69 Sermon Illustrations on Lord S Supper

Forty years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. “I’m talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.

And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth’s orbit and on to the surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement:

“This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to

ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may

be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the

past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:

In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages

which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine

into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth

gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully

came up the side of the cup.

Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the

branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much

fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’

I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth,

but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do

this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with

Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion,

over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting

the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.

I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks

for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young

pilots to the Sea of Tranquility . It was interesting for me

to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and

the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.

And of course, it’s interesting to think that some of the

first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus

Christ, who made the Earth and the moon - and Who, in the

immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves the

Sun and other stars.”

________

[see also #36253]

The Thursday before Easter is known as Maundy Thursday, the day set aside on the Church calendar to remember the Last Supper. The word “maundy” comes from the Latin word for “mandate,” or “command.” At this first celebration of communion, Jesus gave His disciples what He called “a new command” to love and serve one another. And He demonstrated what He meant by washing their very dirty feet.

Now to fully appreciate this command, we have to remember that at this supper Jesus and the disciples were obeying God’s command to remember the Passover. The Passover meal celebrated God rescuing His people from Egypt, as described in Exodus. For Jesus to have the audacity to offer a “new” command when the old one was such an important part of Israel’s history is astounding enough. But Jesus went even further. Rather than remembering the redemption of their forefathers from Egyptian tyranny and the way the angel of death “passed over” the homes with lamb’s blood on their doorposts, they were now to remember His broken body and His shed blood. In Christ’s death, death itself is not just avoided; it is defeated.

Sermon on Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane asking for the cup of suffering to be taken away, but submitting to God's will.

[But compare Buswell's argument based on Hebrews 5:7-8 (in Buswell II.62ff) that Jesus's prayer WAS answered.]

1. There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

Lose all their guilty stains,

Lose all their guilty stains;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

2. The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

Wash all my sins away,

Wash all my sins away;

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away.

3. Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood

Shall never lose its power

Till all the ransomed church of God

Be saved, to sin no more.

Be saved, to sin no more,

Be saved, to sin no more;

Till all the ransomed church of God

Be saved, to sin no more.

4. E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream

Thy flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die.

And shall be till I die,

And shall be till I die;

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die.

5. When this poor lisping, stammering tongue

Lies silent in the grave.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,

I’ll sing thy power to save,

I’ll sing thy power to save,

I’ll sing thy power to save,

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,

I’ll sing thy power to save.

[Tune “Cleansing Fountain”]

*

On the long walk up the steep hill of the historic castle in Marburg, Germany, nostalgia throbbed through every vein. If only the stones could speak and resonate with the voices that held forth within those confines -- what rapture that would provide! Within the rooms of that castle a memorable meeting was held in October of 1529 at which a handful of men, principally Luther and Zwingli, were present. What occasioned that auspicious gathering, and why were the emotions so intense as the moods swung from castigating outbursts to heartfelt apologies?

The question before them was one of consolidating their theological convictions and of presenting a unified platform on what they believed and why they believed it. We read in the summation of those proceedings that of the fifteen points under debate they agreed on fourteen but with great anguish disagreed on the fifteenth. The issue that strongly divided them was the meaning of Jesus’s words “This is my body,” and the significant implications of those words upon the elements of the Lord’s Supper. To Luther it appeared to be as clear as the day -- “This is my body” could only be literal. “Jesus said, ‘This is my body,’” he kept thundering forth. He was not arguing for transubstantiation, although Zwingli saw it as a capitulation to that. To Zwingli the words were only symbolic of Christ’s spiritual presence.

One has only to read the points and counterpoints made between the two and the spirit is stirred by the passion of the reformers. The contest of two different convictions, and the harshness of the words spoken in the heat of argument prompted tears and regret in each as they parted with the hope that the sharp edges of their verbal outbursts would be blunted and gentler words would prevail. Unfortunately, subsequent history unfolds a reality different to their hopes.

Today we marvel at such diatribe between people committed to Christ. But let us not lose sight of something so close to the eye that we may lose focus. For both Zwingli and Luther the fundamental question was unmistakable: WHAT DID JESUS MEAN? That was of supreme importance. To be absolutely sure of the answer to that question on the Lord’s Supper we may have to await the Real Presence when eternity is ushered in. But I strongly suspect that both Zwingli and Luther will be applauded for their unswerving commitment to determine God’s intent in his Word.

With the twists and turns of history, Marburg has a more sobering warning to us than a debate in a castle by a handful of reformers. The prestigious University of Marburg was founded just two years before that colloquy. In more recent times it has been the spawning ground for schools of thought that have brought havoc into theological institutions. In this university the famed existentialist Martin Heidegger taught. His impact was also felt by the notable neoorthodox theologian Rudolf Bultmann.

Bultmann’s legacy to Christianity is his self-arrogated task to “demythologize” the New Testament; that is, to strip it of what he considered its contemporaneously false assumptions and beliefs which modern learning has clearly debunked, and to find in its place that which is personally meaningful. He drew a line between the alleged facts of history and history as we need to apply it. Thus, to Bultmann the resurrection was not a fact but a faith event, fused with meaning and embraced with passion whether or not it is true. This philosophically impoverished approach could not have been more ironically evidenced than on that Easter weekend I spent in Marburg. For seventy-two hours the stores were closed and the streets were barren. Two of the most precious days to Christendom were being commemorated in a culture where the truth of those days has been lost.

After decades of ministry, one of the deepest concerns I have lies in this twin-headed dilemma -- how we approach the Scriptures and how we apply them. So much of our faith today is muddied by spiritual jargon. Time and again we hear, “God spoke to me” -- a mind-boggling statement, to be sure, not only to the skeptic but to many a serious student of the Word. Could such a claim not just as equally be the spiritual clothing of ambition with the verbiage of inspiration? I have seen some of the most incredible behavior justified with the words “God spoke to me.” How does one argue with that? The only way is to turn to the Scriptures and to verify whether the truth deduced is in keeping with the truth of Scripture, not just personally wrested but objectively revealed to all humanity. Further, if the life and conduct of the one to whom God is “constantly speaking” belies a disjunction between practice in day-to-day living and a precept that is harnessed to justify specific behavior, that one too has amputated the organ of fact from the feeling of faith.

From the beginning of time the most difficult question confronting humanity was in the words of the tempter, “Did God really say...?” In a tragic sort of way we have either jettisoned that revealed authority or else given lip service to it, breathing our own inspiration into self-chosen paths. May I suggest the latter is more dangerous, for while the former denies the existence of God, the latter in the name of God, plays God. This may be the most important lesson to learn from the stones of Marburg. To Luther and Zwingli it was important to know what God meant when God said what He did, not what they might like it to mean. Their disagreement was based on the importance of truth. For Bultmann and Heidegger their personal worlds overrode the spoken Word, denuding it from being God-breathed and rendering it effectually just another book to be literally “manhandled” at the mercy of personal inspiration. I have little doubt that to many professing Christians the choice between the two schools of thought is clear: Bultmann and Heidegger were wrong. But the terrifying reality may be that in life and conduct we may be closer to where they were.

________

Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20881]

One of the greatest journalists of the last generation, Bernard Levin, described how, when he was a small boy, a great celebrity came to visit his school. The headmaster, perhaps wanting to impress, called the young Levin to the platform in front of the whole school. The celebrity, perhaps wanting to be kind, asked the little boy what he’d had for breakfast.

“Matzobrei,” replied Levin. A typical central European Jewish dish, Matzobrei is made of eggs fried with matzo wafers, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Levin’s immigrant mother had continued to make it even after years of living in London. To him, it was a perfectly ordinary word for a perfectly ordinary meal.

But the celebrity, ignorant of such cuisine, thought he’d misheard. He repeated his question. Levin, now puzzled and anxious, gave the same answer. The celebrity looked concerned and glanced at the headmaster: WHAT IS THIS WORD HE’S SAYING? The headmaster, adopting a there-there-little-man tone, asked Levin once more what he had had for breakfast. Dismayed, not knowing what he’d done wrong, and wanting to burst into tears, the boy said once more the only answer he could honestly give: “Matzobrei.” After an exchange of incredulous glances on the platform, the terrified little boy was sent back to his place. The incident was never referred to again, but to him it was a horrible ordeal.

A Jewish word spoken to an uncomprehending world; a child’s word spoken to uncomprehending adults; a word for a food of which others were unaware — it all feels very Johannine. “In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh” (John 1:1,14). We are so used to that passage, the great cadences, the solemn but glad message of the Incarnation, that we risk skipping over the incomprehensibility, the oddness, the almost embarrassing strangeness of the Word. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness didn’t comprehend it; the world was made through him and the world didn’t know him; he came to his own, and his own didn’t receive him” (John 1:5, 10–11).

John is saying two things simultaneously in his prologue (two hundred things, actually, but I’ll concentrate on two): First, that the Incarnation of the eternal Word was the event for which the whole of creation had been waiting all along; second, that creation and even the people God were quite unready for this event. Jew and Gentile alike, upon hearing of this strange Word, cast anxious glances at one another, like the celebrity and the headmaster hearing a little boy telling the truth in a language they didn’t understand.

That is the puzzle of Christmas. John’s prologue is designed to stay in the mind and heart throughout the subsequent story. Never again in the Gospel of John is Jesus referred to as “the Word,” but we are meant to look at each scene — the call of the first disciples, the changing of water into wine, the confrontation with Pilate, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection — and think to ourselves: THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN THE WORD BECOMES FLESH. Or, if you like: LOOK AT THIS MAN OF FLESH AND LEARN TO SEE THE LIVING GOD.

But watch what happens as it all plays out. He comes to his own, and his own don’t receive him. The light shines in the darkness, and though the darkness can’t overcome it, the darkness sure tries. He speaks the truth, the plain and simple words, like the little boy saying what he had for breakfast, and Caiaphas and Pilate, uncomprehending, can’t decide whether he’s mad or wicked or both.

Though Jesus is never again referred to as the Word of God, we find the theme transposed throughout the Gospel with endless variations. The Living Word speaks living words, and the reaction is the same. “This is a hard word,” say his followers when he tells them that he is the bread come down from heaven (John 6:60). “What is this word?” asks the puzzled crowd in Jerusalem (John 7:36). “My word finds no place in you,” says Jesus, “because you can’t hear it” (John 8:37,43). “The word I spoke will be their judge on the last day,” he insists (John 12:48), as the crowds reject him.

When Pilate hears the word, says John, he is afraid, since the word in question is Jesus’ reported claim to be the Son of God (John 19:8). Unless we recognize this strange, dark strand running through the Gospel, we will domesticate John’s masterpiece (just as we’re always in danger of domesticating Christmas) and think it’s only about comfort and joy. In truth, it’s also about incomprehension, rejection, darkness, denial, stopped ears, and judgment. Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything’s all right. John’s Gospel isn’t about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying “Of course! Why didn’t we realize it before?” It is about God shining his clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations — and the darkness not comprehending it. It’s about God, God as a little child, speaking words of truth, and nobody knowing what he’s talking about.

You may be aware of that puzzlement, that incomprehension, that sense of a word being spoken which seems like it ought to mean something but which remains opaque to you. If that’s the point you are at, the Good News is that along with this theme of incomprehension and rejection is a parallel theme of people hearing and receiving Jesus’ words, believing them and discovering, as he says, that they are spirit and life (John 6:63). “As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, who were born not of human will or flesh, but of God” (John 1:12-13). “If you abide in my words, you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). “If anyone keeps my words, that person will never see death” (John 8:51). “You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).

Don’t imagine that the world divides naturally into those who can understand what Jesus is saying and those who can’t. By ourselves, none of us can. Jesus was born into a world where everyone was deaf and blind to him. But some, in fear and trembling, have allowed his words to challenge, rescue, heal, and transform them. That is what’s offered at Christmas, not a better-focused religion for those who already like that sort of thing, but a Word which is incomprehensible in our language but which, when we learn to hear, understand, and believe it, will transform our whole selves with its judgment and mercy.

Out of the thousands of things that follow directly from this reading of John, I choose three as particularly urgent.

First, John’s view of the Incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, strikes at the very root of the liberal denial which characterized mainstream theology thirty years ago and whose long-term effects are still with us. I grew up hearing lectures and sermons declaring that the idea of God becoming human was a categorical error. No human being could be divine; Jesus must therefore have been simply a human being, albeit (here the headmaster pats the little boy on the head) a very brilliant one. Jesus points to God, but he isn’t actually God. A generation later, growing straight out of that school of thought, a clergyman wrote to me saying that the church doesn’t know anything for certain. Remove the enfleshed and speaking Word from the center of your theology, and gradually the whole thing unravels, until all you’re left with is the theological equivalent of the grin on the Cheshire Cat: a relativism whose only moral principle is that there are no moral principles, no words of judgment (because nothing is really wrong, except saying that things are wrong), no words of mercy (because you’re all right as you are, so all you need is affirmation).

That’s where our society stands right now, and John’s Christmas message issues a sharp and timely reminder to relearn the difference between mercy and affirmation, between a Jesus who both embodies and speaks God’s word of judgment and grace and a homemade Jesus who gives us good advice about discovering who we really are. No wonder John’s Gospel has been so unfashionable in many circles.

There is a fad in some quarters about a “theology of incarnation,” meaning that our task is to discern what God is doing in the world and to do it with him. But that is only half the truth, and the wrong half to start with. John’s theology of the Incarnation is about God’s Word coming as light into darkness, as a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, as a fresh word of judgment and mercy. You might as well say that an incarnational missiology is about discovering what God is saying no to today and finding out how to say it with him. That was the lesson Barth and Bonhoeffer had to teach in Germany in the 1930s, and it’s all too relevant as today’s world becomes simultaneously more liberal and more totalitarian. This Christmas, get real, get Johannine, and listen again to the strange words spoken by the Word made flesh.

Second, John’s prologue by its structure reaffirms the order of Creation at the point where it is being challenged today. John consciously echoes the first chapter of Genesis: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth; in the beginning was the Word” (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1). When the Word becomes flesh, heaven and earth are joined together at last, as God always intended. But the Creation story, which begins with the duality of heaven and earth, reaches its climax in the duality of male and female. When heaven and earth are joined together in Jesus Christ, the glorious intention for the whole of Creation is unveiled, reaffirming the creation of male and female in God’s image. There is something about the enfleshment of the Word in John 1 that stands parallel to Genesis 1 and speaks of Creation fulfilled. We see what’s going on: Jesus Christ has come as the Bridegroom, the one for whom the Bride has been waiting.

Not for nothing is Jesus’ first sign to transform a wedding from disaster to triumph. Not for nothing do we find a man and a woman at the foot of the Cross. The same incipient gnosticism which says that true religion is about “discovering who we really are” is all too ready to say that who we really are may have nothing to do with being physically created as male or female. But the Christmas message is about the redemption of God’s good world, his wonderful Creation, so that it can be the glorious thing it was made to be. This word is strange, even incomprehensible, in today’s culture. But if you have ears to hear, then hear it.

Third, we return to the meal, the food whose name is strange, forbidding, even incomprehensible to those outside, but the most natural thing to those who know it. The little child comes and speaks to us of food that he offers: himself, his own body and blood. It is a hard saying, and those of us who know it well may need to remind ourselves just how hard it is, in case we have been dulled by familiarity into supposing that it’s easy and undemanding. It isn’t. It is the Word which judges the world and saves the world, the Word now turned into flesh, into matzo, Passover bread, the bread which is the flesh of the Christ child, given for the life of the world.

Listen, because the incomprehensible Word, the child, speaks to you. Don’t patronize him; don’t reject him; don’t sentimentalize him. Learn the language within which he makes sense. And come to the table to enjoy the breakfast, the breakfast which is he himself, the Word made flesh, the Life which is our life, our light, our glory.

________

N. T. Wright is bishop of Durham. This article is adapted from Wright’s Christmas 2005 Eucharist sermon, delivered at the Cathedral Church of Christ.

Every Christian ought to be ready to stand up courageously and unashamedly for the Lord. How inconsistent that a person redeemed by the blood of Christ experiencing saving power should cower before an unbelieving world!

On one occasion Frederick the Great invited some notable people to his royal table, including his top-ranking generals. One of them by the name of Hans von Zieten declined the invitation because he wanted to take communion at his church.

Some time later at another banquet Frederick and his guests mocked the general for his religious scruples and made jokes about the Lord's supper. In great peril of his life, the officer stood to his feet and said respectfully to the monarch, “My lord, there is a greater King than you, a King to whom I have sworn allegiance even unto death. I am a Christian man, and I cannot sit quietly as the Lord's name is dishonored and His character belittled.”

The guests trembled in silence, knowing that von Zieten might be killed. But to their surprise, Frederick grasped the hand of this courageous man, asked his forgiveness, and requested that he remain. He promised that he would never again allow such a travesty to be made of sacred things. (Romans 1:16)

The most joyful Lord's Supper Sam James ever experienced was served in silence -- on a rusted table in a park.

Nearly 15 years after South Vietnam's fall to communism drove James and other missionaries out, he returned for a brief visit in 1989. He sent a message to Vietnamese Christian friends that he was coming but doubted he would see any of them. Most had suffered years of prison, "re-education" camps and persecution for following Christ.

As he emerged from his hotel in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) one morning, someone brushed by and pressed a message into his hand: "Meet us at the park at 2 o'clock."

When he arrived at the park, a man led him through a jungle of overgrown weeds to a tiny clearing. Seven of his former seminary students waited there, seated around an old wrought-iron table.

They were so gaunt and frail that he barely recognized them at first. They embraced him with tears and laughter and spoke of the trials they had faced under communism.

"One of them reached into a paper bag, pulled out an aluminum tray and set it on the table," James recalls. "Another pulled out a loaf of French bread and set it on the tray; another had a little bunch of grapes. One of them broke the bread and began to pass it around. We each took a grape. Nobody said it was the Lord's Supper, but we knew what it was."

James remembers something else about these men: Years earlier, when they first arrived at the Baptist seminary in Saigon asking to study the Bible, they were rowdy, ragged country folk -- nothing like the sophisticated students from the city. James never thought they'd pass the first class, much less endure years of suffering for Christ.

"And yet they're the ones who gathered in that little clearing 14 years later to serve the Lord's Supper to me, their teacher," he says. "It just shows how God's transforming power can take anybody -- anybody -- and make us into what he wants us to be."

James' heart remains in Vietnam, and he continues to share the gospel with Vietnamese around the world. The evacuation of missionaries in 1975 -- as North Vietnamese tanks rolled toward Saigon -- emotionally devastated James and others who experienced it. But the persecution of Christians that followed the communist takeover has purified the church, he believes, and those who endured have become "absolutely fearless" in their commitment.

The agonizing departure also taught him a priceless lesson.

As the plane carrying him and others lifted off in total darkness to avoid hostile fire, he looked down over Saigon and experienced an identity crisis: The seminary was closed. The churches would soon be closed. His status as a missionary, teacher and pastor -- all gone.

"That night I realized that I am a child of God" -- period. "Nobody can ever take that identity from me. I decided there and then never to let a position or a geographical location define my identity in Christ."

The lesson ultimately freed him to serve in numerous roles around the world -- including the mentoring of new generations of missionaries at the Mission Learning Center.

Most new missionaries who train at the center before heading overseas are either "knowers" or "learners," he contends. The "knowers" think they already have all the answers; the "learners" listen -- to God and others.

"The 'knowers' never make it" as missionaries, James says. "But if they come as 'learners,' as listeners, those are the people who are going to make it on the field. I led more people to the Lord in my last two years in Vietnam than the previous 12 because I learned to listen to people, to let them open themselves up so the Lord could come in and touch them where they were hurting. Before, I was just preaching at them."

*

The sun bore down on my neck as I walked through the neatly laid stones, each row like another line in a massive book. My eyes strained to take in all of the information — name, age, rank, country — and perhaps also death itself, the fragility of life, the harsh reality of war. In that field of graves, a war memorial for men lost as prisoners of war, as slaves laboring to construct the Burma-Siam railway, I felt as the psalmist: “laid low in the dust” (Psalm 119:25). I felt like Job sitting among the dust and ashes of a great tragedy. Then one stone stopped my wandering and said what I could not. On an epitaph in the middle of the cemetery was written: “There shall be in that great earth, a richer dust concealed.”(1)

It is helpful, I think, to be reminded that we are dust. It is crucial to take this reminder with us as we approach the vast and terrible events of Holy Week. The season of Lent, the forty days in which we prepare to encounter the events of Easter, begins with Ash Wednesday. On this day, foreheads are marked with a bold and ashen cross of dust, recalling both our history and our future, invoking repentance, inciting stares. Marked with the Cross, we are Christ's own: pilgrims on a journey that proclaims death and resurrection all at once. The journey through Lent into the light and darkness of Holy Week is for those made in dust who will return to dust, those willing to trace the breath that began all of life to the place where Christ breathed his last. It is a journey that expends everything within us.

There is a Latin word that was once used to denote the provisions necessary for a person going on a journey -- the clothes, food, and money the traveler would need along the way. VIATICUM was a word often used by Roman magistrates. It was the payment or goods given to those who were sent into the provinces to exercise an office or perform a service. The viaticum was vital provision for an uncertain journey. Fittingly, the early church employed this image to speak of the Eucharist when it was administered to a dying person. The viaticum, the bread of Communion, was seen as sustenance for Christians on their way from this world into another. Sometime later, the word was used not only to describe a last Communion, but as the Sacrament of Communion for all people. It is as if to say: our communion with Christ is provision for the way home. The viaticum is God's answer to Jacob's vow, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's house, then the LORD will be my God” (Genesis 28:20-22). It is what Christ offered when he said, “Take and eat. This is my body.” The journey from dust to dust and back to our Father's house would be too great without it.

As it is, we are flattened by the events of Holy Week. From the invitation of the Last Supper to the desolation of the Cross, we are undone by events that began before us and will continue after us. We are, in the words of Isaiah or the sentiments of the psalmist, like grass that withers, flowers that blow away like dust. But so we are, in this great earth, a richer dust concealed. Walking in cemeteries we realize this; following Christ we proclaim it. Standing before Holy Week as dust and ashes bids us to see again our need for God's unchanging provision. He offers the Cross, the communion of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting.

________

1. This is a line from a poem of Rupert Brookes entitled “1914.”

________

Copyright © 2006 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

One of the greatest journalists of the last generation, Bernard Levin, described how, when he was a small boy, a great celebrity came to visit his school. The headmaster, perhaps wanting to impress, called the young Levin to the platform in front of the whole school. The celebrity, perhaps wanting to be kind, asked the little boy what he’d had for breakfast.

“Matzobrei,” replied Levin. A typical central European Jewish dish, Matzobrei is made of eggs fried with matzo wafers, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Levin’s immigrant mother had continued to make it even after years of living in London. To him, it was a perfectly ordinary word for a perfectly ordinary meal.

But the celebrity, ignorant of such cuisine, thought he’d misheard. He repeated his question. Levin, now puzzled and anxious, gave the same answer. The celebrity looked concerned and glanced at the headmaster: WHAT IS THIS WORD HE’S SAYING? The headmaster, adopting a there-there-little-man tone, asked Levin once more what he had had for breakfast. Dismayed, not knowing what he’d done wrong, and wanting to burst into tears, the boy said once more the only answer he could honestly give: “Matzobrei.” After an exchange of incredulous glances on the platform, the terrified little boy was sent back to his place. The incident was never referred to again, but to him it was a horrible ordeal.

A Jewish word spoken to an uncomprehending world; a child’s word spoken to uncomprehending adults; a word for a food of which others were unaware — it all feels very Johannine. “In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh” (John 1:1,14). We are so used to that passage, the great cadences, the solemn but glad message of the Incarnation, that we risk skipping over the incomprehensibility, the oddness, the almost embarrassing strangeness of the Word. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness didn’t comprehend it; the world was made through him and the world didn’t know him; he came to his own, and his own didn’t receive him” (John 1:5, 10–11).

John is saying two things simultaneously in his prologue (two hundred things, actually, but I’ll concentrate on two): First, that the Incarnation of the eternal Word was the event for which the whole of creation had been waiting all along; second, that creation and even the people God were quite unready for this event. Jew and Gentile alike, upon hearing of this strange Word, cast anxious glances at one another, like the celebrity and the headmaster hearing a little boy telling the truth in a language they didn’t understand.

That is the puzzle of Christmas. John’s prologue is designed to stay in the mind and heart throughout the subsequent story. Never again in the Gospel of John is Jesus referred to as “the Word,” but we are meant to look at each scene — the call of the first disciples, the changing of water into wine, the confrontation with Pilate, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection — and think to ourselves: THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN THE WORD BECOMES FLESH. Or, if you like: LOOK AT THIS MAN OF FLESH AND LEARN TO SEE THE LIVING GOD.

But watch what happens as it all plays out. He comes to his own, and his own don’t receive him. The light shines in the darkness, and though the darkness can’t overcome it, the darkness sure tries. He speaks the truth, the plain and simple words, like the little boy saying what he had for breakfast, and Caiaphas and Pilate, uncomprehending, can’t decide whether he’s mad or wicked or both.

Though Jesus is never again referred to as the Word of God, we find the theme transposed throughout the Gospel with endless variations. The Living Word speaks living words, and the reaction is the same. “This is a hard word,” say his followers when he tells them that he is the bread come down from heaven (John 6:60). “What is this word?” asks the puzzled crowd in Jerusalem (John 7:36). “My word finds no place in you,” says Jesus, “because you can’t hear it” (John 8:37,43). “The word I spoke will be their judge on the last day,” he insists (John 12:48), as the crowds reject him.

When Pilate hears the word, says John, he is afraid, since the word in question is Jesus’ reported claim to be the Son of God (John 19:8). Unless we recognize this strange, dark strand running through the Gospel, we will domesticate John’s masterpiece (just as we’re always in danger of domesticating Christmas) and think it’s only about comfort and joy. In truth, it’s also about incomprehension, rejection, darkness, denial, stopped ears, and judgment. Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything’s all right. John’s Gospel isn’t about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying “Of course! Why didn’t we realize it before?” It is about God shining his clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations — and the darkness not comprehending it. It’s about God, God as a little child, speaking words of truth, and nobody knowing what he’s talking about.

You may be aware of that puzzlement, that incomprehension, that sense of a word being spoken which seems like it ought to mean something but which remains opaque to you. If that’s the point you are at, the Good News is that along with this theme of incomprehension and rejection is a parallel theme of people hearing and receiving Jesus’ words, believing them and discovering, as he says, that they are spirit and life (John 6:63). “As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, who were born not of human will or flesh, but of God” (John 1:12-13). “If you abide in my words, you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). “If anyone keeps my words, that person will never see death” (John 8:51). “You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).

Don’t imagine that the world divides naturally into those who can understand what Jesus is saying and those who can’t. By ourselves, none of us can. Jesus was born into a world where everyone was deaf and blind to him. But some, in fear and trembling, have allowed his words to challenge, rescue, heal, and transform them. That is what’s offered at Christmas, not a better-focused religion for those who already like that sort of thing, but a Word which is incomprehensible in our language but which, when we learn to hear, understand, and believe it, will transform our whole selves with its judgment and mercy.

Out of the thousands of things that follow directly from this reading of John, I choose three as particularly urgent.

First, John’s view of the Incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, strikes at the very root of the liberal denial which characterized mainstream theology thirty years ago and whose long-term effects are still with us. I grew up hearing lectures and sermons declaring that the idea of God becoming human was a categorical error. No human being could be divine; Jesus must therefore have been simply a human being, albeit (here the headmaster pats the little boy on the head) a very brilliant one. Jesus points to God, but he isn’t actually God. A generation later, growing straight out of that school of thought, a clergyman wrote to me saying that the church doesn’t know anything for certain. Remove the enfleshed and speaking Word from the center of your theology, and gradually the whole thing unravels, until all you’re left with is the theological equivalent of the grin on the Cheshire Cat: a relativism whose only moral principle is that there are no moral principles, no words of judgment (because nothing is really wrong, except saying that things are wrong), no words of mercy (because you’re all right as you are, so all you need is affirmation).

That’s where our society stands right now, and John’s Christmas message issues a sharp and timely reminder to relearn the difference between mercy and affirmation, between a Jesus who both embodies and speaks God’s word of judgment and grace and a homemade Jesus who gives us good advice about discovering who we really are. No wonder John’s Gospel has been so unfashionable in many circles.

There is a fad in some quarters about a “theology of incarnation,” meaning that our task is to discern what God is doing in the world and to do it with him. But that is only half the truth, and the wrong half to start with. John’s theology of the Incarnation is about God’s Word coming as light into darkness, as a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, as a fresh word of judgment and mercy. You might as well say that an incarnational missiology is about discovering what God is saying no to today and finding out how to say it with him. That was the lesson Barth and Bonhoeffer had to teach in Germany in the 1930s, and it’s all too relevant as today’s world becomes simultaneously more liberal and more totalitarian. This Christmas, get real, get Johannine, and listen again to the strange words spoken by the Word made flesh.

Second, John’s prologue by its structure reaffirms the order of Creation at the point where it is being challenged today. John consciously echoes the first chapter of Genesis: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth; in the beginning was the Word” (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1). When the Word becomes flesh, heaven and earth are joined together at last, as God always intended. But the Creation story, which begins with the duality of heaven and earth, reaches its climax in the duality of male and female. When heaven and earth are joined together in Jesus Christ, the glorious intention for the whole of Creation is unveiled, reaffirming the creation of male and female in God’s image. There is something about the enfleshment of the Word in John 1 that stands parallel to Genesis 1 and speaks of Creation fulfilled. We see what’s going on: Jesus Christ has come as the Bridegroom, the one for whom the Bride has been waiting.

Not for nothing is Jesus’ first sign to transform a wedding from disaster to triumph. Not for nothing do we find a man and a woman at the foot of the Cross. The same incipient gnosticism which says that true religion is about “discovering who we really are” is all too ready to say that who we really are may have nothing to do with being physically created as male or female. But the Christmas message is about the redemption of God’s good world, his wonderful Creation, so that it can be the glorious thing it was made to be. This word is strange, even incomprehensible, in today’s culture. But if you have ears to hear, then hear it.

Third, we return to the meal, the food whose name is strange, forbidding, even incomprehensible to those outside, but the most natural thing to those who know it. The little child comes and speaks to us of food that he offers: himself, his own body and blood. It is a hard saying, and those of us who know it well may need to remind ourselves just how hard it is, in case we have been dulled by familiarity into supposing that it’s easy and undemanding. It isn’t. It is the Word which judges the world and saves the world, the Word now turned into flesh, into matzo, Passover bread, the bread which is the flesh of the Christ child, given for the life of the world.

Listen, because the incomprehensible Word, the child, speaks to you. Don’t patronize him; don’t reject him; don’t sentimentalize him. Learn the language within which he makes sense. And come to the table to enjoy the breakfast, the breakfast which is he himself, the Word made flesh, the Life which is our life, our light, our glory.

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N. T. Wright is bishop of Durham. This article is adapted from Wright’s Christmas 2005 Eucharist sermon, delivered at the Cathedral Church of Christ.