No Beginnings, No Endings: God

John 1: 1-5 “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 overcome it.”

The Greek word which was translated as The Word in this well-known passage from the gospel of John is Logos: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. The Greeks understood Logos to be the underlying grid, the foundations from which everything came into being. They did not know about or understand specifically what those foundations were- there were no Periodic Charts of the Elements in existence yet; Einstein’s theories of gravity and relationship in the universe were still 3000 years away. So they used a general term for the God, or gods- the forces behind everything, that caused everything to be.

John gave the Logos, the Word, a name. He identified Jesus as the underlying everything, the foundation of all that was, is, and will be: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” And he then, even more specifically, identified what it was that had come into being through Jesus- Life! “And Life was the Light of all people.”

Nothing that John has just written about Jesus would have contradicted a single Greek notion about Logos. In this way, John was cleverly associating Jesus, a brand new person who was being introduced to the world, with Logos, an ancient concept already understood by most of the Mediterranean world.

Logos is eternal. Light is always moving outward. And Life goes on. Jesus, John says, is all of those things: an eternal Light, who is the author and sustainer of Life.

Today is the next to the last day of 2007- December 30, 2007: two days before January 1, 2008. A calendar year is ending as a new calendar is about to begin. Today is last Sunday of 2007. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of 2008. It is now 11:40 a.m. Almost noon- the end of morning, the beginning of the afternoon- halfway through the day.

Let’s do something here for a little while. Let’s put aside all of these artificial, humanly- designed ways of chopping up time into comprehensible little chunks and try for a little while to think, not about time, but about eternity. Let’s try- and that’s all we can do- but let’s try to think not about beginnings and endings, but about the Logos, the Word of God, Light, and Life.

Here’s where we start:

*tear up a 2008 calendar*

*smash a watch*

There are no more days, minutes, months, hours, years, seconds, or even eras or decades. There is Light and there is Life. And there is God, before and after all of it. What we have thought of as beginning has always been. And what we think will be ending, will always be.

Now, before you think I have lost my mind in abstract thinking, let me read to you one of my favorite verses in the New Testament, from Revelation 22, verses 1 and 2. An angel shows John a vision of what Life- God life, eternal Life- is really like. And it is not about calendars and minute hands. Here’s what John sees:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Life is like water in a river, flowing from the throne of God through the very center of the city. We can name a river, we can even draw it on a map, but we can never see the same river twice. A river is always changing. The water moving in front of us is not the same water that moved by us yesterday or even two seconds ago. Sneeze, focus again, and there is yet another new river to behold, and there, there, there another and another and another. Even the banks of the river are slowly, all the time, changing. Maps of rivers always need redrawn; banks wash away, the river changes course, lakes are formed, and silt from upriver creates new obstacles and courses.

No one looks at a river today and feels sad because it is not the same water that was there yesterday. In fact, something wonderful is happening that should cause us from feeling anything but sad. Much of the water that ran by us yesterday in the river is now gathering about us in the form of clouds- evaporated water. Somewhere downwind, that evaporated river water will be heavy enough to begin to fall down from the sky and it will rain on a field, where dairy cows will eat the grass the rain is absorbed into. The cows will produce milk. The milk will be hauled to the creamery and some of it will be made into ice cream.

We can stand by the river today, in other words, and enjoy the rivers of yesterday on our tongues. Vanilla, strawberry, butter pecan- the yesterday river is still alive, not only giving us Life, but enhancing our Life.

Where did the ice cream begin? In fact, it has always been. Ever since the crashing of hydrogen clouds 13 billion years ago against the hot gases of a dying star, the water has always been present. And whether it is an ocean, a river, a cloud, rain, grass, milk, or ice cream, it always will be.

As we are part of that river of life, flowing from the throne room of God, we can also see ourselves- or, at least, begin to see ourselves- in an eternal context too. Our lives are no more static than the river itself. Who we are today is not at all who we were yesterday. I look at a picture of myself when I was 16 years old: is that me? In calendar language, in the language of social security numbers and permanent records- that’s me, yes. But I look at this and see only part of who I am today. There are eight more years of school, a wife; three kids who wear carry part of my heart around with them all the time. There are sad years in there that I don’t even want to think about, but have to. There have been about 5000 times of laughing so hard I could barely breathe! I’ve lived in 13 different homes, in 8 different towns in 2 other states since then. I’ve cried over the deaths of people I’ve loved that I didn’t even know then, back then when death was still so abstract and far away as to seem impossible. I have voted for both George McGovern and for Ronald Reagan. There were years in there where I despised the very idea of God, and I’m just about ready to finish off paying for 10 years of seminary debt caused by falling in with love God. Am I looking at me in this picture? Or am I looking at someone who is still swimming, and will be swimming for eternity, in the river of life?

And it’s a river, a blessed river without beginning and without end, that we are all a part of. It flows from God and runs directly under the Tree of Life..that’s what John saw! A tree that bears twelve seasons of fruit..life-giving sustenance, fruit to nourish the body and the soul, food to feed the mind and the heart. We are being produced, made better and better by this tree, this tree of life that grows over the river of God. A tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations..

What could this tree of Life be that John is seeing? What is it, who is it, that produces fruit that both nourishes and heals? Who is it, that told his disciples he was the yesterday, today, and forever, and would never leave them or forsake them and who went ahead of them to prepare a room for them in his father’s home, and who is the only beginning and the only end of all things?

It is the tree that gives Light, and the Light that gives Life. It is Jesus, the author, and the finisher of our faith. He is the colors in which we are being painted; he is the music which allows us to sing. His are the leaves which flow in the river with us, into the bays, into the oceans of the world..we are his and he is ours..

Therefore, what I am saying this morning is this: The calendars and wristwatches of our lives are not what our lives are about. We are not a mere series of actions leading to some future event. We are here now, in these moments, part of an ever-changing, always different river of Life. The leaves that are dropping around us from the Tree of Life are not the same leaves that fell yesterday, or the same ones that will fall tomorrow. The messages of God for us right now should not be missed because we are focused on appointment next week, or an anniversary next year. The colors and sounds of today are unique, blessed, and special. This part of the river will never be the same again. Jesus was..is..the Logos, the Word that brought Light and Life to the world. As followers of Jesus, as those passing this moment beneath his Tree of life, we are a part now, too, of the beginnings of everything from this minute forward. Each of us, no more, no less than anyone else, or anything else, are parts- vital parts of the Great Story of this day which will remain forever as chapters in the Great Stories of eternity.

We are part of the flow that began in the throneroom of God, and which now flows into the unending reaches of the universe. The Tree of Life gives us comfort and shade, and the leaves of the Tree of Life give us meaning. All of them are important. And everything from this moment onward is dependent on our being awake to them.

e.e. cummings, one of the great American poets of the last century, is a part of those leaves dropping around each of us right now. I think these words about God are as important as John’s. Catch hold of them, right now, as we pass by in this part of God’s river:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) Amen (With thanks to e.e.cummings and Thich Nhat Hahn)

Christmas Eve, 2007

We step into Christmas Eve with some trepidation. It’s kind of a time machine in which many of the Christmas times of the past are telescoped into the present and we are looking backwards as often on a day like this as much as we are looking around and forward.

For some this year, there is the question of what to do with that empty chair at the table- the one where he always sat, or from where she said the grace last year. For others, it may feel to them like they’re peeping toms, standing on their tiptoes looking through the windows of others at how they hoped life might have been, but never really was. And for some there is the difficult wondering that never stops but which seems to peak especially sharply this time of year: Where is she now? Is he happy? Do they remember me? Is everything OK there?

Our thoughts return home on Christmas Eve, and for many that’s a blessing but for many it is only a vague and fuzzy concept that derives more from the The Walton’s Christmas Special or a Hallmark television drama, than from warm recollections of their own. They might remember how good the pie was at Aunt Nettie’s house, but then there was the drive home that night and that terrible fight in the kitchen that seemed to go on and on.

The money is being squeezed to the choking point, and some are sitting here right now remembering the one thing they meant to do and did not get done or the two or three things, and you don’t have to be sitting to feel that kind of pressure, either. You can be standing right here and feel it, too.

Outside of here, far away in geographical distances but about a half inch away emotionally for some, there are wars and rumors of wars. We all have triangle folded flags poking at our fears or our memories and we’ll just have to put off thinking about that lab report, or that grade report, or the job performance review, and the letter from the IRS, the VA, and the mortgage company..tomorrow, or the next day.

Time telescopes from the past to the present and it feels like tomorrow may never be as bright as we want it to be or remember it being.

None of us faces this dilemma, this tension, alone however. We all share it: the tallest among us, the shortest among us; male, female, the nationality, the race, even the economic condition doesn’t really matter. We are all in the same little boat, crossing an ocean of life that is sometimes stormy, sometimes downright frightening. We are making our ways the best ways we can, the best ways we know how, but there is, with all humans, the deep feeling that there must be, has to be, something more.

There is something else we want, something we share with every other person, every other living being. Rumi, the 13^th century poet, called it “The Kiss”- the Kiss we want:

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

The Kiss we want..like a mother’s kiss that will fix it where we hurt ourselves. But more.

Like the touch of someone we love..the assurance that we are not alone. But more.

Like the embrace of father, who tells us everything will be all right. But more, even more than that.

The kiss we want, I believe, is precisely the reason we have gathered together this evening. No matter how we came here, as families, as individuals, because Mom said you had to be here or because there is no other place you could imagine being on Christmas Eve.. what we have gathered here for this night is to remember and receive, again, the Kiss we want, the kiss we have longed for, the kiss of God on all humanity.

That is who Jesus is. That is precisely the reason, I maintain, for his birth. There are theological, philosophical, and historical explanations for Jesus, God’s Word made flesh and dwelling among us..thousands of books full of those commentaries, definitions, and explanations. We can study them for a lifetime!

Or, we can accept the Kiss. Jesus- the Kiss of God for all of humanity- past, present, and future. And Jesus, the Kiss of God on the cheek of each person here as well. That’s what this baby was.

Jesus was the affirmation of what God said when he formed the world and said, “That’s good.”

Kiss. It still is.

Jesus was the assurance from God that we are not alone, never alone.

Kiss. He is with us now.

Jesus was God’s whisper, the whisper of a Daddy, that everything will, really will, be all right.

Kiss. It is what we have longed for. It is what we want.

God’s gift for all of humanity, for me, for you, was not an esoteric text. It was not a sacred relic to be worn around the neck or a place to make a pilgrimage to. It was not faraway, difficult to grasp, or hard to understand. It wasn’t a set of rules, there was nothing to memorize or agonize over.

God’s gift was a touch, his flesh to our own. His love co-mingled with ours in the manger of a new creation. His trust that we would embrace his son as he had embraced us.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me, to everyone who would look past themselves and into the face of God himself- one of us. A sign for all the world of peace that is possible, joy that is real, and hope that is always present. A sign of Light, understanding and trust, first in the darkness of a stable, but radiating outward through time into the dark corners of our own fears.

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me..the kiss that we want. The kiss we have longed for.

“Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given.”

Lean down now, against the soft cheek of a baby, lean down now and receive the kiss of our Savior.

Let us pray:

Into our lives, God, you have been born. Into our hearts, Father, you have been given. On this night that we remember the gift of yourself to a world that needs you, we acknowledge and are thankful for your love for us, for each of us. May others experience through us, the manger of new beginnings. May we, too, be ready always to share the kiss we have been given, with all of Creation.

(with thanks to Rumi, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Walter Bruegemann)