Full of Grace and Truth

 

Sunday, December 14^th, 2008

Advent 3B (third of the liturgical year)

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

John 1:1-14

Theme: Reflections on what living the Love of Christ means

 

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14And 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.

 

I am a fan of several radio programs, but of one in particular: it is called “The Prairie Home Companion”.  It is a musical, variety, and comedy show that is intentionally patterned after the variety shows from the 40's and 50's,  and it comes on every Saturday evening at 6 PM, and is rebroadcast on Sunday afternoons.  It is carried by our local National Public Radio affiliate, WCVN.  I've been listening to the program for about twenty years, and Garrison Keillor, the host, has a segment towards the end of each show where he recounts the events of the last week in his fictional hometown, Lake Woebegone, Minnesota.  He is a masterful storyteller, and he always begins his monologue the same way:  “It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my hometown ...”  it's a wonderful touchstone for me.  Listening to his voice, the way he weaves the events and his thoughts together is mesmerizing. 

 

I didn't get to listen to him yesterday.  Some weeks that happens.  Sometimes I'll happen to catch him on the second time around on Sunday afternoons, if I'm driving somewhere. 

 

I wish I could start out this morning and say “It's been a quiet week in Emmerton...”  but it wouldn't exactly be true.  In some ways, yes.  It HAS been a relatively quiet week within the former town LIMITS of Emmerton, but in the sense that “Emmerton” means for us “Jerusalem Baptist Church” – understanding the Jerusalem isn't ALL there is TO Emmerton – it has been an … eventful week, full of tragedy and sorrow. 

 

Though as people of faith we can confidently say we celebrate the home going of Elwood and Nana, the fact of the matter is that we can't claim that the celebration is unmitigated joy.  There is profound grief mixed in equal measure with the celebration.  It's there because … well, in part because THEY are THERE and WE are HERE.  It's about the separation.  Elwood and Nana were a joy to be around.  Their absence will be marked by the fact that what they added to our lives each time we got together with them will not be there going forward, but only in remembrances and lessons learned. 

 

The writer of the Gospel was recounting the experience of living through Jesus' presence here with us long after Jesus had risen from the grave and ascended to Heaven.  The view was one that encompassed the entire experience, from Jesus' entrance into the world, through the public ministry, crucifixion and resurrection; through Pentecost and the birth and growth of the Church. 

 

What the writer was blessed to be able to do in putting this version of the Gospel down was to give a sense of perspective to the events that so fundamentally changed the lives of all those people who came in contact with Jesus of Nazareth, and in a larger sense, also fundamentally changed the relationship of the world with God.  The opening lines are profound theological statements about who Jesus was and who God was and what God DID through the person of Jesus.

 

There is no record in scripture of there having been a funeral or anything like that for Jesus after he died.  In part, most likely because there was no time to do that between his death, the observance of the Sabbath, and his resurrection.  But insofar as a funeral will frequently include a eulogy, an oration to honor the deceased person, the Gospel accounts are in a sense those eulogies delivered decades after the event of Christ's death – with the signal difference being, of course, that he didn't STAY dead, so the Gospels are as much about the life of Christ AFTER the … LIFE of Christ … through the church – as they are about the life of Christ BEFORE his death by crucifixion.  And the writer sums his life up in five words at the end of our passage this morning.  After all the theological statements, after the intricately woven phrases about Christ being preexistent, and being God, and being in and through everything that was made, his time on earth is boiled down to this:   

 

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.              

 

If you'll bear with me, I'd like to do some editing of the verse.  Not for the purpose of correcting, but to underline – to underscore – what is being said – the short version: 

 

The Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. 

 

That bare-bones version cuts the verse down to the essential components.  It could even stand to lose the middle phrase – “and we have seen his glory” – (read without) but there's an aspect of the Gospel that requires there to be an interaction between the divine and the human.  We are privileged to catch a glimpse of his glory, full of grace and truth. 

 

How did that fullness of grace and truth make itself known?  What was the signal event in the life of Christ that highlighted that feature of the Glory of God?  Was it his miraculous birth?  Was it his teaching the scribes at the temple at the age of twelve?  Was it his feeding of the five thousand or an estimated twenty thousand by the shores of the Sea of Galilee?  Was it in his healing of the lepers, or the demoniac, or the woman with the issue of blood?  Was it in his confrontation with the entrenched hypocrisy of the temple priests and religious leaders who had lost touch with the roots of the covenant God had established with the people of Israel?  Was it in his radical teachings about the Kingdom of God and how that was SUPPOSED to look as it broke into the world? Or was it in his final, cataclysmic surrender to the forces that would claim they were superior and had the final word of life and death, only to be found completely powerless in the face of the redeeming, revivifying, resurrecting LIVING word of God as the stone was rolled away and he rose triumphant from the grave? 

 

The answer, in case you are wondering, is YES.  To all of them.  Yes, because they were ALL a part of who Christ was, or more importantly, who God was in Christ.  Being FULL of Grace and Truth means that in everything he did, that grace and that truth came through.  There was no event, no action, no word spoken that was devoid of that grace or that truth. 

 

We struggle with the concept because we have no point of reference.  We know ourselves to be quirky that way – inconsistent, as hard as we try NOT to be we can't help it.  Some days we're do better than others, some days we wish we could do over.  But we honestly cannot imagine what it would be like to be 'ON' 24/7, to be on target, on point, on task, on message because we are intrinsically incapable of BEING that.  

 

That having been said, we come to the point of the Gospel that is so utterly uplifting:  Grace. 

 

A fellow MK and current Missionary in Chile, Jerry Coy, wrote a letter to the members of the church that he works with in La Serena, a city about 8 hours north of Santiago, on the coast, in the area of Chile known as the  'Little North' – there's the 'Big North' at the northern end of the country, then the Little North to the south of that, then the central region, then the rest of the country on down … (I won't give you a geography lesson).  You may have heard me mention his parents, Frank and Betty Coy, at some point in the past.  I lived with them for most of my last semester in high school, when my parents and the rest of the family were back here on medical leave  during the last half of 1980. 

 

Jerry and his family are back in the States on furlough.  What is now called

“Stateside assignment”.  But like I said, he wrote a Christmas letter to the congregation of their Church, and he said some things that I'd like to share with you.  He wrote:  “The love of our Heavenly Father is real, true, grounded, tangible. God proves it by coming to our reality in flesh and blood, in Bethlehem of Judea.  Thirty-three years later God freely allows the shedding of that blood of this, God's only beloved son, an act of sacrifice and divine love that was incredibly intimate towards each one of us.  Even more so, for me, the great mystery is that that same love of the Father dwells in each of us when we receive Christ into our lives. 

 

The love between believers should not be based on fleeting emotions, nor in human feelings, nor in circumstances or events that happen around us.  It is a love that we receive from God the father, a love expressed through the presence of his eternal Spirit in our lives, and it is perceived as something real and observable through our daily activities.    Yes, it is a love that IS of flesh and blood, that sometimes spills it's own blood.  That is the true love born of faith, the love of Jesus.  My hope is that the love and the peace of Christ would flood your lives this Christmas and in the coming year.”               

     

We have the capacity to understand, to incorporate the knowledge of what that fullness of grace and truth means for us here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton. 

 

We've seen it lived out in the lives of beloved members of this faith family.  I'm not saying that we were always in the presence of Christ when Elwood was around any more than I'm saying that anyone ELSE is in the presence of Christ when WE'RE around.  Elwood would be the first to stop us from going there.  He knew his faults, and knew that he didn't always agree with everyone, or get along with everyone.  And if we are honest with ourselves and with each other, we recognize that in ourselves as well.  That friction is part of being fallible individuals working – or trying to work – as one body. 

 

But what we DO have is the example of Christ, and ultimately, the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us to move us in that direction.  My prayer this morning is that we would always give in to that movement of the Spirit in our lives.   

 

Would you pray with me?