Good morning! It’s good to be together, on this the Third Sunday of Advent.

During these last weeks we have been reading what is called the Prologue to the Gospel of John, the first 18 verses of chapter 1. The first week we talked about the longings we carry inside of us, and which ultimately are met by the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Last week Jeff insisted on talking about John the Baptist again! He reminded us how John pointed towards the Christ. This morning we’ll once again read all 18 verses, but focus specifically on verses 10-13.

As we read, I want you to pay careful attention to four words/phrases: know, accept, believe…and children of God.

Read John 1:1-18

Last Monday, Anne and I went up to Whidbey Island to see if our place up there was still standing after all of the wind and rain of these last weeks. We found that the top insert part of the chimney had toppled over a bit and was sitting at a badly crooked angle.

Fortunately even though the roof is a long way off the ground, it could be fairly easily accessed by a ladder off the back deck, so I scrambled up to take a look. Since the chimney sits right on the very peak of the roof, the “v,” I found myself standing for the first few moments with one foot on either side. One foot on the northside, one foot on the south. What I found was that, at least for me with 49-year old ankles that have been sprained too many times, I just couldn’t straddle it for very long. I had to choose one side or the other to stand and work on, and plant both feet firmly on that side.

The gospel writer John puts us in a similarly precarious place this morning. He says, in essence, which side will you plant your feet on? There is a choice.

Now, I’ve been reminded again this week that this is not a question that modern American sensibilities enjoy at all. I read an article in the New Yorker magazine about “megachurches” in the United States, churches with over two or three thousand people attending. There are over 1200 churches of that size in the U.S.! The largest one, in Houston, has about 40,000 people, 40,000! They meet in a arena that once belonged to the Houston Rockets NBA basketball team.

The article talked directly and indirectly about what made churches grow to such size. Marketing approaches, business approaches, entertainment value. It also had quite a lot to say about the messages that people hear. There were lots of quotes from teachers and leaders and pastors like “I teach people how to be successful,” or “I need tospeak to people’s felt needs.” The overall sense was we, the church, speaking to customers, to people who wanted and demanded a message of relief and happiness, with no bad news.

It’s a little hard to square this with lots of the New Testament, and the Prologue to John is no exception. John asks: “which side will you stand on?” On one side are people who do not know or do not accept Jesus. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.” [that’s our 1st word] Actually, a better translation might be “the world did not recognize him.”

In fairness, God did come somewhat incognito. A child born to a young woman, in a small town, in a small country in the Middle East was not exactly what “the world” was looking for. A new Caesar, the power of armies, the might of economics, sweeping political reform, yes, people might have recognized that. But the Word, come in quietness and a person? Slipped right by people in the first century.

We are not so different today. We have this longing for something bigger than ourselves but often don’t recognize what it is. So all sorts of vague spiritualities spring up everywhere. Anne and I went to an art sale the other day, and some talented artist had made some beautiful “prayer wheels.” The instructions said to write a prayer on a piece of paper, put it inside and spin it and when you did your prayer would go “spinning out into the universe.” I have to tell you…I’m not very interested in hoping “the universe” hears my prayer. I need something far more concrete. The Word wasn’t recognized.

Much of the world still does not recognize God’s action in Jesus. Why not? Some have never heard or experienced. Some have been so turned off by those who claim to follow Jesus, they would never give him a hearing. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “Lord, save me from…your people.” Some have only been exposed to a Jesus that is a capitalist. Or Jesus the communist. Or Jesus the Republican, or Jesus the Democrat. Or Jesus a set of values, or Jesus a statement of belief, or Jesus a warm feeling, or Jesus a set of rights. It’s a pretty convicting thing to consider that we, the very people who claim to know Jesus might be involved in making him unrecognizable for others.

“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” [2nd key word]

That’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? It’s different than not recognizing him. Those familiar with him, “his own,”…did not accept him. In the great Dostoyevsky novel The Brother’s Karamazov is a story called “The Grand Inquisitor.” In the story, Jesus returns again to earth in the 1500’s and begins to minister to people, even raises a child from the dead.

But a leader of the Church, a Cardinal, has him arrested and thrown in prison, and later goes to speak to him. The Cardinal knows exactly who Jesus is, he recognized him. But he decides that Jesus will mess up his plans to take away people’s truest freedom and give them happiness instead.

The Cardinal is a chilling character. He tells Jesus his plans, and waits for Jesus to answer. Then Jesus “approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: “Go, and come no more…come not at all, never, never!”

He went to his own, the Religious, and they did not accept him. They may have recognized him, but wouldn’t accept him. Why not? Well, do we not usually want God only within our limits? Don’t mess up what I have going. And if we really accepted Christ, welcomed Him, it might mean changing. Admitting a wrong, opening up a heart, finding a different purpose to live for. We want to be successful and comfortable and self-sufficient and Jesus might screw that up, so we may recognize Him, even pay him lip service, but not accept him.

So on one side of the roof are those, sometimes us, who do not recognize Christ, or who will not accept Him. It’s not good news at all. It sounds like Romans chapter 1. Modern sensibilities say: “don’t talk about this at church. It’s not happy. It makes me feel guilty. It doesn’t meet my needs.”

But fortunately, John also shows us the other side. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…”

This is the other side of the crest, and you can choose to put your feet here. The ones who respond. Now we need to be careful here, because the critical word [our 3rd key word] in this whole phrase is probably one we have ruined or at least impoverished. “believed…to all who believed in his name.” When we hear “believe,” we go to things like “think, agree with, analyzed and voted for.” When someone says “do you believe in Jesus?” they usually mean “can you sign onto a statement of intellectual beliefs?”

“Believed” is used a lot in the Bible, but it almost always has much more to do with trusting than it does to agreement with a doctrine. “to those who trusted in His name…”

For me, this changes everything. Trusting involves both head and heart. It is not anti-intellectual, but it is bigger than just the intellect. It shoots for both head and heart. And it is personal. You generally believe a thing, but you trust a Person. Which is exactly John’s point. He’s not talking about religion, he’s talking about a person. He’s talking about trusting God, the God-who-revealed-himself-in-the-Word, Jesus.

In Biblical days, someone’s name was very important, almost mysterious. It represented the person, the real person. To name someone was to essentially call out their character. To believe, to trust in a name, is to trust the claims of that person, to trust in that person.

So what does it mean to “trust in Jesus’ name?” Well, let’s start smaller. What does it mean to trust in a person, a friend? It’s not actually such an easy question, is it? It’s very subjective, even a bit mysterious. Here’s how Frederick Buechner writes about trusting a friendship:

We can trust… “that my friend is my friend. It is possible that all his motives are ulterior. It is possible that what he is secretly drawn to is not me but my wife or my money. But there’s something about the way I feel when he’s around, about the way he looks me in the eye, about the way we can talk to each other without pretense and be silent together without embarrassment, that makes me willing to put my life in his hands as I do each time I call him friend. I can’t prove the friendship of my friend. When I experience it, I don’t need to prove it. When I don’t experience it, no proof will do.”

John says “but to all who received him, who believed in his name…,” who trusted in him. We’ve thought about friends. What about God? Is God trustworthy? What for?

Most often we question whether God can be trusted when something happens to us. When someone dies or gets sick, or we lose a job we throw up our hands and shout “I can’t trust you, God!” And I think it’s absolutely true that we can’t trust God for some things. There are many things that God never in fact promised us. We can’t trust God to give us what we want. Or to make life easy. Or to meet our “felt needs.” Trying to hold God to things we may want but he never promised makes God far smaller than He is, something under our control.

The fact is, there are immensely difficult things in life. The fact is, life is often messy. The fact is, life goes up and down. The fact is that trusting into a relationship with God encompasses being in places we don’t understand, and times when we doubt. The fact is that real trust in God is deeper than a continual happy feeling and wider than thinking that if God cares about us we will be a success or avoid pain. Trust is something we put in a person. So what do we trust God for?

One of my favorite authors over the years has been the Catholic priest, writer and professor Henry Nouwen. Nouwen thought and wrote deeply about faith and being a Christian. Around 1988 he hit a dark and painful time in his life, probably the most difficult time in his life. During that dark one year period, he journalled what he called “spiritual imperatives,” very honest and sometimes raw thoughts and feelings related to following God, and what he was going through.

Later, he grudgingly agreed to publish them so they might be of help to others. They came out the same day he died in 1996, in a little book called The Inner Voice of Love. It’s very small, 116 pages. But whereas in earlier books he ruminated on faith and life, over 65 times in this little book Nouwen talks about trust.

“At every moment you have to decide to trust the voice that says, “I love you. I knit you together in your mother’s womb.” Or later “The root choice is to trust at all times that God is with you and will give you what you most need.” Or later “…now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you.”

Isn’t it interesting that when Nouwen was in the most difficult place in his life, the kinds of things he finds in experience and in scripture to trust in are these:

• to trust that God deeply, deeply loves you.
• to trust that God will be with you.
• to trust that God will provide what you need the most…that God is enough for you.

The gospel of John says: we find these things in Jesus Christ.

The last & fourth key word (phrase, actually) is “to all who trusted (notice how universally available this sounds!), he gave power to become children of God. Not physiological children, as John says in three different ways here, but in a spiritual birth. How does that happen?

Those who trust become children of God. The family of God is not a biological family, or a racial one or a nationalistic one nor does it happen by divine birthright. It happens as people realize what they have been given and are compelled to trust. They become part of God’s family. The Apostle Paul says essentially the same thing in many places, using the language and imagery of adoption.

I’ve been talking to Steve Lympus, our former associate pastor on the phone these last weeks. A month or two ago, Steve and Laura adopted a little boy whom they named Theo. Actually, they named him “Theoden,” which is the name of a king in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but that’s a whole different story!

Steve told me the story that unfolded three days after Theo’s birth. They had an “Entrustment Ceremony (there’s our word “trust!)” where Theo’s birthmom and birthdad were there. All the legal documents had just been signed, no turning back. The ceremony was to formalize this whole experience. After some prayers and scriptures, this young birthmom took the baby and handed him to Laura and said “Here’s your son.”

And they just sat there, silent, overwhelmed. And then the baby’s birthdad took Theo in his arms and walked across the room and handed him to Steve. And so Theo was adopted into Steve and Laura’s family, became part of them. Theo will grow into that, and trust into that.

This is how God’s family gets built. By adoption. Not by right or privilege or bloodlines, but God saying yes to becoming His children.

So we stand at the roof peak, this great divide. On the one side, those who don’t recognize God’s amazing love in Christ, or who refuse to accept it. On the other side, those who put their belief, their trust in Him—not having all the answers, but enough to trust - and receiving this amazing gift of becoming children of God. And the thing is, there’s no way to stand in the middle.

We’re not talking about a religion but a relationship. Not accumulating information but trusting a Person with both head and heart.

I want you to practice this with me this morning. On the insert in your bulletin is the Apostles’ Creed. The Church of Christ has used it for 16 or 17 centuries. I’m willing to guess that most of us who have proclaimed our faith through it do it as a set of doctrines, even as we say them musing over whether we believe this or that.

Today I want to invite you to pray the Apostles Creed. As you repeat it with me, to turn it into a prayer to God, a God you can trust. Don’t just recite it- worship God with it.