Christmas 2021: Jesus with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Merry Christmas, Medichurch.

How are you guys doing?

If you're wondering, this is what it looks like when all of you guys show up at the same time.

So this is this is really if you came and didn't have a seat, just remember they also didn't have a hotel room for Jesus.

You're in really good company today.

We're so glad that you joined us, and I'm gonna try to keep my part very brief.

If you haven't been here with us over the last three weeks, what we've done is we have slowed down the Christmas story.

We learned about this thing called narrative fatigue.

It's very simple.

The more times you hear a story, the less details and weight of that story you're able to hold in your mind.

And so the first time you hear an epic, world-changing story, you experience it like you're watching it for the first time on an iMac screen.

By the 100th time you've heard that same story, you just know the bullet points and you're kind of over it.

And we hear the story of Christmas at least every single year, and we know the bullet points we just sang about them.

Joy to the world, Jesus came away in a manger, a little drummer boy, I guess, can't find that in scripture, but it's a great song, right?

So if we are to fully understand the weight and significance of the moment that changed all of human history, we have to slow down.

And so for three weeks, we looked at the story out of the three Gospels.

Those are the three different historical accounts of Jesus' life: Matthew, Luke, and today we're looking at John.

And each of those tells a story through the lens of a different one of the main characters.

And what we believed about this story is that if we investigated these characters, we could pull out some characteristics that if we were to add them to our life, would position us to fully live out our purpose, and just like Mary did, and just like Joseph did, that we can play a key role in the story that God is telling throughout time.

Joseph taught us that God is looking for people who are righteous.

And if you're new with us and maybe you're unchurched or de-churched or anti-churched, the word righteous has a very heavy spiritual sound to it.

It feels like something unattainable.

We found out through Joseph that to be righteous means that you do what's right, even when you have the right not to do it.

That's what it means to be righteous, to use your power and authority and your rights for the good of those around you.

Last Sunday we looked at Mary and we saw that God is looking for people who are ready.

The old saying that God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called, that he is calling you into a life of unimaginable purpose and significance.

And for you to understand that and explore it, it doesn't start with you getting your life together.

It doesn't start with memorizing the Bible front to back, it doesn't start with the perfect church attendance record.

It starts with the heart that is ready to move when Jesus moves on that heart today.

We are moving on to Christmas through the lens of Jesus.

We're gonna be in John's gospel, and this is perhaps the most unique nativity story of them all.

It starts not at the beginning of the story, it starts at the beginning of the beginning.

In John chapter 1, verse 1, he wrote this: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

John 1:1

We're going all the way back to before the creation of the earth itself, to eternity past, before the universe was even a thought in the mind of God, and it says, In the beginning was the word.

When John wrote this, he wrote it in Greek, and that word is the logos, the word.

This is the uh orienting rhythm of all things in all of creation.

And we believe something here, and we say it often, that words create worlds.

Your words create worlds.

And we see this at the beginning of our Bibles, back in the Jewish scriptures, where it says, God spoke, let there be light, and there was light.

Words create worlds, and you were made in the image of God.

And some of you came in here today and you've been through two years of hell, and I couldn't convince you if I had five and a half years that you are actually special, that you have a purpose on your life, that God made you on purpose.

You're not on planet Earth by accident, that God made you with purpose, that he wants to take all that you are and all that you have, all of your personalities and giftings and traits and skill sets and life experience and worldview, and he wants to use that to actually impact the world around you.

Some of you have been so convinced by the world that you are just meant to settle into the status quo.

You have bought the lie that all you're living for is today.

And I'm telling you, I can't convince you, but we believe that if we come together and seek God, that we will find God, and the Spirit of God is gonna show up in some of your lives today and going to begin breaking away at the facade you have built around your heart and exposing just how badly He wants to use you.

Your words create worlds, and we are creators ourselves.

And when you speak words of truth and life and love, you build up people, you build up your children, you build up your spouses, you build up your coworkers, you speak those things, and those words create worlds.

And when we speak evil, and when we speak lies, and when we speak discrimination, we create for ourselves with our very words an actualization of hell on earth.

Our words are powerful, and Jesus is described in the beginning as the word.

In verse two, it says, He was with God in the beginning.

Verse three, all things were created through him, and apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created.

And we continue to learn some things about this word, this word that is Jesus Christ.

The word is eternal.

And not only was it with God in the beginning, it says the word was God.

Everything that is, everything that we experience, the air that we are breathing and the beating of our hearts, all that was created was created through the word, the agent of creation.

The word was the organizing principle that brought all of this into habitable order.

That is the backstory.

And when I tell you that John's gospel has the most unique nativity story of them all, that is not an overstatement.

In fact, he tells the entire Christmas story in just one sentence.

In verse 14, John writes, The Word became flesh and dwelt right here among us.

The Christmas story in one sentence.

The word, the word that was and is and is to come, the word that created it all, the word that was with God before this was and is God Himself, the Word became flesh and came and dwelt here among us.

You can create worlds with your words, but it turns out that to redeem those words requires our walk.

And I don't know where you're at in your faith journey.

I don't know where you're at in believing all the claims of Christianity.

There are a lot of gods that are talked about out there.

There are a lot of religions with a lot of people following them.

And if you're wondering about some of the things that sets Christianity apart, the word, the pre-existing, all-powerful creator of the universe, our God became flesh.

That is a claim of Christianity that you cannot find in any other mainline religion.

The word became flesh.

You find all of the other gods who are distant and unconcerned with the little details of your life.

And we find a God who came down into our world and concerned himself with every single aspect of who we are and what it is that we go through.

Jesus put flesh onto the word.

He embodied humanity.

And what we believe about this movement we call the church is that Jesus came and embodied humanity so that we could embody the Spirit of God out into the world around us.

God, who is everywhere and everything, came down as a person and a place so that we, single, solitary people in space and time, could be a part of what God is doing in all places at all times.

What we learn from Jesus coming to earth is that if this is going to work, if this church is going to actually do something in our world, if we're not just gonna be another religious movement where we sit in the seats and we check our box and we feel good because we did kind of like a spiritual thing that we, if we're going to really reach and change our city, we have to have more than just word.

We can sit and talk a good game.

Some of you came up in those churches where you talked about holiness and you talked about righteousness and you talked about reaching the marginalized and you talked about those who were living without hope.

But then your actual practice of your faith created unwritten rules and regulations to make sure that the very people you were preaching about would never step foot inside of your doors.

As the church, what you are is you are the hands and feet of God.

You are now the embodiment of the word that was and is and is to come.

You are what puts flesh to what God is wanting to do on the earth, the same way Jesus did when he came to the earth 2,000 years ago.

If we want any hope of this movement mattering, then we have to put flesh and bones on our big, bold, spiritual proclamations.

We've got to put hands and feet to the beliefs that we hold and are happy to raise hands and sing about.

We have to do what Jesus did.

We have to come down and go out.

We have to take this movement and actually force it to move through our actions and through our obedience.

And the church has talked a big game and they've had their words.

But if their words are not embodied in the people of God, then the message of Christmas and the point of our mission is lost entirely.

A foundational text for us is in James chapter one, it says this but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself.

Be doers, embody the word, do not just hear and repeat, because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror.

For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.

How could that be?

How could you look in a mirror, leave that mirror, and immediately forget exactly who you are?

You can do that if your words are not actually in track with who you are embodied in the real world.

Christmas is the story of a God who got small and came down to us.

He became concrete, localized, individualized.

The word Jesus Christ became flesh and taught us the third characteristic for you to position yourself like Joseph did, like Mary did, to play your role in what God is wanting to do in your life while you're here on earth.

Joseph taught us we are to be righteous, and Mary taught us that we are to be ready.

Jesus came down and showed us that we are called to be real.

No one is impressed by the pomp and circumstance of religion any longer.

No one is impressed that you have the tallest steeple or the most stained glass in your windows.

Nobody is impressed that you have a more expensive suit than anybody else on your row.

Nobody cares if you can quote all the verses and sing all of the songs.

The world is desperate for a movement of people who are real, who show up with their full selves, who are transparent about their weaknesses and believe that even in their weaknesses, God can show to be stronger.

Jesus could have come down as a conquering king, he could have come down as a military hero, but he came down as a baby.

He came down in vulnerability.

He came down needing the people around him just to survive.

He came down in the realest way possible, came into the world the same way that you and I came into this world.

He was showing us something, he was teaching us something, he was laying out a template for people who actually want to use their lives for the significant purpose that God created it for.

That God needs people who are ready to get real.

Hebrews 4 says this.

Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Out of however long you have been living here on earth, right now, at the hopefully tail end of a pandemic, is one of those markers along the way of your life when you look around to a world that needs hope and needs help.

People who are still reeling, who are still broken, who are still distraught from the last two years.

There was hope at Christmas because our God, unlike the false pretenders, our God became flesh.

And if his people will carry that on as the embodiment of that word, the carriers of the Spirit of God, those who trust not in a God who is distant and removed, but who came down and experienced all the life that we experience as well.

If we will not just be hearers, but doers of the word, we will make a difference in this coming year that you cannot even imagine.

Having to throw down some foldy chairs on the side will be the least of our problems.

We will fill this place up, we will fill other venues up, we will see marriages healed, we will see addictions defeated, we will see people find the hope that we have found in Jesus.

Let's close this out back in John.

He's talking about the word, and he says, In him, in the word, in Jesus made flesh, was life.

And that life was the light of men.

And that light, it shines in the darkness.

And there is a lot of darkness in our world.

It shines in the darkness, and yet, and here is our hope, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

It's fun to do things for the first time because we're gonna get to start a meta church tradition.

And it's fun because we spend a lot of our time tearing down all of the traditions that have kept people outside of the church.

But every once in a while there is something worth pursuing on our own.

What we're gonna start is something that you may have grown up doing, the lighting of the candles.

In Jesus, there is life, and that life is the light of mankind.

And Jesus came as one, and that one light illuminated the way to God.

But watch what happens as the light spreads, and watch what happens as the light grows.

As the one light, the word who became flesh, now lives and moves in the hearts of his people.

Later in John's gospel, right before Jesus leaves the earth, he says to his followers, You will do what I have done, and you will do even greater things than these.

It doesn't mean that we will be born of a virgin, it doesn't mean that we will walk on water, it doesn't mean that we will raise people from the dead.

We are moving in our cities, we are moving in our families.

Jesus, the light of the world, stood on a mountain one evening and said, You are the light of the world.

Years ago on one silent night.

We thank you, God.

We thank you for sending Jesus.

Jesus, we thank you for coming and being our hope.

I pray that we would take on the challenge to embody your mission, what you've called us to do.

God, that at MetaCurch, if we were known for one thing, people would know here we are real.

We are real people who are really broken, who sometimes are really confused, but who believe in a real God, believe that we have a real purpose, that our lives matter, and that we have work to do in the world around us.

We love you.

We thank you for Christmas, we thank you for Jesus.

We pray all this in his name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.