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The Feast of the Nativity (RCL), 25 December 2005 |
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” John 1:14 KJV INCARNATE WORD In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This is the scandal of particularity. Jesus of Nazareth is true God and true man. The Word of God was in the beginning with God and was God. In former days, this Word of God spoke through the prophets of old. Now here in John’s prologue, the Word of God, who was begotten of His Father, is made flesh through a Jewish girl, Mary, who was, at best, fourteen and possibly twelve years old. He dwells among us, full of grace and truth, revealing His glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father. This is the scandal of particularity. In your face, you forensic pathologists of the Bible who attempt to control the Word of God by voting with colored beads whether the Word is authentic. In your face, you revisionists who attempt to control the Word of God by implanting your theological pacemakers in the same old heresies which the first generations of Christians testified against with their martyred lives. In your face, you re-imaginers who attempt to control the Word of God by substituting your clever, unthreatening metaphors for the holy language of revelation. In your face, you professors of religion who attempt to control the Word of God with your vain recasting of the Christian faith as simply the Nazarene’s torah for Gentiles. You have all been weighed in the balance and found wanting! This is the scandal of particularity. God comes down to earth, making Himself (not Herself, Godself, or Itself) known in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth. You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to follow Him. You don’t have to have your academically inquisitive mind changed. You don’t have to abandon your favorite theories, your moral politics, your wounded psyche, or your well-rehearsed litanies of resentment. In short, you don’t have to listen to John or sit at the feet of other spiritual giants from peasant stock. In every generation, you will always find kindred spirits who urge you to remain bloodied but unbowed in your intellectual and cultural integrity. This is the scandal of particularity. God, the Maker and Owner of heaven and earth, the Holy One of Israel, has been born in Jewish flesh to a teenage virgin in a cattle stall to save the unbelieving world from itself. He has come to get in your face, to mess with your independence, to trouble your sense of what is possible in order to save you from yourself. Your Maker and Owner has come calling in the most out of the way place to make claims on your body, your mind, your spirit, your relationships, your time, your talent, and your treasure. You don’t have to accept His claims, but know this – God is eternal and you are not. The message of the Bible can be reduced to two words – God wins! To make it even clearer, let me add two more words – you don’t! This is the scandal of particularity. You can say “no” to the Incarnate Word of God. Many others before you have done so. Many others in the world are saying “no” to Him today. But the message of the Bible can be reduced to two other words – Yes, No. God has said “Yes” to you and to all the world in Jesus Christ, but if you persist in saying “no” to God, then, finally and sadly, He will let you have it your way and say “No” to you as well. There is no other name by which women and men may be saved. There is no other Savior in the great world religions. There is no other way to the Father than through the revelation of His Son in Jewish flesh. There is no salvation through the meritocracy of the academy, or industry, or the arts, or the good life. This is the scandal of particularity. You can confuse the story, as many Christians do, by substituting the good for God. You can focus so much on what you are doing that it becomes about you and not about God. You can focus so much on earthly temples with all their busy aesthetic and relational programs that it becomes about something other than God. You can so focus your energies on political strategies, goal-setting, fund-raising, and community-organizing that it becomes about your ideals and not about God. But the Incarnate Word of God is offering you eternal life and eternal love when you are ready to let go of the good in order to be possessed by God. This is the scandal of particularity. You can pretend that belief in Him is something you manufacture, that trust in Him is something you decide, and that fellowship with Him is something you choose. It’s the same old lie this time in wrapped up in spiritual language. You are not in charge. He chooses you. You do not choose Him. You can say “no” to Him on your own. But you can only say “yes” to Him once the Holy Spirit has revealed to you that the Word of God has from the beginning said “Yes” to you and has now made His “Yes” to you and to the whole world known in Bethlehem’s stable in the particular Jewish flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, son of God and son of Mary. This is the scandal of particularity. You have a birth date, and you have a death date. While Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, has a birth date and a death date, Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, has no beginning and no ending. If Jesus the Messiah befriends you, He can give you life that goes on forever even if your body dies. If Jesus the Messiah cannot befriend you, because you will not let Him, then you will not live forever with Him in that place prepared for you from before the beginning of time. This is the scandal of particularity. You must be born again of water and the Holy Spirit. You can have a new birth as a child of God every day as you remember that by your Baptism into the Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection, He has chosen you and has taken away your sins on Calvary’s tree. The truth about you and me is that no one else can take away our sins, because there is no way for our sins to be forgiven unless Jesus, the Lamb of God, takes away our sins. We are not born again by choosing Jesus. We are not in charge of our salvation. Only the Holy Spirit can call us out of darkness into light. Only the Holy Spirit can bring us out of falsehood into God’s truth. Only the Holy Spirit can drown the old sinner in us in the water of Baptism and implant the Living Word of God in our frail flesh – not once but day after day until our sinful flesh is finally dead! This is the scandal of particularity. You can be a Christian in name your whole life. Your obituary can say that you were a Lutheran, a Catholic, a Baptist, a Pentecostal, a Methodist, an Anglican, a Calvinist, or whatever your loved ones pay to say about you. Your name may be on the rolls of some congregation somewhere. You may be buried in a church cemetery. You may have been baptized once upon a time. You may have gone down the aisle to make your profession of faith once upon a time. You may have asked Jesus to come into your heart once upon a time. You may have confessed your sins and prayed for the Holy Spirit once upon a time. But following Jesus and being found in Him when you have drawn your last breath is not a once upon a time thing. It is abandoning yourself to the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ not once but everyday! If you are stopping your ears to His voice, refusing His claims upon you, and insisting that you are your own boss, the Lord Jesus cannot save you from yourself no matter what your obituary or the church records say. This is the scandal of particularity. You can make all kinds of excuses why you are continuing to say “no” to God. You can cite pedophile clergy. You can cite the eccentricities and wackiness of TV preachers. You can cite the poor example of Christians you have known. You can list the sins of the present White House, or your parents, your siblings, or your irritating relatives. You can quote Bertrand Russell, Mencken, Gandhi, John Shelby Spong, and the Jesus Seminar. But it all comes down to this. If you insist on saying “no” to the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus the Messiah, then His Father will finally say “no” to you, because no one can save you from yourself if you don’t want to be saved. This is the scandal of particularity. In Bethlehem’s manger and then on Calvary’s tree, the Lord God has made Himself known in Jewish flesh as the Savior of the world that you might be His own, live under Him in His Kingdom, and serve Him forever. Perhaps you came to worship today to make someone happy (or perhaps you are only reading these words on an electronic page). Perhaps you came to remember sweeter, simpler times. Perhaps you came to pray for peace. Perhaps you came to sing the songs and hope against hope that somehow the Christmas story might be true. But the Holy Spirit is calling you to be in worship so that you might know that in Jesus Christ, God has said “yes” to you and me – poor miserable sinners who are going to die. God will not coerce us to believe or coerce us to follow. God will keep saying “Yes” in the hopes that we will hear Him and trust Him with our living and dying. This is the scandal of particularity. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Some have always refused to believe. Some have always refused to follow. Some have always attempted to control the Word of God. That is the way of death and not of life. In John 6, the Lord Jesus asked Peter if he were going to also say “no.” Peter answered: “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (v.68). In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. ©Samuel D. Zumwalt
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