Do you see what I see? Do I see what really is?
During the Christmas season we retell the birth story of Jesus. The account from the Gospel of John, though, reminds us of the universality of Christ’s incarnation and points out that “he came into this world and they didn’t recognize him.” Will we recognize Him?
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Transcript
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Just a few thoughts this morning on these readings as we continue to settle into this Christmas season. So of course, during the Christmas Eve time, we really focus-in on the Nativity story. That’s always what we read on those days there on Christmas Eve, at both the pageant service and even the midnight mass, we focus-in on that account of Jesus’s birth. And on this Sunday, we focus on a different aspect or a different level of just what is going on in this incarnation moment. We always read this prologue to John’s Gospel, which is one of my favorite parts really, of all the texts that we read throughout the year.
The very first line of the Gospel should, of course, bring to mind immediately another text: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And your mind went where? To Genesis. That was a purposeful thing that the writer of John did was to anchor his own gospel account in the creation moment itself, to go all the way back to the foundation of the world. Now the writer of John’s Gospel had a bit more time than the ones who wrote Mark and Matthew and Luke. Mark, as best as we can figure, was written around the year 60. Matthew and Luke were written around 80. The writer of John had even more time. John was written around the year 100 to 110, which would really be, if you think about it, like someone in this day and time writing something about the Eisenhower administration. That’s the length of time, and it helps to kind of put that into its own context. To say what that meant is that the writer of John had more time to actually go into a deeper frame of mind, a deeper reflection, if you will, on the meaning of Jesus’s birth and life and death, burial and resurrection. So that’s why when we read John, it feels different than Matthew, Mark and Luke because it has a different purpose. To put it that way, it has a different grounding. It’s much more poetic than it is wanting to be some narrative, to just go through those moments of Jesus’s life. So what John does is to lay out in the most cosmic sense that we can, how we understand what happened when Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, came into the world, what that meant, what that looked like, and to put it in its deeper context of that creation story.
Now, if you were reading this in its Hebrew from the Genesis text, you would find a word over and over. The word is dabar, meaning spoke. So in its Hebrew sense, in that early, early grounding of how this all came into being, God spoke. And God’s speech act has power, and in that text brought all that is in life into being God speaks and it came to be and it was good. And that refrain, if you will, over and over and over, what John said is that God’s speech act, that word actually became incarnate in the person of Jesus. And John pushes us to say that speech act did not only become incarnate in certain people, or more so in some than in others, but in every human being, and indeed in all creation. There are no footnotes or asterisks parts there to kind of say, yes, that may be the case, but these have more of it than these have. There’s none of that in the text. And in that sense, it’s a very radical text. John goes a step further in writing this and lays out for us so that we can see ourselves in it, says not only is this what is going on on this level, that it is a universal presence of God in all that is. No qualifications. But John identifies what the tension is, and he says “he came into the world and they didn’t recognize Him.” They didn’t see it. That’s the tension for us. It’s not that somehow we have to strive or do certain things to make God’s presence be real in the world. Our work, as we’ve been saying, is to stretch those spiritual muscles so that we can actually recognize what is here. The deeper truth of life that all of us share.
So to do a riff off of the hymn, off of a carol, it’s not so much, we can’t really start by saying, “do you see what I see?” There’s some preliminary work. We have to ask ourselves, not only “do you see what I see,” but I have to ask myself, “do I see what really is?” Because until I’ve done that work around, do I see what really is then my perspective is limited, is skewed. So I’m so thankful that John lays out for us what that tension is, because then it gives us in this text what we have to work on, not only during Christmas season, but for every moment of our lives, is how do we then become aware of this universal presence of God that is found within all of life, that somehow we are called to participate in?
And we ask ourselves, where then does the tension come from? And here’s a very important way to think about that. To understand the deeper elements of the practice of Christian faith, we always have to reflect on the tendency and the temptation of empire. Never for one moment forget that Jesus was born, that that incarnated word came into being in the middle of imperial oppression. And Jesus’s entire life and ministry, leading to his death, was to highlight and call out imperial oppression and to name ways that certain people had been excluded from a deeper appreciation of that universal presence of God within all.
You can come at it a certain way and see, unless we understand that we don’t really engage with the deepest sense of who Jesus was. And the point, if you will, of why that creative speech act, that Word of God, came into the world. There’s always been a tension between the deepest part of Christian practice and imperial assumptions and frameworks. Always. And unfortunately, the church too often has reaped the benefit of buying into imperial frameworks, buying into this sense of power, and relying on the imperial power to gauge our own sense of who we are in the world. But that’s not what the lesson of Jesus actually teaches us. The lesson of Jesus always critiques it and challenges it. And the prophets are deeply, deeply steeped in that which Jesus carries forward in his own life.
Here’s how imperial power works when it comes to Jesus. Ever has it been the case, and it comes in waves, and the pattern repeats itself, but this is what it looks like: we separate the figure of Jesus from the actual teachings of Jesus. We separate the figure of Jesus from the actual teachings of Jesus. And when we do that, the Empire, if you will, is able to take the figure of Jesus and the power that comes with that and co-opt it and then project onto it our own assumptions of the way the world should be and the way that we think the world should work. And we recreate in that figure of Jesus our own sense of who we want Jesus to be, completely separated from the actual teachings. That’s how different ones of us can claim Christian identity and our actions are completely detached from any authentic teaching that Jesus would have actually given and still gives in our lives. That’s how that works. And ever has that been the case.
And we’ve gone through waves of this, and we’re in a wave of it right now where we need prophetic-oriented people to challenge that and lay that out, call us all to the carpet and ask ourselves, “is this figure that we have held up, claiming our own sense of power? Does it have anything to do with the actual teachings of Jesus himself?” Put this way: how do we rationalize treating certain human beings the way that we treat them and at the same time claim that we have a Christian identity? How did those two actually connect in any way? The truth is, is they don’t in many instances. That’s why this reading from John, as lofty as it seems, is actually such a radical text, because John says, “if you want to understand who Jesus is, you cannot separate the figure of Jesus from the teachings of Jesus. You have to keep them together and let them convict you and constantly challenge you to change the way you actually live and move in the world.” And he does it right out of the gate and says, “if you want to really get this, you have to understand that this incarnate word that came into the world, he says, what came into being through him was life. And that life,” he says, “was the light of all people, not some. No qualifications, no asterisks, no footnotes.” What we’re left with in is our selves standing, looking in a mirror and asking ourselves, “how have we put the qualifications? How have we compartmentalized? Have we objectified? How have we oppressed?”
So Christmas is much more than just coming and singing carols and looking at children dressed up like angels. Christmas, in its own way, is this most radical time that calls us all to account for who we really understand Jesus to be. The whole, dynamic, living presence of Christ in our lives, and how that convicts us and challenges us to actually change the way we live in the world. That’s hard. That’s hard, but that’s what we’re called to do. So as we go forward during this Christmas season, that’s why we have a sense 12 days and lifetimes of work to do. So as we go forward. Meditate on that. Go back to this text this following week and see what stirs up within you. When you read John’s account. And then go forward in the story, of course, and notice, as we look toward Lent and Easter season, how these themes repeat themselves in that deeper sense of who Jesus is, actually continues to challenge who we see ourselves to be and how we live in the world.
Amen.