God is with us

Sermon Notes for Sunday 4th January John 1:10-18 Christmas 2 by Geoff Vidal

We have had a wonderfully busy family Christmas. The presence of a niece from Brazil and a niece from California gave us an excuse for more gatherings with lots of eating and drinking. I very easily fell into the trap of making Christmas more about family celebration than connecting with God. The strong attraction of the Aussie Christmas culture prevailed! Why do they celebrate Christmas in Tokyo? Often it seems that Santa Claus is more important than Jesus. Now, hot cross buns in Coles are already beginning to distract us from Easter and, for many people, chocolate bunnies will be more important than the crucifixion of Jesus. 

Over Christmas, in those times when I have actually tried to connect with God, my thoughts have been about how the baby Jesus can distract us from the teaching, healing, loving Lord Jesus. We will end today by singing “Away in a manger” but I hope we see more than the birth of a baby. The critical Christmas message is that “God is with us” Emanuel! Christmas is all about seeing the glory of God. 

Our Gospel reading this morning was the continuation of the wonderful poetic opening of the Good News according to John. John begins his Gospel dramatically; “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God  .... everything came into being through him .... the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it”. 

That powerful message from the prologue to John continued in today’s reading. Verse 14 says “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”    

This Tuesday it is Epiphany. The 12 days of Christmas are done and dusted on 6th January and that’s the day for decorations to come down. Traditionally, Epiphany is the day of reading about (and celebrating) the visit of the wise men. Their story is a great story about seeing the glory of God. 

In our house, the wooden nativity scene with the manger is put away on 6th January but the carved wooden figures of the wise men are now brought out and, for the rest of the year, they stay at our front door reminding visitors to our house that the wise people are still looking for God. 

I recently read a sad story of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, who said he was 'intimidated' by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land. Archbishop Cottrell explained that he was stopped at checkpoints and that militias told him he could not visit Palestinian families in the West Bank as he had planned to do. During his Christmas Day sermon at the Cathedral in York, he said: “We have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers. We don't seem to be able to see ourselves in them and, therefore, we spurn our common humanity.” 

Archbishop Cottrell described how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with “persecuted Palestinian communities” in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood nativity scene carving.

The piece showed a “large grey wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus. He said, “It was sobering for me to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn't visit Palestinian families.” 

So, if they tried it today, any wise men who came from the East, from some country far away, would be blocked from visiting Bethlehem.   

You and I live in an age of seeking understanding, of longing for peace, where life can be thought of as a search, a journey. People are looking, searching. Visitors who turn up to Christmas services and who sometimes sneak into the back of our churches on other Sundays are “seeking”. They are trying to find out what Christianity is really all about; wondering if it is possible to see the glory of God.

 This is an age of searching. In fact, we are often suspicious of people who say that they are sure of where they are. We have our doubts about anyone who is confident in their destination. We are more comfortable with people who say, “I haven’t arrived yet, I am still searching” than we are with people who say “I know! I have definitely found what I am looking for.”  

So, Epiphany is the day for the seekers and the searchers; the day when wise people are on their journey, looking for the Messiah, the promised one. Epiphany is the day for looking for the presence of God with us. 

And, in the Epiphany story, these people, who came to the manger in Bethlehem, were not necessarily kings and, although they had three presents, there were not necessarily three of them. But, they were wise and, significantly, they knew that they didn’t know everything. Most certainly, they were all people on a journey. 

These wise men were strange and foreign. We guess that they must have come from Persia. That is modern- day Iran. They were not Jews: not people of the book. They were aliens. And yet they were the first ones to see the glory of God in Jesus. They were the first ones to worship him.  

They are the ones who, lacking a certainty about where the Messiah is to be born and about who he is, lacking the scriptures themselves, are on a search. Others may be content to stay home, going over the old slogans and formulae, keeping to well-worn paths, but wise men are prepared to get up and go to a new place. 

I wonder what happened to the wise men after they left the manger at Bethlehem. Initially, they intended to go back to tell King Herod where they had found the baby. Fortunately, an angel appeared to them, took charge, and told them not to go back, because the king wanted to kill the baby Jesus. All we are told is that they went home “another way.” Isn’t “another way” a wonderful little phrase! Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear the story of the rest of the lives of these wise men after they chose to go “another way”?   

Undoubtedly these wise men, these searchers and seekers, who had found the baby Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and worshipped him - these people who had seen the glory of God - would not have gone home the same way, even if the angel had not warned them. That is, there was no way to go back home to their previous lives. They had seen God Incarnate: they had seen the fulfilment of their expectation, and they were compelled to go back “another way”, forced to live lives other than they would have lived had they not met the babe.