Inside Job

John 1:1-14

December 24, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It is one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history. The film is A Few Good Men, and Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson are going head to head in a military court. Nicholson is on the stand with Cruise grilling him and when the questioning gets heated, Nicholson asks, “You want answers?” To which Cruise response, “I want the truth!” And Nicholson utters that famous line (the one line most everyone knows whether they’ve seen the movie or not): “You can’t handle the truth!” Then follows a speech about truth, honor, loyalty and what has to happen for him to be able to save lives. It is a stirring moment, but it’s that one line that echoes in everyone’s mind even after the film is over. “You can’t handle the truth!” It resonates with us because, well, it’s true.

If there ever was a time where we proved that, as human beings, we generally can’t handle the truth, it was a time and a story that began in Bethlehem. People had been praying for centuries for God to come down, to walk among them. The prophets, official spokespersons for God, had been silent for 400 years; there had been no new word from the Lord is anyone’s lifetime. They still believed, but they begged for more. And so God came. In the midst of a clear, cold night, a baby’s cry rang out through the night. And no one, except for a few no-good shepherds, noticed. No one noticed. I mean, babies were born every day. Well, maybe not in Bethlehem; it wasn’t that big of a town. But babies were and are born every day. What’s the big deal about another baby, especially a baby born to a poor couple, so poor they didn’t even have a hotel room? This baby was born in a barn, literally, and would just be another mouth on public assistance. A poor child, born to a poor couple, in a backwater town at the edge of the Roman Empire. Big deal. Who cares?

During Advent, we have been looking at this word “incarnation.” It’s a fancy theological word that sums up what God did on that night so long ago. God became a human being, or as we will hear from the Gospel of John in a few moments, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (1:14). The Word. Became flesh. It’s impossible, almost as impossible as God becoming a baby. No such thing had ever happened or, they thought, ever would happen. Incarnation doesn’t happen—except that one time when it did.

I have long loved this story. As a kid, I loved the nativity scenes, the special songs at this time of year, watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year on television, and, of course, that fact that we got presents. But as I have grown, I have come to love and appreciate the simplicity of this story, the beauty of the way it’s told, and the surprise ending. The fact that God would become one of us to be near us is a surprise. No one expected a baby! They expected God to break through the heavens in a blaze of glory, but God chose to enter the world through the womb of a young virgin girl. To save us from ourselves and to rescue us from the mess we make of our world, he became one of us. He came into our world. It was an inside job.

Whereas Matthew and Luke begin their gospel accounts with the birth of Jesus, John goes even further back. “In the beginning,” he writes. That’s about as far back as you can go! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). For centuries, God had been trying to speak that Word to the people. He started with the whole earth and then narrowed his dealings down to a tribe of migrant herdsmen. Over the course of many, many centuries, he shaped them from a loose group of wandering tribes into a nation—a nation with a name (Israel, which means “one who struggles with God,” Genesis 32:28) and a purpose (to bless all people on earth—Genesis 12:2-3). He spoke through priests and prophets, through parables and politicians (yes, even them!). But by and large, most people would not listen to the Word God had for them. Like us still, they chose to go their own way, do their own thing, and sing with Sinatra, “I did it my way!” God offered them (and us) life and we chose death. We chose the pleasures of a moment instead of the contentment of life eternal. We chose what we could see rather than what we could hear.

One of my favorite verses to read on Christmas Eve is John 1:5. You’ll hear the whole passage near the end of our worship tonight, but let me share this verse right now: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I love the hope that offers, that no matter how much the people in ancient times tried or we try to put out the light God offers us, it still shines. It will always shine. The NIV says the darkness cannot “overcome” the light. Some of you may have memorized the older King James Version, which says the darkness does not “comprehend” the light. Both of those are actually good translations. John has a way of using words that pack a lot of meaning into just a few letters, and this is one of those occasions. I think he’s practically shouting at this point (and only five verses into his Gospel) because he’s excited—the light cannot be extinguished, no matter how dark it gets. The latest Pew Research Forum report says the light is going out, that Christian faith is trending downward in our country. In 2011, 75% of Americans identified as Christians; today that number is 63%. And while that is still a majority, the number of people who identify as “none,” meaning they claim no faith whatsoever, has grown to 29%. For a whole lot of people today, Christmas is nothing more than a holiday to eat, to drink too much, to spend too much, to travel too far just to try to enjoy a couple of extra days off with people they don’t like. When they hear, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come,” playing over the store speakers, they don’t get it. They “don’t comprehend it.” The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it. A few weeks ago, we looked at the beginning of the book of Hebrews, where the writer reminds us, “In these last days [God] has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:2). God has spoken, and he has spoken through a baby. The Word became flesh and blood. The Word became a human being. Fully God, fully human in a way we can’t comprehend. And yet, in this moment when God speaks clearly, decisively, the world refuses to listen. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it (cf. Willimon, Incarnation, pgs. 38-39). But the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, either. It still shines and always will. That’s the good news of Christmas.

And so the baby grew up. Though we have no actual accounts of Jesus’ childhood, it appears he grew up as a rather ordinary boy in a small town, probably working alongside his stepfather and learning the trade. We do get one glimpse of his growing up years when he is twelve and goes with his parents to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. You may remember what happens: he ditches his parents. Or they lose track of him. Can you imagine being Mary and Joseph, realizing they have no idea where Jesus is? I believe it had to be Mary who told Luke that story. Joseph is long dead, so he can’t defend himself. I picture Mary saying to Luke, “You want a story from Jesus’ childhood? Let me tell you about the time Joseph lost him. Yeah, he had one job and he couldn’t do it!” Okay, maybe that didn’t happen, but here’s the point: they looked all over the city except the one place they should have started looking. Jesus was at church. He was in the Temple, and he’d been there for three days! Neither one of them said, “Hey, he’s the Son of God, how about we look in God’s house?” (cf. Luke 2:41-50)

Anyway, the baby grew up. Eventually, he began to preach and teach and gather disciples. He told us the truth about ourselves, and the truth about God. But he did it in a sneaky way. He told stories about a son who ran away, spent his inheritance, and yet was welcomed back home by his father. He told a story about a man who was beat up along the road, ignored by religious officials, and rescued by someone who should have been his enemy. He told stories about lost coins and sheep and weeds. He told stories the people would have related to, and he snuck the truth about the kingdom of God into those stories. He told the truth but not in a way people had ever heard before. “He taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matthew 7:29). And he did have authority, because he was the incarnate Word of God.

The time came, though, when the truth became too much for us to handle, and so we got rid of that Word. The one who preached love without compromise, grace and truth, and living a life different from the world—this Word who became flesh was arrested, tried, convicted and crucified. Because we couldn’t handle the truth, we put that truth on a cross. For six hours, he hung between heaven and earth until he gave up his spirit. The Son of God died; the Word of God was silenced. His body was put into a cave, a stone was rolled in front of it, and that was that. The conversation was over. There would be no more Word from the Lord, at least from that one. We made sure of that because we couldn’t handle the truth.

SILENCE.

And for three days, everything they planned came true. The Word was silent. Everyone could go about their business without any more interruptions. The world could resume its ways. Except—they forgot this was an inside job. He had come to stay, and even death could not put a stop to the Word. This God has a way of bringing life out of death. This God has a way of proving that the worst thing is never the last thing. This God has a way of showing up when you least expect it. And this God is the light that darkness cannot put out, cannot overcome and will never fully understand. And so this God raised Jesus from the dead. Come Sunday morning, the tomb they thought could put an end to the Word was empty, and the conversation continued. The Word rose again, and because he did, we can as well because “in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind” (1:4).

So it’s Christmas Eve, and we’ve come here tonight, as I said earlier, to sing some familiar carols (and tonight we’ll even put up with the unfamiliar ones), to hear the story once again (the same story we hear every year), and to light some candles. Some of us may not even know why we are here except that this is something our family does every year. Why do we come here? Why give up a Friday evening to listen to a story we know so well?

A little over four years ago, I stood in a cave under the altar in a church in Bethlehem and sang with a group the same carol we will sing in a few moments as we light candles: “Silent Night.” That trip to Israel was unusual in that we had extra time in the cave; usually they hustle us through. But this time we had time to sing, and I was particularly moved. If you would see the video from that time, I’ve got my eyes closed with my hat over my heart. I’m glad someone got video because I wasn’t aware I was doing that. Others had tears as we sang. Why? I’ve sang that song at least once every year for 54 years. I even sang it in German as a special one time at my home church (I couldn’t do it now, so don’t ask). Why did that cave suddenly become a holy place? Why does this place become a holy destination on this night? I think it’s because we desperately want the story to be true. We want it to be true that God cares enough about us to come and live among us. We want it to be true that God loves us so much he’d rather die than live without us. We want it to be true that God is not far off, that he is in fact Emmanuel, God with us. We want it to be true that the God who is with us is also the God who is for us. We gather here tonight because, deep down, we want it to be true. We hope it’s true. We need it to be true.

Friends, if that’s you tonight, I have the very best news for you: “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The good news is: it’s true. All of it. God pulled off an inside job, and it’s true.