Grace Upon Grace

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

January 4, 2009

Text: John 1:1-18

Paul wrote that Jesus was designated son of God at his resurrection. Mark, at Jesus’ baptism. Matthew and Luke, at his conception and birth.

By the time the Gospel of John was written, he trumps them all.

In concert with the author of the letter to the Colossians, John says that the one who lived among us as Jesus, this one was with God in the beginning, at creation. “The Word” is not letters strung together, not a sound of consonants and syllables. The Word is “God in action, creating, revealing and redeeming.” (Oxford Annotated RSV) This Word became flesh and dwelt among us “full of grace and truth.”

We hear and read superlatives so often today that we grow weary of them---especially at the end of a year and the beginning of a new one.

We read of Top Ten lists galore: Who is really the best football player, team, doctor, singer, the best dressed, the most beautiful, the most talented, and so on? “Outstanding” and “stupendous” are cheapened by their frequent use.

So John’s beautiful hymn of extravagant praise may get filed away as merely the claims of a gospel writer trying to make headlines.

On what basis does John make such a claim for the man Jesus, who was born of peasant parents, who walked from place to place in an area not much bigger than from here to San Antonio, who was rejected by the religious leaders, and whose life was ended by execution?

He makes his claim on the basis of what he and others experienced. In First John, we read: “that which we have heard and seen and touched, we proclaim to you.”

John says that some among Jesus’ own heritage did not welcome him. But “to those who did receive him, who put their trust in him, he gave power to become children of God.” (New English translation)

“But whoever did want him, [welcomed him]
      who believed he was who he claimed
      and would do what he said,
   He made to be their true selves,
      their child-of-God selves.” (The Message translation)

For those who received him, it was as if they started life  over, as if they were born anew, again, from above, from beyond. Jesus showed the world the truth about God’s love, God’s aims, God’s vision of the world.

This is what they claimed. This is what John is singing about.

“Grace upon grace,” John says. “God’s only Son, who is nearest the Father’s heart, has made the invisible God known,” experience-able. (NEB)  The wisdom, reason, love of God in the life of a man, who came from God, returned to God, and is among us yet as Word and Sacrament.

Will you and I receive, welcome and trust in him----not as a Christmas guest for a spell but as God with us for life?

If so, you and I may know first-hand that which John so eloquently described. His words may not be so much hyperbole: they will be the Truth.