Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Of the Father’s love begotten ere the worlds began to be, he is Alpha and Omega, he the source, the ending he, of the things that are that have been, and that future years shall see, ever more and ever more Amen.
Oh, that birth for ever blessed, when the virgin, full of grace, by the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race, and the babe, the world’s redeemer, first revealed his sacred face, ever more and ever more. Amen
This is he whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord, whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful world; now he shine the long expected; let creation praise its Lord ever more and ever more. Amen.
Let the heights of heav’n adore him; angel hosts, his praises sing; pow’rs do minions, bow before him and extol our God and King; let no tongue on earth be silent, every voice in concert ring ever more and ever more. Amen
Christ, to thee, with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to thee, hymn and chant and high thanksgiving and unwearied praises be: honor, glory, and dominion, and eternal victory every more and ever more. Amen.
We’re still in the Christmas Season. It is day 11. Tuesday is Epiphany, the day of the Wise Men’s visit. St. John’s gospel tells the story of Jesus’ origins in ways that are very different from St. Luke’s version of the events in Bethlehem.
St. John has a different goal in mind. He isn’t worried that people will see Jesus as a human. He’s concerned that we will see him as only human. He wants to establish Jesus’ “Godness”. Now I know Godness isn’t word. I made it up for this sermon. Jesus is God and being God he must be eternal, that is not bound by time; and limitless, or infinite, like God.
The writer of our hymn, a Latin poet and theologian says it like this: “Of the Father’s love begotten “Now begotten means born of parents, to be engendered, to grow from a sperm and an egg, to gestate for nine months and come into this world through your Mother’s labor pains. Our Nicene Creed uses exactly the same words, it says “Jesus was begotten, not made.” In other words he isn’t a creature, like Adam and Eve, handmade by God; he is God’s child, God’s Son, and progeny of the Creator of all things. Then it says “Ere the worlds began to be”. What that means is that Jesus has always been with God somehow. Before “Creation” was, Jesus was. This idea has caused great controversy in the church and it is part of the reason we repeat the Nicene Creed. Jesus was with God somehow from forever, as our hymn says, “Evermore and Evermore”. The writer Marcus Aurelius calls him Alpha & Omega. These are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They symbolize that he has no beginning nor ending. The hymn then says, he is the source and the ending of all that is, was, and will be. In short, as St John says Jesus is God.
Verse 2: This verse tells the story of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit. It is hard to understand and will forever remain a mystery. The hymn says that the virgin, Mary, conceived through the Holy Ghost – just another word for the Holy Spirit. How did this happen? Did God impregnate Mary? No, not in the normal human way a man impregnates a women, but in some physical way, Yes. Jesus comes about because God creates life in Mary’s womb. God marries Mary with the Holy Seed for her human egg and Jesus grows in the normal way. St. Luke says the Spirit overshadows Mary; the power of the Most High creates life in her. In seminary, I learned that Mary conceived through her ears, that God, through the Holy Spirit, spoke new life to her, she believed and conceived! When I shared this with a Bible Study in my second parish, a doctor in the congregation smiled broadly and said, “I don’t think Martin Luther ever took biology 101”. I laughed, maybe not, but Jesus’ birth will ever be shrouded in mystery.
Verse 3: God’s people, the Jews, have reflected on the being of God, ever since Abraham identified God as the being who called him to leave his home and go to the Promised Land. God is intimately involved with us, and loves us.
Israel’s concept of God and her understanding of God have changed from the time of Abraham. God is not just her personal God, and Israel the chosen privileged people whom God favors to lavish upon them material prosperity and supernatural protection. Israel is to be a light unto the nations. Israel understands that there is only one God, and that this God loves all people equally. This God, because of the central character of his love is the heartbeat of the universe. We are to love God and love each other.
God cares deeply about how we treat each other. God is no more pro-American than pro-Israel than pro-Iraqi, Afghani, pro-French, pro-Russian. Nationstates are human inventions not God’s and Israel was the first to understand this.
What God wants for us is to be enlightened, and to behave enlightenedly. We are to love justice; we are to protect women, children and the vulnerable. There is plenty of food and resources to go around, what God wants is, for us to share the resources that are really God’s and not ours, and to care for the weak among us. God is totally anti-Darwinian – that is, instead of blessing the strongest, God asks us to care for and help the weak. We seldom “get it” until we look at the cross.
Jesus, God, in his years on earth, preached a message of love, forgiveness, peace and self-denial for the sake of others. He healed the ill, those with birth defects like blindness or deafness and cured those with diseases even scary ones like leprosy which was the AIDS of his time. He deliberately went to the alcoholics, drug addicts, sexually promiscuous and anyone who had a psychological disease that separated them from society, their brothers and sisters, or estranged them from themselves and from God. His purpose was to heal and to restore.
Since Jesus is God, we understand that his message, his behavior, his love, his self-sacrifice and his innocent death on the cross for us is the LIGHT we should shine on all our hopes, desires, aspirations and intentions.
Notice that this third verse refers to the seers and prophets who help us to envision, to see what God was about. God has always been about loving us, and teaching us how to love.
Our last two verses remind us that Jesus is not just for us human beings. God has planned, somehow, through Jesus to rescue the whole of creation – everything from death and decay. When God resurrects, or another way to say it, when God perfects creation, we will be like Jesus. We will join with God in an endless chorus of praise, thanksgiving and love.
In Jesus’ name. Amen
Who We Are