John 1:1-14
The Children of God: Recognizing, Receiving, Believing
December 31, 2006
Associate Pastor Doug Forsberg
Let me be the first to say it: “Only 359 shopping days left until Christmas!”
Let’s see, we need to start baking and putting up decorations and figure out where we put the tree stand and gee, we better start writing our Christmas cards and getting that picture of the kids printed up to send, and well, its never too early to get over to the post office to send those packages . . . there’s nothing like avoiding the rush to make me feel like I’m beating the system.
Of course, we should start buying presents too. Let’s make that list and make sure we cover all of our bases. We don’t want to let anyone down. Boy, 359 days, there’s not a lot of time to string up the lights outside, watch all those classic Christmas movies, figure out when the church’s Christmas Eve services are, and we don’t want to forget scheduling a visit with the big guy.
I don’t know about you, but somehow all of this doesn’t seem all that appealing to me. I don’t think it’s all that appealing to most of us this week. There’s a sense in which Christmas has come and gone and the world is ready to move on. Stores have already changed their decorations; people are taking down their lights, returning their gifts, anxiously awaiting their credit card statements, and throwing away the food they can’t eat.
There’s a problem though. You see, even after we get rid of all the trappings of our Christmas celebration, we still have to deal with Immanuel, God with us. He doesn’t go away on the morning of December 26th. He came, and he didn’t just disappear like Santa Claus. Instead, borrowing a line from Eugene Peterson’s The Message, we say that he “moved into the neighborhood.” Imagine the Lord of the universe moving in to your neighborhood.
What are we to do with this one born in a manger? How has his coming transformed your life? The text before us this morning testifies to the fact that the world did not recognize Jesus, yet he came anyway so that some might receive him and believe in him and in so doing become children of God. As those living in the world, we must be intentional about recognizing, receiving, and believing in Jesus, for then we will have assurance that we are the children of God.
In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen notes that a Christian “ . . . is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.”[1] It’s not easy to recognize someone who comes in such an irrelevant way. All too often, we’re on the lookout for the powerful, the spectacular, and the awe inspiring. Jesus’ birth, his coming among us didn’t really draw that much attention at first. No one expected the Messiah to come like that. No one was looking for the Messiah in a stable in Bethlehem. If anyone was looking for the Messiah, they were probably at the temple or one of the large hotels in Jerusalem, a place where people gathered to see and be seen.
The second person of the Trinity didn’t bother to be seen at his first coming. Instead, the Son of God was born into irrelevance and obscurity. Who could recognize him as the light of the world? He made himself nothing and took on the nature of a servant and was made in human likeness. How amazing it is that Jesus, the one who saves us, entered the world as a baby, the most vulnerable of human conditions. He relied completely upon his mother and father to care for his every need. This isn’t the way that we expect God to come into the world, on the sidelines and out of the spotlight, but because God’s ways are not our ways this is how he came.
It is all well and good to remember that very few recognized Jesus 2,000 years ago when he was born, but the question remains whether or not we recognize him today. Let me suggest that we will recognize Jesus most readily in those places in our lives where we are irrelevant. In those places in which we allow ourselves to be used by Christ in our weakness, Jesus will be recognized. Jesus worked the margins of life. Think of his ministry that took place in the countryside only going into Jerusalem on occasion and even then avoiding the spotlight as much as he was able. His work in our lives is the same. We will recognize Jesus when we look to those areas of our lives where we feel most vulnerable and powerless. It is when we think we have it all together and under control that we are most apt to miss what Jesus is doing and fail to recognize him.
One of the ways to recognize Jesus is to look for those places in your life where truth is being told, where his light is bringing forth your need for him and the great mercy of his Father. In ways both great and small the Kingdom of God is bursting forth as the light of Christ exposes the darkness of our lives. Jesus came to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom and ever since, this kingdom of servants has been gaining ground and proclaiming that the Messiah has come. How hard it is for us to see the reality of the kingdom though, for it is a kingdom unlike any we’re trained to recognize.
Thankfully, some have recognized it. Our presence together this morning testifies to the fact that beginning with the first disciples, faithful men and women recognized Jesus and pointed him out to others. That’s one of the things that Christ’s followers do; they point out Jesus to others. There are times in which we will point out Jesus to others and they will embrace him, but there are other times when, for a variety of reasons, those we invite to see Jesus will refuse to recognize, receive or believe him.
This is as true today as it was when Jesus himself proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom. One day Jesus was met by two demon possessed men when he arrived in the region of the Gadarenes. As Jesus got ready to drive the demons out of these men, the demons begged to be sent over to a herd of pigs. Jesus did what they asked, and the whole herd of pigs ran down a steep bank into the water and died.
Those tending the pigs ran and told the nearby town what had happened to the pigs and then the whole town came out to where Jesus was and begged him to leave. This town was so preoccupied with the loss of the herd of pigs that they failed to take any notice of the men whom Jesus had freed from spiritual bondage. They also failed to recognize Jesus’ authority and power over the demons. In their fear and amazement they aren’t willing to recognize or receive Jesus; instead, they send him on his way, missing out on the opportunity to know him and the coming of the Kingdom.
On another occasion, Jesus met a man who was born blind. Jesus’ disciples asked why the man had been born blind and Jesus answered that this happened so that the work of God would be displayed in the man’s life. Jesus then healed the man, restoring his sight. Isn’t this a great and amazing thing that Jesus has done? You would think that everyone would embrace such a healing, but they don’t. The religious leaders question the man, wondering if he really had been healed and whether or not one sent from God would heal on the Sabbath. The man who was healed isn’t sure who Jesus is, but he’s willing to recognize him as the one who healed him. The religious leaders, on the other hand, accuse the healed man of being a sinner for recognizing Jesus. They throw him out of the synagogue in an attempt to cut him off from God.
Jesus then finds the man he had healed and reveals himself as the Messiah. The healed man receives Jesus and believes in him, worshipping him. The religious leaders refuse to receive Jesus though, for they can’t get past their expectations of who the Messiah would be. Certainly, their Messiah would follow their rules and do what they expect him to do. Sadly, these leaders can’t recognize that the Kingdom has broken out among them as one who was blind can now see and even more importantly as the Messiah himself walks among them.
So it is that even today we can miss out on what Jesus is doing, failing to recognize him at work. We’re trained to expect to see him in the big events and in all the trappings of the holiday season, but in almost every case he’s working on the sidelines and margins where those who aren’t looking won’t see him. He’s at work in the one who is terribly lonely yet comes into the church and finds fellowship and warmth. He’s at work in the one who has lost everything and yet gained the world by finding him. He’s at work in the one whose heart has been broken by loss, and he’s at work in all those who lay down their lives only to find them again in him.
An amazing thing happens when people recognize Jesus and then go on to receive him and believe in him. Such people’s lives are transformed; they become citizens of the Kingdom; they are the children of God. And suddenly, they want nothing more than to invite others to recognize, receive and believe in Jesus.
This is as true today as it was early on in Jesus’ ministry when he was alone at a well during the middle of the day and a woman approached him. Jesus knew this woman better than she knew herself, and he reached out to her, acknowledging her sin and inviting her to follow him. At first this woman can’t recognize Jesus, but slowly she catches on, and then Jesus tells her he is the Messiah. After being confronted with her sins, this woman could have rejected Jesus, she could have walked away from him and thought nothing of him, but she doesn’t do that. Instead she goes to her town and invites others to come and see this one she has recognized as the Messiah. This woman’s testimony brought many in the town to faith. She had become a child of God and others wanted what they saw in her, for when we see the light shining in the darkness, we cannot help but be attracted to it.
One night the Apostle Paul and his right-hand-man Silas were in prison praying and singing hymns. Suddenly there was an earthquake and the prison doors opened and the chains that bound the prisoners came loose. The man in charge of the jail saw what happened and was ready to kill himself, fearing that he would be punished for the escape of the prisoners. In the darkness, Paul called out to the jailor, telling him that all of the prisoners were still in the jail. The jailor brought lights and fell at the feet of Paul and Silas asking how he might be saved. They told the jailor to believe in the Lord, and then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all those in his household. That very night the jailor and all who lived in his house were baptized. In the darkness the jailor was ready to flee this life, but once he saw the light he embraced it and invited his family to do the same.
That jailor found Jesus in the middle of the night among two irrelevant prisoners. He didn’t find God among the religious bigwigs of his day. He didn’t find him in the elaborate religious ceremonies; he found Jesus in a jail among men of little means who proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God with power.
Jesus’ coming to us, in a stable, in such an irrelevant way isn’t all that interesting to the world, that’s one of the reasons we’ve allowed Christmas to get dressed up a bit. Yet, for the children of God, his coming in obscurity and irrelevance is one more sign of the power of the Kingdom of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling with us. He does not go away on December 26th. Instead, he continues his work of calling many to recognize, receive and believe in him and so become the children of God.
Can you recognize him?
Will you receive him?
Will you believe in him?
May it be Lord. May it be.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, Crossroad Publishing Company: New York, 1994, 17.