Advent Four - The Root of Love (John 1:1-5, 9-14)

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 Christmas is a challenge. What kind of a challenge? Depends on who you're talking to.  

For some, the challenge of Christmas is to make it even better than last year, more spectacular tree, bigger turkey. Better everything.  

For some the challenge of Christmas is to just stay silent when you see Aunt Murgatroid put ketchup on her turnip for the 30th year in a row.  

For some the challenge of Christmas is that it is the first year without him, or without her.  

Christmas throws everything into sharper contrast. It makes us more aware of what's right in our lives and what's wrong in our lives, whether it's family dynamics, grief, brand new little babies, your love life (and whether you have one), what's in the fridge (and whether you have a fridge). Every colour, every shape, every emotion, every relationship can be more intense at Christmas. Advertisers know this. Doctors and counselors know this. Retail cashiers know this. 

Christmas brings out the best in what is best, and the worst in what is worst. That is part of the magic of Christmas—a phrase that gets used a lot. 

This kind of magic is not Harry Potter magic, but that special indefinable quality that makes an ordinary day seem extraordinary. A randomly selected one-in-365 day is better, richer, and different from all the rest. The magic of Christmas has power to make the impossible seem possible—Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, and the Grinch’s growing heart.  

The magic of Christmas has this power because it comes from within us. There's something in all of us that knows that what we see and touch isn't all there is—that science will never explain everything. That we are, and that our world, is more than the sum of our senses and our experiences, more than the sum of atoms and wavelengths. The potential for magicalness runs deep in humans, at the same time equally comforting and unsettling. When we experience that kind of magicalness, we don't want to look too closely for fear of discovering how the trick was done. Because we really don't want to know.  

Alongside the magic of Christmas and very, very different, is the mystery of Christmas.

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When we use the word mystery, we usually mean something we haven't figured out, a puzzle to be solved. A secret that is being kept and we haven't uncovered. 

But in the New Testament, when the writers use the word mystery, they're talking about something quite different—a secret “which is being, or even has been, revealed. In the New Testament, the mystery is something that is divine in scope and has to be made known by God to people through the Holy Spirit” (Zondervan Bible Dictionary). A mystery is a secret that is intended to be shared. To be hidden just for a time, but when we wait or we draw close enough, we'll understand. Jesus used the word when he had told his apostles a story that they didn’t understand. They asked what it meant. Jesus explained, sharing the mystery. 

Christmas magic is good. Christmas mystery is better.  

Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and—this week—John. John was probably the last gospel written. John was an apostle, one of Jesus 12 original close followers and apprentices. John was an eyewitness and a closer eyewitness than most. John was part of Jesus’ core team of three men—Peter and John and James, John's brother. John was one of the few people present when Jesus prayed for his life in Gethsemane just before his arrest. One of the few present when Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. 

John and James had a nickname: Sons of Thunder, possibly because they were kind of impulsive and a bit overdramatic. For example, Luke records this story:  

Jesus sent messengers on ahead into a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for him to stay there. But the people in the village refused to welcome Jesus because he was heading for Jerusalem. So when the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven and consume them?”  

And Jesus said, “No, we'll just go somewhere else.” That was James and John. They were deeply loyal to Jesus, wanting to do something good for hims. But Jesus had to keep saying, “OK, no, let's talk about why that's not a good idea.”  

John seems to have lived into old age, and if he did, he is possibly the only one of the 12 apostles to die a natural death. Unlike his brother James, who was the first of the 12 to be killed for his faith in Jesus.  

John's writings, as we understand them, are three letters, one gospel, and the book of Revelation. We don't know in what order these were written.  

Unlike Luke (writing to someone who was possibly struggling  with coming to terms with what they had been told about Jesus) John seems to have been writing to believers. People who had come to faith in Christ. This Gospel was John's encouragement to them. One of the reasons why we think this, is that John does not begin his Gospel with the story of Jesus’ birth. It makes sense that John would have left out those stories because he assumed that people knew them. They had read Matthew's writings, and Luke’s. So John starts instead with... a mystery; a mystery that the church at the time was just starting to wrestle with. The mystery of what we call the Trinity.  

Some have said the doctrine of the Trinity is not heard in scripture, it is overheard. We pick up hints and clues from things that Jesus said and that others wrote, the understanding that within God, the One, there are three persons who together are that one God. The church was starting to put together all of the stories that everybody knew, and what Jesus had said about himself.  

• In Matthew's Gospel, the angel said to Joseph, “The one conceived in Mary is from the Holy Spirit... She will give birth to a son... All of this took place to fulfill what God had said through the prophets... Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.” In that, the church overhears: “God speaks through the prophets. God sends his Spirit to give a Son, who is God with us.” Ok. That's interesting.  
• Then, in the Gospel of Mark... “This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God... As it is written in Isaiah the prophet... John the baptizer began to proclaim, “After me will come one more powerful than I. I will baptize you with water. But he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The church overhears:  “God speaks through the prophets. God sends his Son, who will send the Holy Spirit.” OK, that's interesting.  
• Then in the book of Luke, the angel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will over shadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of the Most High.” The church overhears: “The Holy Spirit brings the power of God, to bring the Son of God to birth.”  

We have the same three pieces, in different writings, falling in different places. We've got the Father sending the Son who will send the Spirit. We've got the Father sending the Spirit, who gives life to the Son. We've got the Spirit sending the power of God that will bring to life the Son. Three moving pieces, all of which are being talked about as though all of them are God. 

The Trinity is a distinctive and distinguishing truth of Christian thought: three persons completely united as one person, one person completely united as three persons. Each of the three is distinct, but the three are never ever separate. Each of the three has particular characteristics, but what is true of the one is true of each of the three. Each of the three is eternal. Each of the three gives life, each of the three teaches, corrects, grieves, judges, heals and forgives. But the Spirit did not die on the cross. The Father did not fill the believers on the day of Pentecost. The Son did not give Moses the 10 Commandments.  

Each of the three has their own activity, but these activities are entirely, inseparably united in purpose. It was very early on agreed that the core essence of the Trinity, the core characteristic, the purest essential truth about the Trinity - is love. Augustine, wrote that “Love is the inner life of God through the mutual relationships of Father, Son and Spirit. Love flows from the very nature and being of God as Trinity. Love existed before the world was created, for God is eternally a community of mutual love between Father and Son and Spirit. God didn't need the world in order to be able to love, because the eternal almighty God is love” (The Message of The Trinity, Brian Edgar).   

We see Trinity love expressed in the way, first of all, that they know each other. 1 Corinthians 2:11 says:

“Who knows a person's thoughts except their own Spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” 

In that Trinity love, there is a complete knowing of each other. They know each other's thoughts because they share those thoughts.  

The second way that we see Trinity love expressed is in the way that they are united in their shared mission. One of the metaphors we use to describe the Trinity is that of a person—I'm a mom. I'm a wife. I'm a pastor. All three of those are one ‘me.’ But within my one self, there are times when those roles conflict: when mom needs to be in one place, wife needs to be someplace, and pastor needs to be someplace else. I can't be in three places at once, so I have to choose. But God's mission is always entirely, united, and focused. There is no tug-of-war between Father, Son and Spirit. They share the mission of sharing themselves with us.  In John 5:19, Jesus says, 

“I tell you the Son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son does also.”   

A third way that we see Trinity love is how they share themselves with each other. Jesus’ baptism is a pivotal moment for him as a human being, beginning his ministry work. Matthew 3:13-17 says, 

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on him, and a voice from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”” 

In this moment we see Father, Son and Spirit sharing the joy and the power of that moment when Jesus submitted himself to the mission of God in the world.  

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That eternal, powerful, mutual love was born into a body: spoke to us through human lips, embraced us with human arms, and draws us into that same divine eternal love.  

He teaches us to know each other. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus gives us our marching orders: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” These are all relational activities—meeting, baptizing, mentoring, teaching—that require time spent getting to know each other. We are to share in that Trinity love by getting to know each other.  

Second, Jesus teaches us to submit to our shared mission. In John 20:21, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you”--to do the same work, in the same way, in the same world. We have a shared mission—telling the world about the love of God. When we submit ourselves to that shared mission, we are living in that Trinity love.  

Third, we share that Trinity love when we share ourselves with each other. In John 13:34, Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Sharing our griefs, our joys, our stuff, our time, our space, our energy. When we share ourselves the way the Father and the Son and the Spirit share themselves, that is Trinity love. That is Christmas.  

The magicalness of Christmas love can be a beautiful thing, helping us to see the extraordinary in our everyday experience of relationship. In Mary's love for her child. In Joseph's love for Mary and her child. Christmas magicalness impacts the way we show grace to each other standing in line at Walmart, and share with people in need—expressions of the magicalness of Christmas love.  

But the mystery of Christmas love—of Trinity love—is infinitely deeper and greater. It had been hidden for a long, long time, and is now revealed. It flows out of divine, eternal love, out of knowing love. Out of love that is determined, and that exists at the core of God themselves. 

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Christmas is a challenge.  

It is a challenge to have the courage of hope—to keep showing up, to never surrender, to always continue expecting and trusting that God is doing his work in the world.  

Christmas is a challenge to be makers of peace—to take a stand against the forces—and the force—that speaks division and violence, abuse and manipulation into the world.  

Christmas is a challenge to speak with the voice of joy—to tell the world the good news that Jesus has come. Jesus is present and we are here to do his work in the world.  

Finally, Christmas is a challenge to root ourselves in the eternal Trinity love that sends us out into the world to spend time getting to know people, to tell people about Jesus, to help each other to grow in our faith, and to always keep trusting him. 

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