"Love with Skin On"

John 1:1-13

Third Sunday in Advent + December 11, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

In the middle of a cold winter night, a small child’s voice penetrates the darkness from the bedroom across the hall: “Mommy, I’m scared!” Half asleep, her mother responds: “Don’t be afraid, honey. Mommy’s right across the hall.” After a brief pause, the child replies: “Mommy, I’m still scared.” Hoping to salvage a good night’s rest with a theological reassurance the mother calls back: “You don’t need to be afraid, dear, God loves you and God is with you right now.” This time the pause is longer. Then the little voice returns: “I don’t care about God, Mommy. I want someone with skin on.”

Out of the mouths of babes and children! That little child’s logic is the best answer we could give to the Christmas question: “What are we waiting for?” We Christians are those people who make the incredible, preposterous, absurd claim that the infinite reality which creates, sustains, and renews the universe has come among us “with skin on.” Yet the very moment we say that we are still face to face with mystery. What does it mean?

Part of the answer is that God came into human life then and God comes into human life now to give us a new perspective. I have always thought that one of the strangest claims we human beings make about God is that God is “unchanging.” We even put it in one of our most familiar and beloved hymns: “O Thou who changes not, abide with me.” Actually, so far as I can see, it is we who are the unchanging ones, going round and round in circles, getting nowhere faster and faster. God is always changing, always creating, always becoming.

Let me risk an analogy: when we are in love we are at our most creative. Our minds and hearts simply teem with ideas. We are willing to try almost anything to show the one we love just how much we care. If God is love itself (which is what we say and believe), doesn’t it make sense to believe that God would constantly be trying new and different ways to show us how much God cares about us?

As I read the long storybook that is our Bible, I see God trying to communicate with us again and again just how much God loves us. Sometimes God tries to reach us with that message through nature and all its wonderful gifts. Sometimes God tries to reach us at moments of crisis or tragedy. Sometimes God touches the lives of special people – matriarchs and patriarchs of the faith, people of prophetic vision – and inspires them with messages of love for the rest of us. Sometimes God becomes real in moments of great creativity – wonderful music, glorious artistic works, moving drama.

Yet somehow, as helpful as all these ways can be, it just doesn’t seem quite enough. It still seems to be “outside” us. We need something more. So it is that the Creator of the Universe makes the most audacious experiment of all. Some years after Bethlehem, the author of the Gospel of John tried to put it into words:

“From the beginning of time existed the active, creative, self-expression of God which we call Love. Every aspect of creation, including human life, came into being because of that Love. At one point in human history that Love became particularly evident and obvious in one human life, Jesus of Nazareth. And what we recognized in him, we can now see in ourselves and in all people – the Light and Love of God.” (David Brown’s paraphrase of John 1:1-4)

When you and I recognize that, it gives a whole new perspective to human life and we can never be the same again.

If we have that new perspective on life, then the coming of God into human life also gives you and me and the whole human family a new sense of possibility. Let’s face it: most of us have reached that point in life when Christmas brings regrets as much as rejoicing. As we look back over the years we think of all the things we did we wish we had avoided; we remember all the things we might have done we let slip by. That old-fashioned notion of being a “sinner” is simply another generation’s way of saying the same thing: you and I are incomplete, imperfect, finite people.

We are like the high-school senior filling out her college admission application form. She was asked to list some of her personal strengths. She wrote: “Sometimes I am trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” Then the application form asked her to list some of her weaknesses and she wrote: “Sometimes I am not trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.” You and I could probably say the same of ourselves. We know too well that only sometimes are we the people God intended us to be and that we want to be ourselves. That’s frustrating.

The good news of Christmas is that we don’t have to live with those feelings of frustration. Yes, the warranty on us has pretty much run out. But again and again in the pages of the Bible God makes clear that new beginnings are always possible for you and me. John’s Gospel puts this in a dramatic way when he says that a “new birth” is possible for each one of us no matter how old we may be. In the Prologue to the Gospel which was read by us a few moments ago we find the same affirmation: “To all those people who recognize, receive, affirm, the presence of God in their lives, God gives the possibility of a new beginning.” (David Brown’s paraphrase of John 1:12)

That is why God comes into human life “with skin on” in the form of a baby. What could have more hopes and dreams and possibilities than a baby? The Christmas good news is that God is equally willing to come into your life and mine and give us just as many new hopes and new dreams and new possibilities. When you and I recognize that, it gives a whole new possibility to our lives and we can never be the same again.

Finally, if we have that new perspective and new possibility, then the coming of God into human life gives you and me and the whole human family a new purpose for living.

I spoke with a very wise man not so long ago and he told me that, so far as he could tell, the greatest problem of our times is that too many people are living almost entirely for themselves. He used a technical term from psychology to describe this behavior: narcissism. That’s just a fancy way for saying that we are so centered on ourselves – our own needs, our own concerns, our own desires – that we have little or no time left over to think of anyone else. When that happens, strange as it may seem, our lives are not fuller, happier, more contented. Instead they become small and narrow and mean. The One whose birth we celebrate at Christmas once observed: “The more energy, time, and attention you give to keeping your own life together, the more it will come apart.” (David Brown’s paraphrase of Matthew 16:25)

That is what Christmas tells us. Think about it for a moment: we have a right to assume that the Creator of the Universe could meet whatever needs or desires God might have in infinite ways without getting involved in human life. God doesn’t need us. Because God is love God comes among us not to meet God’s needs but our needs.

When you and I catch a glimpse of this true meaning of Christmas and gain s new perspective and find a new possibility, we also discover the true purpose of our lives. We are here on earth not to receive but to give love in every way we can possibly imagine to those around us. Some of them need us desperately.

So we return one last time to our Advent question: “What are we waiting for?” What are you waiting for? Is the One we are waiting for still unknown to you? Then listen once again to the Christmas stories and carols. Look into the glow of the candles and into the glowing face of a child. See the promise that waits there to be claimed by you and by all people.

And then the wonderful old words which you and I have sung all our lives will suddenly come true:

“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 The great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel!”