SUNDAY SERMON

THE GIFT
Christmas I, Yr C
December 28, 2003

The Rev. Eyleen Farmer

Gospel: John 1:1-18

"Holy Spirit, Catch my words in mid-air and turn them into a hymn of praise. Amen."

I wandered into the Church of the Holy Communion for the first time less than two years ago. Actually I didn't exactly wander in; I was invited by Tom who was convinced, despite my Baptist upbringing, that I was really an Episcopalian who just didn't know it yet. We argued about it for awhile. I reminded him that there was no such person as John the Episcopalian; it's John the Baptist for heaven's sake. Nevertheless, here I am, a waiting-to-be-confirmed Episcopalian. I want to tell you that finding my way to the Episcopal church, and most especially this Episcopal church, has been both a surprise and a grace. Surprise because I passed this place thousands of times on my way to and from Second Baptist Church, right over there across Walnut Grove, during the nearly twenty years that I was a member there, and it never once occurred to me that I would one day be here. I suppose you could say that in 30 years of spiritual journeying all I've really done is cross the street! And it is grace because I have felt so much warmth and care here, and I have seen in many of you such a touching commitment to try to live out your faith as best you can day by day. It's what I do too. And so I stand here this morning filled with gratitude for the gift you are to me.

When I first started my work as a hospice chaplain nine years ago I did not realize that I had stumbled upon what might just be the best parish in town. I have the incredible privilege of working with people in all the ways that we are human, and it has changed my life. I want to tell you a story about one of them.

Lydia has been our patient for just over a year. She has a serious liver disease brought on by years of hard living. She has slept in the street; she has been in jail; she spent years in an alcoholic fog. She has been intimately acquainted with abuse, violence, and poverty. She has been sober now for three years and lives only a few miles from here in a drafty little shotgun house furnished with junk she pulled out of dumpsters. While there is nothing of value in the whole house, it is clear that Lydia has tried to feather her nest with things she finds beautiful. There is, for example, a large picture of Jesus and the disciples at the last supper displayed prominently on the wall of the main room. A cardboard Santa fastened to the front door with duct tape announces the season.

Once upon a time Lydia had two little girls but was forced to surrender custody when life became unmanageable. She has not seen them in more than a dozen years, and they are all grown up now. When Lydia talks about her deepest longing it is to see these daughters one time before she dies. She wants them to know how much she has loved them all their lives. Lydia is only 42 years old.

There is a way in which hers is a common tale; this city is full of people who live on the margins in conditions as bad or worse than hers. It's the kind of story that tends to make comfortable Christians feel helpless or frustrated or guilty or even bored. And if this were just one more hard luck story I wouldn't bother to tell it. But the astonishing thing is that in the midst of all the tragedy and disappointment, the grief and hopelessness, in the midst of the kind of hardship and heartbreak that misshapes the human soul, poetry flows out of this woman's heart. On the days when she feels good Lydia pounds out the words on an old hand-me-down typewriter. The words are not elegant; her poems will not win the Pulitzer Prize. But they express her bravery and resilience; they express gratitude and praise. They express her love of life and her love of God. You might say that her poems are a kind of love letter to God.

You may be wondering what Lydia's story has to do with the Christmas story or what her clumsy words have to do with the very elegant words of John's gospel that we heard just a few minutes ago. The commentary I read allowed that the prologue to John's gospel is one of the most difficult passages in the entire New Testament. Despite the beauty of the language it's hard to get a handle on exactly what John is trying to say. In the beginning was the Word. Well what does that mean? Certainly John is not talking about the kinds of words that fill up our lives. Every day I get in my mailbox reams of paper covered with words, mostly trying to convince me that I need whatever it is that is for sale. Newspapers, magazines, books, insurance policies, e-mails pile up day after day. Worst of all are instruction manuals. Just looking at the instructions that came with my new digital camera makes me want to forget the whole thing. And talk about too many words, I read that it took the writer of the new Medicare bill over 600 pages to describe exactly what the prescription drug benefit is!

In Greek, the language of John's gospel, the word for word is "logos." To the Stoic philosophers logos connoted the "rational principle of the universe;" Jewish philosophers used "logos" to speak about the creativity of God. Christian missionaries to China translated "logos" as the tao (the way). But it's like Alan Watts has said: using words to speak of ultimate reality is like trying to eat soup with a fork. We just can't get hold of it. We could read commentaries until Jesus comes again and even if we could understand all the fancy words in all the big books written by really smart people, I am here to tell you that it wouldn't get us very far. "Philosophy is odious and obscure," wrote Christopher Marlowe, ". . . law (is) for petty wits,/ Theology is basest of the three/
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile,/ 'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravished me."

What I want to know is, what was in John's heart when he sat down to write about his experience of Jesus? What was welling up inside him so powerfully that he could not contain it? What ravished him?

Oh, people! It is not necessary to understand the theology of John's gospel. What matters is that John deeply loved the man-God Jesus. The prologue is not a theological proposition; it is a hymn, an ecstatic outpouring of devotion. It is John's love letter to God. And that love letter contains the central claim of our faith which is that God, the God so mysterious, so inscrutable, so unknowable that God's name could not be spoken, the God Moses was not allowed to see, the God whose image was forbidden, that very God, in an act of stunning and reckless generosity crossed the divide between holy and mundane, between timelessness and time, to take on bone, blood, gut, sweat, hunger, thirst, grief, suffering and all the rest that it means to be human. Why? Why would God do that?

Jewish mystic Martin Buber said, "In the beginning was the relation." In other words, God did this radical thing (and if you think about it, this bizarre thing) because God desires above all else to be known. God's very nature is self-expression. God's very nature is to hold nothing back, to go the limit in the opening of self. John's claim is that because of this, life can be different. Because of this our relationship with God can be different. God can be known. There is a way in which, according to John's gospel, that Jesus' entire ministry on earth was an invitation for all who would to share in the intimacy he had with God.

From time to time Lydia will share one of her poems with me. On the bottom of the page of the last one I received from her are these words: JESUS LOVES YOU JUST BELIEVE. Were I to sum up all of John's gospel it would be with those words: Jesus loves you, just believe. It's not that you have to believe this or that thing about Jesus or about God or about what John is trying to say. Rather I am speaking of belief as an openness to the gift that is being offered to you. Another way to put it would be to say, belief is not a head thing, it is a heart thing. Belief asks you to give your heart over to the risk of love, to the messiness, to the turn-your-life-upside-down-ness, to the ecstasy. Belief asks that you let your heart be ravished, that you let the tenderness in you take flesh.

Write poems, grow petunias, save the whales, take in a stray cat, teach a child to ride a bicycle, join a pastoral care team, build a Habitat house, take piano lessons, sign up to volunteer with us at hospice, sing your heart out. Brian Swimme has said that self-expression is the primary sacrament of the universe. Whatever it is that wells up from the deepest place in you - express it, do it, pour out your love letter to God. That is how you believe.

In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning God's heart was set upon us and so God offered us the gift of God's self in Jesus. My hope for Christmas, 2003 is that we will, each one of us, be able to receive that gift, that love will be born anew in each of our hearts, that Lydia will get to see her daughters before she dies. To grow into the kind of openness that is necessary we are going to need each other. And so I am grateful to be here, among a holy communion of folk, as we work our way together toward the God who has loved us from the beginning.

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