God's Selfie

Text: John 1:1, 10-18

Focus: Jesus is God's snapshot of Himself

Function: to focus on how Jesus keeps us together instead of separates us.

Form: Lecture, story telling

Intro:

After a while, you will probably figure out that there are a few people who are my muses, a few people who have had significant influence in my theological journey.

Of the classics, I love reading Kierkegaard, Boenhoeffer, and C.S. Lewis. Of the more contemporary authors, Tony Compolo, Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, N.T. Wright, Donald Miller, Shane Claybourne and a blogger named Byron Flynderson are among my favorites.

But there is one person who doesn't write. I consider him to be more of a Prophet than an author. And he is unique to the Church of the Brethren. He is an artist and he has served as NYC speaker, evangelist, COB Moderator and pastor for years. His name is Paul Grout.

Most of you know him or have heard of him.

And he said something that I considered profound during an insight session at the 2001 Annual Conference in Baltimore Maryland.

He was speaking about our Brethren heritage of being “people of the Book.”

He was speaking of the Bible.

And he was talking about how Christians have let the Bible cause us to divide and we have fought over meanings and interpretations.

And if you have ever heard him speak, he uses a lot of gestures, his sermons are visual pantomimes or actual works of art.

He used an issue that I have never heard us argue over, but it made a good illustration. He said, for example the debate over creationism verses evolution.

One side can point to these passages in Genesis and say (pick up bible and point to the passage) “see hear! See it! It is as plain as the nose on your face! There are 6 days listed.”

And the other side can say: “Look, before the first day of creation listed in Genesis the text clearly says: “the heavens and the earth existed.” “The earth could have been billions of years old before that time...”

“And, the argument can ensue...

“Instead, both sides should take the book, the passage, hold it to their breasts and say, as an act of worship, to the living God: `wow! God, you are awesome! What a treasure you have given to us for us to begin to try and understand You!'”

And there are a lot of ways that we look at the bible.

My fundamental Nazarene nephew reminds me that the Bible is not a science book and was never intended to be one.

Some of us take it that every word is God breathed by the Holy Spirit and that even though we see different styles, and competing precepts by different authors, somehow, miraculously, God superintended each and every word and therefore it is without error.

Some hold to the original documents to have been led by God's Spirit, but acknowledge that there are minor differences in the transcription of the documents, hence the debate among English Speaking more fundamental believers as to the King James Version versus more modern English translations.

Some believe that it is a collection of stories of people who were trying to explain their own concept of God, and the ideas were very good, so the Church canonized them into the Holy Scriptures.

But all of us -all of us- find meaning, find personal challenge, growth and spirituality, through these words. All of us are sincere in our belief.

Without the scriptures, we would not have a good concept of who Jesus is.

God has given us this gift of scripture that we might behold God.

And John goes on to tell us in this passage that not only did God give us scripture, in this case, the Old Testament, to see God, but God gave us a snapshot of Himself when God became man and walked among us a Jesus, the Christ.

These concepts, these phrases from today's text: “The Word was in the beginning..., ..the Word became flesh and walked among us” explain the mystery of God's purpose in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

And, the text says, in seeing Jesus, we see God.

Now, let us get a little bit esoteric for a minute.

I know I do better preaching when I tell stories.

I know that when I do a sort of lecture to explain things, or try to explain things, people's eyes sort of glaze over and I lose the crowd pretty quickly.

So stay with me for just a few minutes. Please.

This is a little bit of the history of belief in God.

The universe appears to be infinite.

We are taught at a young age that if we shine a laser out into space that the beam of light will never stop traveling if it never hits anything. The end of that beam of light would go on infinitely.

We understand the concept of infinity. We understand that it must exist. But since it has no real end, we cannot prove it. However, it is really the only logical answer.

And we understand that we are finite beings.

It is sort of wonderful that we can understand and believe in a concept, but we can't prove it.

If I am losing you, tell me. Stop me, raise your hand and ask me to clarify it.

We perceive infinity, but we cannot measure it.

There really cannot be an end to the universe because what would be at the end, but more of the same?

We understand the concept of infinity, but by its very nature, we cannot quantify, or measure it.

And we also believe that God is infinite.

God's name: “I Am that I Am” is a description of God's infinite nature. God has no beginning or no end. God's explanation to John was “the one who was, who is, and who is to come.”

Infinite.

That may seem impossible, but something has to have been infinite with no beginning point.

When I was young and trying to defend the faith in the era of science and reason someone asked me where God came from. If I said “His Father” then they could ask where that Father came from and you could go back infinitely.

Somewhere, somehow, something has to be eternal.

Scientists can sort of come up with a beginning, they think it is about 13.8 billion years old. But what existed before that? There is still an infinite amount of time before that.

Scientists point to a big bang that started from a quark and they have postulated that it might, or will, return to that point and start the cycle over again. But that does not explain where that original quark came from.

Something has always existed. It is either God, or matter.

I postulate that it takes as more faith to believe that nothing created itself than to believe in God, the creator.

But I digress.

Here is the point of this passage, to me.

God, being infinite wants to have a relationship with us, humankind, but we are finite.

God wants us to know and understand God.

So God, sent a finite portion of Himself to us, in the form of Jesus, the Nazarene so that we can see what parts of God are the most important to God for us to understand.

And let me shore that idea up from the original Greek words used in this passage.

In the beginning was the Word, the Greek word used there is “Logos.”

The word Logos, in this concept can probably best be described as “the words that explain.”

We use it a lot.

For example: the name for the field of study, Theology, is the mixture two Greek words: Theos, the Greek Word for God, and Logos, the Greek word for “word” or “words.”

Hence, Theology is “the words of God.”

Psychology is “the words of the psyche, human mind.”

Biology is the words of bios, life. And etc.

The understanding of, the explanation of, or in very recent terms, the selfie of God.

Jesus is the snapshot of God, given to humanity, God's own self-revelation of God's own self, given to us so that we can understand God.

God's own explanation of God's own self became flesh.

Now, let me re-read verses 14-18 to repeat the process of understanding Scripture that Paul Grout expressed, so that we too can read it and go “wow!”

¹⁴And 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. ¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

From Jesus we all receive Grace upon grace.

Law, and from later readings in the New Testament, we read “death” came from the OT, but grace and truth comes from Jesus, the Messiah.