The Word Became Flesh: Part 2

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THE WORD BECAME FLESH: PART 2

John 1:1-5, 14, Neh. 9 (sel. verses) and 1 Tim. 1:12-17

A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church

by Carter Lester on December 13, 2015

Let me show you something that is fast (show smartphone). I read this week that this little phone has more processing speed than the entire space program had the day they put a man on the moon. (Think about that!). There are more applications on this phone than your first three computers had combined! Remember what it once took to research an answer when you had to use an encyclopedia, or even go to a library? Or more recently, go to the desktop computer, fire it up and wait on your dial up connection? Now thanks to these things, we have tons of useless information at our fingertips in a matter of seconds!

Let me show you something that is slow (go and pick up baby Alicia). This is Alicia Davis. Now she is very cute and adorable. But still, she is very slow: it will probably be six months before she can even sit up on her own. It will take a nearly a year – or if she is like me – even longer,before she can walk on her own. Can you imagine what it would be like if we had to wait a year for our pet dogs and cats to be able to walk alone? Most animals in the wild are hunting on their own and fully independent of their moms by two years. How many years do you think it will take Alicia to be able to move out of her parents’ house for good and live on her own? (But don’t worry, Alicia. If they give you a hard time, just point out that Jesus did not begin his public ministry until he was thirty years old!)

“The Word became flesh,” John tell us. When God came into the world in human form, God came as a little baby. What does this say about God? Last week, we reflected on God’s willingness to be vulnerable. This week? We cannot help but notice that in Jesus Christ we see a patient God, a God who focuses less on speed than on growth and long-term goals. (give baby back to parents).

The fact is wedo live in a world of speed and ever growing fast connections. We demand fast phones and computers and short lines and waits. Not all of us may be tech savvy, but who among us wants to return to a time when we have dial up internet, or the only way to watch a movie at home is to go to a store to rent it, or we have to mail an order in by regular mail and then wait for that order to be delivered weeks later?

No we like fast things, and we like a fast God, one who gives us quick results and moves according to our timetable. If we do not like lines at the DMV or grocery store, we are not going to like long delays in answers to our prayers.

The problem is that the God we meet in the manger e is not necessarily a God of fast results. As Dale Ryan, a pastoral care professor at Fuller Seminary puts it, “the living and true God has no problem with stuff that takes time. God has a long track record of working with people on struggles that take a long time…God is a patient God.”[1]

Deep down, however, do we really want it any other way? As Ryan asks, what is the first question out of our mouths when we, or someone we love, has had surgery for cancer? The first question we ask the surgeon is not, “How fast did you do the surgery?” No, the first question we ask is, “Did you get it all out?”

God wants to get it all out – all of our sin and all of the brokenness of the world that we are so aware of these days. And God will not stop working until that result is reached in not just a few but in the whole world. But waiting on that to happen takes patience. Fortunately, our God is a God who will not give up, our God is a God willing to work with people with struggles for a long time. Our God is a patient God.

This is the testimony of Ezra in Nehemiah 9 and of Paul in First Timothy 1. In Nehemiah 9, Ezra is leading a public confession, one in which he names all the good God has done for the Israelites and then notes how the people responded not with grateful obedience but with rebellion and idolatry. And yet, Ezra prays,“you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

In the same way, Paul notes that he has been the foremost of sinners, having persecuted Christians and Christ, and even standing by, while Stephen was killed with stones. And yet, Christ has displayed “the utmost patience making me an example to those who would come to believe in him.”

That God is patient is not to say that God is a sentimental fool or doesn’t care what we do one way or another. No, God’s patience is wrapped up with God’s love and grace. God loves us too much to be satisfied with us as we are, but God loves us too much to give up on us.

And yet, even though God wants to get rid of the cancer of our sin and see us be whole and healthy, God will not take away our freedom. Out of love, God is willing to give us time and space to grow freely into the people that God wants us to be. This growth can be painstakingly slow. Indeed, sometimes young Alicia’s growth will look downright instantaneous compared to our growth as Christians.

One spiritual writer describes what nearly all of us have felt at one time or another: “One minute I’m praising, the next minute I’m grumbling. One minute I’m kind to others, the next minute I hurry past someone in need. One minute I vow to honor Him, the next minute I’m seeking glory for myself.” What a mess. Seriously who could live with a person like that, let alone forgive them, let alone love them?”[2]

And yet God does. In the One born in this manger, we see such forgiveness, love, and patience personified.

God is patient. This means that we can dare draw near to God – even when we have sinned, or are ashamed for what we have done. God is slow to anger and quick to forgive. We can be honest before God, and trust that when we turn to God in prayer and in our lives, we will find God always already turned to us with outstretched arms.

God’s patience with us means that we can be patient with ourselves. Sure we are imperfect. Sure, we mess up. Sure, we do what we don’t want to do. But God has not given up on us, and God is willing to work with us, no matter how long it takes, until we fully reflect God’s goodness, wisdom, and love.

God is patient – that is the good news. But here is the bad news: we need to be patient with others. Other people can be annoying. Other people can let us down. Other people can be imperfect. That is the human condition – just ask God. We are not to condone wrongdoing or simply to submit to being treated poorly, but we are called to live with patience, giving people second chances and not holding on too tightly to our sense of being wronged. We are called to treat others the way we hope that God will treat us – with love and patience.

While we live in a fast culture that searches for quick results, our God is willing to do the slow work of seeing God’s will done in and through frail and imperfect human beings. God is not just looking for quick bursts of good works. God wants us to join God in being in it for the long haul.

For example, “Giving Tuesdays” are a good thing to go with “Black Friday,” “Small business Saturdays” and “Cyber Mondays. But for people who are seeing and doing God’s long and slow work, every Sunday is a giving Sunday as we faithfully offer our time and our money steadily and consistently to do God’s will.

Food drives and clothing drives are good things at the holidays. Bless the Mercury and all those who conduct drives for toys or financial contributions at the holidays. And I love it at this time of year when you fill the lobby and cloakroom with potato boxes and the bags of children’s outfits spilling out of the lobby and cloak room.

But this is what I love even more: we will be back at it in January and for the other 11 months a year, working for justice, welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and telling the good news, over and over. As they say in the Geico insurance commercial, “it is what we do.”

Sometimes when we do God’s work there are quick results and nearly instant successes. But at least as often, if not more, we toil on, unsure of what is happening, or worse, discouraged by our apparent failures. Yet we can find the means to shoulder on patiently and persistently, if we draw from God’s patience and persistence with us.

Father Greg Boyle, or Father “G,” author of the unforgettable Tattoos of the Heart, and a priest who for over 30 years has been ministering to young men and women in the poorest Latino sections of Los Angeles, writes about one such “homie,” Leo:

“In the early days [of my ministry], I was not always so good at waiting. I would find myself on my bike in the housing projects, coaxing and nudging homies to embrace the employment opportunities that would sometimes come my way. Leo was a case in point. More times than I can remember, I would set something up.

‘Okay, dog, I got an interview for you,’ I’d tell Leo, a nineteen year-old dropout, who’d pass most of his day just kickin’ it with his homies in the projects. Leo was a short, squat, exceedingly likable kid you could not resist wanting to help…I would set something up – an interview – [and he would enthusiastically tell me he would come]. I’d wait and he’d never show up. This happened to me more than a handful of times.”

Then one evening, Father G was visiting with some folks in the neighborhood when he saw Leo selling drugs. He saw the whole transaction. Father G describes what happens next: Leo looks up with embarrassment and apologizes: “I didn’t even see you there, G, My bad,” as if what he was talking about was picking his nose or doing something else you don’t do in polite company.

“’No need to apologize,’ I say to him. “You taught me something tonight…Tonight you taught me that no amount of my wanting you to have a life is the same as you wanting to have one. Now, I can help you get a life – I just can’t give you the desire to want one. So when you want a life, call me.’ And I walk away more than a little discouraged,” Father G writes.

Some months later, Leo calls. “It’s time,” he says.

“So what caused the lightbulb to go on?” I ask. Leo says that he had seen an ITT Institute ad, “and I think, maybe I’ll call G, you know, and get me one of those…careers.”

“Now Leo had a superhuman affinity for animals. He was the St. Francis of the projects…I’d just met a veterinarian at a talk I gave, so I called him. He hired Leo right away – first…to clean the cages. Then Leo learned to bathe the animals and even give them shots. Now he’s a supervisor at an animal shelter. It wasn’t long before Leo had got himself ‘one a’ them…careers.’” And then Father G add: “It was worth the wait.”[3]

When we do God’s work patiently and persistently, even when the results we want are slow coming, it is always worth the wait.

The Eternal Word becomes flesh in a tiny baby in a manger. He is worth the wait. Our loving and patient God has determined that this whole world – and all of God’s children - are worth the wait.

“Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel!”

[1] In a video linked to at

[2]

[3] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart (New York: Free Press, 2010), 113-15.