Episcopal Church of the Incarnation

West Point, Mississippi

1^st Sunday after Christmas (B)

Isaiah 61.10-62.3 Psalm 147.13-21 Galatians 3.23-25; 4.4-7 John 1.1-18

Merry Christmas!

1) “[B]ecause you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, ‘Abba! Father!”

a) As Christians we are not surprised to call God our Father.

i) Ever since we were each taught the Lord’s Prayer, we have been used to refer to God as “Father,” and to think of Him in the same way.

(1) Stop for a minute and think, however, what a radical thing it is, really, to call God “Father”.

2) We’re told sometimes that we should not call God “Father”.

a) We’re told this by those who say that if someone has had an abusive earthly father, then they can not have any positive image of God.

i) This ignores the fact that such an approach works just to confirm the wrong idea that fatherhood in itself can be something evil, and that rather than change what we call God, we need to love those who have been wronged so that they may better learn what real fatherly love is.

b) We’re told this by those who say that we should not use a male pronoun in referring to God, because God is beyond gender.

i) This ignores the fact that Jesus Himself taught us to call God “Father”.

3) Calling God “Father” was and is a radical idea, one that we are so bold to entertain only because we have been invited to be familiar with God by the same God who took on our flesh to redeem us.

a) In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul is quoting Jesus, when he says that we cry “Abba! Father!”

i) But, consider how this teaching of Jesus sounded in the ears of those who heard Him.

b) In all of the Old Testament, the word for father, “ab’,” occurs 1180 times, but of those 1180 uses of the word, only 15 are not secular; only 15 have some sort of religious connotation.

i) Only twice is the word “father” used in any connection with the person of God, and then as a metaphor and not as a form of address.

(1) In the Old Testament, God is never addressed as “Father,” He is referred to as “king,” or the “Lord,” but not as “Father”.

4) But wait, it gets even more radical. Jesus not only uses the word “ab’,” “father,” but uses the familar form of address, “Abba”.

a) This is like addressing your earthly father not as “Father” or “Sir,” but as “Dad” or “Daddy”.

i) This is sort of like walking in the White House on an official visit, and walking up to the President and saying, “Mornin’, George,” or “Hey Dubya!”

(1) But more so, because the difference between God and the President is infinitely greater than the gap between any of us and the one we refer to as the “leader of the free world”.

ii) And yet, that what God, Jesus, tells us to do; to speak familiarly with the Almighty God, calling Him “Dad”.

5) Our Gospel lesson today is often referred to as the “Hymn to the Logos,” the praise given by John to the uncreated Word of God.

a) John wrote his Gospel right at the end of the first century, and so the next time someone comes up to you and says that the early Christians didn’t think of Jesus as God, but only as a teacher, please enlighten them, that from the beginning we Christians were saying things like “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

i) We were saying things like “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

(1) Some “teacher”!

6) And what did this same Word, this same God do, as described by John; as described by Matthew, Mark and Luke; as testified to by Paul and Peter?

a) In John’s words, “[T]o all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God ...”

b) To those who receive Him now, and who believe in His Name now, Jesus gives us “grace upon grace”.

i) Just as He invites us to call Him “Father,” this same God calls us His children, and invites us into His loving embrace.

ii) Just as he invites us to be familiar with Him, to call Him “Dad,” He seeks to be familiar with us, to enter our hearts that our souls may find grace upon grace in Him, in this life and in the life everlasting.

7) God invites familiarity both by how He seeks to enter our hearts–by how He invites us always to open our hearts to Him–and by how He reveals Himself to us.

a) Our God is not some distant god, some grand master of the universe who sets up the laws of nature and then has nothing to do with us as individuals.

b) Our God is, rather, the same God who became flesh and dwelt among us.

i) In John’s words, “[W]e have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

(1) In seeing Jesus, we have seen God.

(2) In seeing the crucified Christ and the risen Christ, we have seen God; we have seen all that He does for us in calling us His children.

8) And so we pray with confidence, “Abba! Father! Hear our prayer, send your Spirit to us; that as your children we may be your heirs; that as heirs we may inherit everlasting life; the life which you give of grace upon grace; praying together in the words our Savior has taught us:

[Insert: the Lord’s Prayer]