"Last Words" my final sermon delivered 12/20/09

“Last Words…”
The Final Sermon Offered by Toby Jones to the People of FPCHS -12/20/09
(Based on John 1:1-5, 14, John 14: 5-12)


Today is my last official day as your associate pastor, and so this sermon represents the last words I’ll utter from this pulpit. But my words today are “last” ones in another important sense as well.

When I look at my life - particularly my adult, professional life - I see a life that has been filled with words. I speak, I write, I preach, I teach high school and college English. For years I have relied on words to captivate, educate, and motivate others. But God has been working on me lately, convincing me that my time as a man of words is drawing to a close.

You see, the problem with being a man of words is that over time people can mistake your words for your faith. People can hear your sermons and read your books and assume that you’re a real man of God, a genuine example of the faith. And if the preacher isn’t very, very careful and self-aware, he, himself, can make the same false assumption – that his words equal the substance of his faith. In my particular case, my words have always been much better and a whole lot more Christ-like than my life. My sermons have always been more together than my relationships. And I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the gap that exists between my words and my actions, between my sermons and my daily doings. So I want all of you to know that today’s message represents my last words in the sense that God is calling me into a new ministry, one where words will all but cease.

I think it’s fitting that my transition from a life and ministry of words to a life and ministry of actions is taking place during Christmas time, because what Christmas is really about, more than anything else, is incarnation. Incarnation. Now I know when I say that word, some of you are thinking, “instant breakfast drink.” Others of you might be a little intimidated by this complicated sounding word. But it’s really a fairly simple idea. To incarnate something simply means to embody it, to flesh it out. In Christian theology, incarnation is most often understood as God’s action of becoming a person in Jesus. Incarnation has to do with God making himself and his will visible and real in Jesus. And it’s this incarnation, this putting flesh on God and his will,that is the true purpose of what we celebrate as Christmas.

John’s gospel says it beautifully and poetically in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Jesus’ chief purpose in his time on earth was to incarnate God, to show God to people by living, behaving, treating others in a way that gave them a better understanding of what God was like and of what God was after.
It was Jesus’ incarnating purpose that enabled him to say to Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus took the Word, the Logos, the creative power and mystery of God, and fleshed it out, put skin and bones on it, as if to say, “If the Creator of the universe were a person, this is what he would be like, this is how he would treat people, make decisions, live his life.

I think most of us here probably believe that Jesus was and is the ultimate incarnation of God, the one to make “the Word flesh.” But my question this morning is what if God had more in mind for incarnation than just Jesus? What if there is a role for you and me to play in “making the Word flesh”? What if God’s plan from the very beginning was that others would be able to look at our lives and, from looking at our lives, see how God would behave and make decisions and treat others?

What I hope you’ll do this morning, as you listen to my last words, is consider the possibility that we may have tragically missed the point when it comes to Christmas - this notion of the Word becoming flesh. In our well-intentioned rush to the manger to honor and worship Jesus as “the Christ,” as the ultimate incarnation of the living God, we may have lost sight of God’s larger intention for all of us to incarnate the Word as well. I worry that there are hundreds of millions or even billions of Jesus’ followers out there – including you and me – who believe that we are here simply to believe in, admire, and accept Jesus. By granting Jesus unique status as the only incarnation of God, all that’s really left for the rest of us to do is believe in Jesus and perhaps talk other people into believing in him too.

I believe that it’s bad theology to conclude that Jesus made the Word flesh, but we’re only here to accept and believe that Jesus made the Word flesh. And if that’s our only role in the whole Christmas story – to accept and believe - no wonder people are leaving the Church in droves. That kind of theology sets up Christianity to be a religion of words, for a people who don’t really need to do anything, except talk others into believing what we believe. It’s almost as if Jesus took God and made Him flesh, while the rest of us humans have taken God and made Him words, theological doctrines, dogmas, creeds and even sermons. That’s certainly what I’ve done with so much of my life.

But I’ve come to believe that we were put on this earth for the same basic reason Jesus was: you and I are supposed to incarnate God too. We’re supposed to be incarnations of his love, will, and action too. Jesus didn’t come so that we’d believe in him; He didn’t come so we’d accept him and convince others to accept him as well. Jesus came to show us what God was up to and to invite us to join him in that work. So that’s what we’re to do with our lives – we’re to join Jesus in doing the work of God’s kingdom – feeding the poor, housing the homeless, comforting the downtrodden, befriending the lonely, healing the sick, providing gifts - and it’s important that we do all of this without fanfare and without calling attention to ourselves or even to our beliefs, without words…without words. Jesus was very clear about this in the Sermon on the Mount. “When you give to the needy, don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

When we celebrate Jesus’ birth in a few more days, if we think it’s just about gathering around the manger bed to sing “O Come Let Us Adore Him,” then we’ll be making the same huge mistake Christians have been making and remaking for hundreds and hundreds of years. Jesus didn’t come to be adored, though it’s fine for us to adore him. He didn’t come to be worshipped, though it’s fine for us to worship him. He didn’t come to start a new religion and he certainly didn’t come to be invited in to our hearts. (What kind of arrogant and twisted idea is that, anyway? “O, God? I seem to have a little room left here in my heart. Would you like to come in? Would you like the distinguished honor of coming into my very busy, very important life?”)

Jesus came to invite US into HIS heart. He came to show us GOD’S heart and to invite US to participate in God’s movement. I love the way that Robin Meyers puts it in his amazing book Saving Jesus from the Church: “Too much preaching today is framed as man’s invitation to God to come into our story, but the Bible’s invitation is radically different,” Meyers writes. “We are being invited into God’s story.” Bono from U2 put it this way: “For so long, I’d been seeking God’s blessing for the things I was doing. ‘God, I’ve got this song…Lord, there’s this idea…But then a friend told me to stop trying to get God to bless what I was doing and to instead get involved with what God is doing, for that is already blessed.” And what God is up to is a movement that Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” God is inviting us to participate in the building of the kingdom of God. He’s inviting us to help make His Word flesh. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for THAT kind of Christmas?

I am. I am so ready and so hungry to be a person who incarnates the will of God instead of one who talks about it so much. I am so ready to become like my friend Pete, who is always giving, always helping, always trying to make things easier for others and for me. When he learned that I was going through a particularly hard time and was unemployed, he immediately looked around his house for projects he’d been putting off, projects that he was more than capable of doing himself, but he hired me to do them instead, to help me through my unemployment. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

I am ready and hungry to become an incarnator like my friendly neighborhood veterinarian. No matter how busy he was with patients, he would always sit down and ask every one of us about our lives, how we were doing, before he ever got to looking at our pets. And he’d listen to what we say to – he’d really listen. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in with my 11-year old mutt during that same stretch of unemployed time I just referred to. With my checking account close to empty, wouldn’t you know that that dog was due for every shot and vaccination, plus needed blood work and a diabetes test! Well, the good doc didn’t even examine my pooch until he’d sat down and caught up with me. When we got all finished and when my mangy mutt had been treated, we walked out to cashier, where the doc quietly said, “Let’s do this visit on an even exchange – pay me with an advanced copy when you publish your book.” “Excuse me?” Talk about incarnating the goodness and grace of God! My bill was definitely going to be over $200. My book would be lucky if it sold for $15. But that Veterinarian had listened to me. He had heard my situation, and he chose to become an incarnator; he chose to make the Word flesh for me. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

Sure, I can preach a good sermon, write a couple compelling books, teach an engaging class. But I want to help people when nobody’s looking. I want to secretly give away my stuff to people who need it more than I do. I want to show up at the hospital or at a bereaved widower’s doorstep when it isn’t my job to do so, I want to live simply, in harmony with the earth, producing and consuming locally. In short, I want to live a life for the next 25 years that is as compelling as my words have been in the past 25 years.

And so this Christmas, at long last, it’s time for this preacher to shut up. It’s time that I incarnate the gospel instead of preach it. We read John 14 together a few minutes ago, but I want to reread a couple key verses again. Did you notice what Phillip said when he approached Jesus? He said, “Please, Jesus, show us the Father…Show us the Father.” You know, I think people all over the world are hungry for the very same thing. People want to be shown the Father. They want to SEE God in action. Phillip didn’t want to be told about the Father, or argued with about the Father. He just really wanted to see Him. And Jesus replied with gentle understanding, “Phillip, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus could say this because of God’s standard operating procedure. God incarnates. That’s His way of showing himself to us. It’s almost as if this whole conversation in John 14 is designed to set our incarnational theology straight. Jesus tells us “ I’ve come to put flesh and bones on God’s word and ways, so that anyone who wants to know more about God need only watch me and what I do.”

But then Jesus goes on. He doesn’t stop there, because incarnation doesn’t stop with him! He says, “I tell you the truth: YOU will do all the things that I’ve been doing, but not only that…you will do even greater things than what I have been doing.” (John 14:9-12) It’s as if Jesus says, “You, Phillip, and you John, and you Joan, Mary, Margaret, Bill, and Toby – you ALL are supposed to make the word flesh too. You all are supposed to be incarnators too. You guys are supposed to do the very same things that I’ve been doing, because there are people everywhere dying to get a glimpse of the living God.” People are saying to you and to me a thousand times a day in a thousand different ways, “Show us the Father!”

It’s not an accident that nowhere in the gospels does Jesus ever instruct the disciples as to what they should say. Jesus never offers a single lesson on how to speak on his behalf, and do you know why he doesn’t… because you can’t incarnate something with words. You can’t show God to anybody with words. I should know: I’ve been trying to do it for years! You and I can only continue the incarnational work of Jesus by joining our actions with the actions of Jesus, by joining the movement of God that was incarnated by Jesus two thousand years ago.

For far too long we Christians have been gathering at the manger Christmas after Christmas after Christmas. We’ve adored the baby Jesus and thought that the whole purpose of this holiday was to celebrate his birthday and invite him into our hearts. But that’s not what Christmas is all about. Christmas is about incarnation. It’s about God making very clear that his chosen way of turning this world around is by making the Word flesh, not only in Jesus, but in you and in me. The Christmas story is not about and has never been about welcoming or inviting God into our lives! It’s about God inviting us into His. He invites us to become a part of His movement, a movement of making the Word flesh by acts of kindness, compassion, justice, mercy, and forgiveness. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown: making the word flesh!

My brothers and sisters in this wonderful community of First Presbyterian Church of Harbor Springs, I can’t thank you all enough for listening so carefully and so faithfully to my words these last seven years. But the time has come for me to set all words aside. The time has come for me to let my life speak…to let my life speak. It’s time for God’s Word to become flesh in me. Amen.