John 1:1-14 Pastor Stephen “Tig” Intagliata
Summary: In Jesus, God chose to come to earth as one of us, a human being. God’s nature is love, and in Jesus that love is expressed through accompanying us in our life’s journey–he “stands by us” no matter what. When we allow God to love us and receive his unconditional love for us, it has the power to change everything.
(SING):
When the night has come and the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we’ll see
No, I won’t be afraid oh, I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me Join with me on the chorus:
So darlin’, darlin’, stand by me, Oh, stand by me
Oh, stand, stand by me, stand by me.
This is the theme song for the movie of the same name Stand By Me, directed by Rob Reiner. This past week we were shocked by the tragic death or Reiner along with his wife Michelle.
Reiner made some amazing movies that spoke so deeply to the human condition and all of our feelings, hopes and fears. He was also an outspoken voice for democracy and justice, and he will be deeply missed.
In honor of Rob Reiner, Karen and I watched Stand By Me this past week. It’s a coming of age film about the friendship of 4 young teenage boys who embark on a mission to find something.
In one scene, one of the boys, Gordy, is sitting down, and he starts to cry. One of the other guys, Chris, sees that Gordy is upset so he comes and sits down by Gordy.
Then Gordy says, “My dad thinks I’m no good. He hates me. I should have been the one who died instead of my brother.” And he cries even harder.
Then Chris pulls Gordy close to him and wraps his arm around him. He tells him, “Those are lies; don’t believe them. He doesn’t hate you; he just doesn’t know you.” And then he just sits there in silence beside Gordy, holding him tight.
This scene reminds me of one of my favorite lines of a song I like to hear during the Christmas season. It’s called “Welcome to Our World”, written by Chris Rice and made popular by Amy Grant.
The line has a lot do with our scripture from John which talks about the incarnation, God coming down to earth as a human in Jesus. The line says:
“So wrap our injured flesh around you, breathe our air and walk our sod, rob our sin and make us holy, perfect Son of God, welcome to our world.”
There are lots of messages we hear during this Christmas season. But to me, the most amazing message of all is the incarnation, God choosing to come down to as a human through Jesus, and join us in all of our joy and sorrow here on earth.
The first chapter of John so poetically describes it, culminating in one of my very favorite verses in all of the Bible, John 1:14:
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Let’s look at how some different versions translate the first part of this verse:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us…
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…
the Word became human and made his home among us…
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood…
In the Hebrew Bible, instead of ‘lived’ or ‘dwelt’ it uses the word ‘tabernacled’.
The word became flesh and tabernacled among us…which literally means “pitched his tent”. And it’s a reference to the tabernacle where God dwelt that accompanied the people of Israel in their journey to the promised land of Canaan.
Wherever they camped, they were to set up the tabernacle, which was a big tent; in fact it was also called the tent of meeting. There was an outer court, then a holy place just inside the tent.
And beyond the holy place was the most holy place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept—(this was long before Harrison Ford got a hold of it in Raiders of the Lost Ark!).
The Ark of the Covenant contained the stone tablets of the 10 Commandments. It was the center of worship where the Israelites made sacrifices to God, and it was the focal point of God’s presence during the Israelites journey.
It was also the place where their leader Moses met with God “face to face” as scripture tell us, to receive guidance and instruction for the people.
The tabernacle was later replaced by the temple that was built after the people of Israel reached the promised land.
But during their wilderness journey, the tabernacle was the tangible symbol of God’s desire to be in relationship with his people—to dwell with them, “pitch his tent” and make his home among them”.
And now with the coming of Jesus, God’s incarnation, the tent symbolizing God’s presence is replaced by a human like one of us.
God comes down to earth and makes his home in us through Jesus, who became the perfect sacrifice for us through his life on earth and ultimately through his death on the cross.
When we think about it, the incarnation of God in Jesus is amazing and unique, and it sets the Christian faith apart from all other religious traditions.
It shows a God who takes the initiative to reach down to us humans, instead of us reaching up to look for God.
Its shows us that our God is a personal God who longs to be in relationship with us, rather than an impersonal god who is disinterested and distant. Of course this is true in Judaism as well.
Also, other religions through prophets and guides say “follow these laws and teachings”; while Christianity says through the God-man Jesus, “follow me”.
Next, God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus shows us that God’s nature is love. We see this characteristic of God throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments.
The first letter written by this same disciple John repeats this theme over and over again “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God”…
In many faiths, there’s a fear of gods they perceive as angry and out to get them, while in Christianity, love is what takes center stage a relationship with God.
The last unique thing I’ll mention here is that our God through Jesus is clothed in humility, not royal robes. Jesus is a king unlike all others in that he lives as a servant of the lowliest and most downtrodden of humanity.
In Philip Yancey’s book The Jesus I Never Knew, which I referenced a couple of weeks ago, he says “while the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog…
Jesus’ ministry was all about accompanying and giving hope to those who were underdogs, outcasts, vulnerable to being neglected and trampled upon.
Accompaniment—that’s a good way to describe what the incarnation of God in Jesus is all about. He is Emmanuel, God with us on this journey of life. The Spanish word is “Acompañamiento, which has a rich meaning in hispanic cultures.
Let’s think about how we use the English word accompaniment. It can relate to music, where instrumentalists accompany vocalists, like Luna did this morning on Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.
We also use accompaniment in the culinary world, when we think of foods that pair well together at a meal.
The other night Karen and I had baked potatoes for dinner. We had our usual toppings of cheese, broccoli and sour cream. But we were missing something—applesauce.
We like to have applesauce as an accompaniment to our baked potatoes, and we missed it that night.
You know when I also need applesauce as an accompaniment? When I have pork chops. Anybody else do that as well?
Also, on those rare occasions tha we have lamb, I like to have mint jelly to go with it. That’s how my mom always served it, and we only usually had lamb on Easter Sunday, so that jar of mint jelly would sit in our refrigerator all year long!
Now let’s think of accompaniment in our relationships with others. Just as God accompanies us on our human journey through Jesus being by our side,
When we live in solidarity with others, especially when people are going through hard times, that’s acompañamiento. Have you ever said to someone “I’ve got your back?” That accompaniment.
When our words or actions say “I won’t let you go through this alone; I will be here by your side”, that’s accompaniment. It’s what Chris did with Gordy in Stand By Me. In fact, the entire story of the four friends is about accompaniment.
There’s an organization called Community Peacemaker Teams or CPT, whose main purpose is accompaniment. They walk with vulnerable people who are facing violence, oppression, and injustice to transform conflict using peaceful means.
When I went to Israel/Palestine with a Bluffton University student group about 15 years ago, we went to a village where CPT had volunteers in a Palestinian village in the West Bank.
They would accompany children as they walked to school, because Jewish settlers would throw rocks at the children to harass them on their way to school.
Today, CPT supports Palestinian-led, nonviolent, grassroots resistance against the Israeli Occupation, through solidarity and advocacy with Palestinians in and around the city of Hebron. They’re doing important work, kingdom work.
When we accompany people who are hurting, I believe we are in a real way practicing incarnation in our relationships, because we are imitating our God who came down to us in Jesus—so we’re being the hands and feet of Jesus.
And when love is incarnated, fleshed out, it has the power to do amazing things, including changing the future trajectory of people’s lives.
This past week I read a lot of stories about Rob Reiner, and one that really stuck with me took place during the filming of his iconic movie, When Harry Met Sally.
Reiner met his wife Michele while that movie was being made. Now the original script had Harry and Sally going their own separate ways at the end of the movie.
But during the filming of the movie, Rob and Michele became a couple and their love grew for one another. And their experience of falling in love moved Reiner to change the script so that Harry and Sally ended up getting together at the end, joining their lives in love as Rob and Michele had done.
In that moment when Harry declared his love for Sally, he said that classic line:
I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Love has the power to change everything. God is the essence of love, the source of all love, and that love was demonstrated by God coming down to earth as Jesus.
When we allow God to love us, receive his unconditional love for us, it has the power to change everything for us as well, including the trajectory of our lives. I want to close with a personal story from my own life.
In so many ways, I had a great childhood. I had a loving family, I was involved at church and Boy Scouts, and I had some good friends. But like a lot of kids, Jr. High was kind of rough for me. For one thing, I was petrified of girls.
I was insecure and unsure of myself, and those self-image issues plagued me through Jr. High and followed me into my freshman year of high school.
How I felt about myself depended largely upon what how other people treated me and what they said to me or about me. And then sometime toward the end of my freshman year, something changed, and it changed the course of my life.
I couldn’t articulate what it was at the time, but looking back, I see it as a sort of spiritual reawakening where God became more real and more personal to me.
Several years ago I heard a sermon where the pastor said our relationship with God becomes more real and personal with it drops down 18” from our head to our heart.
It’s like the expansion from knowing God intellectually up here, to knowing him personally down here. It goes beyond believing to receiving God’s love for us here in our heart, and by forming an intimate relationship with God that is nurtured by communication through prayer.
That is how I began to experience God that year in high school, as a companion who walks with me grounded in unconditional love, instead of an authority figure who’s watching from a distance, ready to get angry with me when I sin and mess up.
And it has ended up changing the course of my life. This being afraid of what other people thought of me, and how that influenced my feelings about myself began to loosen its grip on my life.
I began to live with more confidence, and instead of waiting for people to seek me out, the love that had taken deeper root in my life gave me the freedom to take the initiative in reaching out to others, befriend them, and share God’s love with them through my actions, and sometimes with my words.
Now, are my moods and feelings about myself still affected by how other people treat me and what they think of me? Sure. That goes with the territory of being human.
But it doesn’t dominate or dictate how I live my life, because I know that my identity, my value, and my purpose for living is rooted in the God who out of love chose to enter our world and through Jesus become my companion to accompany me in my life journey, in all of its joys and sorrows.
Henri Nouwen says it like this: This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey. The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us. Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him—whose love is greater than our hearts and minds can comprehend—be our companion.
Prayer: God, thank you for showing your love to us so concretely by coming down to earth in the human form of your Son, Jesus. Thank you for wrapping our injured flesh around you and embracing us with the constant presence of your love by accompanying us through the spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. This Christmas, may every heart prepare room to receive you and your transforming love. Amen.
