Sermon No 86
Back to the Beginning of Time.
2nd Sunday before Lent
A sermon preached by Roger Laing (Parish Evangelist) on Sunday 7th February 2021 preached live at St Paulinus Church, Crayford (based on John 1:1-14, Proverbs 8:1,22-31, Psalm 104:26-end and Colossians 1:15-20)
Well good morning. And a very warm welcome to you wherever you may be in the world on this the 2nd Sunday before Lent. For those that do not know me I am Roger Laing, and I am a Licensed Lay Minister at St Paulinus Church in Crayford and it’s great to be with you today?
Alleluia, alleluia. The Lord be with you. Hear the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to John. Glory to You O Lord.
The Word Became Flesh
“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (NRSV)
This is the Gospel of the Lord, praise to you O Christ.
May I speak and may you hear in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. [All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”] (John 1:1-5 NKJV)
These words from the beginning of John’s gospel really are so profound that on them linger creation itself. They are so great that within them they contain truths that are utterly beyond our understanding. Yet, they are the words of a man that knew Jesus personally, and we as mere mortals must try and understand them in our own personal lives and what they might mean in the context of the wider world.
So where do we begin? Well, a good place to start is at the beginning. Now today is not Trinity Sunday I know, but the topic of conversation today is in essence about the deity of Christ which in many ways is not unlike the question over the trinity, for it asks us to consider something that is so unnatural to our daily living that it becomes the supernatural.
It will not surprise you either, to know that the questions over the nature and deity of Jesus have been spoken, debated, and written about for over two thousand years, by much greater minds than my own, but hopefully my level of theological understanding as a laymen will in some way not be too dissimilar to your own and hopefully cause you to connect with, and enhance the way in which you might interpret these most profound words for yourself.
Now I don’t know about you but when I first came to faith in God, I did not understand the idea of God being three separate and distinct persons and to be perfectly truthful it is still hard to grasp the full meaning of that concept when you actually think about it in any detail. And perhaps it’s even harder to know for certain the nature of Jesus Himself.
But brothers and sisters, if you have ever felt like this, we are in good company, for many that have gone before us, have also struggled with the concept of the nature of God and His Son. In-fact the matter wasn’t really officially resolved even in the Church until the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE.
However, Johns gospel deems this matter of our Lord’s identity so important that he places it right at the beginning of his gospel. He doesn’t mess around with birth or genealogy narratives like the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, perhaps implying that he feels it is so critical, that if we don’t grasp that identity then there is little point in going any further at all?
So really my intention is to emphasise that understanding to you this morning if you were in any doubt? For if we do conclude anything different, then our faith is based potentially on Jesus just being a good moral teacher and nothing more, in which case we all might as well go home and have an early lunch!
Now there are lots of books on this matter of the identity and character of Jesus and where in history he might be placed and there are some denominations today outside the established church, claiming to be Christians, that have quite different interpretations on what we might acknowledge to be the truth, but really when you examine the text of which we have just heard in our gospel reading, for me there can, in the end, be little doubt for this was written by one of the closest disciples to Jesus Himself. John would have heard and seen first-hand who exactly His Lord was. For John was the youngest of the disciples and outlived the remaining apostles. He was the only one to actually die of natural causes. John along with James and Peter were the witnesses at the raising of the daughter of Jairus and were present too at the transfiguration. There is also some evidence to suggest that John was the favourite disciple too! So, John is perfectly placed to convey the message of the identity of Jesus.
If we were to read the gospel in its original translation it would have been in Greek of course because that was the language which was used for literary work in those days, and it is through that translation that we can begin to understand how the nature of Christ became apparent to the wider world. For in that text, we would find the Greek word known as ‘Logos’ which literally translates to ‘Word’. and in this context that word ‘Logos’ is deemed to be a title of Jesus and is key to this understanding of Jesus being there right at the beginning of time.
Now logos means different things in different disciplines, but in this setting of John’s gospel and seen through the eyes of the Christian Logos, it identifies that through which all things are made as divine, and further defines Jesus as the incarnate Logos. The Word made man it can be said. For if time began before creation in the physical universe, as we know it, then it was there that the Word was. Of course, we cannot know where or when time began, but in an eternal sense the ‘Logos’ was there. And so, taking that a stage further if God is eternal then so must the Word be eternal and with God.
Simple really!! Are you still with me? Nobody said being a Christian would be easy, let alone why we call ourselves Christian!
There are of course many great theologians that have come to this conclusion through their depth of knowledge in the Greek language. However, I must confess I am not a Greek scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know that languages cannot always be interpreted in the fullest meaning that it was originally written and this seems to be the case here as it has been translated from Greek to the English language, but in summary it can be said that the original Greek word of ‘Logos’ had its meaning as a person and not just as an attribute of God. Therefore, we can quite rightly determine that Jesus is separate, and distinct from the Father, yet was with God at the beginning of time.
And so, when we examine the accompanying readings of today, we get a sense of Jesus being there right at the beginning in the creation of the universe. In Proverbs we heard of the wisdom of Christ being present in creation, and we can see how the words of the proverb run parallel with the creation accounts of Genesis. And what I noticed from this particular proverb as I prepared this sermon was at v27 where it says, ‘When he drew a circle on the face of the deep’ (Proverbs 8:27) this infact by definition alludes to the spherical nature of the formation of the earth. So, at a time that no-one understood the earth to be anything but flat, here was the bible telling us that the earth was infact curved! I find these little facts fascinating and they are scattered throughout the bible, the prophetic nature of God… brilliant!
In our Psalm we again reference a time of creation through animals and creatures of the deep v24-26, “In wisdom You have made them all…There the ships sail about; there is that Leviathan, which You have made to play there”. (Psalm 104:26-end.)
If nobody has heard of that creature called the Leviathan before then you may be interested to know that there are some that say that it could possibly have been some kind of ancient dinosaur, just a thought for you to ponder, and so when people say, ‘What about the dinosaurs, there’s no mention of those in the bible?’ You can now reply with certainty and say, ‘There is evidence to suggest there are’. And you can read about this great mysterious creature in both the books of Job and Isaiah too.
Our New Testament reading from Colossians allows us also to trust the gospel of John as truth, for St Paul in his letter states, “He (that is Jesus) is the image of the invisible God…for by all things were created….all things were created through Him and for Him… And He is before all things and in all things consist” (Colossians 1:15-20).
Brothers and sisters there is no doubt, you can be assured that Jesus Christ the One on whom our faith is founded is God Himself and in Him we can trust.
So now that we have established (hopefully) that Jesus is the Word, and the Word was and is God then where do we go from here? For these ultimately are just written words, albeit inspired, and we claim to follow a living faith.
Well, in the context of our current times we can be assured that Jesus will be walking alongside us and through to the other side, however long that takes. And as the head of our church, He will be asking us all to look at ways we can move from this place. For me the church will be different to what it has been as we move forward, and this should be apparent here at St. Paulinus as you see the way we are conducting services for example, but there is nothing to fear from that change, it will simply be re-creating itself, just as it has done throughout its long history.
There will be things we keep from our lockdown experience and somethings we won’t. There will be new things that will come along to enhance our worship and delivery such as enabling wi-fi into the church allowing us to reach further, deeper, and wider into the community and beyond. You will note I am recording this sermon to upload to our own You Tube channel.
Jesus was, as we have heard present in the creation of everything, and He will continue to be present in any re-creation of His Church. For God is what we call omnipresent (present everywhere at the same time), omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful)
We may consider this period of the last year to be a period of darkness with much suffering, which is true, but take heart, for Jesus is the Light of the World and He forever glows. Sometimes He might appear to us only dimly, but He is always glowing. Think back to our gospel reading we heard in v9, “That was the true Light which gives light to everyman coming into the world” (John 1:9)
The aspects of light and darkness have always played a huge part in the stories of people throughout the ages and within each story there is a different message, and each message will mean something different to all that we meet. Nothing can be more powerful than an individual account of one’s conversion to faith. With that in mind might I encourage you to consider taking part in the current course Fr Paul is running around the four gospels and our Lent course called ‘Passion in Perspective’ during which I will be giving a personal angle on the subject of darkness which hopefully some of you may find of interest?
Also, don’t forget that today is national Yorkshire pudding day so I wholeheartedly commend you to go from this place and celebrate this day with the finest dining that one can indulge and to think of it as ‘manna’ from heaven!
Partake in that manna and be beacons of light knowing that what you have within you has been present since time itself began. Remember and digest these words from John.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2)
Finally, I want to end today, not with that bible quote as great as that might be, but simply to pay tribute to a certain Sir Captain Tom Moore, who in my opinion managed to harness the concept of looking forward with positivity to better times. He certainly was a remarkable man I am sure you would agree, and his life is testament of why none of us should give up, because only God knows just what is around the corner.
Sir Tom achieved more in the last year of his life than he could ever have dreamt and so could we. For Jesus stands alongside us all.
So, today I would like to encourage you all as we continue our battle against COVID-19 and in the words of Captain Sir Tom, say to you, “Tomorrow will be a good day”.
Amen.
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