Shining
John 1:1-18

January 4, 2009


Kathleen Norris relates the conversation she had with a monk in her book Dakota. Monasteries are generally known for their gracious hospitality to strangers, but it’s all not that easy. She writes, “Monks have been quick to recognize that such hospitality, while undoubtedly a blessing, can also create burdens for them. A story said to originate in a Russian Orthodox monastery has an older monk telling a younger one: ‘I have finally learned to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitute, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road and I say, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, is it you again?’”

The Gospel according to John begins even more at the beginning than do Matthew and Luke with their just celebrated birth narratives of Christ, and certainly eons earlier than Mark’s beginning down by the River Jordan. By now we are used to a story and John barely sketches out an outline of The Story. Instead, it’s back to poetry, for John’s description soars. There are some who believe that these first few verses were actually a hymn, poetry in motion. It is not so much a history of the events that took place, but the majesty of the inner history, sort of what the Word was thinking to itself out there when it was beginning the worlds.

No geography is mentioned, no Bethlehem or Jerusalem or Nazareth. No time of day or century. Only one name, John, and when you think about it, you already have to know the story to make any sense out of what John is writing. Oh yes, Jesus Christ is mentioned in the next to last verse, almost too late if you don’t know it already.

John likes light and he knows what light really does. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. You know how a little light can dispel the darkest gloom. A penlight in a large dark room enables you to see the whole place. Not everyone believes that is the case, however. How many people do you know who are convinced that the world is so dark a place that anything enlightening never really makes a difference? Much of the world expects darkness to snuff out any light, but John knows the way light works. Light shines in the darkness.

Two verses, the 10th and 11th, come pretty close to history and at the least are just plain true to the way it works. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” No one sees him, no one recognizes or wants to recognize him. Full of grace and truth, yet, we always have to ask, “Jesus, is it you again?”

Neil Plantinga has pointed out that it is really only Jesus who found the way to be full of grace and truth all the time. The rest of us are either so full of the truth that those who hear us thunder the truth prefer lies before too long; or so full of grace and sweetness that we never know if their gracious compliments carry even a single grain of truth. OK, Jesus can do both at the same time, but how does he do it and why can’t we recognize Jesus when he comes into our space? He is in the world, but the world knows him not.

Is the only Jesus the 30-something man who comes into this world dressed in a bathrobe, with a nice beard and long hair, with all the little children hanging around him? That would be easy. The media would pick him readily and film and photograph him for all to see. We would know how to behave respectfully in his presence, if we only knew that it was really Jesus, or would we?

The Word is made flesh and dwells among us and usually that means Christ is in us, but not completely since we are still just human beings. But even a little bit of Jesus in you makes all the difference. Don’t be looking for the bathrobe, beard and long hair - that can be just a facade - look for the fullness of grace and truth.

The Gospel is lived in the flesh and blood and heart and love of human beings in whom Christ lives. The world seldom is able to recognize the living Christ in a person because the world counts on looking for a uniform. Jesus plays on every team.

This kind of talk cannot remain theoretical, for the Word is made flesh, and being human it can be controversial. Take Nelson Mandela as a human being pretty full of grace and truth. In his struggle against the apartheid government of South Africa he stood and spoke and acted for the human right to be free and not to be considered apart from the rest of humanity. His truth was painful to hear and the government made certain his truth would be painful to him. He spent 27 years in prison, mostly in the infamous Robben Island facility. He never gave up, kept himself in physical and spiritual shape, and when finally international pressure resulted in his release in 1990. He would become President of South Africa and helped guide all of South Africa, white and black, towards the truth and reconciliation commission. There were problems with this process, but it has provided an unprecedented model that, as much as human beings are capable of being so, worked to unveil the whole ugly obscene truth and transform it by the grace of reconciliation and beginning anew. Nobody and nothing has done that in the political realm before, “justice” is always punitive. A strange place for grace, but then the Word becomes flesh in the strangest situations.

No one would or should ever confuse Nelson Mandela for Jesus. He doesn’t have to be Jesus, for the Word becomes flesh and dwells in us and among us, not as full and complete as Christ for certain, but isn’t this how Christ acts? The world knows him not, so for every Christ-like behaviour somebody will deny that Christ is here. We just have to look for someone shining without a uniform. Is that you Jesus, again?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan