"The Beginning ... Your Beginning"

John 1:1-18 Last summer Robin and I hired David and his friend Sean to paint our house in Clarendon. On some of the days I helped with the painting, too, which gave me the chance to learn about what these guys were thinking about as they were in the last days before heading off for their first year of college, David at a school in Pennsylvania and Sean to GCC. You know, to be a good pastor I need to know what people are thinking about. So one of my questions was “what’s the hot TV show these days?” I know what TV shows I like – though I could tell you more about all of the TV shows I don’t like - but I wondered what shows David and Sean liked. David had a ready answer, “The Big Bang Theory”. I hadn’t seen that show before. I usually don’t have the TV on that early in the evening, so sometime after asking I found a chance to watch it. The story line of the show seems to be about two young men, Sheldon and Leonard, who share an apartment in Pasadena. They are certifiable geniuses in theoretical and experimental physics at Cal-Tech, each with multiple PhD degrees, but in their interactions with the girl across the hall it is quite apparent that they have almost no common sense, and for all of their vast knowledge they have trouble getting a date. In the one episode I saw Sheldon gives a vastly detailed, logical explanation touching on string theory, calculus, magnetism, and cosmology of why Penny should go out with him. She just looks at him funny and says “You’re crazy!” and walks out. It’s a funny show, two guys who know everything, but can’t get a date! Reminds me of someone I once was, ahem, someone I once knew! I was hoping that the story line would actually include some insights about the real “Big Bang Theory”, which in case you don’t know is what real theoretical physicists talk about in laboratories and lecture halls at top academic institutions. The Big Bang Theory holds that the universe and everything we know and see was created billions of years ago in a single instant, where out of nothing energy exploded, matter was generated, and the universe began to expand and cool. Even today, billions of years later, the galaxies continue to move outward from an original source point. The Big Bang Theory is widely accepted by scientists. I should point out that the Big Bang Theory offers no explanations for whom or what caused the Big Bang. Nor does it try to. It only describes what happened after the Big Bang. Some Christians cringe when they hear about the Big Bang, because they believe it contradicts the creation story in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, the account of the six days of creation and the seventh day when God rested. But I actually have no problem aligning the two accounts. After all, the Bible is a story of how people came to understand and trust God. It is not meant to be a scientific document. But it does present the idea that however the Universe began, the idea of people was there from the start, that in this vast Universe of beautiful planets, stars and galaxies that God had even more profound purposes. The Genesis story, in my mind, is more poetry than science, and its vocabulary rarely intersects with what you might hear in a scientific lecture on the Big Bang, but the poetry is beautiful and creates in our troubled times a zone of prayer and contemplation about the mind and purposes of God. This brings me to our reading from John’s Gospel. If you read through these verses and ponder them, you will find a clear resonance with the themes laid out in the familiar first chapter of Genesis. The first chapter of John is all about creation, too, but it adds something more. It doesn’t focus on the days of creation, of the establishment of day and night, the placement of the sun and moon, or the emergence of plants, animals and people. But it does delve into the mind of God. What was God thinking? A potter looks at a lump of soggy clay and imagines a beautiful vase. An artist looks at an old hunk of wood and imagines a beautiful carving. A woman looks at a pile of colored yarn and dreams up a beautiful prayer shawl. God looked at the spark of light and imagined a world, a people and a Savior. Much of what we celebrate in the Christmas season is based on the events in Bethlehem, of Joseph and Mary, the birth of the baby, the angels singing, the shepherds visiting, the wise men travelling from afar. But John goes back to the very beginning to emphasize that the thought of Jesus, the idea of the Christ, the plan for a Savior, the need for a Messiah, was in the mind of God from the moment that the light first appeared in the darkness. I like the opening of John's Gospel because it shows that the coming of Christ was no accident of history, but the heart of God's intention for creation from the very beginning of everything. John has a name for this idea in the mind of God. He calls it “The Word”: “In the beginning was the Word”. The word of God is more than speech and writing. It is God in action, creating, revealing, reconciling and redeeming. Jesus Christ is the Word to us, the word that became flesh, living in the world, living among us full of grace and truth, and in him we have come to see the glory of God and experience the power of God’s purpose and blessing. John’s story could make you feel small and insignificant. After all, when talking about the origins of the Universe, and all its beauty and vastness, what does that have to do with your daily life? What does it have to do with going to the grocery store, going to a volleyball game at the high school, or getting a date on Friday night? But consider this: if Jesus was in the mind of God from the very beginning of all things, then you were there too. This is something to really think about. God has you in mind, not just at the present moment, but from the very beginning. God has you in mind, not just observing from afar, but as the Word in your life, actively involved on your good days and bad days, actively touching your heart and mind and soul. God has you in mind, especially if you ever feel lost, or confused, or stuck. You are in the mind of God from the beginning of the Universe. I can’t prove it scientifically, but I can draw you into the poetry of it. In the beginning was the Word, and that Word is your Word, too. In the beginning is your beginning. The coming of Christ is described on a cosmic scale in the opening verses of John’s Gospel, but look where it leads: from the spark of light in the darkness of the Universe to a spark of light in your life. I am amazed by God’s plan and willingness to be constantly involved in all of it from start to finish, from the biggest to the smallest, to you and me. Not only did God have the idea of sending a savior at the beginning of things, God also had you in mind, too. The book begins on a cosmic scale, with the very beginning of all things, but listen to how John concludes his Gospel many pages later: “these [stories] have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.” [John 20:31]