In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

_John 1:1-14

The Xmas story as told by the apostle John
___
It was 1988 when I learned my first hard Christmas lesson. A lesson that in my memory banks I entitle for myself either, “ Leave the Door Shut” or “No Sneaking after Midnight”. Either way by 1988, ten years into my fragile little life, I had already stumbled upon the unfortunate circumstance of having walking into my parents room while they found themselves in somewhat, though not terribly, compromising amorous situation. Now being a somewhat self aware ten year old and realizing that I had neither the maturity to fully integrate these types of circumstances into my young psyche, nor the maturity to remember to simply knock before entering a room (because that would have made a difficult situation considerably easier to handle) I made the decision, Christmas 1988, to buy my parents a lock for their door. Now that’s a good start- but it didn’t capture the immense appreciation, that I as a ten year old, had for my parents and their decision to do things that I didn’t want to ever run the risk of walking in an find them doing. So my thought was to install the newly purchased lock in the middle of the night while they slept so they would wake up to the surprise of a fresh red bow on their brand new lock, ala Santa Claus.

See even at 10 yrs old I knew Mom and Dad were really Santa Claus. They waited until we were sleeping to come down with the gifts. But I was patient. So I waited, till after midnight, till after 1pm, till after my parents came down with the gifts, till after I heard the stillness of the house return and then I crept upstairs, brought my newly purchased lock and a screwdriver, slowly and quietly, like a cat, opened the door to my parents rooms and began to remove the old door knob. It was a great plan. Except that I was 10 years old and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Every time I would try to turn the screws on the door, which I was holding between my legs, it would shift and creak. In the darkness of the room, with my eyes adjusted, I could see my parents toss in bed with every squeak of the door. On top of trying to hold the door between my legs the screws were really tight. I couldn’t get them to move. I was only 10 years old after all. So I gathered up all my might and gave it one big try. The screwdriver slipped off the flathead screw. Which by the way, are the worst of the screws. The screwdriver never stays fixed on the line. Every screw should be the square. Anyway the screwdriver slammed into the door, causing it to slam shut, leaving me standing in the hall, listening to my parents wake up.

This time my parents were up
At least my mom was
“Russell what was that – check on the kids”
“They’re fine go back to bed”

That wasn’t going to pass. I knew that, so I grabbed the screwdriver and the new lock and ran down the hall, took the first left into my youngest sisters room and dove under the bed.

Mom and Dad got up and came down the hall, checking both of my sisters rooms along the way, saw them sleeping peacefully and then headed downstairs to my room, where of course, I wasn’t anywhere to be found. That set off a mini manhunt. I do remember hearing the initial conversation though.

My Mom – “where is he, where could he be”
My Dad – “He probably went for a walk, lets go back to bed”
My Mom – “He’s ten years old, it’s three in the morning”
My Dad – “You’re right we’ll talk to him in the morning”
My Mom – “he’s ten years old we’re not going back to bed”

Five minutes later my sisters are up and the whole family is arranging search parties. Meanwhile I’m still hiding under the bed wondering how this went so wrong. Eventually I figure I’ve got to put an end to this, so from under the bed, in my loudest, groggiest voice I call out and ask, “What’s going on, why are you guys making so much noise.”

Everybody comes running over as I crawl out from under my sister’s bed. Now that begs the question. “Why are you under your sister’s bed?” So I try to convince everyone I had been sleep walking and found myself here woken up by their loud conversation. That… doesn’t work. Eventually I reach back under the bed and pull out my screwdriver and brand new door knob, still with a big red bow stuck to it. Surprise ruined. But a pretty good Christmas story to tell going forward. Actually the worst part was having to hear my mom tell that story for the next ten years, it’s only of late that I have developed an appreciation for the humor in it. At fifteen it was less amusing to hear.

I learned a lot of Christmas lessons that year; chiefly why wrapping paper really is the easiest way to keep a surprise (it’s no wonder it’s so popular) but also about the investment and the disappointment that can sometimes come from a truly heart felt gift. Now I know my parents loved it anyway. In fact they probably, looking back, enjoyed the gift even more because of the story behind it but in the moment, It felt to me like everyone was either laughing at how silly I was or annoyed that I had woke everyone up. That’s probably, no strike that, clearly not a fair characterization of everyone’s response but it was how I felt. That this gift that I had invested, not just my allowance, but a piece of myself in, wasn’t received in the way that I imagined it would have been. That the moment I had been working toward wasn’t happening the way I had pictured in my head.

You see a gift is always more than just what’s in the box, or in this case under the bed, it is a sign or symbol of the emotion behind it. If I was to give you a card for Christmas I’m not trying to tell you about how much I love bad poetry and Norman Rockwell paintings, it’s supposed to point to the emotion that drove the decision to write the card in the first place. This is why some gifts just work better than others. Let’s be honest. Your husband doesn’t want another tie. Your kids don’t want underwear and your wife doesn’t want powers tools even if you plan to use them to fix that creaky banister that’s been bothering her for months. A gift isn’t just about the gift. It’s about the assumptions we make about what was behind the reason it was given. In that sense a gift is really about the invitation for a response. We use a gift as a sign or symbol for our love and then we invite a response from the person we love.

I read the Xmas story from the words of John earlier and I was struck again this week in a new way by the words here. These are some of the most theologically packed words in all of the Bible, some of the most rich and meaningful language in all of the scriptures and this week as I read I was struck by the echo of 1988 and this story of a God who invests not just his power and his resources but his very self into a gift to his world. A gift that in the words of John is simply and tragically not received in the way he imagined it could be. John packs an ocean of emotion and understanding and theology into 14 verses that set the stage for his story, this story that he precedes to tell about Jesus through the narrative of the rest of his gospel.

Commentators call these verses a prologue as opposed to a preface. A preface is the stuff you need say before you get to what you want to say, any background or any information that you will need to understand what’s coming but a prologue, like these verses, are a pre-cap of everything that’s coming. In the first fourteen verses of his book John tells the story of everything that’s he’s going to say in a quick poetic capture of the themes and then he precedes to flesh it out in narrative.

If you’re ever interested in doing a study on the book of John keep that in mind because everything John writes is tied to the themes he lays out in the first chapter.

Now John is the last of the gospels. Not just as we read cover to cover through the Bible but also chronologically. It was written well after the death of Jesus, probably very late in the first century. If Mark was written in the 60s, Luke and then Matthew in the 80’s, John was probably written just before the turn to the second century. So John’s not just writing to capture history on paper. He’s actually looking back on decades of church development and trying to, very consciously, set out to address some of the questions that are being asked about Jesus. This is why John is often set apart from the other gospels The others are called the synoptic gospels. Synoptic is a combination of two Greek words, “Syn” and “optic” – they mean “see” and “with”, so we see with them. They are telling us about the story of Jesus life. John, on the other hand, is telling us about the significance of Jesus life. He doesn’t really care so much about the history or the dates or the chronology, he’s focused on what it all means, the big picture.

Look at the start of his gospel. The first three words; In the Beginning. It doesn’t get much bigger picture than that. Mark starts with Jesus public ministry, he jumps right into the fun stuff. He starts with Jesus at 30 yrs old ready to change the world. Luke starts with the story of Jesus birth, that’s why he gets lots of air play this time of year. Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem and angels and shepherds and no room at the inn. Matthew trumps even that and starts even farther back with the geneology of Jesus. He goes all the way back to show Jesus’ connection to God’s covenant with Abraham, where he came from and how Jesus is connected to the story of God’s dealing with humanity from the start.

But John, John starts “In the beginning”. Now there’s no coincidence here, that this is how another book we know starts.
“In the Beginning”

In Greek, books didn’t have titles like they do now. They were generally called by the first few words of their first sentence, usually the first three words. Now that could be modified if it didn’t make sense but generally books were known by their first few words. So what we now call the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible for Hellenized Jews.

Hellenized Jews were Jews who spoke Greek and lived a very grecko/roman lifestyle
For those Jews, their Bible, was commonly called by its first three words
In the beginning

And here John uses the exact same wording as the first three words of the Septuagint. Same words, same tense, same order, exactly. Basically John calls his book by the exact same title as the Jewish Bible. He’s making a pretty important statement already in the first three words he’s written. He’s tying his story, this story of Jesus, into the larger picture of everything that has come before, everything that the Jews understood as sacred and important.

So where does the story of Jesus start for John, where does it really start for the church?

With his miracles?
With his birth?
With his geneology?

No
It starts, “in the beginning”

It would have been impossible for anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures to miss the fact that John is tying the story of Jesus to the story of creation. As if God is re-creating. Not necessarily scrapping everything he’s already done but re-creating, re-purposing, re-newing.

You find this language all through out the early church. Paul talks about this idea in Corinthians when he writes that “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”. We are re-created.

Probably the most familiar use of this language, this re-creation language, has unfortunately been so misused and overused that it’s almost lost all meaning for us. We hear it all the time now but the only place where we actually read Jesus talking about being “born again” is in the book of John. The phrase is found in John’s writings because he is picking up on this theme, on Jesus mission, to re-create.

In John 3 Jesus is speaking to a man named Nicodemus, a man identified as a Pharisee, as a religious authority. Nicodemus is a man whose entire purpose, and mission and focus was about teaching people to understand and fulfill the law the Moses.

Follow the rules.
Say the prayers.
Go to synagogue.
Study the scriptures.

And Jesus says, no. No, that’s not it. There’s more to it than that. You have to be born again. None of those things really matter. None of your religious practices, or traditions, or good ideas mean anything unless you are willing to start over again because this new way of living, this new kingdom I have come to show you, this new way of life is so radically different, it’s like being born all over again, it’s like starting over.

So Nicodemus says, well how can a man climb into his mother’s womb again, how could anyone do that?

And Jesus says, well that’s maybe a little graphic but you’re starting to get how significant this idea is, because it’s not just about religion, it’s not about rituals, it’s not about rules and expectations and saying the magic prayer, it’s not about being part of a chosen few, or the right club, or the cool kids, it’s about the decision to pattern your life around something new. It’s about finding a new template to model your life around. It’s about stepping into the best possibilities of what you could become. The best of what you already are. The best of everything that you were always created to be, from the very beginning.

To drive this idea home to Nicodemus Jesus gives us the favorite verse of sporting events around the world; John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Remember Jesus has just told Nicodemus that all his rules and all his laws are not going to cut it. You have to be willing to start over. Now he says, Oh yeah and being part of the religious club, the Jews, the chosen people; not enough either.

Now it’s whosoever.

Not just the Jews.
Not just the Pharisees.
Not just the religiously established.
Not just everyone who goes to church.

It’s whoever.
Whoever wants to
Whoever chooses to.
Whoever simply takes the chance to believe that life with Jesus could be different than life without.

To whoever that is, to those people, the gift of God is available. This gift of “eternal life”.

Now we usually read John 3:16 the way I read it. That we should not perish but have eternal life or life everlasting but the actual Greek word we translate “eternal” is from the word “a-hee-on” and it does mean eternal, that’s a part of it, but it’s so much more than that too.

My dictionary says that properly the word means an age, extending in perpetuity both into the past and future;
begun without end. It is an idea that is both present, past and future at once. It’s a very Greek idea. They liked to do this with lots of words. “A-hee-on” is the ideal, the perfect, the eternal representation of an era and so some scholars have suggested a better translation of John would be we are given the “life of the ages”.

And yes, eternal may be a part of that, but it’s more than that. It’s also the ideal life that we were created to find. It’s not just forever and it’s not just perfect, it’s that Christ came so that we could have the life we were meant for. This is the gift of God and this is the gift of Christmas, the gift of the incarnation. Not that we can adopt a set of rules that will earn us the adoration or at least toleration of a capricious God in heaven. No. That we can choose to step into the potential God has invested in us and start over, to be re-created in our choice to follow after Jesus. Think about it, in all the ways you and I have been sidetracked by bad choices, and selfish decisions and unhealthy patterns, that we could be re-newed and re-created to find the life that God always had in mind for us. Not the eternal, static, perfect, unchanging, after we die, eternally in a white robe, sitting on a cloud with wings on our back life that we see in the images of Angels on Christmas cards. God came for so much more than that. He came so that you and I could have the life we were meant for.

Do you see what John is doing here?
We are re-created, born-again-
To receive eternal life, the life of ages, the ideal life, the life we were meant to have…
From the very beginning

This is the gift of God, the gift of Christmas that was wrapped in more than just power or glory or resources, It was wrapped in God become flesh. Consider that for a moment, God, large and expansive and incomprehensible, now humble and gentle and condensed down so far that he fit into a life of a child, helpless in his mother’s arms.

Remember a gift isn’t just about the gift. A gift is a sign that points towards the meaning behind it, and it’s about the opportunity we extend to respond to what we offer.

At Christmas, God comes himself, as sign toward what life could be like with him. What it could be like to start over, to move past our failures and step into our best possibilities. And for that chance God risks everything he can, his dignity, his safety, his emotional well being, he puts it all on the line for us before you and I ever gave him a second thought, to be honest, before we even gave him a first thought. The greatest measure of God’s love is that he brings this gift, wrapped in his very person, in a way that is so fragile and vulnerable, that you and I can choose how we want to respond. For the sake of love God takes the chance that we would walk away from what he offers.

Imagine for a moment, God with a broken heart.

Every time you give something of yourself it will you leave you vulnerable. It’s no different even for God.

John says it this way
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

There’s an interesting thing here in that sentence that might not be readily apparent in the English. John says he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. There are two “owns” in that sentence that are slightly different in the original text. They are both forms of the Greek word “idios” but the first is a passive neuter form of the word. It means his own stuff. He came to his own things. What he owned. The second “own” only a couple words later is slightly different. It’s masculine plural. It’s a possessive type of word– his own did not receive him. It means his own people, his own children, his own family… his own.

He came to his own world, but his own children did not receive him.

John is using a Greek literary tool to ratchet up the intensity here. In Hebrew they do this by repeating an idea in a slightly more involved manner. So in Hebrew you read things like, when you lie down, when you get up, when you sit at home, when you walk along the road. In the Old Testament you read these passages that sound like lists but each step is increasing the intensity. In English we do it by adding on adjectives or just increasing the volume or the pitch of our voice.

You low down, dirty rotten, scum sucking, too much coffee drinking, bad breath having, lying, cheating, good for nothing scoundrel.

In Greek, one of the ways you would increase intensity is to use the different forms of the same word.

He came to his own world, but his own children did not receive him.
He came to his own home, but his own family didn’t invite him in.

John is trying to show the immense pain that even God feels when he invests himself in this gift to humanity and it is not received in the way he imagined it could be.

In 1988 I had two weeks allowance, and some 10 year old ingenuity invested in my Christmas gift.
God has put his entire being into his.

In 1988 I offered my parents a moments respite behind locked doors.
God offers us life with him. The life of the ages, the life he created us for.

It’s Christmas, the time of year we give gifts.

Have you ever felt like your gift to someone wasn’t received the way you imagined?
Like they didn’t fully understand what you put into it?
Like they didn’t appreciate what you had done for them?
God knows what that’s like.

Have you ever felt like your love toward someone wasn’t returned?
Like they took what you had to offer and didn’t give anything back?
Like they didn’t understand what you had risked to say the words “I love you”?
God knows what that’s about.

As a parent have you ever experienced your kids going through what psychologists might call a dissasiociative phase? The rest of us might call that being a teenager, but all of a sudden they don’t seem like they want anything to do with you and you feel like you’ve given so much but now they’ve put up a wall to keep you out of their lives, and it hurts?
Or as a kid, as a child, have you ever felt like you couldn’t get your parents attention? Like they were too busy to invest in you and what was going on your life? Like others things were just more important to them?
God knows that feeling, that pain and that frustration.

The incredible thing about God, the incredible thing about the model he sets out for us, is his unfailing love.

In the beginning poetry of Genesis, it says God walked in the cool of the day through the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and still humanity choose to walk away from him.

But instead of giving up, instead of walking away, instead of saying it hurts too much to go back, God makes himself even more vulnerable, he makes himself even more accessible, he chooses to put even more at risk. 2000 years ago the “word” that was God, the “logos”, everything that the very idea of God can capture, became flesh, became a child that would go on to live and die, so that you and I would be able to make a choice about who we want to have in our life. Love meant that God gave us a choice, the choice to live life with him, the choice to find the life we were meant for, the life of the ages, but also meant God made himself vulnerable to our rejection. The chance that we would choose to walk away, to walk another path, to distance ourselves from the one who created and loves us

Christmas is about a lot of things. It is about gifts, and family, and food, and friends but sometimes we do become a little too preoccupied to remember that at its heart Christmas is about the gift. The indescribable gift of God’s love. The gift of God’s vulnerability toward us.

In the Xmas narrative God takes on frail human, vulnerable flesh but more than that he takes on the frail vulnerable posture of love and he challenges us to do the same. He takes the first step, he makes the first move, he offers to recreate us into the life we were meant for and then waits, on the edge of his seat wherever that is, for our response.