The Politics of Vulnerability

Matthew 5:1-12
February 1, 2026

William G. Carter  

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. 

There they are: the beloved beatitudes. Nine blessings from the tongue of Jesus. It is the preface to his Sermon on the Mount. It’s the charter for every word he ever spoke – and every word he continues to speak. These twelve verses are a favorite text, among the most famous words in all of scripture. Our Sunday School teacher said, “These are important. Memorize them, just like you memorize the Lord’s Prayer.”

For better or worse, our teacher never mentioned them in terms of politics. That’s right, politics. Wait – why bring politics into this? Because of the origin of the word. Our English word “politics” has been around since the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It comes from the Greek word for city (“polis”) and the word for citizen (“polites”). It gives root to the word “policy.” It can be twisted out of shape when it becomes a “politician.”

But at its root, “politics” has to do with the forming of a people. It is how a community is created, how the life of a people is sustained. This is what Jesus has in mind when he speaks the Beatitudes. He is inaugurating a new community, one that he calls the “kingdom of heaven.” It is a new people, an alternative way of being in the world. It is constituted by his blessing. It is shaped by his values. It is, and always has been, a subset of the wider world – or as he calls it, “the yeast within the loaf.”[1]

The question at the heart of Jesus’ politics is simply this: who matters? He does not say “everybody.” That would be like saying “nobody.” Rather, Jesus turns a selective eye to those who come to him. Whom does he see?

            Not the mighty but the weak.

            Not the strong but the scared.

            Not the intact but the broken.

            Not the winners but those who have lost something. Or somebody.

            Not the powerful but the vulnerable.

Survey that list of blessings once again: poor in spirit, mourners, meek, hungry and thirsty for what’s right, merciful, pure of heart, makers of peace, persecuted for doing the right thing, hated for loving Jesus. There is not a powerful person on the list. Not a single one is defensive, arrogant, or insistent on their own way. If there is any trait that they hold in common, it is their vulnerability. They do not run the world. They cannot fix the world. In every way, they depend on the One who is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven.

If we are honest, that is all of us, at least some of the time. We put on good appearances. We try to come across as strong and capable. But Jesus sees us in our need. In that need, he gives his blessing. “God bless you… and you… and you.” Whoever, wherever, whenever. If you can hear him, the blessing is for you.

If, on the other hand, we are preoccupied with ourselves, there is no room for the Christ. If we are intent on running fast, we won’t know what we are missing until life slows us down. If we are preoccupied with climbing higher, we can forget who can catch us when we fall down. It’s just that simple. That’s why it’s so easy to miss. And that’s why Jesus insists on saying it. The kingdom of heaven is for those who need the King. Salvation is for those who need saving. This is the politics of vulnerability.

Are you in a place where you can hear this?

There is a left-handed power at work on Jesus. It comes from a different direction. It’s evident in the Beatitudes and what they do not say. Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. When? How long? Blessed are the meek; they will inherit everything. How? What must they do? Jesus does not say. We simply must wait for God – and that’s the point.

A number of spiritually minded folks suggest the key to unlocking these nine blessings is the first one: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Everything seems drawn to the gravitational pull of that one. The poor in spirit are fundamentally incomplete. They have no resources within themselves. They know it, which means they have everything if they have God. It comes in the blessing, that great Hebrew words baruch atah, blessed are you.

Thinking about this text, Dale Bruner declares it is the essence of grace.

The paradox of the first Beatitude is that Jesus here sides precisely with those who fail what is needed before God, and who feel the failure. Thus the opening saying in the Sermon on the Mount teaches Jesus’ grace… (it) should be appropriately paraphrased, ‘Blessed are those who feel their real personal failure.’ Jesus blesses the spiritually inadequate. This holy paradox is the gospel.[2]

As he goes on to say,

It is those who feel their sin with hurt and penitence who are the really righteous, and it is those who are sure they are the righteous who need no repentance who are the real sinners. It is the dispirited who are often spiritual and live before God, and it is the marvelously inspired who often expire from God’s final presence. It is the poor before God to whom God can be rich, and it is those who feel they are peculiarly rich in God who miss the kingdom altogether.[3]

 To those who are weak, broken-down, broken-hearted, and vulnerable, the Christ says, “God bless you.” All of you. It’s remarkable. And the fact that so many of us can gather to hear this jolting announcement is a most gracious gift. It means we are together in this holy initiative of heaven.

 We can show mercy, make peace, tell the truth, and expose all distortions of the truth.

We can hunger and thirst for what is right, as we work to the benefit of all who hunger and thirst.

We can stay with those who hurt and grieve, and we can welcome their care when we hurt and grieve.

We can laugh at those who are so deeply invested in the devilish hurts of the world, for God has revealed their foolishness, and we can rejoice as we welcome the Christ that God has sent into the world.

This is what it is to be the citizens of God’s kingdom. We can be the blessing of God because we are receiving the blessing of God. “Blessed are you.” All of you.

Now, the world can be so intoxicated with itself that it finds all of this curious. Sometimes, in its desperation, it may reach for the words of Jesus and then twist them out of shape. Those who traffic in power and might never want to be exposed for how weak they are actually are. They will slather makeup on themselves to cover up their vulnerability. They promote their vanity projects and hope nobody notices the vanity.

Yet those who follow a crucified and risen Savior are never afraid to be honest. Sometimes they are even granted a moment to declare the truth. They reveal their citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.

There was that moment when Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was called to the stage to receive a lifetime achievement reward. The old-timers here may remember he had a television show for children. He was honored for his work. The person who welcomed him on the stage was a young man in a wheelchair. When he was a child, Jeff Erlanger had been a guest on Fred’s show. Now, he came to thank him for noticing him and dignifying him. Fred was blown away.

But then he paused, turned to an auditorium full of glittering actresses and handsome men, took a breath, and said these words:     

“Fame” is a four-letter word, and like "tape" or "zoom" or "face" or "pain" or "life" or "love" what ultimately matters is what we do with it. I feel that those of us in television are chosen to be servants. It doesn't matter what our particular job. We are chosen to help meet the deeper needs of those who watch and listen day and night.

 

Television needs to do all it can to show and tell what the good in life is all about. But how do we make goodness attractive? By doing whatever we can to bring courage to those whose lives move near our own, by treating our neighbor at least as well as we treat ourselves, and allowing that to inform everything that we produce.

 

Who in your life has been such a servant to you? Who has helped you love the good that grows within you? Let's just take ten seconds to think of some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us in life, those who have encouraged us to become who we are tonight. Just ten seconds of silence. I'll watch the time.

 

Then he paused. Waited them out. Waited just long enough for some of them to take a breath, pause from their glory, and remember how others had helped them get through their lives. And then, he concluded,

 

No matter where they are, either here or in heaven, imagine how pleased those people must be to know that you thought of them right now. We all have only one life to live on earth. We have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways.[4]

It was a brief, rare moment when Truth (with a capital T) was revealed. The moment wasn’t about Fred, it was about others. The world’s values were flipped over by the blessing of the King. It’s true: all of us have an empty spot. The hurts come. We cannot complete our lives. Nobody gets out of this life healthy or intact.

But there’s good news in this vulnerability. We slow down. We notice our humanity. Then we claim Christ’s divinity, which is wrapped in his humanity. This is the open secret of the Gospel. No matter who we are, no matter what we have done or will leave undone, we are known. We are held. We are loved. We are blessed, that we might be a blessing. Blessed are you.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Matthew 13:33.

[2] F. Dale Bruner, The Christbook: A Historical/Theological Commentary, Matthew 1-12 (Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1987) 137.

[3] Ibid.

[4] See the moment online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcNxY4TudXo

From Friend to Friend

John 1:35-51
January 18, 2026
William G. Carter

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

 

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

 

We have been tracing the beginning of the Gospel, according to John. It begins with an enormous announcement, poetically given. “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God.” And then, “the Word became flesh.” It is an announcement of cosmic significance. Earth gets a visit from the One who made it. Some people saw this. They believed what they saw. They experienced the grace and truth of God. And some didn’t see it, didn’t believe it – but the grace and truth of God was here. 

The religious experts heard about a preacher, a wet preacher named John. They went out to see him. “Are you the One?” No. “Are you the second coming of the prophet Elijah?” No. “Are you an identified prophet?” No. “So, who are you?” John said, “I am a Bible verse: the voice crying in the wilderness.” It was clear. Somebody had come, somebody was hidden among them, and nobody could see him yet.

Then, today, as we heard, John said, “There he is. Look at him. That’s the Lamb of God.” Jesus was walking by. That’s it. Just walking by. No astounding miracle, no astonishing words. Just a man, on two feet, walking by. We don’t know any of the backstory. We have little of the context. The account doesn’t tell us if they knew one another or if they were related in any way. We have no clue why Jesus had come to stand among the sinners and be baptized. All John says is, “I saw a dove.” That’s it. He saw a dove. Now he says, “I see a Lamb.”

Can I dare say it wasn’t much? But it was enough. John the Baptist says what he sees. It starts a small chain reaction. There is no trumpet, no choir, no barking preacher. One person speaks to another, and another, and another. In his magisterial commentary on the Gospel of John, Dale Bruner says, “This is the birth of the church.”[1]

Yet it seems so small. This is the Word of God, the Logic of the Universe. He is the One through whom God created the heavens and earth. He is the Light of the world, the Grace and Truth, the Lamb of God. Look – and two people look and see a rather ordinary man, blending in with everybody else. He’s walking by. That’s it. Did you see him? Maybe. Maybe not. But if you do, you’ve got to tell somebody. And this is how the kingdom of God is revealed: from friend to friend. The Gospel grows sideways. It is not flashy. In every sense, it is down-to-earth. And it is real.

The story moves on. Jesus finds Philip. Who’s Philip? We don’t know. Just a guy. He comes from the same little fishing village where Andrew and Peter hail from. Bethsaida was a small town. He must have known them. And then Philip finds Nathanael. Who’s Nathanael? We don’t know. Just a friend of Philip. He is mentioned five times in this story, and not again until chapter 21.

Nathanael never makes the official list of the twelve disciples. There are people who think he should. Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention somebody named Bartholomew, but John never mentions anybody named Bartholomew. John mentions Nathanael. So, the pious interpreters say, “Maybe Nathanael is the same man as Bartholomew.” We don’t know.

All we know comes from the end of John’s book. In chapter 21, he is called “Nathanael of Cana in Galilee.” There was, as you recall, a “wedding in Cana of Galilee” (2:1). Maybe it was Nathanael’s wedding. Remember? It was the wedding where they ran out of wine, and Jesus had to make more wine? That story happens immediately after this one. It would be reasonable to surmise that Jesus says, “Nathanael, you will see greater things than our little banter, greater things than me telling you that I spotted you under a fig tree.” And the very next day (or as John says, “on the third day”), Jesus transforms the water into wine.

But here’s the thing: hardly anybody sees that, too. Even though it is the first miracle, or sign, of Christ, it happens at a wedding party when a lot of people were drinking heavily. Most of the miraculous moments in the Gospel of John happen out of sight. A lot of people miss them. Or they can be explained another way.

This is John’s way of reminding us that holiness does not happen in the sky; it happens on the ground. We don’t usually can’t see holiness in the huge, Technicolor miracle with 5.1 sound. That’s because the holiness of God is often in those moments when somebody’s life is touched and changed. God is in it somehow, somewhere, not for everybody to see unless they are looking in the right place.

That’s how it is with Nathanael, whoever he was. He hears about remarkable things about Jesus, but his hopes hit the ground with a thud when he discovers where Jesus is from. “Nazareth? Is he from Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You know where Nazareth is? It’s around the bend from Forest City. Have you ever been to Forest City? Can anything good come out of Forest City? It’s just so normal. So ordinary.

When Jesus sees him, he says, “Look, here’s an Israelite without any nonsense. Not an ounce of baloney, hogwash, claptrap, or codswallop in that guy.” Nathanael replies, “Where did you get to know me?” To which Jesus says, “I saw you under the fig tree, before Philip called you.” Well, what fig tree? Do you know how many fig trees there are in Israel? They are everywhere.

And yet, the small moment opens to something far greater. Nathanael falls to his knees and says, “You’re a Rabbi! You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Without any theological training, he gets all those titles right: Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel. He saw the One who had seen him.

John’s point is simple: Jesus comes among regular people who aren’t even looking for him. He signals to them that they are noticed and known. That’s all it takes to reveal there is a God who sees us in truth and grace. Then he invites them to tag along, to stay with him, to come and see what happens. Just maybe that dusty little village of Cana will be the place where heaven opens, and somebody will see the angels ascending and descending upon Jesus.

Every once in a while, something unusual happens somewhere in the world, and the God Squad goes there to mark it as a miracle site. A statue of the Virgin weeps. A disabled person drops the crutches and stands up healed. A Woodstock survivor who drove a purple VW bus once told me that Sedona, Arizona is the stairway to heaven; I don’t know what he had been smoking.

But here’s the thing: the Gospel of John announces any place can be that stairway. The Eternal Word of the Father becomes ordinary perspiring flesh. Christ comes down from God and stays incognito so much of the time. Holiness happens among the ordinary. Jesus awakens faith by spotting a guy under a fig tree. No big deal -- except for Nathanael.

This is the point of it all. The kingdom of God grows when ordinary people see something, then invite their friends to come and see. Nathanael comes to Jesus because Philip first invited him. There is something Philip had discovered about Jesus that prompted him to invite Nathanael to discover it for himself. We don’t know exactly what awakened Philip’s faith. We don’t know which fig tree Nathanael stood under.

What we do know is there was a chain reaction among friends. One friend saw it, spoke to another. The second friend saw it in a different way, and he spoke to somebody else. The Kingdom of God grows friend by friend in an invitation to authentic holiness. I’m talking about the only holiness there is, the kind of holiness in the middle of the everyday.

And the Gospel of John is exactly right. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we do not. As Eugene Peterson writes,

The hardest thing is to believe that God’s work – this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings – is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories… Everything Jesus does and says takes place within the limits and conditions of our humanity. No fireworks. No special effects. Yes, there are miracles, plenty of them. But because they are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life, very few notice. The miraculousness of the miracle is obscured by the ordinariness of the people involved.[2]

It happens. We know it happens. I’m working on my annual report for next month’s annual meeting. It takes a while. Those reports always come slowly. I mean, how do you sum up a church year? It’s far more than statistics and bragging about achievements.

Then I thought, “We eat a lot around here. And we serve a lot of food.” We collect food and distribute it. We receive food and create a monthly mobile food pantry. We go to the warehouse and package food for seniors who can’t afford groceries. When a loved one dies, we put on a meal for all the family and friends, free of charge. Next weekend, we will have about twenty crockpots of chili downstairs; we will risk blowing out the fuse box to raise funds for a shelter of teenagers who have been thrown out of their homes. All of this gives you a perspective on coffee hour, doesn’t it” There’s something more than food going on. Something like grace and truth – if you’re there to see it. And if we do, we can invite our friends to see what we see. Maybe they will.

Our friend Jim isn’t in the room today. He’s visiting relatives in another state, so that frees me up to tell a Jim story. For many years, he was a pastor serving a church downstream on the Susquehanna River. A flood wiped out his town. People were shocked. Homes were destroyed. That big old church building took on a lot of water. The people lost so much. Some of us went down to help. We threw his pastoral library into a dumpster. We dragged the waterlogged pew cushions out to the curb.

Even before all the water receded, an elderly man also showed up with work gloves and a bucket. Jim mumbled, “Oh no, not him.” The man belonged to another church, a contentious bunch of rascals. He was known around the area to be nothing but trouble. And then this volunteer says, “The people of your church helped me when I was flooded in 1972. I need to be here to help all of you.”

Jim said it was as if heaven opened and the angels of God ascended and descended right there. Right there. In the mud, for God’s sake. Right there. My friend praised God. Then the circle grew as friends invited friends to come and see what God was doing right there.

The writer and artist Madeline L’Engle said it best: “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”[3]

For the Kingdom has come among us – because the King has come among us. He is the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the King of Israel, the Messiah, and our very own Rabbi. He sees you and he invites you to see him. Come and see.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012) 99.

[2] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 34.

[3] Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Macmillan, 1995) 122.

From Question to Insight

John 1:19-34
January 11, 2026
William G. Carter

 

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but he confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.

 

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

 

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.”

 I don’t know if you noticed, but we got through December without any mention of John the Baptist. That was unusual. The normal of course of events is to make our way to Bethlehem by passing through the Jordan River. It is frequently a diversion from our Christmas preparations. We regard Jesus as gentle, gracious, and kind. John the Baptist is far more bracing.

Jesus says, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” John bellows out, “You people are snakes, wiggling away from the fire that is to come.” Jesus looked at a woman who suffered from a debilitating illness and said, “She is a child of Abraham.” By contrast, John shouts, “Don’t ever presume to say Abraham is my father.” He is harsh. He is every bit as austere as the desert where he lives.

Today, he pops up in the first chapter of the fourth Gospel. It’s a brief encounter; one of the few times we hear from him in this book. But curiously, he’s not shouting at anybody. We don’t even see him splashing any water or dunking anybody in the river. What he is doing is testifying. He’s answering a series of questions.

            Who are you? “I am not the Messiah.”

            Are you Elijah? “No.”

            Are you the prophet? “No.”

            Well, who are you? “I am a voice in the wilderness.”

            So, why are you here? And he says, “Someone stands among you and you don’t even know it.”

It’s as if John is being cross-examined in a courtroom. That’s fascinating, for that is how the Fourth Gospel concludes – with a trial. After Jesus is arrested, the Roman governor asks him a series of questions.

            Are you the King? “Did someone tell you to ask that?”

            What have you done? “My kingdom is not from here.”

            So, you are a king? “Those are your words; I am here to testify to the truth.”

            Then, Pontius Pilate says, “What is truth?” The One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life stands in front of him, and he doesn’t even know it.

It is this “not knowing” that keeps coming up in the Gospel of John. The writer suggests this is the human condition, that we are congenitally clueless. As we heard last week in that magisterial introduction to the Gospel, “He came into the world that was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own people. and they did not receive him.” (John 1:10-11)

This is one of the key issues of the Gospel of John. Apparently, it is possible to stand in the presence of the Chosen One, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, and not even know it.

In this book, there’s one story after another like that. In the little village of Cana, there’s a wedding celebration. His own mother says, “They ran out of wine.” Jesus says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” That’s what he says. Then he transforms huge jars of water into wine, and hardly anybody sees it. It’s a curious story, except it points out you can be in the presence of Jesus and not know it.

Or there’s that nighttime conversation with Nicodemus, the curious Pharisee. We’ll get to that one early in Lent. Nicodemus doesn’t understand who Jesus is. As a Pharisee, he is thoroughly trained in scripture. He thinks he understands the ways of God, but he can’t quite comprehend Jesus. In this Gospel, he’s in good company. There is a Samaritan woman, hampered by her own religious prejudice. There is a disabled man lying by a miracle pool in Jerusalem and it’s not doing him any good. There is an enormous crowd of people up in Galilee, chasing after Jesus because of their hungry stomachs; they want to elect him king. They don’t understand him.

Today, let’s just spend a little time with John the Baptist. He gets it, but not right away. That in itself is a lesson: comprehension does not come on demand.

If you have ever struggled with all this Bible stuff, all this faith stuff, you are in good company. The gospel of John understands you. Even the professionals who reflect on John’s book say there is something about Jesus that is revealed and concealed. We might see it and then it slips away.

It reminds me of that story Kathleen Norris tells. A Presbyterian elder and lay preacher, she began to stay in regional monasteries and worship with the monks. Her faith was nurtured by those visits, but she admits her Christianity often felt empty. It seemed like the center was missing. One day, she says, “I got up the courage to confess this one of the monks." 

He reassured me by saying, “Oh, most of us feel that way at one time or another. Jesus is the hardest part of the religion to grasp, to keep alive.” I told him that I probably felt Jesus’ hand in most things during worship, whether I was in church at home, or at the monastery. Just a look around at the motley crew assembled in his name, myself among them, lets me know how unlikely it all is. The whole lot of us, warts and all, just seems too improbable, so absurd, I figure that only Christ would be so foolish, or so powerful, as to have brought us all together.[1]

 Well, as I look around the room, amen to that!

 The monk said, “Jesus is the hardest part of the religion to grasp, to keep alive.” As if to imply, he keeps slipping away or stepping out of focus. Even John the Baptist, elsewhere described by Jesus as “the greatest who ever lived,”[2] declares “I myself did not know him.” Yet he kept doing his work faithfully. He baptized others to prepare for when Jesus would make himself known. He kept pointing ahead when Christ was revealed. And most of all, John kept testifying, “I am not him.”

 The authorities wanted to know, “Are you the Messiah?” “No, I am not; he is not me.” It’s a simple answer, yet it’s a profound answer. The Christ of God is not a projection of my life, my work, my wishes, my politics, or my aspirations. We don’t get to decide what kind of God we want. The Chosen One stands apart from us. And if we want him, truly want him, we must wait for him.

We belong to a faithful community. This community is full of field reports of when we’ve seen the Christ. We are the stewards of a big, thick book called the Bible, which is offers hints and stories of when others have seen him. Yet we still have to wait for him. Trouble brews up when we try to force the issue. Or fill the gap. Or if we let ourselves get bored or distracted while we wait.

This is true, even of the clergy. I can recount stories from inside the religion business of leaders who do terrible things – steal from the offering plate, make empty promises to their people, put their hands where they don’t belong. Why do they do this? We can chalk it up to sin or evil or whatever we wish. At heart, it’s because even the religious professionals can’t manage the kind of God that we actually have. So, they force themselves into territory where they don’t belong.

And when these prominent people go off the rails, others are so scandalized. They drop out of church. Give up on believing. Look for substitutes, all of this understandable. Yet does anybody ever pause to reflect on what might happen if they became bored or spiritually distracted? It’s easy to point at somebody else and not see the fingers pointing back at me.

There’s that ancient story of Moses going up on the mountain to talk with God. And while he’s up there, taking his time, the people get restless down below. Then they get bored, then they get distracted. And they melt down their jewelry to make a golden calf. They start dancing around it. Moses comes down and says, “What are you doing?” And they said, “We wanted a god we could touch and see.” That’s not the kind of God we have.

Even Jesus, the eternal Word of the Father, taking form in human flesh – he remains elusive. As Flannery O’Connor describes him in one of her stories, “Jesus moves from tree to tree… a wild ragged figure.” There’s something so spiritually correct about that. He has come into the world. He is alive. He cannot be managed. Yet he can be worshiped. We wait for him because otherwise we are stuck with ourselves.

Can you see where the Gospel of John is pointing? Pointing to Jesus, only to Jesus, because he is the Chosen One, the Messiah, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. There is no other way out. He is all that we need. And John the Baptist says, “I’m not him, and he is coming.”

And the very next day, John says, “There he is. He is here.” And does the Gospel writer ever explain this shift in perspective? Not really. John heard. He saw. He knew. His hopes became his convictions. All he could say was, “It was the Holy Spirit.”

It’s like C.S. Lewis. Brilliant scholar, classically trained, professional skeptic. He heard all the stories, read all the books, even wandered into a church once in a while. His believing friends were supportive, yet he remained unconvinced there was a God, much less a living Christ. Then one day, he hopped on a bus in Oxford town and had the sense he was “holding something at bay or shutting something out.”[3] By the time he stepped off the bus, the door to belief was open. Then it continued to open from the other side.

Belief is not a destination. It’s a journey. We can read the Gospel of John and quickly discover it’s very good at describing all the destinations. But take note: the writer says what he says as his invitation for us to take the trip. We may proceed, we may pause, we may turn this way or that. We begin by declaring with John the Baptist, “I am not the destination. I am not the end of all things.”

Then we can look with John to see what he sees. Light, life. The Holy Spirit. Jesus. And that is only the beginning.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998) 162.

[2] Paraphrased from Matthew 11:11.

[3] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York:  Harper One, 2017)  274.

From Genesis to Revelation

John 1:1-18
Christmas 2
January 4, 2025

William G. Carter  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

 

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

 

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

 

And 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. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

 

I don’t know if you have started yet, but soon it will be time to put Christmas away. The guests have gone home. If they took their gifts with them, one less item to store in the closet. If they didn’t, we have a decision to make. One of our adult kids left behind a new pair of socks. Not once, but twice – so I’m wearing them this morning.

 Christmas can be a grand festivity. Someone called it “a birthday party for the King.” I like that. We wrap the birthday presents. We sing the birthday songs. We share the joy. We light the candles. We eat the sweets. We celebrate one more year. It’s a worthy celebration.

The writer of the Gospel of John is grateful for Christmas. You can tell from the size and scope of the extensive way he begins his book. The first chapter begins with an immense reflection on what it means for Jesus to come into the world. It’s so big that if you had these eighteen verses, you wouldn’t need the rest of the book. The next twenty chapters of the Gospel of John are illustrations of what he lays out here. This is the summary – the whole thing in eighteen verses. Meditate on this text, and it’s all here.

But let me point out that John never says the Christmas is the birthday of Jesus. He does not say that. He would not say that. In fact, if he were to say anything about Christmas at all, he would say Christmas is the first time the world saw Jesus. Jesus was already here. Jesus was already alive. He was completely present in every way, but he was not visible. John says, “And then we saw him. We have seen his glory.”

Who is the “we”? It’s those, along with John, who can testify that God has been found as a little baby, a little baby that grew up and lived among us. He ate with people like us, talked with people like us, shared our life in every conceivable way. Christmas is the first time the world has seen the face of God. John sings it out, “He is close to the Father’s heart, and Jesus has made God known.” 

That is the theme of the entire Gospel of John. There’s an old African spiritual that sings, “Over my head, there is music in the air… There must be a God somewhere.” And we want to know, “What is this God like?” John has sifted through the evidence, reflected on the stories, and discerned the truth, and now he gives his answer. If you want to know what God is like, he says, look at Jesus.

That’s the point of this entire book. Jesus is the revelation of God. That’s the revelation in the title of the sermon, by the way. Some of you thought I was going to preach the whole way through the Bible. Not today. I’m going to give you the central truth, according to John: Jesus is the revelation of God. He shows us what God is like, what God cares about, what God wants for us and for the whole creation. God gives light and life.

And so, he begins his book with the same three words that the first book of the Bible uses: “In the beginning.” Did you notice that today? What begins on Christmas is what began when God said, “Let there be light! Let there be life!” And there was life and there was light – in the beginning. That is the “Genesis” in the title of the sermon. “From Genesis to Revelation.”

The Gospel writer is making the claim that what happened at Christmas is inextricably bound to what happened when God decided to make a world. The Jesus who became visible at Christmas was already hanging around with the Father. To score the point, John says, “All things were made through him. Nothing came into being without him.”

Every bird in the sky, every fish in the sea, every platypus and hippopotamus, and every everybody – it all came through the heart and mind and hands of the One who loved the world from before its beginning. And Jesus was there – the wisdom, the logic, the joy of the Lord Almighty. And together, they stepped back, took a look, and said, “It is good. It’s very, very good.” Genesis begins with the generosity and goodness of God.

But the world doesn't stay with generosity and goodness, does it! And it still doesn’t! That's the point at which the rabbis said, “The story gets very interesting.” In complete partnership with the Father, Jesus gives life; life provides the spark of light, and the light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot swallow all the light, although it really would like to try.

By page three of Genesis, there is darkness. Don’t know where it comes from, but it is there. The grasping, the lying, the cover-up, the jealousy, the hand raised in violence, more cover-up, and the terrible consequences. The rabbis are right. The story gets interesting – and it’s still going on. It was all there by page three in Genesis.

And yet, the light shines. Present Tense.

When Jesus came into the world, it was his world. Always was, always will be. He had a hand in fashioning it, yet the world doesn’t recognize him. He comes to his very own people, people who know about God and worship God, but they don’t recognize him either. Just because God comes into the world is no assurance that anybody will be able to tell. Because they are busy – grasping, lying, covering up what they’ve done, doing whatever they can to put a spin on it to make themselves look better.

The whole time they are missing the central revelation of it all, that God has been before all of them – and now is making himself known.

That’s the truth, the truth about us – and it usually misses the truth about God, that all things come as grace. John leans back his head to say the coming of Jesus into the world is the central act of grace. Remember that memory verse that some of us were taught? From chapter three of this book, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…” Just pause it there. That’s the grace. The One who gives life and light has come – and the systemic darkness of the world says, “Turn out the light!”[1]

And they tried. Yet “the darkness” (which is very real) – “the darkness did not overtake the light.” That is John’s shorthand of the death and resurrection of Jesus: darkness – and light. And John’s good news comes in the present tense, “the light shines.” Even if we are having a tough time seeing it. Even if darkness descends like a heavy cloud, somewhere the light is shining. And it’s going to keep shining because it is God’s light. It does not depend on any of us to make it shine. And should we see the light, we can reflect it for others to see as well.

This is God’s mission to the world, to send Jesus into it, to continue the holy generosity that John calls, “grace upon grace.” And it happens in spite of how the world treated the One through whom it was made. God is just that gracious, “abounding in steadfast love,” which is the ancient way of describing grace.

Now, do you have all that? It’s a lot to take in. Like a compressed diamond, the Gospel writer has pressed everything he has to say into eighteen verses. If some of that has gone by too quickly, well, we will hear John unpack it in the next couple of weeks and through most of the season of Lent. That’s right. Lent is not far away.

But wait, what about Christmas? Isn’t that the birthday of Jesus? Well, according to John, “the Word did become flesh” – even though Jesus was already “in the world” and he was with the Father before there was a world. It’s enough to make a smart head spin.

So let me say one thing more: there is a birth between Genesis and Revelation. It is the birth in us, what John calls “the power to become children of God.” This is the birth from above, the birth that comes from God just as Jesus comes from God. And let me make this birth as accessible as possible. We don’t have to mimic some magic words. We don’t have to memorize somebody else’s formula. We don’t have to recite the Nicene Creed in the original Latin while standing on one foot. We don’t even have to explain all the mystery of it.

No, the birth is a gift. It is grace, not obligation. Invitation, not duty. All we have to do is say as deeply as we can, “Lord Jesus, we are glad you are here.” We receive what God has given to the world. There is life, there is light, and the darkness will never prevail.

  

© William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] John 3:19 – “And this is the judgment (“the crisis”), that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”