Sermons & Services

The second scripture reading comes from the first chapter of the Gospel According to John. This first chapter of John is among the most philosophically complex parts of scripture, but lucky for you I am just a humble preacher of Jesus, not a philosopher, so we are going to take note of the philosophy, but focus on the good news. Before reading, I note that God is referred to as “the Father” in this passage. There are lots of inclusive language issues involved here, but I’ll keep that vocabulary today. As I said last week, the point of calling God “Father” is not that God is male, or even gendered, but that God is the head of our household – that we have a personal, even familial connection to the creator of the cosmos. So, from the Gospel according to John:

And the Logos became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we saw his glory, glory that comes from being the Father’s only child, full of grace and truth. John [the Baptist] testifies concerning him and has cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has surpassed me, for he was before me.’” For we all have received from his abundance, that is, grace upon grace; because the Law was given through Moses, the grace and the truth came through Jesus the Anointed. No one has ever seen God; the one who is uniquely god, who is in the Father’s embrace, that one has made God known.

Let us pray. Blessed God, thank you for these words of life. May my words now reflect your Word for us here in this place and time, with all we bring to the table, our hopes and fears, gratitude and anxieties, large and small. May your Spirit dwell in us richly through your Word. Amen.

This is something of a “in case I get hit by a bus” sermon. Or in the Cambridge context, perhaps that should be “in case I get flattened by an electric scooter.” What I mean is this is a message I want to be sure you hear up front, at the beginning of my time here, and if you don’t hear anything more, at least you will have heard this.

The message is,

in a word – grace;

in a phrase – the Lord is merciful and gracious, s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love;

in an analogy – as water is the medium in which a fish lives out its entire existence, so grace is the medium in which we live, and move, and have our being;

in an old school text, when we were limited to 140 characters – in Jesus all l creation is filled with grace and our purpose on earth is simply to recognize and enjoy that grace and help others do the same.

I am sure that every preacher you have had through the years has given you that message. From Hooker and Shepard to Luti and Smith, grace was at the heart of it all. We are going to talk a lot in the coming months of transition about justice and all the wonderful ways this congregation works to promote justice for others. We are going to talk about responsibility, and our calling to make the world more like Jesus would want it to be. We are going to talk a lot about money and God’s hope that those of us with enough will share with those without enough. We are going to cover all that: but first, before I get smashed by a scooter, hear this word: grace.

The verses I read a bit ago from the Gospel according to John are one of the many parts of scripture that I feel like, if we fathomed what is really being said, we’d just gasp in wonder and awe. We’d be like, “no way…” and God would be like, “way.”

To hopefully unpack these verses, and hopefully get a bit closer to that awe, here’s a little insight into what John is actually doing.

You heard me read the word “Logos.” In most translations, the Greek is normally translated as “the Word,” as in “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What that traditional translation hides from view is a tradition, hundreds and hundreds of years long already by the time the New Testament was written, centered on the concept of the Logos. In the Greek philosophical tradition, the Logos was the organizing principle that made sense of the world. It was the internal logic that held everything together. And what’s more, this organizing principle, this internal logic, was also conceived of as divine being – a god with a small g you might say. The idea here is that the one eternal uncreated God, the ground of all being, was unknowable, distant, unfathomable – so much so that this God used an intermediary to bring the physical world into being. That intermediary was the Logos, the one through whom all things were made, the one who alone made sense of it all.

The Gospel of John not only makes the bold claim that Jesus was this Logos, this divine being through whom all things came to be, and in whom all things make sense, but John also outrageously claims that the Logos became flesh, became a human being, the Logos pitched a tent among us, as the translation I used put it, and we saw his glory – which was the very glory of God – and in the next phrase, even while using the language of the Greek tradition, John blows that language apart and says, oh, and by the way, God is not unknowable, distant, and unfathomable, but God is our father, the head of our household, a household in which there is room for us all.

Okay, so that’s a blockbuster. Jesus is the Logos, the Logos became a human being and carried the glory of God, and in Jesus, God is knowable, God is family. Incredible. Greatest story ever told.

But wait, there’s more. There’s a sequel that is even better. This is like Toy Story being a fabulous film, and then Toy Story 2 being somehow even better! These verses from John go on to talk about the abundance of Jesus, the fullness of Jesus, I don’t know, I like the voluptuousness of Jesus, the thing he is made of that just flows forth from him, like light from the sun. That abundance, that fullness, that emanation, is grace.

But what is grace, really? For some, I am afraid it is one of those churchy words that sounds good, but is hard to give any substance to, to really feel the weight of it. Indeed, the church has often talked about grace as if it were something that God, I don’t know, imparts upon us. We sin, so, depending on the nature of the sin, God gives us a drop, or a bucket, or a boatload, of grace so we are forgiven and free to sin again, I mean sin no more.

But grace is actually deeper and more profound than that, more existential than that. At its root, the word grace really means to favor, to esteem, to hold another in high regard, to have good will toward another. Grace is not something imparted, it is about the nature of the source. God doesn’t simply dole out grace, but rather God is grace-filled-ness. By nature, God looks upon with favor and has good will toward us.

If only, from the days of our awakening self-awareness as toddlers, to the time of the challenges of establishing our personal identity, to the decisions we make throughout life, to the days when we hope to age with grace, to facing the last days and moments of life, if only we trusted that the nature of God is grace.

What kind of difference could it make? To know that it is in the nature of God to look upon you with favor? Consider this: From childhood on, people that fit socially prevalent notions of beauty have higher self-esteem, more friends, and are overall happier, than people who do not fit such visual categories. Why? Because other people look upon them with favor. Other people smile at them. Laugh with them. Enjoy them. All that positive reinforcement shapes their notions of themselves. It’s kind of pathetic, of course, that we humans treat others that way, but it’s generally true.

Now just think if we all could deeply and naturally trust that it is the nature of God – who in Jesus pitched a tent among us – to look upon us with favor; if we could all deeply and naturally trust that grace is the nature of God.

Good people, we have all received from his abundance, his fullness, grace upon grace. Rejoice and trust this good news.

So, I’ll try not to, but now I can get smashed by a scooter and I’ll know that I have said the most important thing of all.

In the name of the Living God, the one who is Grace. Amen.