John 1:1-18

Who Are We, Really?

Sermon preached January 10, 2021
Scott Bowerman, Central Presbyterian Church

Introduction

In the summer of 2017, I stood on a windswept island off the west coast of Scotland with my
heart in my throat and tears in my eyes.

Like Supertramp sang in “The Logical Song” I had a longing in my heart - “won’t someone tell
me who I am?” We all feel that way, don’t we? We all want to know who we are, where we fit in
the world, where we come from, who our people are.

So Susan and I traveled to Scotland, in part so I could better answer that question. We called it an
“ancestry tour” to help us reconnect to our roots. Since my father was adopted I know almost
nothing about his birth mother and father - but my mother was a MacKenzie, from Greenock,
Scotland and emigrated to America when she was 14.

Susan and I met up with my mother’s cousin Myra and her daughter Claire, and Myra shared her
memories of my grandfather and what little she knew about my great-grandfather. We went to
see the house my mother grew up in and then to the farm where my mother’s mother grew up.
Even while preparing this sermon I got choked up remembering that.

Shortly after we headed out into the Highlands with me driving on the wrong side of the ride and
Susan hyper-vigilant, warning me when I was about to drive into oncoming traffic. We ended up
on the Isle of Skye, that windswept island off the west coast of the Highlands where my great-
grandfather John MacKenzie was born and raised. A wild, sparsely populated and incredibly
beautiful place. We went to a re-creation of a typical home from the 1800's - dirt floor, thatched
roof. And as I stood outside and looked at the landscape around me - craggy mountains and cliffs
and the ocean crashing - I felt down into my bones, this is where I come from. This is a big part
of who I am.

The gospel of John opens with the story of who Jesus Christ really is. And from that, from him,
we learn who we really are too.

The Logos

You see, all our stories, the story of the whole universe, starts with this one.

We’ve just read and learned from the nativity accounts in Luke and Matthew - now John presses
back, way back, to tell us the deeper origins of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ, he says, is the Word of God. John uses a Greek word - Logos - drawn from
philosophy to explain this. The Logos is the divine intelligence and order behind the universe.
The reason that water always boils at 212 F at sea level; the reason that planets circle stars in
predictable orbits; the reason that a sperm and egg cell can come together and a human being
results, is because of the order that the Logos built into the universe.

But John pushes further than that. The Word - the Logos - was with God in the beginning, and
everything that is was created through him. Galaxies and beavers and mountains and planets and
hummingbirds and you and me too.

And then John says the most incredible leap - in Jesus Christ the Word became flesh and lived
among us.

It’s one thing to believe there is a creator up there somewhere. Plato said, “The Father of all
things is past finding out.” Too remote, different, unknowable. But the Christian story is that God
came to us, showed himself to us - and became one of us.

You can sense the wonder in John’s words - “we have seen his glory.” -In the Hebrew Bible we
are told that no one can see the glory of God and live - yet here God came so close that people
touched him, could smell him and talk with him and be touched by him, hear him speak with a
human voice in their own language. He looked and sounded exactly like one of them, one of us -
yet was at the same time, God in the flesh, God who moved into the neighborhood.

Madeline L’Engle put it like this: “What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond
finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is
one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was
tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some
Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy
Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of
God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.”

That is the story of us all - we live in a created world - not one that emerged out of the void by
chance - a world that is upheld by the Word of God - and that we are created beings - we have
our ultimate origin not in a Scottish island or Korea or Ireland or anywhere else to where we
trace our heritage - we come from the mind and heart and will of God. And when God created
human beings - what did he say about us in Genesis - it was very good.

The darkness

That’s completely wonderful. But there’s a problem. Vs. 10 - “He was in the world - (amazing!) -
and the world came into being through him - (yes!) - but the world did not know him. He came to
what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”

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That is shocking. How could that happen? Because the world is shrouded in darkness. Things
aren’t right.

The world itself is out of whack.

There’s an infectious-disease specialist named Tony Goldberg who works at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison. He traveled to Kibale National Park in Uganda to
study infectious organisms. When he returned home, he felt something up his nose and
found a tick embedded way up in a nostril. This kind of tick - an Amblyomma tick - is a
nasty bugger - they carry bacteria that cause diseases such as Q fever and African tick bite
fever - and they also hop from animal to animal to feed their hunger for blood, spreading
disease, for instance, from chimps to humans.

Nose ticks! The world is out of whack. There is darkness, suffering, agony in this world.

And we’re out of whack. Our minds, our hearts, are clouded by darkness. We’re lost and broken
and desperately need saving.

Before 9/11, I sometimes had to work hard to make that case. The 90's were a decade of
optimism. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union collapsed - the West won the Cold War.
The economy was roaring, gas was cheap, this internet thing started taking off. People thought
the West had won and that human progress was going to save us.

Then 9/11 - and we realized that the darkness in the world was there all along.

And we saw the darkness in DC this week. How lost we are. How quickly the darkness can take
hold even in America. How quickly it can take hold in all of us. And how fragile is the thin
veneer of civilization.

You’ve seen the pictures of what happened. The man with his feet up on the desk of the Speaker
of the House - was quoted as saying he’s a proud white nationalist and ready to die for President
Trump and take some people with him. A man parading a Confederate flag - that horrible symbol
of white supremacy - through our Capitol building.

Darkness, my friends. A police officer dies defending the Capitol, 60 others are injured. A
woman is shot and dies- a veteran who served her country, four deployments to the Middle East -
who, her friends say, was taken in by conspiracy theories.

What is most horrific, is that this is dressed up in the garb of a perverted brand of Christianity.
People in the crowd referring to the Proud Boys as “God’s Warriors.” One insurrectionist
paraded a flag around the House chamber with a cross in the corner - the “Christian” flag.” 1
Others had banners that read “Jesus Saves” and other familiar Christian-sounding slogans. All
that wasn’t fringe - it was central to that movement. Sinclair Lewis was not far off when he

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observed “When fascism comes to American it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the
cross.”

Carrying the cross...don’t think you can isolate the events in DC to a small, fringe group. What
we saw is a visible tumor emerging from a cancer growing within much of the church in this
country. A cancer of a false Christianity mixed with grievance, conspiracy theories like Qanon
that have become another set of infallible scriptures, and a bogus patriotism. A false religion with
its own prophets, some in politics, some in American religious life. And it is in our churches, all
through the country and in Franklin County too.

Too many pastors like me have been shied away from naming this for fear of dividing our
churches or heaven forbid, hurting the church budget. Our cowardice has allowed this cancer to
metastasize and become a deadly threat and it is bringing shame and dishonor to our Lord Jesus
Christ.

Perhaps you think I am being overwrought. Consider these stinging words from a Christ-follower
I know:

“It was the beauty of Christ, the scriptures and the church which brought me to
faith...(and in Christian friends I experienced) the beauty of God and world-changing
love.

But while the church is inherently made up of people so broken they recognize their need
for a savior, the past five years have revealed the ugliest nature of the church on a scale
that is unsettling. (A)ccepting and spreading lies, nationalism, racial ignorance and
blatant racism, hypocrisy, greed for power, cherry-picking legislation of morality,
unapolatetic pride, etc. - all these stand as crimes against the law of the Lord...

To my friends outside the church...the church is indefensible at this moment...All I’d like
to do is offer apologies for the church - but how can I do that when so many are
unapologetic. Instead, I can only request that you will not let the sins of those in the
church quell forever in our mind the inkling that God may exists...I pray you start with the
contrast: God is not like the modern American church.”

Here me clearly - I certainly do not believe that everyone who voted for or supports the President,
who has concerns about the election, is part of this. But it is undeniable that this heresy, this
idolatry, is all through the American church.

I grieve for those searching for God, attracted to Christ but repelled by what some of the
American church has become. I grieve for those who invaded the capital and the many like them,
so desperate for something to believe in that they’d give themselves to this idolatry. And I grieve
for the church in America.

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Our God saves

What does God do for human beings are lost in darkness? God doesn’t abandon us, God doesn’t
wipe us out - he comes to save us.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...full of grace and truth.

Flesh - describes the entire human condition. We are flesh because we are weak, fragile,
vulnerable, needy creatures. Enslaved to the powers of sin and death, we do what the apostle Paul
calls the “works of the flesh” - immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife,
jealousy, outbursts of rage, disputes, dissensions, factions.

And to say the “Word became flesh” is to say that the Word assumed the whole of our
dilapidated condition. He becomes weak, dependent, vulnerable, mortal. The Word is tempted by
all the indulgent and violent instincts of flesh, yet he doesn’t sin. God doesn’t recoil from our
flesh. He enters it to make it his own and to transform it from within. 2

Transform it - not only that - John says that to all who believed in his name - we become children
of God.

Now in a sense, every human being is a child of God because we are all created by God - but
John means something more - that God invites us into a deeply personal, intimate relationship
where he loves us as we love our children (only more fully and wisely) and we know God,
experience God, as our heavenly Father.

A writer named Frank Neff tells of a time he decided to call his father by his first name.
He thought it meant they would relate to each other adult-to-adult.

His father said, “You can call me by my first name if you like. There are hundreds of
people who do. But there are only three people in the world who can call me Dad. Which
name do you think carries more weight?”

The right to become children of God - who call God, “Father.” The weight of that. The privilege
of that.

But you see, this is an invitation - to which we must respond - if we want to become children of
God we do so by faith in the Son of God. And if you have - this, is what is most true about you.
Created by God - and a child of God - and God is your heavenly Father!

That is who we are. That is who we must be. Before political party or ethnic identity or race or
denomination or any other loyalty or human classification. Only then do we begin to have
anything to offer this lost, broken world.

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I don’t know how to save our country from falling into the abyss we looked into Wednesday. But
I do know, from God’s word, what will save the church of Jesus Christ, so we can be salt and
light, so we can people of love and truth. It is that we become first and foremost, before anything
else - children of God through Jesus Christ. That is our salvation. That is our hope. And Jesus
Christ is the hope of the world. Amen.

Endnotes

1. https://religionnews.com/2021/01/06/as-chaos-hits-capitol-two-forms-of-faith-on-display/

2. Peter J. Leithart, “Word Became Flesh” in First Things, Dec. 15, 2017.