Why Does the Four Letter Word Offend Us?
Christmas Eve 2006
John 1:1-14
Let me read from the Gospel of John a few words that put this night into perspective.
NLT John 1:1 In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn't make. 4 Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. 5 The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
NLT John 1:14 So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father.
A few weeks ago I asked myself a question, “Why does this Word from God offend us so?” Perhaps, you might say in response, “It doesn’t offend me at all. I am happy and comfortable with this word.” For the most part, most of us, most all the time are quite comfortable with this word. It has become quite tame and domesticated, after all is said and done, even profitable in this season of joy to the world. We come here to sing and to celebrate it. So, why does it offend or does it?
Let me begin by painting an image that a friend of mine has placed in my mind several years ago. He is an African-American pastor with a small but vigorous and caring congregation. Each year in Advent he places a very simple display on his front lawn of the church. This display has a cradle and a cross linked only by a string of lights that highlights the image of both as you drive by. In a day of more and more gaudy and tacky Christmas light displays, this scene is so dismally simple and unadorned, it has no possible hope of making the “Tacky Tours” of Christmas. It makes no splashy, glitzy statement.
Well, in fact, it may be theologically the best statement that I have yet seen in 31 years of ministry. Its simplicity and truth are disturbingly counter to our culture of hype. As I was reading my devotional book entitled “This Day - A Wesleyan Way of Prayer,” I came across the explanation that makes this simple display so offensive to our time and place in history. The author, … “warns us not to ruin Christmas with over-sentimentality. For, he insisted, in the nativity accounts … present us with the fullness of the ministry of Jesus: He who is born for us must die at our hands.” (P. 111)
The English poet and preacher, John Donne, shocked his congregation on Christmas Eve 1626 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London when he began his sermon in this way: “The whole life of Christ was a continual passion. Others die martyrs; but Christ was born a martyr... and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.” (P. 111)
But what is the offense? It means that we feel attacked and a righteous indignation for something we hold most sacred that is being threatened to be taken from us. How does Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, offend? What is it that causes us to turn our eyes, our ears and our mind away in disdain? I am offended when I see 4-letter words scribbled on the bathroom stalls. I am offended when my freedom to have an opinion different from others is called liberal or conservative and then summarily dismissed.
Why does the Word from God offend so? Consider the word, in Greek – agape. That’s not a four-letter word; but in English it is four letters – L-o-v-e. Such a disturbing word has ramifications that can shake and totter a kingdom. Consider the comments on it in 1 John -- 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
This divine Word first viewed by shepherds in Bethlehem is destined to become the earthly ruler of human hearts. This living Word is what scared Herod the Great so much that he ordered all male children under two years of age to be killed. It is this Word that frightened neighbors, friends, and even family to think that this Jesus might be more dangerous or even insane. “Love your enemies,” he said, and “It’s not what goes into the body but what comes out of the heart that is evil or good.” It is this Word that both inspired and encouraged those who had no hope, who were on the margins of life – the sick, the lame, the outcasts, the sinners, all of whom needed this Word of God to love them back into health and wholeness. But, this Word threatened all the traditional institutions of politics and religion; it turned the world upside down and challenged every thing held sacred. The cross like the cradle became a stumbling block, a scandal to the wise and a folly to the powerful of this age.
What makes this Word that is so filled with life and light become so terrifying and threatening at the same time? The four-letter word is love; and because it stands opposite of greed, it lifts up hope for unity and reconciliation and forgiveness. How offensive is that in a world that builds walls and barriers to separate and segregate? I can tell you of no worse feeling than to stand on a knoll, as I did on my trip to Israel in September, looking across a valley and seeing the Church of the Nativity atop the hill in Bethlehem isolated from free travel by a 30 ft. wall and electrified wired fences. These are the real life displays of a “dividing wall of hostility.” The Wall keeps people apart. This concrete barrier stands completely in opposition to Jesus, who tears down the walls of hate, hurt, distrust and fear. Jesus therefore offends those who put up such walls and barriers.
In fact, Jesus challenges every wall that divides us. Jesus offends those who erect the white picket fences that separate the rich from the poor, the railroad tracks that distinguish the white from the black. Jesus offends those who construct the fences along the borders of a country that keep the unwanted out. Jesus offends those who create rigid separations of north and south, Yankees and Confederates, insiders and outsiders, blues and reds, and those who are been here’s who never allow the come here’s into the inner circles. You see, there are always walls and barriers that the world erects and that are the targets of the offensive Word of Jesus who loves all God’s children, and will suffer them all to come to him, irregardless of wealth or poverty, nation or race or even gender.
LOVE is his offense, if it means that these barriers that protect the few against the many are to be torn down in the Kingdom of God.
When there is no room in our heart for this Word of God from the cradle to the cross, there will always be an offense to any who want to keep this place an exclusive club for the select righteous.
The Good News is that on this holy night we know again that the holy Word is out. It will bear all things, hope all things, believe all things and endure forever. It will love even when we will not. It will not be destroyed by a cross or entombed in a cave.
Can you imagine with me for one moment how one man began to stand up and sing Silent Night on Christmas Eve and dared to walk forward with a white flag of truce. John McCutheon writes a divine moment in World War I which he called Christmas in the Trenches. Soon both sides would meet in the middle of No Man’s land and exchange signs of that divine four-letter word. While Germans were ordered to kill the English and the French, and vice versa, to stop it would have been treason and a court marshal, something more powerful and offensive to the political leaders and generals of war sounded, a song of Christmas Eve.
"There's someone coming towards us!" the front line sentry cried. All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side. His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright, as he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night.
“Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land,
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand… These sons and fathers far away from families of their own…This curious and unlikely band of men.
“Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more. With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war. But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night: "Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung. The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung. For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war, had been crumbled and were gone forevermore.
“…Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well, That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame, And on each end of the rifle we're the same.”
Now again God offers us this divine gift. Will we dare to receive this gift so offensive to a world of hate, accustomed to violence, distrust and hurt? This is a night of hope in a God who gives and gives and keeps on giving. God’s greatest gift for us is a four-letter offensive word - love.
Merry Christmas. Amen.