Recognition
John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
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. But 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.
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. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 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.
It’s Epiphany—it’s the Sunday when we recognize and celebrate God coming to our realm in the body of a human—in the body of a child. It’s when we celebrate the physical manifestation of the Divine. Now, I have a tendency to focus on, and put a lot of emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, as opposed to his divinity. And despite the fact that this Sunday the one in which we celebrate the divinity of Jesus… I’m still gonna talk about Jesus’ humanity a lot. Sorry not sorry.
To start, John uses the language from Genesis—he uses this language to show that Jesus was always with God, was always a part of God. This isn’t saying Genesis was wrong, he’s not correcting anything. He’s just sort of… putting a different spin on things. That’s sort of John’s MO, putting new, mystical spins on things. So here we are, in the first 72 hours of 2021, looking at a new beginning. Here we are, looking at this cryptic passage and celebrating the divine coming to our world. But as I warned you, I don’t want to focus on the divinity. What I do want to focus on is the fact that someone perfect and divine would deign to join us on this imperfect, troubled earth—that God, would deliver Jesus to us only to be denied, unrecognized, only to not be accepted. That Jesus, this divine being truly did dwell among us, that Jesus truly did worship with us, laugh with us, pray with us, cry with us, suffer with us—that Jesus ultimately died with, and for us.
And the reason I’m so obsessed with this idea that Jesus was truly among us is verse 14 of this passage: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” Because lived among, dwelt among, translated literally is “pitched a tent.” And I just absolutely love this—to me, it has so many different meanings—it’s of course a callback to the wandering Jews in Exodus, it’s Jesus with all those wandering, with all those searching, with all those struggling. It’s the notion that Jesus is with us at our most precarious, at our most vulnerable.
And to me, it’s also saying that Jesus is with the absolute lowliest of us. That Jesus is truly on the ground with us, getting dirty with us, that Jesus is truly with us when we’re scared, when we’re suffering. That the least of us are never alone. The black liberation theologian James Cone says, “To declare that God raised Jesus from the dead is to say that our knowledge of Jesus is not limited to his life in Palestine…. Faith in the resurrection means that the historical Jesus, in his liberating words and deeds for the poor, was God’s way of breaking into human history, redeeming humanity from injustice and violence, and bestowing power upon little ones in their struggle for freedom.”[i] Church because God delivered God’s son, in human form to us—Jesus, in spite of his divinity, was profoundly human. Jesus broke into human history, and because he lived and died and was resurrected, he remains with the lowest of the low today. His tent remains pitched among whoever needs him, among others who are suffering, wandering, and lost.
Reading about this literal translation of “pitching a tent” my mind immediately went to a very literal modern-day parallel I’m constantly reading about these days—transient homeless shelters—“tent cities” popping up all over the place, increasing in size since the start of the pandemic. Just before I left Philadelphia this past Fall, there were tons of protests and controversy surrounding the threat of demolishing a homeless encampment that was a temporary home to over 100 people as COVID numbers were rising. Those folks, already homeless, were about to be cast into yet another form of uncertainty, thrown into an even more vulnerable state, at the worst possible time. There are countless stories from the west coast, where there is a perpetual affordable housing crisis, and instead of creating safer housing for people, cities are putting structures and fines in place that make the streets even less inhabitable. I was reading and article about one place in Phoenix, AZ, an official Tent City in a parking lot exists where each family is designated a 12x12 foot lot to keep their tent and all their belongings. And in that relief bill that was just passed, there was no relief designated to combat growing homelessness amidst this pandemic.
And church, this is not just an issue on the West Coast or in big cities—there were 3 iterations of a single tent city here in Vermont since the beginning of the pandemic. It was disbanded as the weather began getting colder and city and state officials and nonprofits worked to get those folks temporarily housed, but many of those people are currently living in motels and shelters. I’m always thinking of that Jesus quote, Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these…you did it to me. So, if Jesus is indeed pitching his tent among us, then he is indeed with the least of these. And as this pandemic rages on, and as these deeply rooted systemic inequities continue to be disregarded, this is where Jesus will stay. And I’m wondering—when we walk by shelters, run-down motels, people sleeping on benches, do we notice these folks? Do we recognize them? Knowing Jesus is surely with them, it seems even more cruel that we (and I include myself in this—I’m not singling anyone on here, we are all guilty of looking the other way!) don’t recognize these people.
Church, as of this morning, there have been over 350,000 deaths from COVID-19. On Christmas morning, a man who was essentially a suicide bomber leveled a city street in Nashville, a major American city. And homeless populations are not getting any smaller during these dangerous, dire times. Now church, I’m not trying to depress anyone, I promise you. But I’ve noticed that it can feel like we’re living in a different world here in Vermont. When none of these huge things are happening super close to home, it doesn’t feel real. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been struggling with this since I got here. Of course, it makes me incredibly grateful to be living in such a beautiful state full of kind and rational people! On the other hand, I’m finding it takes a lot of work to make sure I’m cognizant and aware of the chaos in the world beyond our beautiful state here. And regardless, I think it can be sort of a survival instinct to turn the other way when we’re confronted with the myriad problems in this world. It’s overwhelming. Worse, it’s discouraging.
I wonder how God felt when God’s only son, as it’s written in John “…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.” I wonder what it felt like for God to watch God’s own son be rejected.
Church, this passage in John makes it clear that Jesus came to this world as the ultimate revealer. The light that Jesus came with didn’t only shine a light on the good—the light that Jesus came with shined a light on everything, showed the truth about everything, and much of that truth was hard to digest. Much of that truth showed how upside down things were, how so many were struggling and suffering. We all know Jesus spent most of his time with the outcast of society, the exiled, the ignored—Jesus was revealing the fact that these people were indeed people. That they were people deserving of love and comfort.
Being that Jesus came to our world and spent time with the lowest of the low, with the least of us, it’s no surprise that he was not recognized by his own. I think we—and again, I’m not shaming anyone, I fully include myself in this—become numb to death tolls, to the homeless and housing insecure, to the violence that is everywhere.
I just started a book Missionaries by Phil Klay—the book starts with the story of an adolescent growing up in Colombia in the 1980’s, watching the beginnings of political unrest, violent uprisings , paramilitary and guerilla warfare. The narrator, describing the descent into violence of the world around him says, “…after a time [it] became normal…and the fear became something in the background, like the heat of summer, something you acknowledge sometimes, even complain about, but which you do not expect to change.” It’s such an easy attitude to have. I’ve never lived in a world where I didn’t see homeless people almost everywhere I walked. I’ve seen the life expectancy go down in this country because of the opioid epidemic, because of gun violence, because of a lack of adequate physical and mental healthcare.
It’s so easy when these changes happen slowly but surely, when they happen gradually, or when they were just always there, to shrug and say “well that’s always how it’s been” like the narrator in Missionaries, to acknowledge the problem but feel hopeless about the fact that it could ever truly change or get better. And so we become numb to these things. And we turn a blind eye to those people, those groups of people who need our help so badly. We don’t recognize them. And when we don’t recognize them, we don’t recognize Jesus. And as long as we don’t recognize them, that is where Jesus will pitch his tent. As long as we don’t recognize the least of us, they will remain the least of us. And as long as they remain the least of us, so remains Jesus.
The good news now—“And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth…From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” We have grace, church. We have time to change things—we have time to take a moment and recognize Jesus amongst us—to recognize Jesus among the least of us. This is the good news. Sure, there is work to do, but we can do that work once we accept all that Jesus has revealed to us. We can do that work without it overwhelming us or discouraging us, because as we work with those who need help most, we are working alongside Jesus, because Jesus is always with the little ones, in the words of James Cone.
This work takes time, and thanks to the Grace of God, we have a little time. But this work and change take time because it means recognizing things we have long ignored. It means seeing terrible things for what they are—things we have long become numb to. This change takes time because it means coming to terms with and confronting inconvenient, difficult truths and evils.
Let’s not repeat history. Let’s not be blind to Jesus among us this time. Let’s recognize him with his tent pitched among the nomads. Let’s recognize him sleeping on the ground and on park benches. Let’s recognize him in line with struggling families at food banks. Let’s recognize the difficult truths that Jesus brings to light.
The light Jesus brings can illuminate hard truths, yes. But the light is good, the light is truth, the light is love—and we can take so much comfort in the fact that the darkness will never overcome the light. Epiphany is all about revealing—about Jesus as the revealer. So I’m asking you today, church, to walk in the light, and see what Jesus is revealing to each of us, and in turn, to see what Jesus is revealing to the world, about the world. From now on, thanks to this new year, this new beginning, this new light, we will work to see Jesus pitching his tent among the least of us. And we will take this new beginning to really recognize Jesus, and to work together to bring about a world in which we all have more than a tent to lay our heads.
[i] Cone, James. God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, New York 10545, Orbis Books, 1997), pg. 110
