The Father became known John 1
A Christmas talk from All Age Church in 2005
I wonder whether you can think of a life changing relationship? It doesn’t have to be romantic but they usually are.
Can remember what you had to do to initiate an introduction? For most of us it was something painful like crossing a dance floor, pulling her pigtails or getting a friend to make the necessary arrangements.
This morning we’re thinking about God’s introduction to humanity through a babe in a manger. Our author John doesn’t use those terms. He’s not like Matthew and Luke who describe the Christmas events in narrative form. Nevertheless in these opening verses of his gospel John’s attention is on the arrival of God in a human body. Look at (14).
The Apostle John was one of Jesus’ closest friends and this eyewitness came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was God. He wrote this gospel with the aim of convincing readers like us to share that conviction.
I fear that this introduction confirms what people think about Christianity. It’s big ideas expressed in inaccessible language. But we’re concentrating this morning only on (18). It’s the climax of what is known as the prologue to John’s Gospel. If his gospel were an architectural masterpiece this would be the foyer. It’s the way in and gives us a taste of what’s to come.
‘No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known’
From it we learn three simple truths.
1. God is invisible
In 1961 the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin delighted the atheistic authorities in the former Soviet Union when he returned from his flight to space and announced, ‘I looked for God but I couldn’t see him anywhere’. It’s a nice line but the Apostle John got there years ahead of him. Because John wrote, ‘No one has ever seen God’. That’s not to say that people hadn’t come close. It’s true that a handful of people caught a glimpse of God when he revealed himself in the Old Testament Moses saw God’s back and Isaiah saw the hem of the Lord’s garment but no one had a face to face with God. No one ever saw God. The reason that we can’t see God is not that he’s too small for the human eye. You may have read this week about the miniature Father Christmas. And it’s not because he moves too quickly.
Some American researchers have come up with a scientific explanation for why we won’t see Santa this Christmas. Consider the following. There are 2 billion children in the world. But if we’re prepared to accept that he doesn’t handle Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish households then the total is nearer 92 million. If he works the times zones properly and travels from east to west he’s got 31 hours in which to deliver the presents. He has to visit 822 homes per second and therefore in just under 1/1000th of a second he has to park the reindeer, put the presents under the tree, eat a mince pie and climb the chimney. To do so the sleigh must travel at 62,000 km per second, which is about 200,000 times the speed of sound. That’s why we won’t see Santa this Christmas. Blink and we’ll miss him.
The reason we can’t see God is not that He’s quick or that He’s small but that He’s Spirit. And so by his very nature he’s inaccessible to human sight. Implications Each of us possesses a persistent intuition that beyond the visible and the material there’s a largely unexplored place. It’s not accessible to our eyes but is nevertheless, something very real. Deep down all of us know that God is there. Our problem is that no one can speak with any authority about him. None of us has ever seen him. This is frustrating and humbling for human kind. We’re not used to this sort of barrier to human knowledge. The history of human exploration is extraordinary. We’ve been able to discover some incredible things. But we need to know our limitations. We can’t describe what we can’t see. Therefore we ought to regard with great scepticism anyone, whether religious or not, who lays claim to being able to speak with any great authority about God. How can they? They’re every bit as clueless as we are. It doesn’t matter whether they have academic credibility, have mastered philosophy and speak persuasively. They cannot know. None of us has seen Father Christmas and so we conclude that he doesn’t exist. Why shouldn’t we do the same thing with God? Well the game’s not over yet. We would have done, had it not been for the events of that first Christmas Eve.
2. God is multiple
By which I don’t mean that there is more than one God in the world. There is only one unique God. But the one God has multiple persons. Which doesn’t mean that God has a personality disorder but that there’s a multiplicity to God since He’s composed of three persons. God is simultaneously Father, Son and Spirit, each is a distinct person and each is equally divine. Which is one reason why he’s unique. This is not the place to explore the complexities of God’s Trinitarian existence, much as I would love to. There simply isn’t time. But what it does mean is that there are at least two other persons who can introduce us to the Father. The way John puts it is to say, ‘the only God, who is at the Father’s side’. I think the footnote catches the nuance of John’s language slightly better. Literally it means, ‘the only God, who is from the Father’s bosom’.
I value my friends very highly, I cherish their commitment and loyalty and I love their company but rest assured they won’t be getting within a country mile of my bosom. That place is for only a privileged few. It’s for family.
‘At the Father’s side’ implies ‘mateship’ or proximity, from the Father’s bosom’ implies intimacy of unparalleled quality. Jesus Christ is the closest source to the Father that we can have. He’s been with his Father for all eternity so there’s no period of history that he wasn’t around for. God hasn’t got a past that Jesus can’t tell us about. And if I can put it in these terms, the Son knows what the Father is like not only in his public performance but also in the privacy of the family home. He’s perfectly qualified to speak with authority about his Father. The qualifications for being Father Christmas on the other hand are more straightforward. Almost anyone can do it.
However, an e-mail I received this week suggested in fact that women are better qualified. Of the reasons given these were some that can be repeated. Men don’t do conversation with small children, they don’t know how to pack a bag, they wouldn’t be seen dead wearing red velvet, they don’t think about selecting gifts until after lunch on Christmas Eve and would never get to everyone’s house because they’d never stop to ask for directions. On the other hand women would love it because they’d never feel the need to ask, ‘does my bum look big in this?’
Jesus Christ is perfectly qualified to speak about the unseen God because he’s from the Father’s bosom. He’s the closest source to the Father that we can have. The question is will he leak anything of significance?
3. God is knowable
The way John puts it is to say, ‘he has made him known’. It’s a done deal. Jesus Christ has made God known. The original word that’s translated here ‘known’ is literally ‘exegeted’. It’s the same word that we might use for making plain and clarifying what a passage of the Bible means. Jesus Christ has ‘exegeted’ God. By becoming a human being Jesus has made God plain and clear to us.
If you’ve had the privilege of attending a primary school nativity the past few weeks you’ll have spotted a frequent ruse employed by wise teaching staff. A common tactic is to choose a narrator. His or her job is straightforward. To make clear to us what the collection of random animals is doing on stage. They bring order and understanding out of confusion and speculation.
Jesus Christ has narrated God to us. If we want to know what God is like we need do nothing more than look at Jesus. We don’t need to be in the dark about God. In the pages of the Bible we can watch Jesus in action and we can hear Jesus teach and all the time we’re learning what God is like. The time of speculation is at an end.
Churches like ours have a responsibility to help one another grow in our knowledge of God. We need to do that by helping one another to encounter Jesus as he walks off the pages of the Bible. That’s one reason why each week we take time to read and explain a passage from the Bible.
Conclusion
We’ve learnt that
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Since God is invisible we cannot know God
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Since God is multiple there’s another person who knows him intimately
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Since God became a man in Jesus Christ God is knowable
God went to extraordinary lengths to introduce himself to humanity. As unlikely as it sounds he shrunk himself down into an embryo, grew in Mary’s womb and arrived in the world via the birth canal. As introductions go, that’s pretty impressive. God’s intent is clear. But is it a relationship worth pursuing? How do we know? John would want us to read on in his gospel to find out. And that would be a good thing to do this Christmas whether we’re a Christian and we think we know what’s coming or whether we’re not and we’ve never read a gospel as an adult. But we also need to understand how the story ends. We need to include both Christmas and Easter. They’re inseparable. It’s like Morecambe and Wise, they’re not the same when isolated from each other. At Christmas God arrived in the world. At Easter God died for the world. Jesus came not only to speak to us but also to swap places with us and die in our place because he loves us. Christmas is the start of a wonderful love story that culminates in Easter. The God who wants to meet us is the kind of God who later in the gospel lays down his life to save us.
Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian last week said this, ‘Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls.’ I don’t find that repugnant I find it very wonderful.
There are two responses that we can make to God’s introduction.
a. We can reject the offer of friendship with God
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and they’ve spent most of the time looking over your shoulder for someone else? Many of us can be like that with God. God offers us the prospect of relationship with him but we’re looking past him to see what else is on offer. Understandably God takes that sort of treatment with great seriousness. But why would we do that? Perhaps one of the reasons is that we’ve not really understood whom it is that we’ve blanked. We’re turning our back on someone who loves us passionately. But there is a second response.
b. We can receive the offer of friendship with God
In all conversations there comes a time when it’s our turn to listen. If we’re ever going to learn anything from God about himself and about what he’s done for us we need to let him speak. Christianity Explored is a great way to begin the conversation. For many of us the Bible is a scary book and the subject of Christianity so vast that the easiest thing is to put it off. Christianity Explored is a user-friendly course that does exactly what it says. It’s not like a relationship you’re not expected to know anything, say anything or do anything! Over six weeks there’s the opportunity to explore the big questions of life. Lots of people have done it not everyone has decided to become a Christian but everyone has enjoyed it. If you want to begin a conversation about God this is a great way to do it.
