Christmas Eve: John 1: 1-14

This is the night when we contemplate the most awesome moment in human history.

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”.

 

I asked Susan to read a different version of the reading form the beginning of John’s gospel – not because I don’t love the poetic language of the King James Version we are more used to hearing, but because I wanted us to try to grasp this amazing moment in a fresh way.

 

So Eugene Peterson has re-written the New Testament Greek of John’s gospel using what he calls ‘the language of the street – the way you’d talk with friends, write a letter, or discuss politics.”  So his version reads

“The word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes…true from start to finish”.

  

In beginning his gospel as he does, John is not trying to wow us with beautiful poetry or bamboozle us with complex theological ideas. John is trying to say that in Jesus, God’s very self became earthly, bodily, flesh-and-blood like us. 

God moved into the neighbourhood – into our world, into streets like these, lives like ours.

 

Look at any nativity scene and marvel at the sheer number of things in a small space. The baby lies in the manger – with straw, perhaps the walls of the stable; a donkey, an ox, sheep, and shepherds, wise men, and even their camels, Mary and Joseph, perhaps angels, a star. 

This is how God comes in Jesus - surrounded by things, made real flesh and blood, here with us. An earthly baby among all these earthly people and animals and things, who is also, somehow, God.

 

It was wonderful to be able to present Nativity Live at Willhome Farm Barn on Thursday – real people, real sheep, a real donkey, a real alpaca standing in for the camel; real straw, real animals all around us in that real farm.

We didn’t have a real baby – but how could you possibly have a baby, a few hours old, who is flesh-and blood like us – but also captures all of the power and timelessness of God’s Word made human?

 

I go back time and again to John Betjeman’s poem ‘Christmas’.

It starts as a fairly comic description of all the Christmas sights and sounds, but then he writes:

 

And is it true, 
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

 

We are pausing to breathe, reflect and pray before Christmas Day begins.

 

God offers us his presence not in a theological idea, but in a baby.

 

We may be dreading being alone; or we may be anxious about being overwhelmed with people. 

We may have been very busy doing things, or we may have been struggling with not being able to do things.

We may feel ready & excited or unprepared and anxious.

 

But tonight, among all these things of this world – right here and right now – among us then and now and forever – God is with us.

 

May it be so.

Amen.