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Sermon 1-3-21

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Hey it’s 2021! We made it! This year, more than most, we have we been looking forward to starting something new - though I think our “new years resolutions” might look a bit different than normal – like “move to the other side of the room,” “put on something besides sweatpants” and “less screen time.”

Beginnings give us hope. Maybe it’s the reason we return over an over again to hear our favorite stories, with their recognizable first lines: “Once upon a time” and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” “It was a dark and stormy night.”

What about this one? “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

And so, began the greatest story of all time, a story could not be contained on just one book or just one lifetime. It is a story that starts at the very beginning and tells of a God who created a world that was good and full of life, and God wanted to share it with us. Even though we tend to mess things up. Again, and again and again. So God decided to begin a new chapter to the story. And this one also began with “in the beginning.”

In an example of divinely sanctioned plagiarism, this is how the gospel of John chooses to tell us the Christmas story. There are no angels or shepherds or censuses or managers or even Mary and Joseph, or even a birth. Instead, John takes us back to the dawn of time, to tell Jesus’ origin story like a dramatic crane shot that zooms out and out and out until you can see all of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

And so, God’s word became flesh and living among us. The Word made a home with us. The Word landed in your neighborhood and moved in next door. The Word arrived at a new address - A living, breathing, Christmas card – with a message of love from our maker, arriving just in time in just the right place.

Having just moved myself, I feel like learning a new address, navigating mail forwarding, and getting your mail right is always an adventure – especially this year! And then there is always having to deal with getting mail addressed to some of the previous inhabitants.

When I lived in NJ, I got Christmas cards two years in a row from one particular family I didn’t know. Both times, the card had my correct address, but the recipients were Moe, Marc, and Justin, with no last name. Did Moe, Marc, and Justin forget to update their friends and family about their new living situation? Or did they not want to be found? I’ll never know. I just felt sad that, for two years in a row, I returned the cards with my own personal, though not very Christmas-y, message added: return to sender.

Our address, when written correctly and kept up to date, tells others where we call home. It’s an amazing system we use to receive everything from Christmas cards to ads to Amazon packages safely in a timely manner – at least, most of the time. And when we move, we usually leave a forwarding address to point the way to where we can now be found, which is exactly what I did when I recently moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia.

Certainly, the words that I read a moment ago from the Gospel of John is more beautifully written than the loveliest hallmark card. It is the first line of the most amazing story ever told. But it seems to me that it is also an address - not only an address of a physical location, but also an address in the span of cosmic time. This is not an address you could punch into your GPS and find the most direct route. This is an address that takes you back to the very beginning, to the Source, to where everything started. 

It was through words that God spoke our world into being at the very beginning. “Let there be light,” were God’s first words into the darkness. And there was light. And it was good. Then God really got going: “Let there be water and land and plants and animals and the moon and the sun and people!” And God saw that the world that had been created was VERY good, very good indeed. And the Word of God has been on the move ever since. 

God didn’t stop speaking after the universe was formed. Through human history God has been communicating to us, through ordinary people called to speak extraordinary words: through Abraham, Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, and countless more, …. All like letters from God delivered through the mouths of so many who have gone before us. Though sometimes the message didn’t always get through as intended.

But in these days and in these times, God speaks to us by a Son, born in a particular place and in a particular time, giftwrapped for us in rags. We celebrate that the Word didn’t just pop in for a quick visit. The Word didn’t plan an overnight trip just to see how things are going. The Word didn’t have to be up early in the morning beat the traffic home.

On Christmas Day, over a week ago, we celebrate when God moved to a new permanent address. The Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word set up shop and decided to stay.

The tracking number of this very special gift was first revealed to a poor, young, small-town girl in Nazareth. Gabriel informed her that a “shipping label has been created by the Holy Spirit; it is currently en route to womb.” Mary shared the good news with her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, who confirmed that the package was on its way. Then, Mary and Joseph faced their own shipping challenges as they made their way to Bethlehem. When they rested with the animals, they thought they had been rerouted or even gone off course, but were exactly where they needed to be.

The shepherds found him first, at 100 Manger Way, Nowhere’s Ville. It was not very hard to find since they had gotten their directions from the finest heavenly host GPS: “to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the messiah, the Lord.” These shepherds, poor and nomadic themselves, were surprised to see that the Word of God packs light. No carry-ons or checked luggage, no U-Hauls or moving vans for Jesus. They found just a wrinkled little baby resting in an animal feeding trough.

Some thirty years later, John the Baptist came on the scene, assuring the world that the Word of God had indeed moved into their very midst. Some people thought that John himself was the one who they were looking for, but John assured them he was just the delivery man. Any confusion was finally cleared up at Jesus’ baptism, when a voice came from heaven said – “you are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Quite the delivery confirmation.

And for three more years, the word of God walked and talked, taught and healed and fed, and proclaimed his message of the kingdom of God, until, like a gift we don’t understand, the world tossed him aside for something else they liked better. God gave us the greatest and most wondrous gift imaginable, a perfect reflection of Godself.

What we didn’t count on was that this love was going to mess up our ideas about God and love itself. So, after all this work on God’s part, and on the part of all the prophets, in delivering this gift, we often act as though we want to send the gift back. We would rather say search for the gift recipe and write on the box “Return to Sender. This is not really what we wanted. You must have the wrong address.” 

But God has already spoken. The delivery was already made, and there is no going back what that was before. A new beginning arrived, and it is very good indeed! In the year one AND in the year 2021. Thanks be to God, amen.