Home | Site Map | Contact Us | Feeds

God Came for a While and Changed Us Forever

             The last U.S. soldiers rolled out of Iraq last Sunday morning, signaling the end of a bitter war that, according to the Associated Press, “raged for nearly nine years and left Iraq shattered…The mission cost nearly 4,500 American and well more than 100,000 Iraqi lives and $800 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The question of whether it was worth it all is yet unanswered.”[i]Although God came to earth on a silent night with humble arrival among shepherds and animals, it was an act of imperial aggression declaring war on sin, death, and the devil. It cost God the humiliation of departing heaven, of the Creator becoming a creature, and of the Holy and Almighty One subjecting himself to pain and punishment at the cruel hands of sinners. Was it worth it all?

            With majestic poetry the apostle John takes us to heaven for the answer. We enter the inner chamber of the Divine himself, and we behold the very beginnings of Christmas, the purest meaning of Christmas, and the glorious effects of Christmas. While the other gospels each begin with an announcement about Jesus Christ by a messenger—whether an angel or John the Baptist—the gospel of John begins with the embodied announcement, the One who is the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Thousands and thousands of pages have been written to explain this verse. One of the best is Martin Luther’s.

A word signifies not only that which the mouth speaks, but much more so the thought of the heart, without which the outward word is not spoken…God in eternity in his majesty and divine essence has a word, speech, conversation, or thought in his divine heart with himself, unknown to angels and men. That is called his Word, that from eternity was in himself in his fatherly heart, through which God decided to create heaven and earth. But no man has known anything of this will of God, until the Word became flesh and declared it to us.[ii]

             Call the Word an expression of God, a revelation of God, or even God’s logic taking shape. The Word was in the beginning, and to exist at the beginning is to exist before the beginning, to be eternal. The Word was both with God and God himself; therefore the Word is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate and eternal expression of God. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). Keep in mind we’re peering into the inner workings of the triune God, unfathomable to human understanding. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, well, so am I. Let’s listen again to Luther.

No one sees, hears, or comprehends this Word, but God alone. He has an invisible, incomprehensible Word…St. John therefore says that in God there is a Talk or Word, which comprises the entire God and itself is God, and is before all creatures and angels: no one sees it or hears it…So it is a Word or Talk, not of any angel, nor any creature, but of God himself, the Creator of all things. That is here called the Word; not a simple, common word, but a Word as large as God is, yes, that itself is God. [iii]

             “Beyond all question,”the Bible says, “the mystery of godliness is great” (1 Timothy 3:16). It’s a miracle, after all. A miracle by God and the miracle is God. A miracle performed for people, among people. “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). That is what we mean when we say in our creeds that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. And so the Word stepped out of eternity again, as he first did at creation, now to do his work of redemption. God Came for a While and Changed Us Forever.

            “Through him all things were made…the world was made through him…he was in the world…he came to that which was his own.” One of the challenges to progress in Iraq was the cultural barrier between the U.S. troops and the Iraqi people. Everything from climate adjustment for soldiers to appropriate behaviors and local customs reminded us that we were foreign visitors. When John wrote these words the church was battling a false teaching about Jesus called Docetism, which comes from a Greek word meaning “to seem or appear as if.” The teaching stated that God didn’t actually become human because that’s simply too drastic of a demotion for God. He only seemed to be human. John, the disciple of Jesus, disputes this, saying “The Word became flesh.” This is no illusion. God was here, and he’s real. “I walked with him,” John remembers. “I talked with him, broke bread with him, touched him, and watched him die.” God entered our world, and not as a visitor. Jesus Christ became as we are, not to observe life on this planet, but to experience all of it from birth to death, and beyond. God Came for a While and Changed Us Forever.

            Remember the Old Testament tabernacle of Israel? The transportable worship structure containing, among other things, an altar for animal sacrifices, and the Ark of the Covenant, enveloped in a cloud which by night filled with fire. It represented God’s presence, as God once described, “There…I will meet with the Israelites…I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God” (Exodus 29:43, 44). When John writes, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” he uses a word that means “God tabernacled among us.” The focal point where God meets people and we meet God is God himself. The place where sinners find forgiveness is God’s own blood sacrificed for our sins, the blood of the God who became human so he could die. The Old Testament cloud of heaven takes shape as the New Testament God of heaven among us and the firestorm of heaven’s holy judgment on our sin strikes its fury on him. God Came for a While and Changed Us Forever.

             Considering the ancient history of the Middle East, the eight or nine years that the U.S. military tented there during the war is a drop in the bucket. We did make a difference injecting some democracy, security, and hope into a torn land, but how much and will it last? President Obama spelled success by stating that we gave Iraq “a chance for a successful future.” Perhaps a chance is all we could do. When you consider the vast landscape of history over the ages of our world, the 33 years that God lived among us is also a drop in the bucket. But what he left behind is a changed world. “All the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” Isaiah announces (Isaiah 52:10). What God did by dwelling among us doesn’t have a zip code, or a skin color, or a credit limit, or an expiration date. And it’s more than providing a chance. God’s Christmas love coming in the flesh is salvation. Lay claim to another way, another kind of savior, or another form of forgiveness and it’s darkness. “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” Receive him. Hold him. Embrace him. And live forever as God’s own child. “To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…born of God.” There is another birth to celebrate today. Your own! You are born of God with rights to approach your heavenly Father as his own son or daughter. God Came for a While and Changed Us Forever.

             The war in Iraq exploded with a high-octane airstrike of shock and awe in southern Baghdad, and ended with a quiet exit of orderly convoys under the cover of darkness.U.S. military leaders didn’t want to attract attention from their enemies in a still dangerous corner of the world. The coming of Christ when he returns at the end of time will be higher-octane shock and awe, but his first coming under the cover of Bethlehem’s night was a quiet entry. The kind of attention God wanted to attract was the attention of Christmas believers who, by faith, look for God’s glory not in shock and awe but in the manger, the ordinary, the small, the everyday of our lives. Alarm clocks, bills, and car repairs. Cleaning up messes. Dealing with roommates. Going back to work. Living like a follower of Jesus. Making improvements in health and relationships. His glory is there. The Word comes to the manger of our hearts still today and we find, born in us, little changes that give great glory to God. Amen.

 Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 25, 2011

 

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

Home | Site Map | Contact Us | Feeds