A PHOTO ALBUM OF GOD
A sermon by Earl William Greene, Jr., based on John 1:1-18
When I was growing up most of the family Christmas gatherings were at our house - not because my mother was the best cook, but because we had the biggest house.
My mother made no pretense as a cook. There had been a disaster one Christmas. She burned the turkey! Blackened turkey! In unison, everyone said, "Thelma, how could you burn a turkey?" Instead of turkey that year, we had tamales. My mother's cooking was so unreliable that the other women in the family started to come early on successive Christmases to watch over the bird.
After Christmas dinner the men in the family would retire to the living room and TV, and the women would sit around the huge dining room table, playing canasta.
After a few games someone would always pull out this old family photo album. I loved this part. The pictures would prompt family stories, and quite a few secrets about relatives and friends pictured there - many I'd never met. But even though most of them were "long gone" I always felt close to them-- because of the stories shared around the table.
One year, not too long ago my cousin Peggy and I - (we're the "family survivors") [we] got together during the holidays. I pulled out the old album over her shrieks of laughter, knowing what came next. Peggy is ten years older than I am. She knew some things that I hadn't heard before. When I was a kid the women would sometimes abbreviate the stories when I was around. There were "adult words," - a kind of "code," - like the words "bigamist" and "tramp." But this time, with Peggy and me there were no kids around. We just told it as it really was! There were stories of hardship and heroism, of faith, and folly. What a family!
We've all seen photographs of Lincoln. There are paintings of Napoleon, Beethoven, of Washington and Jefferson.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus looked like? There are some famous paintings, but all of them have been done over the last five hundred years or so - just artists' ideas of what Jesus may have looked like. But nobody really knows what Jesus looked like.
It's even harder to imagine what God looks like. Children sometimes think of God as an old man with a long beard, and a white robe and maybe a frown on his face. But as we grow up we understand God to be "spirit," something far bigger than human "looks," and maybe not to be "seen" at all.
On Christmas, all the focus is on the baby Jesus. The early church wasn't very interested in how Jesus was born. Interest in that came a few years later. The earliest followers focused on the adult Jesus, not on the baby.
And so, what we have in the Bible are not photographs, or sketches, but a series of stories that tell what Jesus was like. Glimpses of Jesus, without the photographs, glimpses so profound, so impressive that it's not at all surprising that they called Jesus the "Son of God."
Now, our Christmas is over. It's the Epiphany season now - the time when the earliest followers of Jesus took the "light" they had found and the stories of Jesus they had collected, and shared these "glimpses" with everyone they knew, and in time throughout the whole Mediterranean world. "Here is what God is like," they said, "God is like Jesus. Let us tell you about him."
Now that Christmas is over it's time for us to leave the "sweet baby" and the legends and carols behind, and to turn our thoughts to what kind of man Jesus was. In a way it's like looking through the old family photo album and retelling the stories. And these stories have a way of becoming very "personal" stories - not just about people living way back then, but stories that "bridge the ages," stories where any one of us could be among the chief players.
Jesus' impact to this day came - not by leaving a complicated textbook of doctrines or life "game plans" sure to work for everybody. Instead, his teaching power is in telling stories, stories that everyone would remember, and pass on.
In a way, the four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are a kind of photo album of God. Here, are pictures of what God is like. And what we see here are warm, real-life, real experience pictures that we can relate to and understand. They are so real, and "true to life" that if we change the names and substitute our own, the stories might be ours.
Let's take a look at a few pictures-- this "photo-album of God"-- and see what God is like.
1. There are the pictures of Jesus teaching - pointing to the lilies of the field and to the birds of the air, reminding us that if God cares for lilies and birds, God all the more cares about each of us.
2. Here's the picture of Jesus talking with widows and little children, and lepers and others ignored by the society of that day. No teacher of religion had ever paid attention to them before.
3. And look here. Here is Jesus showing compassion to the crowds, to people who have lost their way, and to those who were "like sheep without a shepherd." And Jesus says, "I will be the good shepherd, and will care for my sheep."
4. And here are pictures of God's love at work when Jesus brought wholeness to people who were blind, or deaf, or suffering some paralysis. Everyone could count on being taken seriously by this Master Physician.
5. And there's a picture of Jesus, present at a wedding feast, delighting in the joy and love of two people who are about to make commitments to each other. Like God, Jesus doesn't just sit on the sidelines, watching from a distance. Instead, he is part of the party, he shares in the laughter, and the friendships, and he even creates more wine when there's a mix-up and the hosts need more. With care Jesus not only provides more wine, but turns the experience into an epiphany - everyone there saw a deeper truth as well.
6. Here's a picture: Jesus, in showing what God is like, gathers the little children around, giving them a hug, and blesses them, teaching that little ones have value. Great teachers never had time for children, but here is this teacher lifting up the value and importance of children to God.
7. Here's a picture: Jesus goes to a tomb, and cries over the death of his friend, Lazarus. This must show that God also comes to grieving families, and even cries, too, for people are hurting. When someone we love dies God senses our sense of loss, and is moved in the divine heart to "cry," too.
8. Here's a picture: Jesus, so like God, making a point to honor women, ignoring the custom where for centuries only men had real value, and women were to be used.
9. Here's another picture: Jesus, like God - eating at the same table with sinners, and with prostitutes, swindlers, and other undesirables, giving them the friendship they need, and inviting them to have an important place in God's realm.
10. Here's another picture: Jesus, so much like God, drawing the line between truth and falsehood, exposing ulterior motives, bringing the light of truth to injustice, naming it for what it really is: the oppression of the powerful over the weak, challenging the top leaders, and doing it right in public where rich and poor alike can see the whole thing. Doesn't he know that these very same leaders have the authority to erect a cross for him right on the spot? And Jesus goes on, telling the truth anyway.
11. And here is the picture of that "inevitable cross" where we see that God's love has no limit. Jesus does what God does: he gives, and gives to humankind - even when the cost is God's own suffering.
12. And here is the picture of that first Easter morning. The picture's kind of hard to make out - very strange. Perhaps there's an empty tomb over there, or is it instead, a picture of a brilliant sunrise?
Looking at these pictures it appears me that God isn't "out there in space somewhere," but that God is right where we are, living life.
An old lady I know put it this way to me: "I'm often lonely, but I'm convinced that I'm never really alone." A man we all learned to love, approaching the last days of his life said to me, "you know, there are long, lonely stretches in the night when I can't sleep. But then I open up my hands, and God never fails to touch me right where I am."
A dad, taking care of his teenage sons alone, said to me "It's hard being a "dad" to such powerful and volatile young sons. I sometimes don't know what to do. But then I remember Jesus, who, even now keeps raising the right questions in ways that even my sons can understand, though they might not like it much. And the "muck" gets cleared away, and I'm able to be "dad" with clarity and passion once more.
It often seems that there are no easy answers. Years ago I remember my grandmother helping me with my homework. I was in high school, but she had only gone through the eighth grade, and here she was trying to help me! There was a hard chapter in my science book, with questions at the end of the chapter. I had no idea what it was all about. I'd read the chapter, but...
How ludicrous, I thought, my grandmother is trying to help me and she only went through the eighth grade! And they didn't even have "science" back then!
My grandmother listened as I went over the problems. She didn't know the answers either, so she read the chapter herself. And she sat quietly for awhile. She took off her "reading glasses" "These problems aren't so bad," she said. We looked at the chapter together, this eighty-year-old eighth grader and I, and after a bit, with her help I was able to say "yes, these aren't so bad." "Some of this is really old stuff, just with a new twist."
Maybe that's what God's photo album is trying to show us. Times come when we don't know any place else to go. So we go to God. It seems, sometimes, that we're sure that God, and grandmother went to school together. It was so long ago. And we're sure they didn't teach science back then!
But God listens to our problem, and says, "these things look bad, but they're really not as complicated as you think. "Some of this is really old stuff, just with a new twist. Let me show you."
The photo album shows the kind of God who is no stranger to human life. And that spirit is with us still - to show us the way. Amen.