Apparently the week of Christmas found me in a musical mood...
Jesus Sings a Song of Love
John 1:1-14
Christmas Day 2009
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him, not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people .(Jn. 1:1-4)
John begins his gospel with poetry,
what they think might have been an ancient song.
It calls to mind another beginning:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,
while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said,
'Let there be light';
and there was light.” (Gen. 1:1-3)
In his classic series, The Chronicles of Narnia,
CS Lewis transports us into the magical, mysterious world of Narnia,
inhabited by talking animals & other mystical creatures,
and Aslan, the lion who is always good, but not quite safe.
In The Magician's Nephew, a prequel to all the other books,
Lewis tells how the world of Narnia came to be.
Digory's Uncle Andrew had created magic rings,
with the power to transport whoever was wearing them into other worlds.
And in a strange series of events, it comes to pass
that Digory & his friend Polly find themselves
with Uncle Andrew & the evil Empress Jadis,
in a strange, dark place.
Jadis calls it an empty world. A nothing world.
And so it was.
Yet as they stand around,
scared and confused & angry with each other,
wondering what to do,
suddenly they hear something
– the sound of 1 voice
And the voice begins to sing.
It is beautiful & deep & strong,
and it seems to come from everywhere
– in the air above them,
from the ground below their feet,
it surrounds them.
The Voice sings,
and suddenly many other voices join the song.
Stars shine forth by the millions,
& they are all singing with the one Voice.
The Voice is calling them into being,
singing them into existence!
And there was light.
And the Voice continues to sing,
and suddenly, the sun bursts over the horizon,
called forth by the Song
and suddenly, in that greater light,
they can see,
and what they see is a world being created.
A world filled with life & light.
They see grass rolling, spreading over the hills and the valleys.
Trees & flowers springing up from the ground,
and then the animals start to come forth!
– frogs and panthers, birds and butterflies, dogs & elephants,
every kind of creature you can imagine,
all brought forth by the power of the Song
and the Singer who sings it.
I think that if Lewis were writing the gospel of John,
he would have put it this way:
In the beginning was the Song,
and the Song was with the Singer,
and the Song was the Singer.
And yet, the gospel reminds us,
that despite its powerful beauty,
not everyone likes this Song;
not everyone will sing along.
John says,
“He was in the world,
and the world came into being through him;
yet the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
and his own people did not accept him.” (Jn. 1:10-11)
Because somewhere along the line,
not too long after the initial singing of the Song of life,
the world got out of sync.
It stopped listening to the Song -
it lost the melody,
it stopped singing along.
And pretty soon, the world just made up its own song instead.
You know this song.
It's the undercurrent of the news
and advertisements;
it makes its way into our sleepless nights.
It's a song of fear & anxiety,
of lust & greed & grasping for power.
It sings of how there is never enough –
not enough time, not enough money, not enough love.
It is not a beautiful song,
but somehow it's catchy.
It gets in our heads & drowns out God's song,
until we almost can't recognize it.
And so, in the fullness of time, God sent the Song.
And the Song became flesh & sang among us,
so that we might hear it with new ears
and remember this Song
the Song
that was powerful enough to create order out of chaos,
to call forth the sun and moon and stars,
to form the earth and all that lives on it;
powerful enough to sing the universe and all that is into existence.
God's Song -
about abundance, and joy, and truth,
God's Song -
about justice, and forgiveness, and mercy,
God's Song -
about peace, and wholeness, and salvation,
God's Song of never-ending Love
sung just for us,
a great, majestic symphony of life and light,
that begins and ends in the Singer of the Song
whose birth we celebrate today.
May this song dwell among us
and sing in our hearts
until we sing it as our very own.
Amen.
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