Before the Beginning, You Were Loved

What happens before the beginning? Before once upon a time, before the story, before the conflict of good and evil thought to be a conflict? John takes us to the beginning, removing the veil of creation to reveal the Creator behind it. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was with God.” Christ’s birth points us not only to the beginning of his life, but to the beginning of all life – to the dawn of Creation. Before the fallen angels, before the conflict between good and evil, when the world was not yet made, and humans had not yet drawn their first self-conscious breath, there was the Word and there was God. Looking over the vast expanse of nothingness, there was the sense that something was missing. God was not content with the abyss. Let there be light and skies and seas and stars and trees and birds and sea monsters and creeping things and walking things. Let there be a beginning. Let there be something other than us, alone, looking over an expanse that neither responds nor cares. Let us create something, for it is in the nature of a Creator to create and in the nature of the Word to proclaim.

The light came into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it. But not for lack of trying. Not long after the beginning, after God revealed God’s nature to create and to love through speaking creation and creatures into existence, all was not well. “You will not die,” said the serpent, and the man and the woman turned from God to listen to another word, to another voice, to a different story than the one that had created them. The revelation of the serpent seemed more enticing than the revelation of God. The desire to know what God knows, to do what God does, to be what God is, proved too tempting, and humans attempted to take their image into their own hands, believing themselves to have crafted their destiny. The light continues shining, but on that day, humans became afraid of the dark. Afraid of the shadows cast by our desires for greatness and the realization that who we want to be is so far from who we are, we hide from God. The light proves too bright, revealing our nakedness, revealing our shame, revealing our dependence.

Of all the things we ascribe to God, of all the glory, of all the majesty, of all the honor, the hardest thing for us to give to God is our acknowledgement of dependence; the acknowledgement that we cannot create ourselves, though not for our lack of trying through New Years’ resolutions to be better, faster, stronger, and – while we are at it – to lose those few pounds we’ve been meaning to lose for the past few years. And when we fail (most resolutions last a few weeks, if that,), we forget that our image is revealed by the light and that the shadows we cast point not toward darkness, but rather, to light. Still, we tend to focus on the shadows as they lengthen, jumping along with Adam and Eve as the wind rustles through the trees.

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world,” because the world became so afraid of its own shadow that it forgot about the light. It forgot about the Word that spoke it into existence. Creatures began to take themselves a little too seriously, trying to fashion a tower in Babel tall enough to reach the heavens, to march up to God and give God a piece of our minds, all our ideas of how the world could be run better, how God could fix God’s creation, of what God could do to make us believe. “God, if you just…  I will believe.” “If you just get me through this, I will do better, I will change, I will pray more, read my Bible more, etc.”

 Busy with our demands of God, we are so concerned with looking in the places we expect God to be revealed, that we miss the forest for the trees. “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.” It seems the revelation of God in creation – everywhere around us – was not enough for us to recognize God. God walks among us, and yet we insist that God come in a more obvious package, demanding that God reveal Godself in a more obvious way. Yet God remained quiet, refusing to bargain with us, refusing to demand our allegiance, refusing to fashion us into puppets. Yet “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.” God walks among us, inviting us to see ourselves and God a little differently, to experience the gift of life as something other than a burden. We have wandered through the wilderness of despair and arrived to the promise that God will come, that God will show up, that God will be revealed.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of Grace and truth… from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” God has revealed Godself in creation and in the Word made flesh. Close enough to touch, God reveals God’s desire for relationship not by forcing us to be in relationship with him as a marionette to its puppeteer, but as flesh meets flesh. By his touch, we are healed, by his touch, we are saved. Through him we have received grace upon grace.

Now, you might say, this is all well and good, but that was long ago and far away. God doesn’t walk among us anymore. Maybe God did once, but look at the world now. The shadows seem much more obvious than the light. Grace upon grace seems part of a nice story, but not part of our story. Well, my dear brothers and sisters, you are not the ones writing the story. Before the story began, before we fancied ourselves its authors, the Author of Creation wrote the story of a God not content to be an island of divinity, not content without a relationship, not content without you. Before you knew there was a story, before you realized the story was true, there was a story of a Creator and a creation written to reveal the God behind the creation. As you demanded signs and wonders, God determined to come, to be close enough to touch. And so the Word was made flesh and came to dwell among you. Christ, dwelling in the bosom of God, draws you into the bosom of God. You, who don’t want to be held, who would prefer build your towers into the heavens, look: God has opened the heavens and come to dwell among you. There is no need to climb to the heavens and no need to descend to the abyss. Christ is among us, present in bread and wine, present in the echoes of creation that proclaim their Creator, present in the reminder that you have received grace upon grace. Overflowing in mercy and abundant and grace, Christ invites you to dwell with him in the bosom of God, who can’t imagine a world without you. And so God reveals Godself again and again. God reveals Godself in the forgiveness of sin, in the waters of baptism, in the Word, in the Word made flesh, in the blood and wine, and sends you out into the world to reflect God’s glory. Before the beginning, before time was time, before long ago and far away, God said “you are mine, marked with the cross and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever,” and so God reveals Godself in you, so that you might know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are his, from the beginning of creation, from the beginning of time, from the beginning of the story, until its end.