Testify: John 1:1-18
Second Sunday of Christmas
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light. A man named John was sent from God. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light. The true light that shines on all people was coming into the world. The light was in the world, and the world came into being through the light, but the world didn’t recognize the light. The light came to his own people, and his own people didn’t welcome him. But those who did welcome him, those who believed in his name, he authorized to become God’s children, born not from blood nor from human desire or passion, but born from God.
14 The Word became flesh
and made his home among us.
We have seen his glory,
glory like that of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.
15 John testified about him, crying out, “This is the one of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is greater than me because he existed before me.’”
16 From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace;
17 as the Law was given through Moses,
so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God.
God the only Son,
who is at the Father’s side,
has made God known. (CEB)
Merry Christmas, Church!
It’s still Christmas, you see—Christmas until Wednesday, actually, which is Epiphany. It’s why we have the song of 12 drummers drumming; the drummers don’t come on Christmas day because that’s the partridge in the pear tree. Today marks ten lords a-leaping, I believe, though I do hope they’ll take care on the snow here.
This past week, amidst the five rings and seven pipers, I took the time to watch the Netflix film “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which dramatizes the federal case against seven white organization leaders plus Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers on charges of conspiracy to incite violence for the 1968 riots at Chicago’s Democratic National Convention. It’s a dramatic interpretation, to be sure, but it is also a decisive skewering of the injustice piled on top of injustice at that trial. In one important courtroom scene in the film, a character reads the names of those who were killed in the Vietnam War—the original reason for protesting—over the course of that trial, some 4,700 soldiers in just under six months.1
The gospel author John writes of a man named John; he is not referencing himself but the man we usually call John the Baptist. John the evangelist doesn’t use “baptist,” identifying him instead as a witness. “A man named John was sent from God. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.” To testify—we think about it mostly in the courtroom sense, but to witness to something is an act of power. The character witnessing to these dead soldiers was putting power into the act of naming—Sergeant John Smith, 22 years old, Second Lieutenant James Warner, 19 years old. It’s amazing how important it can be to testify to the existence of another.
It was a sobering scene, the reading of the names, partly because it is a well-done film that focuses on the reality that liberty and justice are not automatically for all in this nation, but partly because it is a reminder of how fierce the Vietnam War was. We watch a film like “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” set in 1969, and we may say to ourselves that it was such a calamitous time, the 60s; it is so good that we made it through, then, that we kept a bit of light.
But it was sobering also because of this time in our own lives, we who have made it to 2021. Between February and December of 2020, 303,823 people died of COVID-19 in the United States.2 We do not read their names—on All Saints’ Day here at St. Luke’s, we rang a bell once for every 50,000 dead and the global count at that time still took us 24 rings. Perhaps there are simply too many names of those lost to this pandemic. We do not read the names of the 989 people of all races shot and killed by police in 2020.3 We do not read the names of the 43 transgender or gender-nonconforming people murdered in 2020.4 Perhaps we should; perhaps we should witness to the shadows that cover the glory of life, testify to the light of theirs that is no longer in the world.
“What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people.” It is still Christmas, at least until the Magi arrive on Wednesday and push us all out of our nativity scenes and into the ministry of Christ. We come to this second Sunday of Christmas with the famous Christ hymn of the gospel of John on our lips and remember that yes, figgy puddings and pine trees aside, the Incarnation of God is a marvelous thing indeed. In the beginning was the Word—the very beginning, where the Word was with God and the Word was God, this Word Who was Christ Who becomes Jesus the infant birthed by a teenager far from home. We read His name, every Christmas, but we do not know the names of the toddlers Herod killed when he heard of this rival king in the province of Judea. We do not always know how to witness to those who are not marvelous, miraculous, God. It was a calamitous time, the aughts AD; such a confusing time. It is so good that we made it through, then, so good that John was able to testify to the light.
It was a calamitous time, the 30s AD, such a confusing time when the Roman Empire crucified a Man Who said His kingdom was not of this world; it is so good that we made it through, then. We don’t know the names of the two men crucified with this Man Whose placard called Him the king of the Jews. It was a calamitous time, the 300s when the emperor decided that Christianity was the only way people could encounter God; we do not know all the names of those who were killed in the service of a religion that had put down deep roots in the blood of its own martyrs. It was a calamitous time, the 700s, the 1100s, the 1250s, the 1340s, the 1460s, the 1540s, the 1680s, the 1770s, the 1860s, the 1900s, the year of our Lord two thousand twenty.
Do you see the pattern, Church? “The light was in the world, and the world came into being through the light, but the world didn’t recognize the light.” John writes to a community where the faith that follows a Man named Jesus has begun to write rules for itself, a history, a way to belong and not to belong. John writes from faith to faith for a generation finding its way in an empire that did not want some upstart of a new religious sect. John writes that the light shines in the darkness and it is not extinguished and we do not get to stand in the 21st century and say that it is brighter here where we do not stand in courtrooms and read the names of the dead. We who come later are still in shadow—not because there is some nameless miasma of evil that hangs over us with impurity but because we far too often stand in courtrooms, in schools, in houses of government, on the streets, in our churches and say that it is a calamitous time for anyone who did not welcome Him like we did, we who believed in His name and were authorized to become His children, we who have become named and testify to the light.
It is 2021, Church, and I do not have to spend two hours with a film like “The Trial of the Chicago 7” or five minutes with the opening verses of John to know that there is an awful lot of language in our very Christian vocabulary in this nation about those other people who are not marvelous, miraculous, or worth remembering. I do not mean the lists of the dead; I mean the lists of the living, the ones who do not fit, do not conform, do not see the god that we have crafted in our own image who is white like us, or straight like us, or male like us, or cisgender like us, or middle class like us, or Christian like us, or comfortably acceptable like us, as though the light to which we testify is ours to guard. We have started a new calendar year and we are bringing into it every hope and fear and -ism and anger and grief and joy and wonder that we built day by day in 2020 because our souls are not bounded by calendar months and Church, we must be aware of that. We cannot start this new calendar year as though the last one didn’t happen, as though the light has come into the world and erased everything we ever saw before it, everything we have refused to witness to, one injustice at a time. We cannot come out of the season of Christmas without acknowledging that the baby Whose birth we just celebrated will be nailed to a cross by human governance before He grows old. We cannot testify that the light has come into the world and overcome the darkness without admitting that sometimes we are the darkness that has to be overcome.
I am not saying that the congregation of St. Luke’s is to blame for all of 2020. I am saying that I am preaching to myself and any who hear this about the fact that it is far easier to refuse to read the list of names when someone else is telling me to sit down and be quiet; it is far simpler not to testify to the Word Who existed before the beginning of all things if someone else is telling me that there is no room for that riffraff here.
John Wesley, the pastor who usually gets credited with having started Methodism, was fond of a covenant service originating in a 1663 writing that he tweaked for himself. The prayer at the heart of it is, “Lord, make me what you will. I put myself fully into your hands: put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed by you, or laid aside for you, let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and with a willing heart give it all to your pleasure and disposal.”5 This is a dangerous prayer because God may well take us up on it and then where will we be? What does it mean to step into this faith that speaks of grace and truth and accept that some days, we will be laid aside; some days, we will be empty; some days, we will have nothing, but on all these days we are to live with a willing heart? How on earth can someone witness to such a terribly uncomfortable thing?
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.” I must admit, this is in my top five favorite Bible verses. The light shines, you see, not because we have prayed our covenant prayer with enough honesty and commitment; it shines not because we have stopped our wars or our prejudices or our cruelty; it shines not because we testify that it should. It shines because that’s what Light does. This hymn of a gospel opening says that yes, the world did not recognize the Light, but the Light came anyway. God did not and does not wait for us to have fair trials and total equality and complete self-awareness of the times we are falling short—and let us be clear, we do not have any of those. Rather, God came to us in such a calamitous time as Roman Judea and said let us do this another way, let us do this another way. I invite you to change the world by witnessing to My Light into the most shadow-filled corners of the human heart where there is no justice, no mercy, no recognition of the power of God that did not come into the world to condemn it but to save it. The Word became flesh and made His home among us, the Word that was in the beginning and shall be in the end and lives with us in the middle in every single calamitous time therein, and thanks be to God for that kind of solidarity when we are so very good at not recognizing it.
What can we do with such a miracle but learn from it, desire to be molded into its shape? It may not be standing up in a courtroom and reading a list of names, but we who claim this faith must step into 2021 recognizing that we have our work cut out for us to live as people who have received grace upon grace. Professor Karoline Lewis points out that, “The word ‘grace’ is used only four times in the Gospel of John and only in the Prologue. Once the Word becomes flesh, grace is then incarnated in the rest of the Gospel. That is, the entirety of the Gospel will show what grace looks like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like, and feels like.”6
Theologian and poet Howard Thurman wrote a poem called “The Work of Christmas” that speaks to this kind of embodied grace, the kind of grace that reads names in courtrooms and says yes, God, I will be empty if that is what is need. It goes like this:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.7
May we witness to illumination like that, Church, with our every action, witness, and choice this year. It is, after all, Christmas. Amen.
2 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
5 UMW Book of Worship, 291.
7 https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/now-the-work-of-christmas-begins/
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