Sermon from Christmas II, 31 December 2006

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Readings: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 147:13-21, Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7, John 1:1-18

Those of you who were here for Christmas morning's service will be familiar with the first part of today's Gospel reading from John. You may also remember that at the end of my sermon that morning I asked for you to each give one last Christmas gift this year of yourselves to those around you, sharing the gift's that God has given each of us as individuals in order to help bring about the most amazing aspect of the abundance of God's kingdom - us in community sharing our gifts with the world.

The continuation of John's gospel this morning picks up the same theme of action from the first fourteen verses in which Christ represents to us God's volition in the act of creation as well as God's new creation amongst us of light, life, and the promise, through Christ born in human flesh, that we can become children of God.

Isaiah, the Psalmist, and Paul pick up on this same theme of action in our other readings, as well as further developing the cosmically profound change that has taken place in God's interaction with creation.

I don't think it's any coincidence that the stress on action also accompanies a new way of perceiving and interacting with God. As children we are brought up with parents who must act primarily as rule-givers as they seek to teach us how to live and survive as humans in this world. They have the difficult job of disciplining us in positive ways in order to teach us the values and "rules" that will keep us safe as well as which will carry us into our own ability to reason and make good decisions for ourselves. While they want only what is best for us and do their best to make our childhood fun, it is also a difficult necessary for them to discipline us when we willfully insist on our own destructive and potentially dangerous way.

As a lighthearted example, my Mom loves to tell the story about when I was four or five years old and she took me to the grocery store when my aunt was visiting. She had established a routine with me by saying when we entered the store that if I was good she would get me a treat on the way out of the store. This particular day, upon entering the store, I stood up in the cart with my hands on my hips and proclaimed that I would not be good unless she got me a treat. While my mom and my aunt both stifled their laughter, I can guarantee that I neither got the treat nor got away without learning an important lesson about who was in charge.

It is only after we have mastered the fundamental rules of how to appropriately live in and survive in the world that we can step out in our own independence and begin to act for ourselves. So too in our developing spiritual stage we must learn God's rules. It is only after understanding God's fundamental requirements for our righteousness that we can begin to spiritually reach out to others in faith. At both of these profound and life-changing junctures in our lives, our fundamental relationships change. Our parents become no longer figures of authority over us who have the task of disciplining us when they would rather gather us up into their arms and have a good belly laugh at our incorrigibility, but become, instead, a form of inspiration as we reflect on what we have learned and gain our own sense of right and wrong.

So it is with Christ. As Paul states in his letter to the Galatians, we were guarded under the law until faith would be revealed... God gave us the law and the prophets as our guides and guardians until we were ready in faith to step out in action to become God's hands and heart in the world. Christ's coming into the world marked that profound change in our relationship with God that accompanies our readiness to act on our faith and to claim our inheritance as children of God. As with any parent-child relationship, the transition is never smooth or easy, but God's willingness to take the first step in guiding us into a deeper relationship with God's own self in human form draws us ever closer to the kingdom of God as we move along our spiritual path in a state of perpetually becoming that frequently mirrors our perpetual development as human beings in the world.

This state of becoming is reflected in Isaiah's teachings today where his whole being exults in God for causing righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. It is through God's interaction with us that we come to recognize and seek a deeper relationship with God. Through learning God's discipline we hone our spiritual gifts so that we can share them with others in joy and exultation.

Similarly, our Psalmist exults in God's awesome power and calls Israel to worship, praising God for revealing God's Word to Israel - which is made available to all the world through Christ, the Word made flesh. Through this same word, God has taught us through countless generations to know God's will and the rules necessary for caring for one another and sharing God's abundance as we strive for enough spiritual maturity to do God's will naturally.

Paul carries us deeper into our understanding of the transition that takes place when we are ready for a new, deeper, and profoundly different relationship with God. Christ exemplifies this type of relationship - one in which we are no longer disciplined as children who do not yet understand, but rather one in which we are invited as friends, as brothers and sisters, as cooperative instruments in bringing God's reign into fruition, to see the fulfillment of God's will and laws through that perfect and abundant love that Christ taught us and teaches us to share with one another.

John expands on this idea, calling our attention to Christ's awesome presence among us as God's gift of grace upon grace. In Christ, we come to know God not as disciplinarian but as inspiration - as teacher in a new and cooperative way that draws us into God's kingdom as God's very instruments. John summarizes all of our readings today in teaching us that through a perpetual state of becoming, by the grace of God, through Christ, we have been given the power to become children of God.

Where I have found some difficulty with today's readings is in Paul and John's contrast between Mosaic law and grace in Christ. Both seem to pit Judaism and Christianity against each other, frequently seeming pretty anti-Semitic in the process. While in their own time the dynamics of the inter-religious family struggle that resulted in Christianity and Judaism ultimately becoming separate religions, it can leave us in a difficult position in today's world.

For my own part, I've found some help in reaching out to others whose different experience of God has deepened and broadened my own understanding of God's relationship to all of us. In my chaplain internship at Akron General Medical center in the summer of 2004, Rabbileuca, a friend and Rabbi, discussed with me the similarity between the modern Jewish understanding of the Word of God and the Christian understanding of Christ as the Word made flesh. I was surprised and delighted to learn that our understanding of Christ's message of love, service, and becoming instruments of God's abundance in the world is just as present in the Jewish understanding of God's word spoken through the laws and the prophets. The same Word, speaking the same message throughout time, just heard differently depending on where we are in our particular journey as Children of God.

As we find our own understanding of God radically changed through Christ, and our own relationship with God to be ever evolving as we continue on our path of becoming children of God and seeking to bring the abundance of God's kingdom to the world around us, perhaps it is fitting that the challenges that keep us mindful of the path and faith of others keep us also mindful of God's grace working through others in ways that demonstrate to us that we are still Children.

Just as we never outgrow the fundamental lessons we learned from our parents, but continue to learn and grow throughout our lives, so too we can never exhaust the awesome abundance of God's ever-changing and ever deepening presence in our own lives and world.

This week, as we continue our celebration of Christ's coming into the world, we are reminded in our readings not only of God's perpetual creative act of becoming in Christ, but of God's ceaseless action in the world to bring us into relationship with God and each other. As Children of God, as heirs with Christ of God's kingdom, we are reminded yet again that it is a kingdom of becoming. Just as Christ was and is heir of a kingdom that is perpetually becoming, so too are we heirs of this same kingdom - one that only becomes through our cooperative action in bringing it to the world around us.

This new year, let us join with all of God's children around the world to breath new life into Christ's ministry of love and abundance, so that, as Isaiah said, we might become to all those around us crowns of beauty in the hand of the Lord.

Amen.