Christmas Day 2011 – John 1:1-14
John 1:1-14
God Moves into the Neighbourhood
Christmas Day – December 25, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I do love Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message of this last bit of the Gospel reading:
The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.
That one line is the Christmas story according to John.
Those of you who have received an e-mail from me lately know that
in my signature I have quotation from the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann:
Jesus talked a lot about the Kingdom of God. What he meant by that was a reorienation of the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
In Jesus, God moved into our neighbourhood to increase our neighbourliness with one another.
But this is a hard thing to do these days.
I’m reading a book about this that was recently reviewed in the Christian Century magazine.
Peter Lovenheim, who lives in a posh, upscale neighbourhood in a New York suburb,
wrote this book about neighbourliness after a tragic thing happened to
his neighbours.
A domestic tragedy occurred that left two children screaming for help at a neighbour’s door.
After that, Lovenheim realized that he knew almost nothing about his neighbours.
The husband and wife had appeared to have the perfect life.
They were both successful physicians.
They worked out together at the gym. They played tennis together.
They appeared to ably balance work life and home life.
But after the funerals, a truer picture came to light.
The husband had been increasingly mentally unstable and increasing raging.
On the night of the tragedy, before coming home,
the wife had spent all day phoning her best friend who lived a 20 minute drive away,
asking if she and the kids could come over because she was anxious about
her husband’s mental health.
She couldn’t get hold of her and tragically went home.
Lovenheim was bothered by the fact that the woman had not gone to any of her neighbours.
Why hadn’t she?
Lovenheim figured it had to do with the increasing isolation of people in his neighbourhood.
The people on this street had “made it”: It was the biggest, fanciest street.
The homes were large. The lots were huge.
Children only seemed to get together for play dates, never spontaneously on the street.
Their parents connected with friends miles away through facebook,
but knew next to nothing about people they shared a street name with.
So Lovenheim decided to get to know his neighbours, one by one.
And he did this in a crazy way: he asked them if he could have a sleepover with them.
In this way he got to know them intimately and well.
Not everybody took him up on his offer, of course,
but enough did so that they changed the nature of their community life.
Some of these people became friends, but certainly not all.
But, as Lillian Daniel writes in her review,
by the end of the sleepover project, neighbours did become neighbours in the theological sense of the word – people who could nurse one another through loss of love and even loss of life by practicing real hospitality. (In the Christian Century, August 9, 2011, 26-27)
Lovenheim’s experiences, writes Daniels, pose a very theological question:
Could we, in the busyness of our lives, be missing out on the very people that God intends for us to meet? Throughout scripture we are told to love our neighbour. We are not told to love our friends and family; that is assumed. We’re told to do something harder – love our neighbours.
The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.
Just ask Jesus how hard it is to love your neighbours. He knows a thing or two about it.
The thing is: God in Jesus has moved into our neighbourhood.
Into our lives of isolation and distress.
In fact, he takes on our isolation and distress and
experiences those things as we experience them, on the cross.
We learn in Christ what it means to love our neighbour, because this is how he loves us.
He enters into our lives, into our ordinary lives, lives filled with isolation and distress.
Lives filled with imbalance and imperfection.
And seeks to be . . . neighbourly. He seeks to abide with us.
He doesn’t care what our income is, he doesn’t care what we look like.
He doesn’t care how successful we are.
He’s seeking to make friends of strangers.
And he’s seeking to reorient this whole world towards increasing neighbourliness.
Toward increasing community.
This morning, Jesus wants to take up residence at your address.
This morning Jesus wants to be invited for not just a sleepover, but for a lifetime,
This morning Jesus wants you to be the flesh he takes on.
This morning Jesus loves us as he finds us. Can we do the same for our neighbours?
The world did not accept Jesus, yet he accepted us. Can we do the same for our neighbours?
It’s not easy.
Recently my wife Sue and I have been involved in a little potluck dinner circle with
people on our street, which is, comparatively speaking, a pretty neighbourly place.
So let me tell you right now: it’s not always easy to love your neighbours.
You wonder how much you have in common with them.
You’re not sure you’re interested in talking about the same things.
You discover there really are generation gaps.
But in an age of increasing isolation you discover that Jesus probably really does
want to reorient the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
Maybe that’s why it’s so important to be doing what we’re doing on this Christmas morning:
taking time to gather not as individual family units, but as neighbours,
neighbours who have been given into one another’s care by God.
Neighbours who discover that Jesus is born among us – right in our neighbourhood –
despite our differences.
Neighbours who together, this morning, as we share bread and wine with each other,
neighbours who discover that together we can become God’s word of love made flesh.
Neighbours who discover that together we can reorient a little part of this world towards
increased neighbourliness, maybe just this street,
maybe just this little bit of Victor Street between Ellice and Sargent.
But that’s enough.
Because on this day, on this Christmas morning, the Word – God’s very love – has
become flesh and blood and moved into this neighbourhood:
our little fellowship and the street we meet on.
You’re right: this is nothing less than crazy, and it is nothing less than miraculous.
But it is true.
We are learning to love one another, as neighbours.
We are learning to enter into one another’s lives, as loving neighbours.
We are learning to move into our neighbour’s lives, at Food Bank and Kids Klub and BBQs,
through hospitality to those who visit here and through service to
the people of this street.
We are learning that in Jesus, this Jesus who is born to us again this day,
in Jesus God has given us power to become children of God, imitators of the loving God,
even as Jesus is a beloved child of God, the very image of the loving God.
The Word has indeed become flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.
Breaking down old boundaries.
Unleashing love into an increasing isolated world.
Bringing healing. Reorienting us all towards increasing neighbourliness.
So on this Christmas Day, let us give thanks, and together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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