Star Words

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Transcript

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

 Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

January 5, 2025

“Star Words”

John 1: 1-5, 14-17 – Common English Bible

In the beginning was the Word
     and the Word was with God
     and the Word was God.
 2 The Word was with God in the beginning.
 3 Everything came into being through the Word,
     and without the Word
     nothing came into being.
 What came into being
 4     through the Word was life,[a]
     and the life was the light for all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
     and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

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.

It was a bitterly cold Christmas Eve and the whole family was at church for the midnight service – all except Sam.  Church just wasn’t his thing.  At home alone, he gazed out the window and suddenly realized he hadn’t fed the animals in the barn yet.  He rushed out, lit the heaters, fed the animals, and walked back to the house as quickly as he could.  It was so cold, the snow crunched below his feet.  That’s North Dakota cold!  

But along the way, Sam noticed some little sparrows.  Some with their feathers ruffling in the bitter wind looked like they were frozen to a branch.  Others had fallen to the ground, flopping around on the snow.  He feared they might all freeze to death so he tried to shoo them toward the barn.  But every time he got close, they flopped away.  They were afraid of him.  To the birds, he was a giant, scary-looking creature, so he tried to think what he could do to help them.  I wouldn’t scare them away if only I could become like them, he thought – an idea he immediately dismissed as silly.  But then it came to him.  He ran to the barn and got some seed and laid it out in a line straight to the open door.  And sure enough, one by one, the birds hopped their way to the barn, eating seed all the way.  Once inside, they flew to the rafters, safe and warm.  

Unbeknownst to him, his initial idea illustrated a big theological word – incarnation.  If only I could become like them, I could help them.  They wouldn’t be afraid.  That’s the Christmas story.  In Jesus, God became an ordinary human, born into the most lowly of situations.  His mother was made to walk for days because a brutal tyrant from thousands of miles away decreed a hardship on every citizen in his occupied land.  They arrived homeless in a strange city, looking for any kind of shelter.  An innkeeper did the best he could and she gave birth in a barn full of animals and placed her baby in their feeding trough.  All of which is to say, this was not a birth in the palace of a powerful royal family, but born vulnerable to the elements – as messy as any human experience could be.  

That’s Luke, a journey to Bethlehem ordered by the Roman emperor with stories of shepherds, angels, and barn animals.  Matthew tells a quite different story, with dreams, a star and magi, and a journey to Egypt to escape from a murderous, paranoid king.  In Mark, there’s no mention of birth at all.  And in John we have a kind of third “birth” story.  A cosmic origin – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  In verse 14, John further clarifies, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Incarnation.  

In some interpretations, the “Word” means wisdom.  More commonly, the Word is interpreted to mean Jesus.  But, if Jesus is the Word and the Word is God, then is Jesus God?  Verse 18 seems to contradict this.  “No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to God’s heart, who has made God known.”  So, with all that wonderful clarity, John seems to say in one verse, “The Word was God living among us,” and a few verses later, “it wasn’t God but Jesus, the Son, who makes God known.”  So, Jesus is God.  And Jesus isn’t God…  Simple, right?

And yet, the message of incarnation is powerful because of its simplicity.  God understands our human experience because Jesus has been there – our suffering, our sorrow, the injustice that threatens to overwhelm.  As the spiritual says, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus.”  God is not a being who looks down on us from on high, judging from on top of a throne.  For God so loved the world, God’s very self chooses to enter our mess.  Or is it, God sent Jesus to do it?  

Into this confusion, the church “helpfully” adds the doctrine of the Trinity – God the three in one – in which Jesus both is and isn’t God.  And add the explanation that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine – which to me sounds like he isn’t fully either one.

If this seems confusing, even Jesus’ disciples couldn’t answer when he asked, who do you say that I am?  

J.A.T. Robinson was a major source in shaping liberal Christian theology.  In 1963 he wrote, it’s simple:  “Jesus lived God” – which kind of says both.  It’s more than saying he was a wise and brilliant teacher, a prophet.  And it’s less than an insistence that he was fully divine or that he was God.  Maybe no, maybe yes.

Carter Heyward was a groundbreaking feminist liberation theologian.  She said that Jesus had to be considered divine by the “patristic authorities,” also known as the Church Fathers, because they had such a low view of humanity.  They didn’t want to empower people with the example of Jesus but elevate the necessity of the church to act as their intermediary.

Thirty-five years ago, I had to explain my theology in my master’s thesis.  I wrote that Jesus was “a human so conforming to the will of God as to become divine.”  Therefore, not born divine, but becoming more than human – not unlike enlightenment or the Buddha.  But how do I square that with, “In the beginning, the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  So much for a simple explanation.

Does it have to be this complicated?  What’s the point?  Why do we ask such questions as “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” when the most pressing issue is how we live God?  Not to be God.  Not a Nirvana to achieve, but to join in the messiness of humanity, God’s original purpose of the incarnation, to help others find their way into the safety and warmth of a barn on a bitter cold night – which is how we find our way. 

Jesus came to show us how to live God and in so doing, how to become as fully an authentic human being as we can be, shaped by love and forgiveness and grace – in a world dominated by greed, violence, retribution, and the pursuit of power at any cost to people born into the most vulnerable experience any human may have, including Jesus.

But still, don’t we want to know, who was Jesus?  Just when we’re too sure, Carter Heyward wrote in Our Passion for Justice, “the people who wished him to be a political zealot found him to be a person of prayerful spirituality; those who wanted him to be a person of prayerful spirituality discovered they had on their hands an offensive activist.  To those who wanted him to be a messiah, he retorted, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’  And in the presence of those who demanded he explain himself, he stood silent.”

Who do you say that he is?  It’s wonderfully simple.  And equally wonderful, it’s not simple at all but deeper than we can ever hope to perceive.

Like the words on these little cards – simple and profound.  Last year we had our first experience with “star words,” quickly growing in popularity in churches as a spiritual practice to begin the new year.  For those unfamiliar, we print out a list of words generated by a liturgical group called Sanctified Art for each person to choose one as their guiding word for the new year.  But they aren’t words we choose for ourselves.  They’re placed face down to pick up randomly.   

And we have an option for those worshiping online.  Go to our website – missionhillsucc.org – and right on the home page you will see a link that will take you to something that looks a little like a spinning Wheel of Fortune.  Click the wheel and your word will be generated from the same list. 

Why randomly?  Why not choose the word we want, that calls to us?  Last year I picked up my random word and it was “listening.”  I immediately wanted to put it back and choose another one.  I do enough listening already, I thought – as if that could ever be true.  But I stuck with it, periodically pondering its meaning for 2024.  It wasn’t until the 12th month that I realized the word was “listening” and not “listen.”  That shift answered a question I had been carrying around for six months.  It suddenly made sense. 

The word you pick today may immediately make sense.  An epiphany on the day before Epiphany.  Or it may not seem to apply to you at all.  And maybe it won’t.  Or maybe if you stick with it, it will reveal something you couldn’t have expected, wouldn’t have asked for.  Think of it as a word to ponder occasionally.  It might guide you in an unexpected direction.  Or maybe it won’t.  The best gift is to simply open yourself to explore some deeper meaning – using just one word.