Year C
 Isaiah 52:7-10
 Psalm 98
 Hebrews 1:1-4
 John 1:1-14

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

I didn’t want it to be John’s Gospel tonight…  not on Christmas Eve…  I wanted the familiar stories about Mary and Joseph… and inns…  and mangers…  and oxen and sheep…  and a baby…  and shepherds in the fields…  and angels…  and wise men…  and snow…  I wanted there to be snow…  not for my sake as much as for yours…  but we don’t have much of a white Christmas…  instead…  it’s 47° and rainy… I hope this doesn’t make it harder for Santa tonight… 

I didn’t want it to be John’s Gospel…  John’s Gospel is dense…  it’s cryptic…  it’s full of mystery…  it’s meaning is difficult to unravel…   but…  if we can understand something about it…  if we can understand some of what John wanted us to know…  then we can understand something more about God…  and our relationship with God…  and our relationships with each other…

Still…  John’s Gospel seems convoluted…  seems to turn in on itself…  it tells us about the Word…  and about God…  about how the Word was not only in the beginning with God…  but that the Word was God…  and…  In the beginning  isn’t linear…  it doesn’t mean the first thing that happened in a long list of things that happen…  it’s like Genesis 1:1…  in the beginning…   before God spoke creation into being…   and the uncertainty of whether one came before the other…  brings to mind Elizabeth asking Mary…  why has this happened to me…  that the mother of my Lord comes to me…  it brings to mind what Jesus asked in the synoptic Gospels…  when he asks the Pharisees…  How is it then…   that David…  by the Spirit…  calls him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord…  it brings to mind one of those mind-boggling M.C. Escher paintings where the stairs keep going up…  but somehow they end up right where they started…

And another John…  Fr. John Shea…   explains that…  In the beginning…  is a code word that means eternally…  it tells us that time and space itself…   is undergirded by the Divine realm of no time and no space…  and this matters…  because it means that God’s nature…  God’s essence…  is always being revealed here…  that God ought not be conceived of as self-enclosed…  or self-absorbed…  but ought to be understood…   as always being about relationship…   in the first few verses of John’s Gospel…  as in the first verses of Genesis…  God’s Word…  who is also God…  and is therefore infinite…  creates finite reality…  and like passing over a threshold…  God passes over a mystical boundary between God’s realm and ours…  and incarnates…  is enfleshed…  becomes one of us…  God opens God’s own doorway…  and the Word is revealed as the foundational source of everything and everyone there is…  out of the One comes the many…

And so every one of us…   are like so many little wave caps on God’s ocean…  and instead of looking down…  instead of looking into our depths to see where…   and how…   and that…   we are all connected…  the mistake that some of us make is that we look only across…  and remain on the surface…   and believe that we are disconnected…  and alone…

Have you ever gone into the kitchen at about 8:00 in the evening…  and you want something…  but you’re not sure what…  and maybe your spouse or partner calls out from the living room and asks…  what are you doing…  and you say…  I want something but I don’t know what…  but I’ll know it…   when I see it…   or else they say…  even though it’s dark and snowing outside…   what I’m looking for isn’t here…  would you please go to the store…   

We always want more…  something more…  but we are too often fooled into thinking that it’s something like a new house… or a new car…  or a boat…  or the latest smartphone…  or pair of designer shoes…  or a set of professional cookware that we really want…  or the perfect snack that’s not in our kitchen but is on a grocery store shelf somewhere…  on the surface…  it might be greed or hoarding or conspicuous consumption that’s driving us…  but if we look deeper…  what we’re truly hungry for…   is exactly what St. Augustine captured when he wrote:  Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord…  and our hearts are restless…  until they rest in thee…  until we are united with God…  in this life…  yes in this life…  and in the age to come…   we want to be able to look down…  and see where and how and that we are all connected in deep places…  the divine spark within each of us connecting us to God…  to the Word…  to the Holy Spirit…  and to each other…

John makes it clear that the community’s ideas about Jesus changed after Jesus’ lifetime…   and he describes this shift as the work of the Holy Spirit…  by claiming that the divine Son of God…   truly “became flesh”…   that is…   was fully human…   John presents the Christian belief that in Jesus…  God entered human history with one goal…  to save human beings…

The Rev. Laurel Mathewson…  co-vicar at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in San Diego wrote…   that one year…  in an Advent devotional… she read a story that first caught her attention in a sour way…  the author of this piece…  described a Christmas when she was given an unexpected…  overwhelmingly generous gift…  close friends offered her enough money to live on for a year…  to pay for everything…  so she could singularly devote her time to writing…  they believed in her and her work…  and with that gift of time…  Harper Lee went on to write To Kill a Mockingbird…

This is the beginning arc…   and the foundational heart…  of the Christian tale… God’s belief in us…  the gift of the Word made flesh…  the ground of our joy and celebration…  Christmas trees and presents and all…  a new life of deep intimacy with God…  freely given…  as gift…  as grace…  we are worth more to God than we ever imagined…  we are worth the risk and the sacrifice involved…  and yet…   with shocked faces…  many in the world…  and perhaps too many in the church itself…  exclaim…  I can’t believe it…  we have such a hard time getting our heads around the idea that God loves us unconditionally and that we are worth it…  as Harper Lee’s friends saw her worth…

And so when we say…  It is Christmas…  we mean that God has spoken into the world God’s last…  deepest…  most beautiful word…  in the incarnate Word…  and God is not only with us…  God is like us…  Jesus comes again and again to make us and our world better…  and that alone is more than reason enough…  to have…  and to wish you all…  a Christmas of depth and connection…  Merry Christmas…