That Which We Celebrate: Carly's Advent Sermon

John 1

Again we come to the famous passage which opens the Gospel of John. As we read the words, we most likely, as I do now, hear them reverberating in the ear, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The echo rings on within us because these words are grand, and, like the Psalmist, we catch ourselves crying out, “How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God, How vast is the sum of them!” It seems best then, knowing that all truth is God’s and drawing near to truth means drawing near to God, that it would be faithful for us to marvel at the mystery held within the first chapter of the book of John. 

We begin, then, with “in the beginning was the Word.” More specifically, with the word “in”. This little preposition denotes a particular instant in time, raising the question: is my time the same as God’s? God is not and never was created, and the Son is with God outside of time and for all eternity. God “was”. The Son “was”. And the Son is inseparable from the Father. How can Christ, then, be both beyond time and yet present “in the beginning”? And how can Christ be both the Son and yet God? 

To some it would seem that the very basics of our faith as Christians is laughable and counterintuitive. A deity cannot be one thing and yet be the opposite of that thing simultaneously. It is an absurd thought, and yet the Gospel of John tackles the question head-on, right at the very beginning of the book itself! There is a lack of fear, a knowing, a truth underlying which the author (and presumably, therefore, all Christians) seems to hold dear as elementary. 

Though the Christ, the Word, Jesus, is inarguably outside of time, His people seem to not be timeless but rather bound by time. They must wait for the coming of this Word, and do so anxiously. John proclaimed the coming of this Christ to a people who seemed to be anticipating his every word. “The true light,” he said, “…was coming into the world.” When I envision an excitable crowd hearing these words, I liken it to a congregation attending a wedding ceremony. The minister invites the people to stand, and with glittering smiles and rustling skirts everyone in the chapel shifts about to catch a glimpse of the bride. The groom stands by the altar of the Lord, waiting patiently and yet feeling anything but patient. The bride catches herself wishing the aisle weren’t so long while simultaneously savoring the fluttering feeling of anticipation. All the people of the Lord hold their breath and await the final, glorious “Amen”. And for all the joy which a wedding day contains, it pales and withers when held next to the anticipation of all Creation for its coming “Light”.

For this Bridegroom was of a different sort. He knelt down to earth to pursue and court His bride. The one who crafted flesh itself and awakened the very souls of men condescended to become His very created flesh and to call these souls toward a consciousness even greater than before. He who was not bound even to the realm of Heaven shackled himself in the bonds of a human form—subject to age, to pain, to change, to death—for the simple fact that He is merciful. “The world came into being through him,” yet “he was in the world” of His own design.

As if the mere fact of God becoming human were not contradictory to reason as it were, this God-man, this Messiah, lived no ordinary human life. He was subjected to every vile thing which we could never bear. Rejected by all, both beloved friends and supposed holy men alike, he was alone like no other in history. “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.” As if it were not enough to be separated from those who despised him, this Savior was separated in essence from the Father as a result of his fleshliness. This is the greatest sorrow of all. 

All this he endured, and to what end? That all Creation might be healed by the very presence of his holiness. As a noble woman enters into a small village and makes the place elegant simply by her being there, so does the Christ make the broken Creation more glorious because of his own glory being amongst it. Beyond this, he gave power to those who believed “to become children of God…born…of God.” Ordinary met supernatural, and by this juxtaposition the ordinary was made extraordinary. 

When Christ dispenses all truth by making himself known to us all, he completes our need for oneness with the Father. And this is our goal. This is our need for a Savior. This is our reason for living and being and continuing: that we may be one with the Father. This is why God crossed heaven and earth and made what would otherwise seem preposterous completely plausible, that we might be restored to God and rectified to righteousness. God became one of us that we might become one with Him. 

Carly Bratcher is an alumna of LA Tech and of the Wesley Foundation. She is currently attending Duke University, working toward her Masters of Divinity. She is honest, lovely, and all around fun to be around. She has a puppy named Milo and loves hiking.