Christmas Day - B
Isaiah 52.7-10
John 1.1-14
December 25, 2011
How Beautiful upon the Mountains
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
Here are two lessons that we don’t get to hear very often. They come around every year, but Christmas only falls on a Sunday once every seven years on the average, so like I say, we don’t hear them very often. We’re not like Lutherans who go to church on Christmas Day whether it falls on a Sunday or not. We’re Methodists so, well, all right, since Christmas falls on a Sunday, we’ll come to church, but when church is done, we’re gone. In fact, I heard of a colleague of mine who canceled church on a Christmas Sunday, since, he reasoned, Christmas is basically a family holiday. And anyway, he thought that attendance would be pretty sparse. He got to explain his reasoning to the bishop who was, as I understand it, less than receptive, but those were stricter times.
Anyway, here we are, and today we have these passages in front of us for the last time until Christmas of 2016. And, I have to say, they’re a little strange. There is no manger, no baby Jesus, no Joseph and Mary, no Bethlehem, not even any of the magi, those strange figures from far away.
In the reading from Isaiah, we have lovely poetic language: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” It’s lovely, but not very “Christmas-y”.
The words are from the figure we know as II Isaiah, who lived later than the historical Isaiah, in the time when part of the exiled community of Judah was preparing to come home from Babylon. Exile had been a hard experience as exile always is. It wasn’t because they suffered materially. The Judean community prospered in Babylon. In fact there was a thriving Jewish community in Babylon for the next thousand years or more. No, their suffering had been emotional and spiritual.
At the heart of their experience was the question, “Where is God?” When they had lived in Jerusalem, often called Zion, they knew the answer to that question. God was in Zion. But then the Babylonians came and hauled them away in chains. Where was God then? Did God stay behind in Zion and let Judah go off alone into exile? Or had God abandoned the covenant people all together leaving them to their own devices, perhaps choosing some other people or perhaps even getting out of the covenant God business completely. Or had God in some strange way gone with them, away from Zion, into the very heart of the city of their oppressors? They had no answers to their question.
Now they were being permitted to return to Zion. Where would God be then? The prophet spoke into that situation and that question with his poetry.
John’s gospel came much later, but oddly, the situation that his community faced was remarkably like the situation of his spiritual ancestors in Babylon. John’s community had either just been expelled or were in the process of being expelled from their broader community because they were Jesus-followers. The separation was painful, as anyone who has gone through a church split knows. They needed reassurances. Was God with them or not?
John wrote into that situation and that question with philosophical theology: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That sort of language fills the early part of the first chapter of John, interrupted by some stuff about John the Baptist and then resuming with the words that closed our reading this morning: “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.”
We have all sorts of questions about these words. What is “the Word” anyway? What does it mean to say that “the Word” was “in the beginning”? The beginning of what? And—“the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” How are we supposed to take that? What could it possibly mean?
And then there are questions that we should have but don’t because of the decisions that were made about the translation. When John says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us,” “lived” translates a Greek word that means “to pitch tents” or “to encamp.” The Word pitched its tent among us. When we read on a little it becomes clear that for John’s gospel Jesus of Nazareth is a “tenting” among us of the Word (whatever that is!) that is somehow closely related to God’s very being. But that tenting among us suggests that this whole arrangement is very mobile, which, I guess, makes sense, given the amount of territory that Jesus covered.
God comes to John’s community prepared to travel, willing to go where they go and live where they live. If they are being expelled from their community it will certainly be painful, but God will go with them. God is willing and able to do that.
Which, making allowances for the differences, is precisely what II Isaiah wants his community to know. Yes, it was wrenching to have to leave Zion and it will be wrenching to have to leave Babylon to return to Zion. But God has gone ahead of them. God has already announced peace to Zion. God has already shown Zion that its safety and security will lie in God’s hands. God will be there for them.
We’re gathered on Christmas morning. You are pretty much by definition the hard-core Christ-followers. You remember that one of the things that Jesus is called is Immanuel—God with us.
No, we don’t have the baby Jesus or Bethlehem in our readings today, but we do have “God with us.” God goes with us. God will be with us. God will be there for us.
We don’t know what will happen in the next year. There are worrisome signs on the financial horizon as Europe struggles with its crisis and political parties cannot agree on how to respond to our own lingering difficulties. We don’t know how these stories will end. Whether they turn out well for the world as a whole, some of us may suffer reversals in the coming year that we cannot see today. It is II Isaiah’s testimony and it is John’s testimony that God will go with us no matter where we go.
Some of us are young and growing and getting stronger all the time. Some of us are living in bodies that seem frail. Some of us are struggling with long-term illnesses or conditions that weigh us down and keep us from the life that we would like to live. None of us knows just what the next year will bring. II Isaiah and of John tell us that God will be there, no matter what happens to us.
Most of us, I suspect, plan to be here next year. I certainly do. Some, perhaps, have plans to move away and pursue their lives in another place. Where we stay here or go somewhere else, II Isaiah and John both tell us that God will go with us.
If it helps us to hear that news in poetic language, it’s there in Isaiah. If it helps us to hear that news in the technical language of philosophical theology, it’s there in John. However we need to hear it, the message is the same: God is with us and will go with us and will be for us. Wherever we are: Immanuel. Whatever we do: Immanuel. Wherever we go: Immanuel. That’s our word for the day, our word for the year, our word for all time: Immanuel.
That does sound “Christmas-y” after all.
©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
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