From: "Donald L. Hoffman" <donhoffman@W-LINK.NET>

 Christ: The Word

John 1:1-18

A few months after President John Kennedy was killed, I was visiting a radio station. The person on duty pointed out a silhouette of Kennedy drawn on a piece of paper pinned to the wall. When I looked at it closely I saw that it had been created on a teletype machine. [ Oh, wait a minute! People nowadays may not know what a teletype machine was: that's pretty ancient technology. Basically a teletype is two typewriters hooked together by a wire so that what you type on one machine gets printed at the other. ] Now this portrait of Kennedy had been typed out with such a skillful use of periods and hyphens, letters and spaces and margins that the identity of the man was obvious.

The old teletypes were normally used for sending news. The news is also built up of letters and margins and spaces-put together into words and sentences and paragraphs. But in this one instance, the letters of the teletype had been used to send an entirely different kind of message-not a news story, but a picture.

It reminds us in an unusual way of that old saying: A picture is worth a thousand words.

Now I want you to think of that picture sent by teletype as a parable about Jesus Christ.

John's Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. One possible way of saying this differently is to say that Jesus is God's message.

Likewise the writer of Hebrews tells us that God's messages used to come through the prophets at different times and in different emphases, but now God speaks to us in the Son.

 Now, let's be careful here. I don't want to say that calling Jesus the Message of God completely fills up all the meaning in the phrase "Word of God." This is just one way of looking at the idea for just one sermon.

This idea that Jesus is God's Word may be confusing because we've heard people speak of the Bible as God's Word. When we read in the Old Testament, "The Word of the Lord came to Isaiah," we don't imagine it means that Isaiah came face to face with Jesus Christ. And yet when we read "The Word became flesh," we know it can't refer to a book.

Here is the difference: The Bible is packed full of statements about God, and statements from God, and commands, promises, warnings, pleas, questions, and actions by God. But, in some way we humans don't really understand, Jesus Christ IS God!

Now we can see the difference. The teletype sent many messages about John Kennedy. They were biographical messages, human interest messages, stories about his life and about his death. The teletype sent many messages by John Kennedy-portions of his speeches and news conferences and presidential proclamations. But a day came when the teletype stopped sending messages about Kennedy and by Kennedy and instead sent a picture which in a dim and shadowy way was John Kennedy.

We're going to have to leave our parable behind. It's too crude and clumsy to help us anymore. We know that science can do a lot better than sending pictures by teletype. We have learned to send actual photographs over wire. Then we learned how to broadcast instantaneous moving pictures without wires into millions of homes. Now we have added color, and perhaps someday we will make it three dimensional. Long ago Al Capp had his hero, L'il Abner experience smell-avision and feel-avision. We've already reached the point where photographs can be doctored so even the experts can't tell they're fake. Now computer experts are experimenting with virtual reality.

Maybe someday we won't be able to tell the difference between a real person and a projected image. But that's the farthest we can ever go. One will still be a person. And one will still be only an image.

 But God's communication, God's message, God's word has already surpassed anything we'll ever be able to do. Jesus was not just an image of God. He was God.

We talk about God's messages to people as being revelation. A revelation is something which is revealed or uncovered or exposed. When Johnny takes off his Halloween mask, there is a revelation. When a statue is unveiled, there is a revelation. When the detective exposes the murderer, there is a revelation.

When God was speaking to people through the prophets, God was uncovering or revealing small bits and portions of the divine will. It was like the old TV show Concentration where different squares on a board were turned over to reveal pieces of a puzzle on the back. Like that game board, what was revealed through the prophets seemed many times to be only puzzle parts.

But when God spoke through the Son, God used a more complete and accurate communication system. The new revelation was as much better than the old as color TV is better than a teletype.

Instead of revealing things about God, Jesus actually revealed God! Jesus IS God. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," is what he told Philip at the Last Supper. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.Š And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

No one has ever seen God; It is God the only Son Š who has made God known." Those of you who are in love, which is better, to get a love letter or a hug and a kiss? Which is a more satisfying communication, a box of candy mailed from a different state, or a walk together hand in hand in the moonlight? Which message has more meaning? Which is more complete and accurate and effective?

That is the beauty of Isaiah's title for Jesus: Emmanuel, God with us. No longer a God separated from us by light years of empty space, no longer a God hiding behind a temple veil, screened and protected by scurrying priests, no longer a God revealing bits and pieces of a puzzle through written words, no longer a God of darkness and secrecy and concealment, but God with us, God visible, God tangible. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have stared at and touched with our hands," says John in one of his letters.

It's funny, isn't it, that from our human point of view, God seems to prefer obscurity, that through all of history God has managed to stay hidden except for one brief period?

It's funny because really just the opposite is true. John is pointing out that it is in the very nature of God to communicate: "In the beginning was the Word." Communicating is part of God's nature. God's self-revelation existed even before there were humans to communicate with. The fact that God spoke over and over again through prophets and then finally through the Son shows God's great desire to communicate with us.

So God spoke to us in words, and then God spoke in THE WORD. And the essence of Christianity is in this fact, that in Jesus of Nazareth is revealed not the teachings of God, nor the commands of God, not even a description of God, but God Himself, "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, of one substance with the Father."

Back in the Sixties Marshall McLuhan was insisting that the medium is the message, and that is certainly true here. Christ is not the bringer of God's message, he IS the message. We can impose a message of dots and dashes on a beam of light, but the message of the sun is the light itself. Jesus Christ is God's sunlight, Jesus is God's message, the Living Word.

That Word is the source of the written words, and the written words point to the Living Word. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, and when we know him, we at last know God. In the beginning was the Word Š and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth Š and these words were written, and my words are spoken, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Don Hoffman

donhoffman@w-link.net

Northwest Christian Church

Seattle, WA

"For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong." -H. L. Mencken