“In the beginning was the Word…”
It is so weird that it has never struck me before. There is a truth in those six words that is so utterly amazing that I cannot believe it never sunk into this thick skull before. “In the beginning was the Word…”
Our culture is so paranoid about endings, that I am not certain we put all that much effort into thinking about beginnings.
We fear death; an end.
We fear losing the things and people we hold dear: friends, pets, houses, neighborhoods, care-free summers and holidays spent with those we love. It makes us sweat to consider losing any one of them; all endings.
We put insurance on those things and people we hold to most dear: life insurance on us and our family, house insurance, car insurance, hand insurance…yes, I did say “hand insurance.” I once had a girl tell me that my hands were so perfect that hand modeling should be my career. She urged me to get hand insurance. I was 16. Doritos or hand insurance? You know which won.
But, our lives get so wrapped up in the world falling apart, that we try to protect what little we have. And, all of it is done in the hopes that we will never have to face “the end.”
Even the church has a tendency to focus on endings. We set our hopes on heaven and make eternal life the goal. We hope one day to see God face to face, in heaven, surrounded by those others we yearn to see again. Even in the church, we have a tendency to focus on the end.
And, maybe that is why I never saw it before. Maybe, that is why I have always sort of glossed over these first six words in the gospel of John as some sort of beautiful poetry, and nothing more.
But, there is more. And, though it is poetry, there is so much more to be seen in these first six words: “In the beginning was the Word…”
It all comes down to this. Whenever there seems to be nothing, God’s Word is there. Right? Before the universe was born, when there was simply a vast nothingness, God’s Word of light and life was there.
Do you not understand what this means? It is still true! Whenever it seems that life has all come plummeting to a dark end, God’s Word is there. It is not an ending, it is a beginning. Whenever we face a new beginning, God’s Word is there with us.
That simple truth just blew my mind. Whenever life falls apart, my mind always leads me to believe that God has left town. Right? If blessing does not seem to be coming my way, but rather black muck and mud, I think that I have no reason to believe that God is anywhere near.
But, I would be supremely wrong. If it feels like there is nothing left that is because it is a beginning. As we just heard, what is the only thing that the Bible says is in a beginning? God and God’s Word.
And, by God’s Word, we are not imagining Bibles floating around in the vacuum of space.
No, we are imagining a loud utterance across the face of the deep that calls forth light and life. We are imagining loud cries that create a new beginning for a man who had blind since birth, but now he has just started a life of sight!
We are imaging loud cries that allow a man who had been left to beg along the side of the way to get up and walk and live!
We are imagining loud cries that open up a tomb and allow the dead to come out, be unbound, eat, and live!
We are imagining loud cries that burst open tombs and proclaim new life to the entire world. For God so loved the world!
We imagine ourselves, tired and weary and worn. We see ourselves slumped down in the darkness of the end thinking that we are alone, but listening close only to discover that when there seems to be nothing, the God’s Word is still there. And, we were mistaken, every dark place that we view as an ending is really a beginning in which the Word inhabits, itching to bust forth at the right time.
The Word after-all, is God’s dream becoming reality. It is God dreaming big and dreaming wild so that water and trees and unlikely animals like the platypus burst forth on the scene. It is God dreaming big so that the stars glimmer and babies are born and lives of love bloom.
It is God dreaming big, and being right there with you, ready to make that dream a reality just as you face a new beginning.
You know what gets me every time I watch a video? It is the faces of sheer joy and love that you see in those videos where soldiers come home unexpectedly to their families.
The set ups are all different. In one, the soldier shows up unexpectedly in a classroom, and the student looks up and falls apart in tears of joy. In another, the soldier shows up at a birthday party that the family had expected him to miss. In each face we see the unexpected tears of joy and happiness that comes when someone we love suddenly arrives and an old story suddenly ends, and a new story begins.
Well, I am here to preach something to you this morning sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ that will put a tear of joy into your soul. The world might seem dark. The world might seem like it is nearing an end. And, people’s lives might appear to float around in the darkness, but I am here to tell you that this is not an end. It is a beginning. And as with all beginnings before, the Word is present right here, right now in this new beginning. God has unexpectedly shown up! And the Word is with God, and the Word is God. And, the Word is here to shine new light and new life upon the darkness of this world. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
That is right, Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, by the power of the Holy Spirit is right here, right now in this new beginning, and God has only begun to start to dream.
God’s dreams are big. They are even greater than the platypus. I know you are thinking, “What could be greater that a platypus?” I do not know for certain, but what I do know is that what God has in store is even greater.
And, I also know that what God has in store is for this new beginning to be full of grace and truth. It is right here in the scriptures. It is a new beginning that has heaps of grace upon grace, like an endless mountain of buttery mashed potatoes for the soul. What could be better than mountains of buttery mashed potatoes? Well grace and truth is better than that!
And, if there is one thing that we can all agree on, it is that this world needs a whole lot more grace and truth.
We desperately need more people looking upon each other with grace rather than hate.
We desperately, need more people looking upon each other with eyes willing to see the truth rather than assumptions and lies.
We desperately need more people looking at our world and seeing God’s light despite the darkness. Am I right?
And, so it will be. See, it is happening. God is making all things new.
“In the beginning was the Word.”
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