The Transcendence of New Years
A Sermon by Andrew Colman based on John 1:1-18
On Christmas Eve, we read the Gospel according to Luke, and it started like this, "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment when Quirini-us was governor of Syria."
Luke was the physician; he was the one who researched as much as he could to communicate as clearly as he could the who, where, what, when, and why of the Gospel. Was he trying to write an accurate historical account of the events? No, first and foremost, he was trying to communicate the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, through all the stories he had collected. But that there is the truth that one can point to in his Gospel was indeed important to him.
Hence, this is the reason for naming the Emperor of Rome and Governor of Syria at the time and the particular political act that happened. Luke is placing the events of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in history. Each of us here can scroll backwards through the calendar on our phones and say it was about here in time that all of this happened.
It is marked in time. And that is an important thing. The fact that most of us know when we are born and probably where and that we mark our birthday each year speaks to this truth.
It is important for us to be able to point to a time and place and say - here - it happened here.
In tonight's Gospel reading, the prologue to the Gospel of John, we do not find nearly the same concern for the placement of the beginning of the story of Jesus.
John starts before there is even a place to point to. Before, there was anything at all. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."
Where Luke the Doctor was concerned with establishing the humanity of Jesus. John is a mystic, not so concerned that the first thing that we know about Jesus is that he is real,
but that he is God.
Before all things, the Word was Jesus. Without Jesus, there was nothing, and only through him is there anything at all.
John is inviting us to raise our eyes from the ground upon which we walk and look up. Or to close our eyes and look past everything we can see and find Jesus there.
Find Jesus the Word made flesh that came and dwelt among us in "the" nothing at all.
That sentiment is at the heart of the Christian Mystical Tradition.
Monks and Nuns, for well over a thousand years, spent their whole lives in prayer, trying to clear their minds and their hearts of everything that is between them and God.
And actually, We know this sentiment well here at saint ben's from the prayer that begins be silent, be still.
Be silent. Be still. Alone. Empty Before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still.
Martin Laird describes the resulting feeling it like this “When our awareness loosens its arthritic grip to reveal a palm open and soft, awareness is silent and vast in the depths of the present moment. As Meister Eckhart put it, "The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge and one love."... This is the revelation of stillness.
This is where John wants us to start, to be in the vast and deep love of God. Full stop. Nothing else, but to be in the vast and deep love of God.
And then - something different. We get a name. The name of a person who we know that lived in a particular place on earth, that millions of people pilgrimage to every year.
John the Baptist. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness to the light."
And then, before the next breath, back to the creation narrative:
"The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not."
Back to cosmic images of lights and being in the world and making the world.
If we think about the first few verses of the Gospel according to John, we are given wild images to grab onto and make sense of.
The Logos that existed before time,
the beginning of time through creation,
historical figure and his job description of testifying and bearing witness,
and then back to cosmic purposes of the Word...
It is a spiralling image of God's existential being and doing and John's being and doing in the world.
Theologian and Baptist Minister Allen Dwight Callahan speaks to the presence of John the Baptist in this otherwise mystical opening few lines of John Prologue,
"The witness of John the Baptist punctuates the prologue, thus firmly ensconcing the opening of the Gospel in earthly history, not heavenly pre-history. The logos became flesh and dwelt "in our midst."
He continues remarking on it’s implications,
“The incarnation has happened in history and in the community; the incarnation has happened "in us." This incarnation is both human and divine, both transcendent and immanent. "The doctrines of transcendence and immanence," wrote Martin Luther King Jr., "are both half-truths in need of the tension of each other to give the more inclusive truth." In this incarnation, the divine and the human sound together in a symphony of transcendence and immanence. The Gospel is its score, the prologue, its overture.”
This is exactly what John is calling us to do in his Gospel. To live with tension.
To live and be in the loving presence of the one who was before all. To feel the Triune God's overwhelming love. Full stop.
And
To live in a place that has people, relationships, and work to do, problems, solutions, questions, and tension.
A few weeks ago, I said that we are a people who live with two New Years. Our second New Year is upon us. It's only a few days away.
It's the time year when we look back at the year that has passed and look forward to the year ahead. Look at what went well and didn't go so well and what we'd like to see happen differently in the next year.
The thing is, change is not like flipping a switch. Sometimes, maybe, changes can happen like that, but most of the time, things change slowly, which can be frustrating.
The problem when things change slowly is that we must live with the tension of what was & still is and what we are working towards.
These changes we try to make are all things that are immanent, whether it’s the provbial gym membership or a commitment to a new spiritual practice.
All of these are very good and can help live better lives, even lives more connected to the transcendent; they all have their place and time in history.
And it is not the only thing. I cannot be the only thing. If it were, we would all be hopelessly out of luck because try as we might, we'll never get it all right.
Though defeated, Sin runs rampant in this world.
Thankfully, the other side of the tension is the Transcendent love of God.
The love that was before all things. Love that came to dwell among us. Love that came to show how to live. Love that came to take all of our sins with him to die on the cross - so that there would be nothing to keep us from being silent and still in the presence of God even after one of our worst days.
I commend to you the Edwina Gaitley Prayer that we pray here, especially on those days when the stress of life feels like it is drowning out any sense of the Transcendent Love of God.
Say it slowly, as slowly as you possibly can, and breathe.
After all, the Transcendent Love of God in Jesus Christ, who was before all, came down and dwelt among us so that we might know that God’s love for us is as real as the ground he walked on.
—-
Let Your God Love You
Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.
Let your God—
Love you.