2nd Christmas (1/3/2010)

Pastor Richard Johnson

John 1.1-18

God with Us

“And the Word became flesh, and lived among us.” Martin Luther once called that verse the “most important gospel of all.” It is, indeed, the gospel in miniature, for it tells us of the most basic purpose in the coming of Jesus Christ. Last week, I talked about what it means that the “Word became flesh.” I’d like us to reflect this morning on the latter part of this precious verse. Just what does it mean to say that the Word made flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, “lived among us”?

To begin properly, we must remember that the ancient Jews were nomads. They had no home, but they wandered all over the ancient near east. The story of ancient Israel is a story of movement. Abraham’s father moved his family from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran; Abraham himself, at God’s call, set out for a new place, a land God had promised to give him. That journey went on for centuries, taking Abraham and his descendants all over the map. Egypt, the wilderness of Sinai, Canaan, Babylon—and in later years, the children of Abraham were dispersed all over the known world. They were a people without a homeland.

Now in the ancient world, being without a homeland was a serious religious problem. In those days, people believed in many gods; and most gods in the ancient near east were local gods. The god of a particular city dwelt in that city, and if a citizen of that city left, he left his god behind him. The god of one nation had no power or authority over any other, because the god’s power was geographically limited. So the early Israelites were regarded as quite strange. They had no homeland, and so obviously they had no god.

But the Hebrews themselves had a different view of things. Their God was not local, but all-powerful. He was God no matter where they were, no matter where they wandered. He was always with them. You can sense this idea most clearly in the stories of the Exodus from Egypt into the wilderness. There you find Moses pitching a tent outside the camp of the Hebrews each night. This tent was called the tent of meeting, for here the Lord would come and meet with Moses and give him direction. The fact that it was a tent was very significant, you see, because a tent is portable. It meant that God was not tied to one location, but he went with them. They may have no homeland, they may be wanderers, but their God went with them, wherever they might go.

Now the background here is quite important, because in this passage from John there is a hidden reference to that tent. It is in the Greek word used when it says “the word became flesh and LIVED among us.” The word translated here as “lived” is the verb form of the noun “tent.” You might very literally translate this verse as “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.” The image John has in mind is that in Jesus Christ, God is again “pitching his tent” among his people—and no longer on the edge of the camp, but right in the midst of it. He is going where they go, living where they live, traveling where they travel. He is identifying with them, and being with them completely and totally. He is demonstrating that he is not a God who is far off, but a God who comes to us and abides with us.

Now all this stuff about tents and nomads seems worlds away from us. It is rooted in very primitive culture, very primitive ideas about God. And yet perhaps its image is closer to us than we might first imagine. In many ways, we very modern twentieth century Americans are the new nomads, the new wanderers. How many of you—raise your hands—are living more than 100 miles from the town where you were raised? How many more than 500 miles? How many have lived in Nevada County all your life? You are a very typical group. Most of us live many miles from where we were raised, and most of us, in our lifetimes, live in many different places. In a society where such mobility is frequent, the sense of rootlessness is very great. We do not have the ties to the land, to family and friends, to church, to other institutions, that most people had just 75 years ago. And that leaves us unsettled, restless.

Sociologists tell us that when people move to a new place, the chances are that they will fall away from the church. They may have been dedicated church members back home, but in this new place, they simply drop out. Maybe they go to church once or twice, but it just isn’t like home, so they don’t go back. That is symptomatic, you see, of the sense of rootlessness that is part of our whole American culture.

But even if you live in the same place most of your life, things around you change. Science, technology, communication, transportation—all rapidly advance. Fifteen years ago, how many of us had even heard of the internet? Twenty years ago, who would have predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union? Five years ago, who would have thought that America would elect an African-American president? And with the swirling changes in the world come changes in values. We used to think we knew right from wrong, but now we’re not so sure. We don’t seem to have any clear grasp on where we are as a society, or where we are going. In short, we are nomads. We may live in comfortable houses, with lots of apparent stability in our lives. But we still find ourselves in many respects every bit as unsettled and rootless as the ancient Hebrews three thousand years ago.

And even so, right in the midst of all that change and uncertainty, in Jesus Christ God is pitching his tent among us! Even so, in the middle of all that rootlessness, in Jesus Christ God is living among us! Even when we feel that nothing is the same anymore, and we can’t rely on anything anymore, there is one thing we can rely on—and that is that God is with us! No matter where we go, no matter how far we wander, no matter how lost we may feel, in Jesus Christ we know that God is with us, and that when we move, he folds up his tent and comes right along too!

Can you grasp just how freeing that is? Just how comforting that is? He pitches his tent among us! He not only never leaves us, but we can never leave him! He follows us, stays with us, lives with us. He is Emmanuel, God with us! In the 139th Psalm, it is said this way: “If I ascend to heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me.” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us: And even now, he lives among us, pitching his tent among us, moving with us through all our journeys. Traveling with us into this new year, and this new decade, and into all the future days before us. God has made our homelessness his home. He has come to us, and he abides with us. He is indeed Emmanuel, God with us.

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,

descend to us, we pray;

cast out our sin and enter in,

be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

their great glad tidings tell.

O come to us, abide with us,

our Lord Emmanuel.