Made That Was Made
John 1:1-18

January 2, 2005

I will have it made once I pay off all my debts, Knox-Metropolitan is $50,000 in the black, the worship attendance here triples (a good trinitarian hope!), the Roughriders win the Grey Cup three years in a row (again the trinitarian impulse), and global warming transforms southern Saskatchewan into a blossoming tropical forest with no snow to shovel, no floods, earthquakes, volcanoes or tornadoes to fear, and no mosquitoes. Then I will have it made!

What kind of “it” will I have made? Made for what? Easy living, achievements of success? No worries or anxieties, so joyful living? It is one of those odd, but universal English idioms that expresses our most basic desires.

This lyrical opening to the Gospel according to John is often recited as the eloquent closure or benediction to the Christmas season. It is definitely idiomatic in its language and so difficult to comprehend, but it sings how as Christians we have it made.

The Christmas Eve service at Faith United was the big event of the season, if not the year, with young adults returning from university or with their families in tow. The order of worship was a simplified version of the Nine Lessons and Carols of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, and the 9th reading is the Prologue to John’s Gospel. One Christmas I invited Jennifer, back from her first year at a university back East, to read the last lesson.

Jennifer had read before publicly as a confirmand, and read well, but a little rushed. That cold, -35 degree night, she read with an unheard of poise and confidence, so much so that we actually understood, that we palpably felt was John was talking about.

Everybody noticed. Not that any of us could repeat later on how Jennifer had read or pronounced the words to any satisfaction. I am convinced that Jennifer did understand for those moments what the Word had made. And so, the Word was made flesh and syllables. I hope she remembers.

John’s Gospel does not have a nativity story. He begins long before the birth of Christ, so long before that the concept of time was not even a thought. Jesus is the Word, “and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Trinitarians love this passage, for it makes no bones about Christ and God being the Son and the Father, along with the Spirit, one God in Three Persons.

Nevertheless, I keep finding my attention captured by verse three, one of the hardest verses to read properly. “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (Revised Standard Version). Having it made is right back in the forefront. This is a fairly literal rendering of the original Greek, and proves that it’s all Greek to me!

The New English Bible waltzes through the “mades” and translates the idea more plainly. “And through him all things came to be; no single things was created without him.”

You and I are reminded bluntly that we are “made,” that as much as we like to believe we do not make or create life. We are creatures fundamentally in the first place and once you accept your creatureliness you can begin to be really free and really powerful, as John goes on to say, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

Beware the so-called “self-made man or woman.” They may have become humanly very successful, but invariably are about as arrogant an individual one can be, assuming that they have made themselves and their world. Confusing their own operating principles with absolute right and wrong, they usually forget humility and compassion for those not as gifted as they are.

We are made, but never made to be left alone or discarded. We are made for something, though our creation is seldom summarizable into a clearly objective achievement. The life of most people is a song, a long, rambling son, but some kind of theme eventually catches the ear. Like Jennifer, there are moments when you can sing that song so clearly that no one can mistake the meaning of the words.

“And without him was not anything made that was made” declares something particular to those of us sitting in a Christian Church. Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the centering point of all that we are and become, and have been made. We are living only partially, in pieces, if we do not confess the reality of the Word at the centre of how we live and move and have our being. “All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of all people” (NEB).

Our first Christmas Eve as a married couple was spent at a late night service in San Francisco. There was a little party at the minister’s house afterwards, but we knew like most other people in the Bay Area that the last bus of the night crossing the Bay Bridge back to Oakland and Berkeley left at 2:13 a.m. We were driven down with a few minutes to spare in the rapidly filling up bus.

It was almost time when a typical early 1970’s hippie climbed on and put his ticket in the box. You know, wild hair, wilder eyes that suggested things you don’t want to suggest. He stopped at the first person sitting down and looked at them squarely in the eyes and proclaimed emphatically, “Christ is born!” A few giggles came out, but as he went up the entire loaded bus, saying “Christ is born!” to every passenger, a very different atmosphere emerged. It was, after all, now Christmas Day 1971. Maybe he had the right idea. But there was also an atmosphere of tension building up that craved release.

He reached the very last person on the back seat of the bus - always watch out for the guys who sit on the back seat of the bus, back benchers the lot of them - and gave out his final “Christ is born!” The back bencher responded in a surly “Who the heck is Christ?” Our evangelist exploded back, “Who the really heck are you?” Or something stronger to that effect.

The bus then exploded in a roar of laughter, it was 2:13 a.m., and the bus driver and all of us, including the heavily debating theologians on the back bench, took off across the San Francisco Bay.

Perhaps it all was drug-induced in those hazy crazy days of Berserkeley, but our evangelist was right. Unless you know who Jesus is, you really don’t know who you are and who you can be. Nor how you have been made. Sometimes the song is sung in an odd way, like John’s, but we hear it clearly and the light of the world brings light to the darkness.

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