Trinity Parish Church - Christmas 1 - December 30, 2007
John 1:1-18
The Rev. Rachel Endicott
This time of year, my daughter Megan always gets antsy. And it’s not simply to do with too much sugar from Christmas candy, too many presents (well, maybe), or too much time on her hands as school is on break. She’s still at that age where she looks forward to her half birthday, December 29th. So as of yesterday, she’s now moved into the second half of her 7th year…and in the world of youngsters, older is better Do you have certain dates and days that you remember with clarity? Many people seem to remember the celebratory days: the day of marriages, of grandchildren being born, of being asked out on a first date, of your baptism. Sometimes dates are remembered for their sadness: national disasters, wars starting, dates when people died or were killed… For me, a pair of significant dates is June 28th and 29th, 2000. On the 28th of June, the morning started with plans a-changing. I missed attending Wednesday morning Eucharist. Now this is not a good thing, especially for a priest, especially when you’re supposed to be presiding and preaching. But then things changed once again and I found myself sitting in my office with the usual projects and paperwork. By late evening, I found myself definitively in labor. Soon, I had dropped Ben off with a friend and found myself in the car, directing my mother how to get through the unknown streets to the hospital. My mum drove and between contractions we even took note of someone’s early 4th of July fireworks shooting over the top of the car while we were zipping up I-405. Soon, not long after the clock ticked over to the new day, the 29th of June, Megan was born into a waiting world, greeting her mother and father, grandmother and aunt. She, who had been the object of hope and waiting, became flesh and blood, crying, breathing flesh. Dark hair and big eyes appeared atop the rounded body, the never scuffed skin. Hopes and dreams were made incarnate, made flesh on that day of her birth. Today, on our 6th day of our 12 days of Christmas, we celebrate with a similar excitement that birth of Jesus so many years ago. Now the author of the Gospel which we read today, one I’ll call John, tells the story of Jesus’ birth perhaps differently than many of us would. He sees Christ’s incarnation, Christ’s being made flesh, as the key to God’s relationship with us and so starts his story-telling from that perspective. Jesus being one of us, the plain fact of his birth, is the foundation on which John bases everything else that he writes. John, however, doesn’t see Jesus birth in either the wonderful somewhat haphazard way I experienced Megan’s and Ben’s births or the pastoral, rosy way in which artists often outwardly portray Jesus’ birth in print or even in crèches, manger scenes. Jesus’ birth, for John, is one that was preordained for all time, a birth that was the ultimate fulfillment of God’s presence and love. We are told that Jesus is full of glory, grace and truth. John makes a special point to invite us into this story. He writes, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…”, not just that John has seen the glory, but all of us, storyteller and reader affirm the glory of his birth and life. John also points to Jesus being full of truth. As one incarnate from the father, how could Jesus not be full of truth? John names grace as the final attribute of Jesus as God’s son. It is in Jesus that grace is personified. Grace means the same thing as blessing or gift. And it is Jesus who is the gift we are given. In fact Jesus is the greatest gift we could ever have as he comes from God to be the savior of each of us here. Through his being born, living, dying, and rising again, Jesus takes all that is unclean about us, all that is ugly in our souls, takes it upon himself. We are made new. We are given new birth.
U2, a prominent rock band over many years, has a song entitled “Grace.” The thoughtful lyrics include the following:
Grace, it's the name of a girl
It's also a thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything
…
Grace, she carries the world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl in perfect condition
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things
Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything
As the words of this piece point out, God’s grace has found the beauty in you, the goodness in you. Rejoice on this day that through Jesus’ birth, God came into the world to touch you and take the stain of sin away. Before our daughter Megan was born, her father and I scrambled for months trying to decide on names for the baby to be born. We haggled over names we liked and names that reminded us of the kid that picked on us in school. We tried to pick names that appealed to us in meaning, were culturally relevant for us, and that just sounded right. Finally, if it turned out that the baby would be a girl, we picked Grace as the middle name. We chose it in part in gratitude for all the blessings God has given us, specifically for the additional life that came into our family in the person of our daughter. Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, explores the nuances of grace. She experiences grace as central to who we are, our relationship with God, and the reason why we gather in Christian fellowship. As I’ve shared with others before, she writes: One morning this past spring I noticed a young couple with an infant at an airport departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking he would respond with absolute delight. It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it, I felt … awe-struck … because I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And, as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we’ve done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image. I suspect that only God, and well-loved infants, can see this way…And maybe that’s one reason we worship – to respond to grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith God has in us. To let ourselves look at God, and let God look back at us. And to laugh, and sing, and be delighted because God has call us his own.
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