A New Year’s Resolution (John 1:10-18)

By Kim Thoday

So what is your New Year’s Resolution for 2003? Or have you several? The more cynical amongst us may have decided to give the whole idea away. If you are one of these you may rather consider yourself a realist, having learned by bitter experience how hard it is to maintain resolutions!

Some of my more mundane resolutions are to clean out my shed, get rid of a whole lot of junk and unclog all our gutters. Even these resolutions my wife is doubtful about.

How hard it is to keep our resolutions. How hard it is to be resolute about our re – solutions. Yet by definition lying hidden within the very best of our resolutions are indeed our solutions.

As Christians we recognise that human beings can never resolve the core problems of life in our own strength. The spirit of resolution is so willing, yet the flesh of the solution is often so weak. We know deep down that we need something outside ourselves to empower us to live out the solutions to our life that we so dearly crave. There is only one resolution that has ever been completely fulfilled. It is this great resolution, I believe, that lies behind all our impulses to resolve the problems and issues of being human. This great resolution is what we have celebrated again during Advent. Matthew describes the great resolution as the birth of Emmanuel, which means God is with us (Matthew 1:23). John articulates the great resolution as the Word became flesh and lived amongst us (John 1:14). The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Christians in Philippi uses an earlier Christian hymn to hand on the tradition of the great resolution: “. Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2: 5-8).

The great resolution of God, required a revolution on his part. A revolution was required for the resolution of a lost, broken and sinful world. The revolution was that God resolved, in infinite wisdom, to break into the finite world of human existence. God became uniquely one with creation through the birth of Jesus Christ. God is with us, through Jesus Christ. God birthed a new solution to humanity’s brokenness and sin in the form of his only Son – Jesus Christ. God came to be with his creation now and forever in the form of a solitary human being, who would grow up and begin his ministry of salvation and resolution in a dusty out-of-the-way province of Palestine. The beginnings of this great resolution are worth meditating upon often. The events of this resolution are astonishing – even bizarre: that God would firstly choose to become human and secondly, that this identification or incarnation would have such a humble, unlikely and obscure genesis.

John goes on to say that in Jesus, Christians have seen the nature of God. John puts it this way: ” . and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14b). In Jesus, the very character of God is revealed. For it is only in Jesus that the nature of God can be known and experienced. John says: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). At last, in Jesus, has come the solution that all our resolutions have anticipated, yet could not be fully realised with human ingenuity. In Jesus, that power beyond ourselves, that infinite power, has once and for all broken into finite humanity. But what is the content of this power, this solution, this resolution? John says that it is “grace and truth.” Note the order, grace first, then truth. God’s glory or character, according to John, is quint-essentially – grace. While grace always dominates, truth forms the other axis of God’s grace-truth matrix. What is the meaning of this grace-truth dynamic, which is God’s glory? How is this dynamic the solution to all the dilemmas we face as human beings?

The truth is that God needed to send his Son Jesus into this world to save us from our sins and to restore this world. The truth is that God so loved the world that he was prepared to come into this world as a vulnerable human being. The grace of God is this unconditional, infinite love that God has for all creation. The grace of God is the giftedness of this love, the divine initiative of this love and the sacrificial vulnerability of this love.

This grace-truth dynamic is the solution for humanity’s impulse for meaning, value and fulfilment. The truth about human beings is their capacity for both great good and also incredible evil. There is a wonderful beauty about humanity. It is this that God embraces; for this was God’s intention as depicted in the first two chapters of Genesis. Indeed, God becoming human presupposes the inherent goodness of human being. Yet there is a flawed-ness, a broken-ness, an umbilical break, a tectonic rupture, in traditional terms: a fallen-ness, within humanity which has resulted in that deep need in us all for salvation and restoration. I recognise in my own life both of these capacities – great good and incredible evil. Yet within this dichotomy it is the reality of the diabolical that constantly frustrates, inhibits, contaminates and dissolves the potential horizon of the goodness of humanity. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, an it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart” (The Gulag Archipelago). The Apostle Paul spoke of his deep inner conflict thus: ” . when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand” (Romans 7: 21).

It is God’s great resolution in Jesus Christ that releases us from the tyranny of knowing our human potential and yet never achieving it; indeed often destroying or damaging the important achievements in life through those illogical, chaotic, perennial tendencies of self-interest, aggression, domination and so on. God, in Jesus, saves us from the dichotomy of ourselves.

God’s great resolution has the ability to save us because first of all he accepts us as we are – in all our grubbiness (God’s grace that in Jesus’ he is prepared to become grubby, to in fact take on our sins and deal with them at Calvary). At one and the same time God, in Jesus, embraces and esteems humanity and confronts our sinfulness and enables us to be released from evil through his supernatural power. The resolution does not occur through the benign or dictatorial activity of a deity that controls or brutalises us into conformity; nor does the resolution occur by making us guilty or ashamed of our humanity. Rather, the solution occurs through the God/Jesus who initiates an event in human time and space. Salvation is offered through the God who loves us so much he is willing to communicate that love by being born a human and by living a fully human life and dying at the hands of the human beings he loves infinitely.

The old Sufi legend about the Watermelon Hunter and the Land of Fools is helpful in appreciating aspects of God’s great resolution in Jesus Christ. Once upon a time a watermelon hunter strayed from his own country into a place known as the Land of Fools. He suddenly encountered a group of people fleeing in terror from a field where they had been reaping wheat. “There is a monster in that field,” one of them yelled. The watermelon hunter went over to the “monster” in the field and recognised straight away that it was a huge watermelon. The crowd of people watched him from a safe distance with a mixture of fear and awe. Realising this was an opportunity to impress and win over these strangers he exclaimed, “I will kill this monster for you.” He drew his sword and cut the melon from its stalk and then cut himself a large slice and begun to eat it.

The people became even more terrified of him than they had been of the watermelon. Some of them screamed in fright at the sight of this foreigner devouring part of the monster. Others began to whisper, “He will kill us next, unless we get rid of him.” So they drove him away with pitchforks and whatever else they could lay their hands on.

Many years passed and another watermelon hunter strayed into the Land of Fools. He encountered a similar situation to the first man. But instead of offering to help them kill the monster he agreed with the fools that it might well be dangerous and by tip-toeing away from it he gained their confidence. He decided to spend time with these people in their homes. He developed relationship with them. Eventually, little by little, he taught them some basics about watermelons that enabled them to lose their fear of watermelons and eventually to cultivate them for themselves.

God, in Jesus, is like the second watermelon hunter who decides to completely identify with us as human beings. God comes from another land and has the solution to all our dilemmas, fears and sufferings. Yet God does not impose this solution like the first watermelon hunter. God appreciates and respects his creation with all its limitations. God accepts humanity as it is and yet paradoxically exposes humanity’s brokenness and sin and offers a solution through his limitless love. God, through Jesus, dwells with us in our homes; he is in relationship with us as one of us, yet he is still God – beyond us, from a strange land.

John Tucker, a Baptist minister from New Zealand, has a useful observation about aquariums. He asks:

“Have you ever seen one of those really sophisticated aquariums for tropical fish that some people have in their living rooms? You probably know someone who has one. It takes incredible energy and compassion to take care of those delicate fish. You have to feed them three times a day, change the water filters, monitor the water temperature, test the nitrate levels. You’d think the fish would be grateful. But every time your shadow appears above the tank the fish dive for cover. Out of ignorance they perceive their caretaker as a threat. Tragically, they see his acts of mercy as cruelty. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot convince them of his true intentions. He’s too large for them, too different. To change their perception, to communicate his true intentions, to reveal his true character, would mean getting into the tank, not just caring for their “world” but actually being in it, becoming one of them.”

In Jesus, God, as bizarre as it may sound, got into the aquarium of humanity. Through Jesus, God in his infinite wisdom, was at once able to identify with his creation and communicate God’s glory – grace and truth – the great resolution for a creation quarantined by evil and self-indulgence.

God, in Jesus, continues to dwell amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit – the living reality of Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead through the supernatural power of God’s limitless love. Praise God, that the Light that came into this world, is still with us. God, through Jesus, is Emmanuel! We can have a full relationship with God, through Jesus, in the here and now. By accepting Jesus as he accepts us, our eternal resolution with God is sealed now and for eternity. As John proclaims, so we can echo, “. and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Friends, could you imagine a Church, a body of believers, fired by the fuel of this grace and truth? Could you imagine the impact of a Church upon this world if we were to express our worship, mission and evangelism with a heart motivated by this grace and a soul generated by this truth? Friends, as Jesus’ disciples, we now have the same task of accepting people as are they are, learning to treat people with a grace they don’t deserve, taking time to build relationships so as to communicate and demonstrate the great resolution of God in Jesus; a salvation of grace and truth. But it will require a revolution in thinking and lifestyle for a resolution to love with a love of grace and truth. Now this resolution would indeed be worthy of any New Year.

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look up ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

But who is that on the other side of you?”

(T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”)

KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

http://www.hewett.org.au