"Thus Says the Lord: God Speaks Love through the Prophet" - Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Thus Says the Lord: God Speaks Love through the Prophet
Advent 4 – Narrative Lectionary 4
John 1.1-18
Grace Lutheran Church, Mankato, MN
December 22, 2013

[T]he Word became flesh and lived among us… 

From his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. (John 1.14, 16)

Clearly, Ole could tell that Lena was agitated, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know why. He was also pretty confident she wouldn’t keep it in and, sure enough it came: “Ole, do you love me? He wasn’t prepared for that one, thinking it might have been lid on the commode again. “What” was all he could say? “Do you love me,” she repeated? “You never say you love me.” “Lena,” Ole said, with all the emotion a Swede could muster, “I told I loved you when we first got married, and if the situation ever changes, I’ll let you know.”

Today, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we light the candle associated with love. We do so having finished our trip through the Old Testament and picking up the Jesus story in the New Testament. This year in the Narrative Lectionary, we read the Jesus story in the Gospel of John. Like the Sesame Street song, “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other,” John is very different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There is no birth narrative in John, at least not your typical one, and a brief review shows its oddity. There are no parables, unless you count the “I ams” that Jesus speaks of himself (“I am the Good Shepherd”; “I am the Bread of Life”; etc.). Rather than having short stories in a narrative sequence, John has several long stories with rich dialogue and drama.

Our view of Jesus is also different in John: he speaks so loftily, leaving us scratching our heads and wondering what he is saying. Yet, if there is one thing the Fourth Gospel speaks loudly and clearly it is love. A cursory glance at a concordance shows that the Gospel that gives us arguably the most famous of verses, “For God so loved the world …,” uses the word love far more than the other three. As God spoke creation into being at the beginning of time through the pre-existent Word, so God continues to speak new life through the Word become flesh, Jesus, Emmanuel, God with Us.

Jesus may seem to have his head in the clouds in John’s Gospel, but he is firmly with us. God gets “down and dirty” with creation, coming down to meet us where we are by becoming a divine blend of soil and spirit, and entering the messiness and brokenness of our lives. It has been likened it to this: it is as if God asked one of us to become a dog and to go to a planet of rabid dogs where we would in all likelihood be torn to shreds, just to tell them God loved them. In the face of rejection, through Jesus God shows the lengths he will go to get through to us.

 “Do you love me?” The question asked by Lena is one we often ask of God, “Do you love me?” God responds by sending Jesus, who communicates as much through his actions as his words. Indeed, we often receive the fullness of God’s love in Jesus, “grace upon grace.” Though I’d memorized that verse long ago, it didn’t become real to me until my father-in-law’s funeral, when so many people sent good wishes and showed up to be there for our family. God poured out love through others, grace after grace.

Just a few days ago, as I was manning a Salvation Army kettle on behalf of Rotary, a man stopped, put a few dollars into the kettle, and paused to tell me about losing his 102 year old mother a week ago. He told me about the outpouring of love and support from the nursing home staff and how much his mother had blessed them. He didn’t say it this way, but he received grace upon grace in the midst of his mother’s death. Through his story, I also shared in that abundant, loving grace.

Through Jesus Christ, God’s love flows in ways that had not been possible before. “Do you love me,” we ask God? In a few minutes, we’ll encounter grace upon grace through the gift of Holy Communion, as God answers with a resounding yes, continuing to pour out his love for us. For, the Word becomes flesh each and every day in so many ways as we receive grace upon grace. Amen.