"He pitched his tent among us"

Sunday morning, January 4, 2009

Text: John 1:1-18

Title: “He Pitched His Tent Among Us”

I love the story of the little boy whose mother was constantly after him to wash his hands to be safe from germs. After coming into the house one day from playing, his mother confronted the little boy for the umpteenth time to go wash his hands, to which the little boy slunk off to the bathroom disgustingly muttering, “Germs and God, germs and God! That’s all I ever here around here, germs and God, and I’ve never seen either one of them!”

No one has ever seen God, John emphatically states in our text today. But that certainly hasn’t stopped us from trying. Surely Moses spoke to a great yearning in all of our hearts when he asked God, straight up, in Exodus 33:18, “Show me your glory, I pray.” God said you can see my back, “but my face shall not be seen.” (v. 23) Not even Moses, the man of God who found great favor with God, was allowed to see God, an indication that the rest of us won’t stand a good chance either.

The Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 13 that one day we will see God face to face. But until that time that God chooses, we cannot see God fully, only in part. Try as we may in this life, Paul says the best we can muster will be a dull reflection of God from a mirror, dimly.

We should know better about trying to see God. There has always been at the heart of Judaism a prohibition against picturing God in any form or fashion. In fact the second commandment prohibits idol worship of the one, true God. Not idolizing the Lord of the universe or imaging the eternal God in any fashion was a unique insight of Judaism surrounded as it was in the ancient world by cultures that easily fashioned their gods into animal or human forms and bowed down and worshiped them.

And yet like our little friend who doubted germs existed because he had never seen them, if we are honest with ourselves, there is that spec, or maybe even boulder in some of psyches, that nagging voice of doubt, that no one has ever seen God. And if no one has ever seen God, then how can I believe in something I have never seen?

That question has plagued believers and Christian theologians throughout the centuries. Many have tried to tackle it along rational, philosophical lines. Perhaps the most famous attempt to answer God’s existence came in the 13^th century by one of the greatest theologians of all time, Thomas Aquinas, in his massive work, Summa. Aquinas offered these five proofs of God’s existence (I hope you are awake!) 1. the argument from motion: Aquinas noted that things are in motion in the universe. If things are in motion in the universe, then something had to start them moving. Aquinas postured that the thing that got things moving in the universe was God. 2. efficient causes: Aquinas believed that matter cannot create itself. Life must have arisen from some creative cause. That creative cause is God. 3. consideration of the possible and the necessary: There was a time when nothing existed. If things which once did not exist now exist, then something must have brought them into existence. Something was necessary for them to exist. That necessary being, prior to all other being, is God. 4. consideration of the grades or stages which are found in things: Aquinas believed that when we speak of things as good or better, there must be something that is best. When we say more or less, there must be something that is greatest of all. There is, therefore, something which is most true and most good and most noble, and consequently exists as being in the highest degree—God. 5. the consideration of the government of things: All things that live, seem to live intentionally, moving toward some end or purpose. Flowers turn toward the sun, human beings turn toward love. Where does this intention come from? All beings must be directed by some higher being, even as an arrow is directed by an archer. This intelligent being we call God.

Aquinas may help us at some level to grasp the reality of God and see the existence of God. But ultimately Aquinas’ philosophy leaves us with a God who is up there or out there, moving and shaking things, ordering and controlling things, but in the end, a God who is distant and faceless like some mathematical concept, like gravity. As United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon has aptly noted, “The God who is spoken of in scripture tends to have a more interesting personality than Aquinas’ demonstrated God.” (Pulpit Resource, Vol. 32, No. 1, page 6)

But wait the gospel writer John says. There is someone who has seen God. In fact there is someone who exists so closely to the heart, or bosom of God, that this person is the Word of God, a Word with God and a Word who is God, residing as God from the very beginning of creation itself, through whom all things have come into existence and being. This person whom John literally says faces God, face to face, shines with God’s glory and light, a glory and light that are the very life of all people.

How does John know this? Not because he thought it up one night cramming for a philosophy exam. Not because he took a nice stroll in a beautiful forest and all of a sudden it came to him. Not because he looked deep within himself and noticed some good and extrapolated out from there that there must be a God. Not even because he viewed a beautiful sunset and surmised somebody had to make this.

The prologue to John’s gospel literally brims with insight and understanding and overflows with brilliance and light and glory and life not because John is a great thinker or imaginer, but because “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (v. 14)

Christianity is a revealed religion. While it is true that no one has ever seen God, it is equally true that what we know of God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Christianity was not thought up, in fact what we are reading in John’s prologue is not a well-thought out theological treatise, but a confession of faith, a hymn of praise and awe and wonder. Listen to John’s language: “WE have seen his glory…From his glory WE have all received, grace upon grace.” This is the language of a community of faith greatly impacted by incarnation; by preaching, teaching, and healing; by suffering and death; and astoundingly, resurrection and new life.

This is not the language of reason or rational thought, not nearly the language of abstract philosophy or theoretical theology. This is the language of worship, of wonder, of amazement that quite apart from ourselves—our reason, our imagination, even our sin—“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The eternal Word of God, facing God, being from the very heart and bosom of God, became human in a stable in Bethlehem; had a human family; had human parents, Mary and Joseph; had a human face and name—Jesus of Nazareth. We could never have imagined it. It was given. It is grace. It is gift.

This is what we celebrate at Christmas. We celebrate gift. We celebrate the astounding gift that, though we have never seen God, God has seen us, and God has chosen to become flesh and dwell among us, literally in the gospel writer John’s Greek, to pitch his tent right in our midst.

Bethlehem’s baby is Emmanuel, God-with-us. And as we look to Jesus’ teaching; as we look to his healing; as we look to the ways he tore down human barriers and lived for justice and righteousness and practiced mercy and showed love and suffered much and died and was resurrected—as we look to Jesus Christ, and follow, we will see as much of God as we ever can hope to see in this lifetime.

No one has ever seen God. And thanks be to God. Because ultimately a faith strong enough to overcome even death itself cannot be sustained on the basis of irrefutable proof and reason, but on the basis of undeniable relationship with Jesus – the Word of God made flesh and pitching his tent among us.