January 5, 2020 – John 1:1-18
John 1:1-18
Love Moves into the Neighbourhood
Second Sunday of Christmas – January 5, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of this first part of John’s Gospel:
The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.
The very mind and heart of God became a human person and moved into the neighbourhood.
All the goodness, all the life, all the light – and all love – of God became focused in
a single human being . . . and moved into the neighbourhood.
It is the Second Sunday of Christmas.
Up to this point we have heard the stories of Jesus’ birth according to both
Matthew and Luke – Mark, of course, does not have a story of Jesus birth.
And this morning we have John’s birth story: this is it!
The word – the mind and heart of God – became a human being and
moved into the neighbourhood.
God becomes a neighbour to us in Jesus.
And not just any neighbour – a good neighbour.
A neighbour who brings you chicken soup when you’re sick.
A neighbour who comforts you when your spouse dies.
A neighbour who forgives you when you cross a line.
A neighbour who puts up with your idiosyncrasies.
And what is it that brings God to the neighbourhood?
It is love.
It is love that brings God to the neighbourhood.
“For God so loved the world,” John will write a few chapters later,
“that he sent his only Son.”
For God so loved the neighbourhood is why God’s mind and heart became flesh in Jesus.
In First John, John will write: “God is love.”
It is as simple as that.
God is love – and it is love that brings God to the neighbourhood.
God, the three persons of the Trinity – the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit –
exists in an endless circle of loving, of giving and receiving love.
This God, which is love, wants only one thing:
to give itself away to the beloved so that love fills the beloved and joins them as one.
This God, which is love, wants only to fill the beloved – who is you – so that you too overflow
with love and be bound to your neighbours in love.
This God only wants to bind everything together in love,
filling each of us and all that is until all things in heaven and all things on earth
are bound together in love –
and make neighbours of us all, together with rocks and trees and hills and seas.
The mind and heart of God became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.
And it is love that brings God to the neighbourhood.
According to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, what God was up to in Jesus
was reorienting the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
I just love that: reorienting the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
We think that neighbourliness is a modern problem, but apparently it has always been a problem.
Back in his day, Jesus re-oriented the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
And today, Jesus continues to re-orient the world towards increasing neighbourliness.
At Sargent and Victor, thanks to your ministry, many neighbours have become . . . neighbourly.
Many have become neighbourly within these four walls, and outside them.
God’s mind and heart have become flesh and blood and moved into this neighbourhood.
Now while it may feel on January 5th like Christmas has come and gone already,
that is really not true.
Christmas is today.
And Christmas is every day.
Every day is a day for the mind and heart of God to take on flesh and blood and
move into the neighbourhood.
Every day is a day for God’s love to flow into us and bind us to God and to our neighbours
and to everything in all creation.
Every day is a day for this love to move toward more and more harmony and peace among
human beings.
I have taken to wearing a button Rebecca gave to me.
I got it when The Excel Empowerment Centre was participating in Rotary’s Peace Days
in the fall.
But, you know, every day is Peace Day.
So I keep wearing it: it says, “Be a piece of peace.”
One day not long ago I was in the neighbourhood liquor store.
An employee asked about my button – so I told him about it.
“Kool,” he said.
“Right?” I responded. “Like, in my experience it is actually not that hard
to be kind to each other, enjoy one another, and love each other. Not really.”
“So dope,” the guy said. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Love moved into the neighbourhood a little more that day.
And loves moves into the neighbourhood again this morning.
The love of God comes to Sargent and Victor and moves right on in.
The love of God flows to us and into us in our Holy Communion this morning.
Become what you receive: the body of Christ, the love of God – may it flow into you and
may it overflow you into your neighbourhoods and workplaces and schools.
May it be part of God’s design to bind all things together in love.
Christmas is not a day – Christmas is our life.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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