some list of acceptable behaviors in order to stay a Christian. This is one of the main things – maybe even the main thing – that sets Christianity apart from all other world religions. Every other religious system essentially says “Do this, and this, and this, and this … and you will have good karma, or you will get to Heaven, or paradise, or nirvana.” By contrast, Jesus Christ says, “Done!” That’s what it meant when He cried out on the cross, saying, “It is finished.”
The transaction is complete. The price has been paid.
Our job is then to respond in gratitude to that sacrifice. We desire to do good things because we’ve been changed by that sacrifice, and that we choose to walk with God, however imperfectly.
So, along those lines, maybe one lesson for us today might be, when we look across what seems to be a great divide between us and other Christians, to try to glimpse how these others might be seeing the mind of God. We may not agree with them, but this is at least a start toward understanding them. It strikes me as being a better response than either responding to their finger-pointing with our own finger-pointing, or getting all huffy and refusing to even listen.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
Mark Link tells the following true story by way of illuminating this passage:
“Sister Mary Coleman, a Maryknoll nun, spent a good part of World War II in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines. The prisoners set up a prayer room and one of the Filipinos carved a wooden crucifix. It proved to be a great aid to prayer. When Christmas came, several prisoners carved crib figures for the prayer room. A guard who had watched the prisoners meditate before Jesus on the cross now watched them meditate with equal fervor before the infant in the crib. One day he pointed to the infant in the crib and then to Jesus on the cross and asked reverently, ‘The same one?’ Sister Coleman said softly, ‘The same one.’ Then, looking at the crib and the crucifix again, he said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’”[2]
Such is the power of simply living in faith. Sister Mary Coleman and the other prisoners were not out to convert anyone. They didn’t wear their faith on their sleeves, as so many today seem eager to do. They recognized that being a Christian means to follow Christ, in good times as well as in adversity, to desire Him, to have fellowship with Him, to be indwelt by Him, and to bring glory to Him in your life, and they lived accordingly. By doing that, they moved the heart of that soldier to repentance.
What, then, does it mean to be a Christian in the year 2016? Here’s a pretty good summation that I found on the BBC’s religion website:
“Being a Christian is…about a friendship – a friendship with Jesus Christ. Jesus said that knowing him is the doorway to a special relationship with God.
Jesus says that we can begin such a special relationship with God by committing ourselves to follow him. Millions of people today have discovered a relationship with God in this way.”[3]
To paraphrase today’s lesson a bit, “To all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God.” When you hear some people talk about being a Christian, it sounds like the religious equivalent of climbing Mount Everest! It sounds so hard that you might say to yourself, “why bother?”
But it is really quite simple: Establish a friendship with Jesus. Believe in his name. And live your life accordingly. Anyone can do that. That doesn’t make us “fundamentalist Christians,” or “evangelical Christians,” or “orthodox Christians,” or “liberal Christians,” or “conservative Christians,” because these are just useless labels we pin on each other and ourselves. It just makes us Christians – normal, decent, caring people who have accepted the call and the claim of Christ.
That is what it means to be a Christian, then and now. And as we walk together through this new year, let us spread that Good News to others.
It’s going to be a great year!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Paraphrased from Barclay, William, The Gospel of John, Volume One, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Know Press, 1975, 2001, p. 30 ff.
[2] Link, Mark, S.J., Jesus: A Contemporary Walk with Jesus, Resources for Christian Living, Allen, Texas, 1997, p. 45
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/conversion/whatitmeans_1.shtml