1st Sunday after Christmas Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill
The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling John 1:1-18
Who is Jesus to you? I’ve heard
this question posed by a variety of people in a variety of contexts throughout
my life. Who is Jesus to you?
Asked another way, have you ever wondered about Jesus?
I mean really wrestled with the question about who He was, who He is for you,
and who He will be in the age to come? People in the first few centuries asked
questions about Him, as I do now. Who was Jesus? Was he human or divine? Was he
man or was He God?
Unlike the other three gospels,
the gospel of John is quite clear. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word became flesh and lived among us
in the person of Jesus. The fourth gospel claims that God entered into human
history in the person of Jesus to make God known through his words and deeds.
Jesus wasn’t just a babe in the manger, born of the Virgin Mary, however.
According to John, Jesus also was the pre-existent Word of God, the One who
created life with the Father and the One who lived, died, and rose from the
dead “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal
life.” (3:16) Do you believe this?
I
didn’t. At least I didn’t until I too, like John, had experienced Jesus as the
way, the truth, and the life. I was baptized as a baby and grew up in the
Congregational Church, now called the United Church of Christ. As a child, I
remember the wonder of Christmas eve services, hustling out to our car in the
bitter cold, shielding the light of my candle with my hand against the wind,
using the light of Christ to dispel my darkness. I didn’t wonder in doubt back
then; I only wondered in awe. I believed as only a child can.
As
many of you know, in my teens, when we lived in Atlanta, my family worshiped in
the Presbyterian Church. At that time in my life I wondered so much about God
and Jesus that I chose not to be confirmed. And then later on, when I was off
to college in Massachusetts, I wondered even more. I became a confirmed
agnostic, although during a particularly difficult time in my freshman year, I
found myself on my knees in the dark, outside the college chapel, asking God
for help.
Married at a young age, and once
again living in Atlanta, I remember asking my next-door neighbor why she
attended mass every Sunday. I wondered why she bothered to go to church,
especially since our group of “married without kids” often spent Saturday nights
enjoying life and adult beverages far into the night.
Moving
once again, back to Massachuestts, where our two children were born, Paul and I
wondered in awe at God’s creation of these two little human beings, and so we
returned to faithful and active worship in the Episcopal Church. Like Mary, we
discovered that babies can bring you to your knees in wonder and awe. Not
knowing what it meant, but knowing it was part of both of our families
traditions, we baptized our two children into the life of Christ.
After
we settled in Newtown, Connecticut, my wondering about Jesus began in earnest.
I wanted answers; and so I began to attend Bible study at the Episcopal Church
on the hill. I joined the vestry, and got involved with outreach and pastoral
care. Still wondering but growing in my knowledge, I took a 4 year course
called Education for Ministry and learned that the early church held three
different beliefs about Jesus; and they argued about them for centuries.
The catholic (little c) position
claimed that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. Our Anglican
tradition affirms this belief as stated in our Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. The
Ebionites believed that Jesus was the Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary and
raised from the dead, but that he was not divine. And the Docetists denied the
Incarnation, that Jesus only appeared to be human, but was really just fully
divine. He looked like us but He wasn’t created like us. Today, these various
beliefs about Jesus remain.
The battle raging in and amongst
the early Jewish and Christian communities has also raged within my own heart.
Who was Jesus and who was He for me? If Jesus was not divine, then why did I
worship Him? If Jesus was not human, then how could he understand me? And if
Jesus was both human and divine - how could that be, and what was the point?
Who was I worshiping anyway? Jesus? God? Both? My wondering had me wandering
all over the place. And then one day I heard the words of John the Baptist in
our gospel lesson today.
He
declared to me that he knew Jesus. He claimed that this human Jesus, who came
before John, also ranked ahead of him because Jesus was there before the world
began. John the Baptist testified that no one has ever seen God but that Jesus
was the Son of God, who was close to His Father’s heart, and made God known to
us by becoming a human being. It was from Jesus’ fullness of grace and truth
that we receive grace upon grace, and through Him, we are given power to become
the beloved children of God.
Even so, until I became like John
the Baptist myself, I could not and did not believe what the gospel of John
said about Jesus. I discovered once again in another difficult time in my life
that I needed to become like the voice of one crying out in the wilderness -
first as one who suffered, then as one who questioned, and then as one who
proclaimed as a witness. My journey of faith, perhaps like yours as adults,
became a life-long process of suffering, questioning, wondering and
proclamation.
Over the years, like many of you,
I have become acquainted with suffering and grief. Frequently, I wrestled with
questions about the meaning of life and if there is life after death. As a wife
and mother, I discovered that as babies and marriages grow older, they not only
bring you to your knees in wonder and awe but also in wonder and doubt.
I also wondered about the
suffering in our world. As someone who has watched family members, friends, and
people struggle with issues of life and death, addictions, and mental illness I
wondered as well about Jesus. Although he ate and drank with sinners, did he
really know the struggles of humanity? Had he not died in his early 30’s, never
having been married, raised children, nor faced the challenges of his mother’s
old age, let alone his own? Wasn’t Jesus the one who at his death passed the
care of his mother along to his disciple John, and then confidently proclaimed,
“It is finished” leaving us all to wonder what he meant?
And who among us has not wondered
recently about God and Jesus with news reports around the world. There is
suffering and violence in all corners of our globe that are beyond our human
understanding and experience. What happened to that other voice of Jesus, who
cried out from the cross “My, God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
How is it then that my voice,
crying out in the wilderness, has become a voice of one who also proclaims
“make straight the way of the Lord”? Quite simply, through the Church. It is in
Church that I began to know that the Word became flesh and lived among us, in
you and me. It is through the Body of Christ, people like you at Redeemer, and
the witness of faith communities everywhere, that I have come to know the true
light of Christ, a “light which shines in the darkness, and the darkness does
not overcome it.” It is through the Church and the power of the Holy Spirit
that I have seen His face, heard His voice, and felt His healing touch. I have
heard the promise of our salvation in the Word of God spoken in the voice of
Jesus in scripture.
Who is Jesus? He is
the Living Word of God, who speaks to us daily, sometimes shouting, sometimes
whispering, sometimes silent. He is the Bread of Life and the Cup of our
Salvation, who feeds our hungry hearts and quenches our thirst for justice and
mercy. Who is Jesus? He is the Good Shepherd, who loves us beyond measure, and
guides us along the right pathways, even through the valley and shadow of death
. He is the Son of God, who made us all the beloved children of God, worthy to
stand before Him, and through Him we become heirs of his eternal kingdom.
Coming to know
Jesus, I am a child, once again, who can walk through the cold and bitter
nights of winter, carrying my candle in front of me, knowing that the Light of
the world will dispel the darkness of the world. Who is Jesus? He is the Word
of God, not only telling us about God, but also showing us the Way of Love and
the Will of His Father.
Who is Jesus? He is
the firstborn of all creation, the head of the Church, and the author of our
salvation.“Believe in God. Believe also in me,” Jesus said. And with the help
of the Holy Spirit, we can.
