CMLC 2023-12-25 Sermon (Carols)

Howdy?

Howdy.

Well, most of the time on Christmas Day, I like to go to John 1 when I'm doing the sermon.

I feel in many ways, not only because it's the one that always stands out as different from every other introduction to the Gospels,

but also because I feel like on Christmas morning, it's sort of like we've already gone through all the other parts,

the shepherds and Mary and the manger and everything else, it's sort of like, yeah, but it feels like there's something missing.

With it is that I always find John interesting because he always provides something a little bit different,

and especially whenever we get started with the beginning, and it says, in the beginning was the word.

The thing is that this opening actually means a lot more to people in their context than we realize.

Whenever we end up seeing this part that says, in the beginning was the law of us, the word,

is that that word itself actually had a lot of meaning for people to have.

You see, there was this idea that our very existence came from this sense of reason in the universe.

This belief that, especially back in those days, this was even before Gnosticism became a huge thing in the second century,

it was this idea that came up a lot in grief in the later Roman thinking that was that our purpose in being came from some sort of like a

demi-burge, this like force in existence that they would just call the act of reason, that it wasn't necessarily this deity, per se,

but just the fact that we're supposed to exist because reason says that we should.

And isn't that an easy out? Isn't that an easy way to look at things?

Is to believe that we're supposed to exist, but that we don't actually have any obligation to an actual being.

See, reason doesn't have thoughts. Reason doesn't have feelings.

Reason doesn't need to be admired or acknowledged. Reason isn't worship, per se.

But it also allows us to kind of like decide everything for ourselves.

See, each one of us has, in a sense, a world view. Each one of us sees the world in a certain way.

Some of us may see it from a glass half empty perspective, some of us may see it from a glass half full perspective,

and of course the engineers, the glasses, twice the size it needs to be.

And with it is that the way that we view the world, in a sense, sort of allows us to get by.

See, the times whenever we feel like we've done something that was wrong, the way we view the world is oftentimes a way of getting out of it,

a way of excusing. Or whenever someone has frustrated us, even though they may be totally in the right for whatever they did,

our world view allows us to still be angry at them. That even if whatever they did is totally justified, you know what, I'm angry.

So therefore there must be a reason for it.

When John says in the beginning was the loss, is that strikes the reader in a lot of ways?

But what strikes the reader even more is what he says happens. The word was with God, and the word was God.

Because in many ways it's trying to keep this reason set aside. But John will allow the word to be separate.

John does not say you can now somehow focus on that as if somehow there was this God that existed back in the Old Testament days,

and now we have this better version of God, the one that's cleaner, the one that's nicer, the one that's brighter,

the one that seems to make more sense to us today. No, you can't separate them, not only because they've always been there together,

but because love us itself only exists because of God. And it might be easy to try to go back and say,

well maybe it's just that the word is kind of divine. It's meant to be something special.

No, the actual original Greek is meant to say God. It's not just trying to say that it's some sort of a godly characteristic of social life.

See, one of these things is that we oftentimes can take our hope and our light and the things that bring us joy

and separate them away from the idea that there is actually God that looks at us and knows us deeply.

How many things do we do day in and day out that somehow we're reasoning out in our minds, why do we do this,

and at no point do we pause to say, yeah, but what about God? What is he saying at that moment in time?

Could we somehow manage to sit there and reason out that, you know, maybe in a parking lot I may or may not have scraped somebody's

back fender on their vehicle and somehow tell myself, you know what, I'm sure that I could easily just ignore it and move on

and I'll take care of it on my own and yet then at the same moment is to be able to say yeah, but God.

Or the times whenever you know that you could have reached out to the person that you love,

the person in your family, the people that your friends with, and you know that, you know, they probably,

everything's fine, you don't need to worry about it, but you know deep down inside that you haven't been that afraid of them

and you have to pause to be able to say, but God. The thing is that we can easily reason away so many things in our life

but reason doesn't get rid of the darkness. See it says in the passage, if human's life and the life was the light of men,

the light shines through the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. That word overcome has another meaning.

It also means to understand. You could also say the darkness has not understood the light.

We're not supposed to be reasonable. We're not supposed to do things just because it makes sense.

We're not supposed to somehow justify anything and everything that we do in our heads.

We're supposed to stop and say, but God. See that's the thing about darkness is that darkness cannot overcome light

because darkness doesn't even understand light in the first place. Darkness doesn't even get why light even exists.

That's the thing is that we face a world that doesn't understand light. It doesn't understand God himself saying, I'm going to be in human form.

It doesn't make sense. Why don't yourself that way? Why have to go and clean yourself because your body has dead skin cells?

Why in the world would you have to go through puberty and you didn't have to? Who likes pimples? I don't. I'm 43. Why do I still keep them from time to time?

To be able to say that this is also someone who's going to have to be voked, who's going to need to have a diaper change,

who's later on going to have to actually figure out how to learn, how to be a carpenter? Yeah, maybe that happens and the earth

and still have to figure out how to use it anymore. It doesn't make sense. The love of God is not here to try to make sense.

It's the thing that we end up seeing about the world. Jesus was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

He came here and he wasn't recognized. This is not the God that we were expecting. This is not the Messiah we were expecting.

This is not the Messiah that made any sense to the people that were even trying to follow Him. Okay, yeah, we're going to follow you.

Yeah, but we're not going to let any of that bad stuff happen to you, Jesus. Yes, we're going to follow you, but why is it that you're expecting us to love the people that are making our lives difficult?

Yes, I'm going to follow you, but why is it that you're expecting me to change? See, that's the thing about love us.

Whenever we see reason, whenever we see words and ideas and thoughts that just exist without God, they make sense in our head.

But what do they do in the world around us? How many things have we justified in our world that have brought hurt and torment and a lack of love and a lack of God in the world around us?

Because that's the thing about love us. The word is never supposed to be separate from God because the word is God.

Everything that is not only proclaimed by us, but also to us, if it is not truly of God.

Though God who is not only knowing us from the beginning and designing and creating us, but said, I am going to make you knowing that you are going to mess everything up.

And I'm going to have to give my son for you and I'm still going to make you. I'm still going to give you life. That doesn't make any sense, God.

How is that reasonable that you're going to make the very people who are going to kill your son? And he says, I'm not trying to make sense to you. I'm loving you.

That's the thing that we have today. You see, no matter what people want to justify about who we are and where we come from, it's never going to make any complete sense.

From those who want to see us as accidents and the cosmos that somehow just found its way into being, to those who want to somehow think of us as just some level of reasoning or just to find ourselves just because, well, I think therefore I am.

Whenever we do that without God, what we also lose is the fact that the greatest gift we have is not one or reason. It's one of all.

So as we're finishing up Advent, today we get to have Christmas. What I wish for you today is to go do something completely unreasonable. Go be happy.

And find somebody who is going to be so happy and no line of way to make them happy too.

Because the only thing that's going to actually bring hope are the things that are not about reason but rather about a loving God who has said, I have known you from before you ever existed and I know you till the end of everything.

And everything is going to be about loving you, whether you get it or you don't. May God bless us this Christmas and always. Amen.