Sermon on John 1:1-18

Sermon on John 1:1-18

Theme: “It’s all about God becoming a human being for us”

“See how much God loves us!”

* “What’s Christmas all about?”

LOVE (No. 1)

I thought that I’d start this morning’s message time by talking about our pets…. I think that you’ll see the relevance of this as we go along….

Many of us have pets that we dearly love.

One of the great benefits for me of having an Annual Blessing of the Pets at Salisbury in the local park was my being able to see how much many people loved their pets. We used to have quite a few pets, mainly dogs, no totally dogs, in the local park, and it was great to see people from our church family there loving and caring for their pets….

I know first hand, too, how much you can grow to love your pet. Our pussy cat, ‘Tash’, went missing a couple of years or so ago, presumably killed by a fox or whatever, and I still can’t look at photos of her, like the one on the screen, without feeling a pang of sorrow inside. You can grow to really love your pet, or your pets….

Our love for our pets, I think, can remind us a lot of God’s love for us human beings….

Let me tell you a story. This is a story that Max Lucado tells in one of his devotional books, a book entitled When Christ comes (hold up book). Let me largely read to you what he says. I’ll read most of it, because Max Lucado has a way with words, and he can tell his story much better than I can paraphrase it. He writes:

When it comes to animals, our house is a zoo. I wonder if other folks have the strange experiences we do. We had a bird enter through the chimney and get stuck in the bedroom. Another one knocked himself silly flying into a window. We forgot to feed a goldfish for a week – and it survived.... It seems that we have more than our share of animal episodes. In fact, sometimes I wonder if God send them our way so that I will have ample illustrations.

Such was my thought last week with Fred. Fred is one of the two hamsters under the domain of our nine-year-old daughter, Sara. She was letting him run up and down the piano keyboard. I don’t know what Denalyn, my wife, would have thought about a hamster on her new piano, but she wasn’t home. Besides, I was presiding over the affair in fine fatherly fashion, stretched out on the couch. The little fellow wasn’t doing any harm – he seemed to be having fun. I know we were. Sara and I got a good giggle out of Fred’s wind sprints. He brought new meaning to “tickling the ivories”. But after several dashes, all three of us were a bit tired. So Sara set Fred down where you place the sheet music. I closed my eyes and Sara, for just a moment, stepped away from the piano. Just a moment was all that Fred needed to get into trouble.

To understand what happened next, you need to know that our piano is one of the horizontal versions. Had the piano been of the upright sort, Fred would have been safe. Had the lid been closed, Fred would have been safe. But the lid was open and Sara was distracted and I was dozing off when Fred decided to peer over the edge.

I opened my eyes just in time to see him tumble into a pool of piano strings and hammers. Sara and I both sprang into action, but it was too late. Our little friend was not only inside the instrument, he was under the strings. We could see his furry back rubbing against the wires as he ran back and forth looking for a way to escape. Fred was trapped.

And we were stumped. How do you get a hamster out of a piano? We tried several approaches. We tried nudging him. Wedging our fingers between the wires, we tried to coax him towards the opening. Didn’t work. He ran the opposite direction and disappeared into a corner. We couldn’t see him. We held a lamp over the piano, and still could see him. We tried flashlights and still couldn’t see him. Coaxing didn’t work.

So we tried calling him out of hiding. We used every voice possible. The voice of a search party: “Fred, can you hear us?”. The voice of a friend: “Come on Fred, old buddy”. The voice of a mother: “Freddie-pooh, where are you?”. Even the voice of a drill sergeant: “Fred. Get out!”.

Nothing worked. Coaxing didn’t work. Calling didn’t work. So we came up with another idea. How about a little piano music. But that didn’t work either!

Only one alternative remained. We had to (gulp!) dismantle the piano. Some of you would not be intimidated by this task. I was. My hands are anything but handy. I have trouble opening a loaf of bread, much less opening a musical instrument. But Fred, the hamster, was in danger.... So I grabbed my trusty Phillips screwdriver and began looking for a place to start. But I couldn’t find one.... The keyboard had no screws.... So, once again, we were trapped. All of us were trapped. Fred hadn’t come up for air, and we hadn’t come up with a solution. All we could do was pray that he would survive the night, and call a piano tuner in the morning....

After we had tried everything possible, I said jokingly to the girls, “Well, if one of us could become a hamster, we could go in and show Fred the way out”. Of course, we couldn’t even begin to do such a thing. But can you imagine what it would be like if you could? Can you imagine becoming like Fred? Taking on a round belly, short legs, and whiskers? Leaving you great world for his cramped world? Why, we couldn’t even imagine such an act. But God could – and God did. And the journey from human to hamster is nothing compared to the span between heaven and earth. God became a baby. He entered a world, not of piano strings and hammers, but a world of problems and heartaches... (Max Lucado, When Christ comes, 151f).

That’s what God did for us on the first Christmas Day, nearly 2,000 years ago. What’s Christmas all about!? It’s all about God becoming an ordinary human being, like you and me, out of His love for us. The baby Jesus is a reminder to all of us of just how much God loves each one of us. God loves you and me so much that He was prepared to send His Son, part of His very self, to be born as an ordinary human being to show us what He is like, and “in order to rescue us”.

This is what John is talking about in his prologue, his introduction, to his Gospel, which we heard read out before. Listen again to what he says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….

And the Word became a human being (Lit. “flesh”) and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son….

Out of the fullness of his grace, he has blessed us all, giving us one blessing after another. God gave the Law through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is the same as God and is at the Father’s side, he has made him known (John 1:1-18).

Do you hear what John is saying? God, in the person of the Son, became a human being for us when Jesus Christ was born. What happened was much like Max Lucado wished could happen with regard to him and the girls’ hamster, Fred. Max wanted to turn himself into a hamster, like Fred, so that he could communicate with Fred, make himself “known” to Fred, and to rescue Fred.

That’s what God did when, in the person of the Son, He was born as the baby Jesus. As the man Jesus, God lived among us, and made himself “known” to us. Through listening to Jesus, and watching him as we read the Gospels, we can find out how much God loves each one of us….

And not only does God make Himself “known” to us through His Son, Jesus, but also through Jesus he rescues us, like Max Lucado imagined he could rescue Fred. How did Jesus do it? By suffering and dying for us on a cross! There he took on himself the blame and the punishment that we deserve for the things that we’ve done to hurt others (point to the cross). On our own, our situation would be a lot like that of Fred the hamster: trapped in whole mass of guilt and fear and shame. But the great news of Christmas is that God loves us so much that He sent His Son to rescue us. And that’s what Jesus did for us on the cross.

John speaks about his a bit later in his Gospel.

He writes:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, gave him up to suffer and to die for us on a cross to rescue us, so that whoever believes in him may not perish (Lit. “Be lost eternally”), but have eternal life (John 3:16).

By the way, in this last part of this verse, John is reminding us that you have to want to be rescued in order to actually be rescued.

Even if Max Lucado could have become a hamster, Fred the hamster would not have been rescued by Max Lucado if Fred didn’t want to be rescued…. To be rescued, you have to be willing for the rescuer to rescue you!

That’s what baptism and faith are all about. When we are baptised, we saying to Jesus in effect, “Please rescue me!” And when we go on trusting in Jesus as our Saviour, we are saying to Jesus, “Go on rescuing me, please!”.

Which brings me to the six young people who are confirming their faith today….. When you were baptised as babies, your parents brought you to God, and said to God in effect:

“Please rescue my child. Let what Jesus did on the cross for everyone, be for my child!”

And they have brought you up nurturing your faith in God as your dear Father in heaven, and in Jesus as your Rescuer, your Saviour.

I’m reminded of the words of a song that Gillian and her family hold dear to them:

Once little pebble and the circles begin,

Circle in a circle they go on without end.

Ripples on the water move across the pond,

The pebble disappears but the circles move on.

Circles on water from one little stone.

The water is smooth if you leave it alone.

Each pebble you toss makes a difference you see,

The ripples that circle can touch you and me

(Found in “God gives…Songs for Kids”).

Your parents’ actions in bringing to Jesus and nurturing your faith have had great rippled effect on your life…. And now you are here today to state what you personally believe….

And, by the way, your faith and your life are like stones in a pond too…. As you live your life trusting in Jesus and following him as God’s rescued child, you will have a rippled effect on those around you: your friends, your relatives, your husband, your children, your grandchildren and so on. Don’t underestimate what has happened in your life, what’s happening today, and what will happen in the future as God uses you to “make a diff’rence”.

Back to our story…. So what happened in the end to Fred, the hamster? He allowed himself to be rescued.

He finally made his way back to the place where he fell in. He looked up. And when he did, Sara was there. He lifted his head just high enough so that she could reach in and life him out (Ibid., p156).

My prayer for you who are confirming your faith today and for me and for all of us here today is that this Christmas and always, we will allow ourselves to be rescued, and go on allowing ourselves to be rescued in the future. And not only that, but that each of us will be people who make a real different in this world as we follow Jesus….

Conclusion:

What’s Christmas all about!? It’s all about God’s Son becoming a human being for us.

The baby Jesus is a reminder to us of how much God loves each one of us: enough to become an ordinary human being for us to make Himself “known” to us and in order to rescue us….