"Dancing With the Lord!"

A sermon preached by the Rev. Christopher E. Yopp at Edgemont Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) based on John 1:1-14.

We gather on this Fourth Sunday of Advent - the Sunday prior to Christmas. Many churches will call this “Christmas Sunday,” for obvious reasons. While many churches, including Edgemont, offer Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, many Christians will not attend those services. And so, for many of you, today is Christmas Sunday, in the sense that this will be the last time you will gather for worship in church prior to Christmas. For the rest of us, it is the Fourth Sunday of Advent - the final Sunday in this season of preparation. We are moving toward the climax, when we will once again celebrate the coming of God into our world in the person of Jesus Christ. Throughout this season, we have prepared our hearts, as we prepare our homes for guests and family, making room for Christ to be born anew and afresh in us.
Edward Hays writes; “Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent… If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present our lives. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time,” but to allow the fire of God’s Spirit to birth in us God’s hope and peace, joy and love.
As Pope John Paul II said in his 2002 Christmas address; “The [season] of Advent [and Christmas]… helps us to understand [more] fully the value and meaning of the mystery of Christmas. It is not just about commemorating the historical event, which occurred some 2,000 years ago in a little Judean village. Instead, it is necessary to understand that the whole of our life must be an ‘advent,’ a vigilant awaiting of the final coming of Christ. Therefore, Advent is, so to speak, an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.”
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we’ve heard a reading from the very opening chapter of John’s gospel - a familiar reading, one, perhaps, some of you may have memorized. But what exactly does it mean; “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… The Word became flesh, dwelling among us.” In the original Greek manuscripts the term used for “word” was logos. This is typically translated as “word,” but it didn’t simply mean that which was spoken or written to the Greeks. Instead, it means “reason.”
Scholars have suggested that John chose this multifaceted term because he wanted to communicate with a diverse audience. Jews, he knew, would interpret it as a reference to God. While the Greeks would understand it in a more abstract sense: in the beginning was the logos - the very principle or reasoning that governs the universe. In this way, John was telling both Jews and Gentiles that in Jesus, God becomes flesh, God becomes tangible, and visible and real to us, and now we can more fully know God because in Christ, God is Emmanuel - God with us, dwelling with us.
No doubt, these words written in the Gospel of John would have awaken the senses and sparked the interests of both Jew and Greek. To those raised in the Jewish tradition, when hearing those words would have quickly called to mind their ancient scriptures which declared that by the Word of the Lord an unformed and chaotic universe was transformed into an ordered, structured and beautiful reflection of the Creator. And, of course, they would have recalled the words of the psalmist who affirmed that by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. You see, the prophets and psalmists, the teachers and philosophers of Israel’s tradition had declared this Word to be the powerful instrument of divine activity in the life of creation, and in the life of their people.
The word “Incarnation” is the theological term used to describe this idea that John gives us in our Gospel Lesson this morning of, the “Word becoming flesh.” The Incarnation is the essence of the Christmas story. “The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.” You may remember from my sermon on the First Sunday of Advent that I said that the best way to send an idea into the world is to wrap it up in a person. This is why companies will pay large amounts of money for famous actors to endorse their products. And so, in a sense, this is what God has done. God had a Logos - an “idea,“ a “Word,” in which God wanted to convey to humanity and that “idea,” that “Word” was God’s divine love and grace. And it is a Word of hope and peace, joy and love. In God’s infinite wisdom, God took this “idea,” in which God was so eager to communicate to humanity, wrapped it up in the person of Jesus Christ, and laid it in a feeding trough. The babe of Bethlehem is the Word of God Incarnate. He is the message of God to humanity.
There is a rather cute and somewhat powerful story told about a little girl who, one night as she was being put to bed by her parents, became a little frightened. It was one of those nights when the shadows in the bedroom assumed strange shapes, and she was scared. Just as soon as they had put her to bed, she got out of bed and came into her parents’ bedroom seeking to be comforted. They told her to go back to bed and to remember that God was with her. And so, she returned to her darkened bedroom, only to find the shadows even more frightening and terrifying. So, she once again sought her parents and said; “I know that God is with me, but could you come too, because I need someone with skin on.” And, you know, that’s the message of Christmas, isn’t it?
Peggy Lee wrote and sang a song entitled; “Is That All There Is?” Oftentimes, this the question that children will think or ask as they look up from their mound of opened gifts and shreds of wrapping paper strung out all over the living room. “Is that all there is? Is this it?” This is the question that adults will ask when Christmas Day draws to an end; “Is that all there is? Is this it?” So much time and effort, so much preparation and work, and it’s all over with! There is such a thing as Post-Christmas Depression. And, I must admit, I too have found myself slipping into such a depression after the holidays, with all of the time and energy, the preparation and work that went into the Advent and Christmas season, and to have it come, to what appears to be, an abrupt ending. But there’s a line in Peggy Lee’s song that I really like. After asking “Is that all there is?” She says; “… let’s keep dancing.”
To ask the question “Is that all there is? Is that it?” means you are celebrating Christmas wrongly. It means you are celebrating Christmas as the world - your celebration is centered around the gifts and commercialism of Christmas, which goes as fast as it comes. During the season of Advent, we’ve been doing a study in the Sunday School Class I teach, from a book written by James Harnish, entitled; Rejoicing in Hope. In it, Harnish tells of a rather unique Christmas card he received on Christmas from a clergy friend. He said that it was just a plain, white card with the words: “Blessed are those who celebrate Christmas as a way of life” printed on it. Certainly, if we celebrate Christmas correctly, we realize that it isn’t just a once-a-year event. Instead, it launches us into a new way of living that lasts our whole life long. It challenges us to practice living in what God has done and is doing in the person of Christ. When we celebrate Christmas the way it should be, it forces us to “keep dancing.”
One of my favorite hymns is the hymn our choir sang this morning, Lord of the Dance, not to be mistaken for the popular Celtic dancers. The hymn’s words were written by Sydney Carter in 1963 and he adapted it to the popular American Shaker tune. It definitely has an old Celtic flair to it. But the hymn also has a powerful message that corresponds well with our Gospel Lesson this morning. The hymn reminds us that:

"The one who danced in the morning
when the world was begun
And danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
Is the one who came down from heaven
And danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem he had his birth."

And so, may we join the dance of the Lord who dances in all of creation. Won’t you embrace this one who has made himself known to us in the person of Jesus Christ. That you might become a dancer in the Lord of the Dance that we might in turn reveal the God of hope and peace, joy and love to the world. What an awesome privilege to join in the dance of the Lord of the Dance. Won’t you get out of your pew, and dance. “Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.”