Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”
(John 6:28-40)
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At this time of year it’s fairly common to hear Christians lamenting that the meaning of Christmas seems to have been lost. The irony of that lament is that it’s based on the assumption that, as Christians, we “get it” - and yet it seems to me that even a lot of very faithful and dedicated Christians have missed the big picture, and they’ve reduced Christmas to just a few loosely connected snippets of a much larger story. Several years ago there was an episode of the TV show “Thirtysomething” that involved a seasonal religious debate between two of the characters – Hope, a Christian, and her Jewish husband Michael. Hope wanted to know why Jews celebrated Hannukah – which actually ended just a few days ago. She asked, “Do you really believe that a handful of Jews held off a huge army by using a bunch of lamps that miraculously wouldn’t run out of oil?” Michael replied with a question of his own. “Do you really believe that an angel appeared to some teenage girl who got pregnant without a man and traveled to Bethlehem and spent the night in a barn and had a baby that turned out to be the Saviour of the world?” As a Christian, I have little to say about Hannukah, except to wish a “Happy Hannukah” to the Jewish community. But as for Michael’s question about Christmas? That was actually a pretty fair summary of Luke’s story and if you were to ask Christians what Christmas is about you’d probably get a variety of variations on that one basic theme. C.S. Lewis once wrote about Christmas that “the whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear – a Jewish girl at her prayers.” And that’s correct as far as what we would call Luke’s Christmas story goes. If there were only Luke’s Gospel then Christmas would, indeed, be about what Lewis described as that “little point.” And that’s the problem. Christians often become narrower and narrower in their faith and we start settling for little points rather than the big picture. Our faith is usually a lot bigger and grander than we think it is.
We usually only think of two of the Gospels as having Christmas stories: Luke speaks for Mary and Matthew speaks for Joseph. We don’t often think of the Gospel of John as having a Christmas story, and yet John’s Christmas story might well be the most important of all. John doesn’t mention the birth of Jesus, I suspect because he never fell into the trap of narrowing things down to a single “little point.” John is totally concerned with the big picture – the biggest picture of all, in fact. Luke and Matthew relate a story that happened on a particular night in that little town of Bethlehem; John’s story takes place in the depths of the cosmos and the far recesses of time itself. You could say that if Luke speaks for Mary and Joseph speaks for Matthew, then John speaks for God! John doesn’t worry about explanations – he gets right to the heart of the matter. His first words (which we didn’t read tonight) are clear: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” In John’s Gospel, the big picture is shared: Jesus is the One sent by God; Jesus was a man who came down from the heavens; through Jesus God decided to get down to earth – not just to get a closer look at what had been created, but to enter into our reality of flesh and blood. The Creator became the creature. That was John’s message.
Think of some of what we read a few moments ago: the work of God is to “believe in him whom he has sent;” “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world;” “I have come down from heaven, ... to do ... the will of him who sent me.” Those are big picture statements, and some people’s view of God won’t allow for this type of understanding. “How could a mere human claim to have come from heaven?” they ask. The author Madeleine L’Engle wrote that “The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it’s far less mind-boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us.” She had no problem with what C.S. Lewis called the narrow point. It was the big picture that gave her pause – probably as it should cause us all to look up in wonder, in awe and even sometimes with doubt. Some of the people of Jesus’ day knew him and they couldn’t believe it. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” they asked. “Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? … And they took offence at him.” The narrow point was easy; the big picture was tough. In the Koran, Muhammad wrote that “those who claim that God has begotten a son preach a monstrous falsehood.” Ironically, Muhammad got the big picture better than most Christians. Yes, indeed – we claim that God has begotten a son. We go even farther and claim that this son is an incarnation of God. But rather than being a “monstrous falsehood,” we claim it as a mind-boggling and wondrous truth. It should be. It’s not easy to believe. It shouldn’t be. But it’s the claim of our faith.
Soren Kierkegaard once tried to explain the incarnation in a parable. A great and good king fell in love with a lowly peasant girl and contemplated how to win her love. He considered going directly to her or even sending a messenger from his royal court but then he realized that the relationship wouldn’t be real – she would be compelled to respond to such an invitation. He thought about disguising himself as a peasant and coming to her that way, but he realized that would be dishonest and dishonesty violates the very essence of love. Finally, the king realized that there was only one way out of his dilemma. He would have to give up his throne and all the perks, privileges and wealth that accompanied it in order to truly be the equal of his bride and to honestly win her love – and if he did that he still had no guarantee that the peasant girl would return his love. Kierkegaard’s point was that love – if it is to be real – has to be based on equality and has to run the honest risk of being rejected.
That’s the risk God took in coming down to earth. It was a display of love without parallel. In receiving Communion tonight we remember that this is, indeed, a down to earth God whom we worship; a real flesh and blood deity. Christmas, you see, isn’t just about a baby in a manger. That’s just a “little point.” Christmas is about the big picture: an Almighty God who came to us in weakness and vulnerability and humility; who came as one of us!
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