God'S Body Language

Dr. Richard J. Henderson January 4, 2009

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Psalm 147:12-20 (responsive)
John 1:1-18

Introduction

We have just celebrated a New Year. Almost everybody has New Year's Day off. We waited up late last Wednesday, the last day of 2008, to watch the celebration. As always, there was the countdown of the last seconds of the old year: 3 - 2 - 1. And then a huge celebration! Times Square was once again packed; lots of people got together with parties to celebrate. Grown men and women wore silly hats and tooted little cardboard horns. It's a big event.

If you stop to think about it, you might wonder what we are celebrating. What's so joyful and exciting? What is such a big deal?

There's another way to look at the New Year: we've just lost another year that we will never get back. Especially for those of us who have birthdays early in the year, it's a reminder that, "Yikes! We're another year older!" A New Year also says time is moving along. Is that good news?

We might recognize New Year's Day differently than we do. It could be a sad, dark time because another year has passed. People might stay home alone. They could pull down the blinds. The TV screen is blank.

We don't do that, of course, because there is something else important about New Year's Day. It's a chance to start over. It's a new beginning. A new year brings new opportunities.

What do we do at this time every year? We make New Year's resolutions. I've been eating too much; I'm going to cut back. I'm wasting too much time watching TV; I'm going to turn it off. With the turn of the calendar we see the chance to turn in a new direction.

Really, there's no difference between midnight December 31 and any other night at that time, except suddenly we see the chance to start over. It's a new beginning, a new creation.

I

At the very beginning of John's gospel he speaks of new creation. Here he is speaking of God's new beginning. The language is subtle, but profound. Do you remember the first three words of John's gospel? "In the beginning," and the first three words of the book of Genesis are "In the beginning." John echoes the creation story in talking about what God is doing at Jesus' birth.

He does that to signal that he's talking about a whole new creation. He is saying that when God sent the baby Jesus into the world that he created it was something so new that it was like creating the world all over again. John implies that the birth of Christ is that big.

Remember at creation God said, "Let there be light," and there was light? John says that in this new creation God sent "the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." This is such a monumental event that it reflects back to the creation of the world. It is a new creation that brings a new kind of light into the world: new beginnings and new opportunities.

II

This new creation is a human being. As God tried to find the most effective way to speak to us, God chose to come in person - face-to-face in flesh and blood. As Barbara Brown Taylor put it, God decided to "speak body language." The word of God became flesh. The creator God came into our world as one of us.

John says the Word lived among us. But the literal translation of this phrase is "pitched his tent with us." In Jesus, God set up camp with us. He pitched his tent right here among all of us. He came to us in this most intimate way.

III

People had heard the word of God for thousands of years. The word was spoken by teachers and through the Torah. It was seen in the actions of God in creating a people and then rescuing them from slavery. It came in the beauty of the Psalms, in the harsh words of the prophets, and in the encouraging events of God's saving history. The fact that God spoke was important.

But now God is doing a new thing. God is living among us and that means so much more. God with us is living as we live, knowing what we go through, and understanding by experience what our lives are like. Being here with us makes such a difference.

Several years ago Mother Teresa received the Templeton Award for progress in religion. In her acceptance speech she talked about the importance of being present and how our presence means more than our money. She said, "Let us not be satisfied with just paying money. Money is not enough. Money can be got - but they need your hands to serve them, they need your heart to love them. Very often I ask people to come to our homes for the dying and ask the people not to come and give things, but I want their presence, just to touch them, just to smile at them, just to be present. It means such a lot."

The actual presence of God in our world means such a lot: not just to receive his word, but to have God's presence.

When we really care about someone, we do everything we can to be there with them. A man gets a phone call, "Your child has been hurt in an accident and has been sent by ambulance to the emergency room." Now, it's one thing for that man to call the hospital and ask how his child is doing. It is quite another for him to jump in his car and race to the hospital to be at his child's side.

God comes to be with us. God cares that much about you and me. God loves us enough to be born among us; to have a body, a face, hands and feet, skin. God pitches his tent among us, as one of us.

Conclusion

It was a dark, fierce, storming night. As the rain poured down, its rushing sound was broken by loud claps of thunder and bright flashes of lightning. In the middle of the night, Sara, a little seven year old girl, climbed out of her bed and ran down the hallway to her parent's bedroom. She tugged at her father's pajama sleeve, and said, "Daddy, Daddy, I'm afraid."

Her father lifted her up and she crawled down into the bed, snuggling between her mother and father. She clutched her father tightly. He said, "You don't have to be afraid, honey. God will always take care of you." Sara looked up at him and said, "I know, Daddy, but tonight I need someone with skin on."

Amen

© Richard J. Henderson 2009