Sermons

“Word by Word”

John 1:1-18 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – January 4, 2015

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might welcome your Christ into our lives, every day, and make your Word flesh in every moment. We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

There is a reason we don’t get to the gospel of John until the Christmas season is almost over. John’s version of the Christmas story, if you can even call it that, is pretty different than the gospels of Matthew and Luke. It’s important to remember that John was the last gospel written, probably as much as 60 years after Jesus’ ministry was completed. Throughout his gospel, John isn’t interested in storytelling so much as meaning-making. He’s not so concerned with helping us know what Jesus did as making sure we understand his significance.

And so we have this “Christmas story,” which is, in fact, also a creation story and a ministry story and an Easter story, all rolled into one. If you consider everything it’s trying to cover, it has a sort of breathless tone to it. It’s like he’s trying to tell the whole story all at once.

We get like that sometimes, don’t we? Sometimes it’s because we’re excited and we’re trying to tell someone about it, and we can hardly figure out where to start, because there’s so much to say. And sometimes life gets that way for us; everything piles up and piles on, and we find ourselves getting nothing accomplished because we’re trying to do everything at once. I think sometimes New Year’s resolutions can do this to us. We read a bunch of inspiring articles about de-cluttering, and setting priorities, and what we should and shouldn’t be eating, and getting rid of the negativity in our lives, and making time for friendship, and being more efficient at work, and how to really connect with our families, and a great new way to make money on the side, and on and on, and we want to do it all. We resolve to do it all. And a few short days later, the holiday spirit has faded, and we are confronted by the reality that we haven’t done anything toward any of those goals, so why bother?

There is a breathlessness to our bursts of self-improvement, reminiscent of John’s prologue telling us the whole story all at once. And yet, maybe we can learn something from his refusal to separate Christmas from the rest of the story. Perhaps the problem is that we approach Christmas as a season to be completed, rather than taking it on as a way of life.

We put such pressure on ourselves to make Christmas special and perfect. We want to have everything be beautiful and delicious, and everyone to get along, and most of all, we want to feel warm and fuzzy, and joyful and generous and hopeful the whole time. Sometimes the only way we survive such high standards is by constantly reminding ourselves that it’s only a few weeks. January will come soon enough, and things can go back to normal. And then we feel bad about craving that relief, because somehow we know we’re supposed to want it to be this way all year long.

I wonder if sometimes we’re the same way about New Year’s resolutions. We feel like we’re supposed to want to improve ourselves, and so we set some ambitious goals, aware that the deprivation or the work involved will be unpleasant, but secretly knowing in the back of our minds that we’ll do it for a little while – a few weeks, a few days – and then we’ll give up and go back to normal, feeling better about resigning ourselves to mediocrity for having given it the “old college try.” Trying to do it all at once is overwhelming, and more importantly, it’s not the way life works. Sure, it’s all connected, as John would have us learn, but life itself is only lived moment to moment.

The Bay Area writer Anne Lamott shares a story that is good advice about both writing and life. “My older brother,” she writes, “who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surround by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”[1]

Maybe you know someone for whom Christmas is a way of life. Not that they keep festive decorations up all year, but that they live with a joy and a generosity that most of us only muster up in December. Maybe you have rarely seen them not smiling. Maybe they manage to make ordinary life feel like a celebration. Maybe you know someone who lives Christmas all year long. Without knowing who that person is in your life, I’m guessing I can tell you something else about them: They didn’t get that way overnight. Anyone who wants to start living Christmas as a lifestyle rather than a season is going to have to recognize that it’s only possible if we take it bird by bird, moment by moment, word by Word. It is a lifetime of moments that changes us.

The scope of the story that John covers in those short 18 verses can take our breath away. But if we’re going to live that story – creation, Christmas, Easter and all – we can only do it one day at a time. If we’re going to truly grow and become better versions of ourselves, it will not just be because the year on the calendar changed. I had a fascinating conversation with Emma Carranza yesterday. She had stopped by the Shelter with her mom and sister to drop off an onion. As grown-ups are wont to do, our guests asked the girls how old they are. And for some reason I can’t remember, I mentioned that Emma was actually older yesterday than she’d been the day before. Nope. She was convinced that this was nonsense. “I’m six,” she said resolutely. She was six the day before, and she’d be six the next day. I simply couldn’t convince her that she would be any older at all, until she turns seven next September.

Isn’t it funny how we measure progress? We may think Emma’s stubbornness is funny, but we’re not that different when it comes to change. We want something dramatic, like a number changing, to motivate us, to push us, to make us feel like growth is possible. We aren’t impressed by tiny shifts. We want dramatic transformations. We want Christmas and creation and Easter all rolled into one, with a big ‘Ta-da!’ added on at the end if possible.

But that’s not how life works, is it? If we’re going to live Christmas, or if we’re just going to lose ten pounds or stop cussing, it’s going to happen moment to moment, bird by bird, one day at a time, word by Word. Every moment we will be given the choice to be joyful. Every day we can choose to be generous. Every conversation gives us the chance to be gracious and loving and gentle. Every hour we can decide to focus on what we know is truly wholesome, rather than what would taste or feel really good right now.

How on earth do we manage to do that? Well, breathless as those first 18 verses of John are, it’s important to remember that he doesn’t stop there. There are 21 chapters left after that. We don’t live our lives as a synopsis or an abstract. We live them in stories. Some of those stories are pointing toward the final meaning of our lives, and some of them are dramatic tension when we’re veering off the path. The question is whether we can hold onto the values we want our lives to reflect as we live out each moment’s story. Can we remember that we’re called to be joyful, generous people, even when people at work are a pain, even when traffic is bad, even when the pain is barely endurable, or loneliness is unbearable, or money is unavailable?

What is the Word you are trying to give flesh to with your life? What words do you need to say to yourself more often to make that more possible? There is no way to live life without living it day by day. At the start of a new year, it’s tempting to take the long view and make grand, sweeping declarations about how things will be this time around. But if those declarations aren’t connected to each of the moments that lie ahead, they will be meaningless. Even as we put away the Christmas decorations, surely there is something we can hold onto as a sign of our longing to live as children of God. Maybe it’s just making sure we’re in worship every Sunday we can be. Maybe it’s joining a Sunday school class. Maybe it’s coming to pray for our neighborhood on Thursday nights. Maybe we’ll keep one ornament out, to remind us of the humble generosity of God’s love and how it changes everything. Maybe we’ll get some gold stars and put one on every day on the calendar, to remind ourselves that life starts anew every morning, not just January 1^st.

The Christmas season is almost over. But life in Christ begins fresh every day. May our every moment be graced by the joyful light of God-with-us! Alleluia and Amen!

[1] “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott, 1994. (pages 18-19)