DAY 129

SAVOR IT

2 Kings 7, 8 & 9 and John 1:1-28

A delicious meal should cause us to slow down and savor every morsel. In fact, if there are other items on the table that do not add to its taste, maybe it is just as well to let them alone.

I feel that way about our two readings today. I take it you have read the Old Testament, and by doing so you and I have kept up with history. But today we have before us one of the finest pieces of prose ever written in the world – John chapter one.

Today, before turning to my feeble attempts to describe the text, I think you should first read the words…slowly.

Below is a more detailed discussion of the text, but don’t rush…savor it.

I start with a question for you: What is your mental map of the universe and beyond? Do you have a general idea of how you think it all fits together?

The Greeks for centuries did and their idea dominated our world until about 400 years ago. Their view was that the earth was flat, that the earth was at the center, and that God (or something akin to God) was beyond the cosmos.

There were two imponderables for them:

w  The idea of some higher perfect power, or force, or god(s) causing all of what they could see to exist, and holding it all together.

w  Their desire to figure out how to get from the earth to where this “other” perfect power or being existed.

For centuries their philosophers would come up with different ideas and concepts that wrestled to make sense of these two imponderables. Over the centuries (as far back as the 6^th century b.c.) they began to describe something called logos.

Logos was described in various ways by different Greek philosophies including:

w  The principal of order and knowledge

w  The generative principle of the universe

w  Active reason that pervaded and animated the universe

Are you getting a sense that there was this idea, this concept, which was trying to capture that behind all that they could see, hear, and think about, that there was something or someone more? They wanted to understand it, know it and in fact be with it.

Today we read John’s Gospel, chapter one beginning at the first verse. If we read it in Greek we would have read, “In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God and the logos was God.

John was saying to them that their idea of something or someone more behind it all was a good idea. This idea of logos captures the amazing nature of where we live and that he, John, knows the logos and that “it” is not separate from God, but is God.

In fact John tells them that logos isn’t some impersonal concept, no, logos is a person as John writes “he”. He was in the beginning with God. The text shifts from using the word logos to the pronoun “he” driving home that their ideal is a person and that this person is responsible for all that ever was and ever will be. This person is the source of life and this source is light to all people. It is the true light.

Can you imagine the Greek listeners, but it gets better because not only is it a person, not only is this person the creative and sustaining force of the universe, not only is this person the source of life and the light of all people, but this person is “coming into the cosmos”. One of those imponderables: How do they get to the logos has been turned upside down; logos is coming, has come, to them!

Tragically, though the world was made through him, the world and his people did not receive him. The dilemma of the first century is the dilemma of today: Can we as humans accept and receive God, and His invitation to us? God does not give up for we read, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God”.

We become children, part of the family. How far God has moved their minds (and ours) from this human construct of “god” as some impersonal force or being, to a God who seeks the most intimate of relationships; family. We become family not by any human action: not by blood, or by flesh, or even by our wills. No, we become family not by our action, but by God!

Then, as if to put an exclamation point on all of this text, it moves back upward and we read: logos became flesh and dwelt among us. We have in this one sentence the Good News. That which we cannot see or comprehend, that which is beyond the cosmos, has not just come, but come and put on flesh. Not only did he put on flesh, but he “dwelt” among us. The Greek here could easily be translated as he “pitched his tent” or “tabernacled” among us. God didn’t live in a far off castle, no he lived with us. God became human in order that we might be able to not just ponder the imponderable, but to welcome, receive and live for and with and in Him.

How does John make such claims? “We beheld his glory!” He is an eyewitness; he has seen the logos full of grace and truth.

This is a stunning piece of Scripture. It reveals to us truth as it reveals to us God. Our human minds are no different than the Greeks of old. We try and try to comprehend, but are limited. We try and try to construct some system by which we might climb up to God, but we fail. It is God who descends and reveals, but not only reveals, but adopts and lives among and in us, if only we receive him.

My prayer is that for all of us God will be more than an abstract concept and that we will receive him. To receive him I think is two steps. The first step requires us to have the necessary courage to be honest with ourselves. The courage and the honesty to admit that as humans, as smart as we are in the twenty-first century, we don’t have all the answers, and even when we have the answers we fail, we aren’t perfect. That admission takes some courage and some humility. The second step requires intelligence and faith. The intelligence to see that there is something or someone behind all that we can see and understand, and the faith to believe that it is God and that God welcomes us, imperfect as we are, into his family through His Son.

Let us pray. Almighty God, we thank you that you have come to us, that you have shown us in your Son Jesus, that you are real and that your love for us is real. Lord we pray that you will enter our minds, our wills and our hearts so that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for Him has come among us. Amen.