Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on December 31, 2006
(Year C, First Sunday after Christmas, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

For eight years my oldest friend, his brother, and I with our families would choose a weekend in the late summer and go camping. But this wasn’t just any camping. This was camping at its best and most primitive, to the point where two out of three wives stayed home. We would go to Harper’s Ferry, Iowa where my friend’s parents have a cabin, load up the john boat with all of our gear, and the fishing boat with kids, and go out into the middle of the Mississippi River to the main sand bar just north of Prairie du Chien. Now everybody and their brother, each with a boat or personal watercraft, come out to the main sand bar during the day to enjoy the river, to where it looked like a small marina. We were friendly but really didn’t want to be in the midst of a crowd. So we did some wandering around and discovered that further to the north inside the tree line was a huge expanse of sand stretching out about a hundred and fifty feet, which with a little bit of rake work provided a relatively soft and shady location for what was to become a small tent city. There was a break in the trees that provided a wonderful view of the river, and there was a little game trail down to the shoreline. So we anchored the boats about fifty feet apart, threw a rope between them, and staked out our own private beach. The beauty of the location was that from the river you couldn’t see our little kingdom. In fact it looked pretty inhospitable looking in. But inside, it was as close to paradise on a beach that you could find in Northeast Iowa. Each year we tweaked the site a little bit more, to where it really was a pleasant experience except for the unpredictable weather changes that occur around large quantities of water. Through the years we have literally weathered everything from blistering heat with no breeze to riding out tornadoes that spring up with little or no warning. But over all, it was most enjoyable to just sit by the edge of the water or in it, and watch the river go by with whatever happened to be floating down stream; the flotsam and jetsam of life. It was a bit far north on the river but there was still a flavor of Mark Twain at least in our hearts.

Last summer was the first time in nine years that we were not able to make the trip. Life had changed. We had both made career changes since we closed our business down and my friend was contemplating returning to school to become a special education teacher. His boys had lost interest in the yearly excursion, and my son was getting married in September. And so the chain of tradition was broken. We have discussed the trip for next year but in the back of my mind I seriously wonder if it will ever happen again, because our lives have changed. Just like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, we’ve grown up and you know, you really can’t go back. Sure, you can paddle against the current for a while, but life like the river continually flows to its final destination.

In today’s Gospel, John, unlike his brethren, Matthew and Luke, takes the Incarnation to a new level. As I pointed out in my Christmas morning service, the Goszpel according to Mark doesn’t say anything at all about the origin of Jesus. Matthew and Luke both have their versions of the nativity in order to show that God became man by being born to a human mother by the power of the Holy Spirit. But John, who was the youngest and lived the longest, has shown us the revelation that Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity existed before He was born to Mary. Indeed, He existed prior to the creation of the world because Christ as the Word of God actively participates in the creation of the world, and therefore is an integral part of the creation, and yet His own, the chosen people of God did not know Him.

So Almighty God, in His infinite Wisdom, sent His Word to the world. And as John says in the Gospel, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”

Now this is an example of where I don’t like the newer translations of the Bible. In the NRSV, it says that he lived among us. But in the RSV and the Authorized Version, it says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is significant in that the Hebrew word meaning “to dwell” can also be translated as tabernacle or literally to pitch a tent. A tabernacle was a small booth or tent-like structure. So you could say that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us or pitched his tent among us. This clearly brings us the image of the Hebrew people who having been freed from captivity in Egypt by God wandered in the wilderness as a nomadic community, living in tents made from the hides of goats. And whenever or where ever they stopped in their journey, the Tent of the Meeting was erected first in which housed the Holy of Holies, a smaller tent within a tent, which held the Ark of the Covenant. And when this was complete, God, in the form of a cloud, descended upon the Holy of Holies, and was said to be present in the tabernacle. God was dwelling among His chosen people in His own tent.

But then the wandering stopped, the Hebrews came into the Promised Land, and the Tent of the Meeting became the Temple, complete with the Holy of Holies. And although it was somewhat amongst the people it was no longer mobile. The people had to come to the Temple, and in time they drifted away; from the Temple, from the Law of Moses, and from God. This happened over and over again until God decided that it was time for Him to truly live among the people again.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God pitched His tent in the form of a man and came to live among us. In the Old Covenant, the Word of God, as written in the Law, was contained in the Ark of the Covenant, and this is where God was said to dwell. In the New Covenant, The Word of God is written upon our hearts, contained within our fleshly tabernacles. By accepting Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and acknowledging him as our Lord and Savior, we are assured that God dwells with each and every one of us. And with this assurance, we know that even though someday our earthly tents will cease to be, Jesus, the Word of God, has prepared a mansion for us in heaven so that we can dwell with God for eternity. With the Word of God, our lives are changed and why would anyone want to go back. Life like a river continually flows toward its final destination, and our destination is the Throne of God. This is the true gift of Christmas.

Gloria Patri