Preached this morning at Lutheran Church of the Nativity
John 1:19 - 34 Christmas 1 (Narrative Lectionary)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we stand between the crib where the baby Jesus lay at Christmas
And the cross toward which we’ll journey between now and Easter.
In this in-between time, we’ll accompany John the Evangelist,
hearing his account of Jesus’ ministry,
written some fifty years after his crucifixion and resurrection.
Today, we hear the testimony of another man, John
who was sent by God as a witness.
The Fourth Gospel doesn’t give us the familiar birth stories of Jesus
that we know from Matthew and Luke and our children’s pageants.
There are no angels, no shepherds, no magi.
Instead of a swaddled infant, lying in a manger,
Or an impetuous boy whose parents find him in the Jerusalem temple,
We meet Jesus, fully human,
Fully man.
Unexpected by a people waiting for the return of the prophet Elijah
and scandalous to a people waiting for a divine Messiah
In Jesus we meet God’s Word made flesh.
God’s Light shining in the darkness.
And now, God’s Passover Lamb
who takes away the sin of the world.
The comfort and joy of Christmas turn into bleak despair as we listen to John’s testimony,
Because just as a witness called by the prosecution testifies against the accused,
John bears witness against us,
Naming the brokenness he sees in the world –
our alienation, our distance, our rebellion against the very God
who created us and wants to live in relationship with us.
The sin of the world is not a catalog of all of our moral shortfalls –
in John’s Gospel – sin is a problem in one’s relationship with God
It is our human condition of standing against God,
like petulant children,
rebelling against God,
refusing to believe we are loved by God.
It is in this bleak space that we meet Jesus
Not as a baby and not even as a shepherd but as a lamb....
What does John mean?
Growing up in the city, all I know about lambs I learned from nursery songs and from James Herriott’s All Creatures Great and Small.
But for Israel, the words “Lamb of God” meant something.
The Passover Lamb was not a sacrificial lamb,
cut and burned on the altar.
Those animals were more often bulls and goats.
The Passover Lamb was Israel’s reminder of God’s deliverance when they came out of slavery in Egypt.
It goes back to Exodus 12 when the Lord instructed Moses and Aaron to have every household slaughter a lamb and smear the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and the lintels
so that when the Lord passed through, they would be spared from destruction.
After Israel was spared, when they reached the Promised Land that the Lord gave them, they kept the Passover as a way of remembering what God had done.
The Passover Lamb was God’s sign to Israel of God’s deliverance from oppression, from bondage.
In the same way, Jesus delivers us out of the bondage of sin,
removing our unbelief and rebellion against God
and calling forth FAITH.
Herriott says, for farmers, the arrival of new lambs and the lambing season means the end of a long, harsh winter;
In the same way, the arrival of God’s Passover Lamb means the end of our bleak winter –
our alienation from God,
the end of our rebellion.
It is God’s overcoming our sin,
God exhibiting God’s eternal love for us
It is Christ’s taking up our sin as his own,
and giving us all that is his.
This is what John the Witness comes tell us –
the Good News of the Gospel –
Not that suddenly, we will live a perfect, blameless, sinless life;
Or that if we always do the right things and always make the right decisions, we can draw nearer to God on our own,
No.
John’s message for us is that even in our brokenness,
even in our imperfection,
even in the dark places where we live and where we hurt,
even in the Cross
God overcomes our sin and creates faith in us,
Forgiving us and drawing us into relationship.
By God’s grace, we are made new every day, restored to new life and forgiven.
Freed to believe
in God’s mercy and in the new beginnings God promises.
Sitting on the cusp of a New Year,
bombarded with messages about resolutions
that would have us lose weight, exercise, eat healthier,
and unplug more often,
John’s testimony challenges us
To find new ways to announce God’s grace, love and forgiveness in our lives.
Maybe it is letting someone step ahead of you in a long line,
Or paying for someone else’s coffee or lunch.
Maybe it is giving your time to help someone else who is hurting or
Listening to someone who is alone.
Maybe it is changing a habit that takes you farther away from God,
or starting one that helps remind you of God’s presence in your life.
Or maybe it is going to someone and offering them a fresh start;
Or sitting with someone and telling them,
“Jesus came to live for you
that you would know how much God loves you.”
Whatever you do, in making God’s love visible in your actions,
like John,
you are pointing away from yourself,
toward what our life-giving, living God has done and is doing
in the lives of the people you love and with whom you live and work.
Thanks be to God.
Let us pray…
God of life and God of faith,
Thank you for your son Jesus who takes away our sin,
Who calls forth faith in each one of us.
Take us into the New Year,
strengthened by your grace and
filled with hope by your promise of new beginnings.
May our words and actions be witnesses to your love and forgiveness.
Amen.
(c) Christina Auch, 2013.
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