If you've been here in these weeks of Advent, you know we've been slowly making our way through the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John, sometimes called the Prologue to the Gospel. And it has pointed us to this phrase “The Word” of God-

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God.”

We said in the first week that “The Word” probably encompassed part of Greek philosophy, the “logos”, the supreme principal of reason or order in the universe…and even more strongly encompassed the Hebrew sense of God’s personal activity, that when God SPEAKS, things happen. Maybe a shorter explanation would be this: The Word is the very expression of God.

So for 13 verses, we have found the Word talked about, described, pointed to, hinted at. We found that the Word is personal, but never is actually named until today’s passage, with perfect timing for Christmas. We will again read the first 18 verses of John chapter 1, and focus on verses 14-18.

Read John 1:1-18

In 1993 Anne and I moved with our three very little children (ages 1, 4, 7) away from Seattle, where we had lived our entire lives, to Princeton, New Jersey. We drove all the way across the country in a station wagon littered with books, clothes, wiffleball bats, diapers, and MacDonald’s wrappers. We saw the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, a Cubs game in Chicago, the Amish country of Pennsylvania, the Civil War battlefields.

When we finally arrived at our new home, married student housing at the seminary, we were tired. It was humid like we had never experienced humidity. We knew absolutely no one, and our first encounters with East Coast people seemed…well, pretty abrupt.

We were the first ones to arrive in our building. As the moving van was unloading, with us sweating profusely with every step, we felt so very out of place, like everything was wrong. Just then, a woman about our age came around the corner on a bike, with two kids following on smaller bikes, came right over the lawn to us and with a wonderful smile and a gentle voice said “Hi! I’m Lorraine…are you just starting this fall? So are we…Welcome!”

Her arrival, her family’s moving in, changed absolutely everything for us. Though everything had seemed wrong, that was the beginning of setting things right. “Movin’ In Day” was the start of something really, really good.

Our text today deals again with “the Word,” and finally tells us in verse 17, though we have assumed it, suspected it, finally it tells us that the Word of God has a name, Jesus Christ. And “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” Or, in Eugene Peterson’s now famous re-phrasing, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” It moved in. It changed everything. And it was the beginning of God setting things right.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

That’s a lot to say in one sentence, you know. If Jesus became flesh and lived among us, then he came into time, space and history. The Christian faith starts with this act, and it clings to this hope.

• The Word of God did not come as a good thought.
• The Word of God did not come as a warm feeling.
• The Word of God did not come as a The Word of God profound philosophy.
• The Word of God did not come as a spiritual idea.
• The Word of God did not come as a book or a manifesto
  or a lifestyle.

The Word of God became flesh and lived among us. And it changed everything.

If “the Word became flesh and lived among us” then He came to a real place and encountered real life. Moved in. And it doesn’t matter too much if that neighborhood was a small town in Bethlehem, or growing up in Nazareth, or dying outside of Jerusalem. Because the neighborhoods that Jesus moved into are the same as our neighborhoods.

Two years ago, a group of us were in Nairobi, Kenya, in the Soweto area, a large slum. Right next to it is an even larger slum area. A million people in a 2 ½ square mile area. I’m told there are worse places in the world. I just haven’t been to them. We trudged through filthy streets, with garbage everywhere and open sewers.

Imagine a million people squeezed into an area the size of Interbay, between Queen Anne and Magnolia, and half the people sick with HIV/Aids. We went to a rough little house made mostly from old sheet metal, no electricity, no water, 6 children watched by neighbors and older siblings. We prayed with a woman named Pamela, who was very sick and would die two days after we left.

If Jesus “became flesh and lived among us,” then one way or the other he came to exactly such places. And all sorts of other places.

Places where people scratch out a living, where anger and enmity boil near the surface and places where weddings happen and children are born.

Places where justice is absent, and where friendships start and laughter is good for the soul.

Places where people are sick, where prayers feel unanswered, where people die.

Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Nairobi, Seattle. Jesus has been there. There is nothing you or I encounter that is not included in “he lived among us.”

And if he came in such a way, then we are forced to deal with why. Why would he even start this road that led to betrayal and abandonment and death? What did he bring?

In this season we hear so much about gifts, and if we are quite spiritual we might think of the wisemen bringing their gifts to Jesus, or even us bringing our gifts. It’s nice. But what did “the Word who moved in,” what gift did He bring?

Sometimes the best way to get a sense of scripture is simply to find out what gets repeated a lot. If we look just at these few verses, 14, 16 & 17 three times we will find a word that the writer John uses only here, and nowhere else in the whole gospel. Three times he uses this word, almost as though he is saying “If you don’t get this, then none of the rest of it makes sense. The word that is repeated? Grace.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

“The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

In his life, his death and most certainly his resurrection, we have received grace. It began when The Word moved in. But what does grace look like, or feel like? Kathleen Norris gives a nice picture. I suspect that you, like me have seen this exact scene and yet missed it:

“One morning…I noticed a young couple with an infant at an airport departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other people, an as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking he would respond with absolute delight.

It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it…I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good…”

Grace. It’s a broad word in scripture that interestingly enough actually means “gift.” Gift. The kindness, the mercy, the initiation, the forgiveness of God in choosing to be with us for no good reason, without merit, beyond all reasonable limits. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, who you are, what you’ve done.

I love the beach, almost anywhere. I love being up on Whidbey Island, or down on the coast of Oregon. And I love simply walking the beach, and watching the waves. Over and over, so consistent. One wave after another, one upon another. Just as one comes in and hits the sand and breaks and runs up the beach and is turning to leave, another rushes in over the top. There’s always another one. The source must be inexhaustible because it literally never stops.

“We have all received grace upon grace.” Forgiveness upon forgiveness, mercy upon mercy, love upon love. How do we know we received such riches? The Word became flesh and lived among us…full of grace and truth.

What do we do when we get a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the grace-gift brought to us in Christ? Maybe we can be led in our response by the art work on the walls of the sanctuary that has grown each week of Advent. “O Come let us adore Him” is the theme.

I’m giving you license to turn and look! Look at them. A Palestinian soldier, an Oklahoma girl in a wheat field, 2 children moving from dark to light, people of various ages and wealth, angels, dancing children, a somber sentinel, the whole globe using different languages, all people coming to Christ, to worship. To worship. One way or the other, worship is our response to grace, perhaps the only response to the grace of God.

So Tuesday is Christmas. It’s Movin’-In-Day. The start of God setting things right. Not the completion, but the beginning. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” and it changed everything.

So come, let us adore him.