John 1:1-14
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.
As you know, a couple of weeks ago – for the first time since Oprah – I took a vacation during Advent. Christa and I went to Key West to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. It was lovely – and warm – and sunny – and all the rest.
And in addition to eating and drinking and biking and walking a lot, we took a boat ride and snorkeled some. And the highlight of that little excursion was that – in addition to a lobster, some sponges, a couple of very small fish, and some refuse from the recent hurricane – we saw and swam with a sea turtle, which is a relatively rare treat, according to our guide, who seemed as genuinely impressed by it as the rest of us were.
When we began our three-hour tour, our boat’s captain asked if any of us had ever snorkeled or scuba-dived in places like Bali or the Great Barrier Reef, only to warn us that no matter what we were about to see in the Florida Keys, it wouldn’t be anything nearly as cool or beautiful or colorful as any of that. And he was right. It was all pretty gray and dead-looking and lacking in life, even, to be honest.
But there was that sea turtle who – as noteworthy as he was – wasn’t much to look at. I tried to find a picture to show, but every picture I could find online – from the turtles to the water they were swimming in – was too colorful and too pretty and nothing like the one we saw. He was as gray and lumpy and as colorless as the rest of that underwater seascape. And, when he kicked up the sand around him or if you took your eyes off of him for to catch your breath, he could be hard to find again.
He was camouflaged pretty well by his gray, barnacle-covered shell and his slow motion paddling that kicked up the dust and muck beneath him to hide him from view every once in a while. He basically looked like a rock that could swim.
But he did have to come up for air which – according to Christa and our friends – is when you could see more of his true colors. (I missed that part, because I was back in the boat having a beer by then.)
But the whole time I wondered if that sea turtle knew or cared that we were watching him. He didn’t seem to. He just did his thing down at the bottom of the sea, moving rocks around with his nose – looking for a lobster dinner, according to our guide – without any indication that he knew there were nine human beings floating and swimming and pointing and splashing on the surface, less than 6-10 feet away from him the whole time.
So I wondered how risky it must have felt for him to come up for air – to rise to the surface with all those people surrounding him – and to trust that he’d be okay. To expose himself – and whatever colors he was hiding – to the people who were watching. And how could he be sure he’d survive to snoop for more lobsters in the end.
And it made me think of Jesus – and God’s choice to be born; to come to life in a new way; to come out of hiding, you might say; to rise to the surface, as it were; to be seen without the camouflage of so many generations and so much history; and to just live and move and breathe all of a sudden, in the person of Jesus.
Of course we know what a risk that was and how all of that turned out to be – it wasn’t safe… our sin did him in… which was only a surprise to the likes of you and me.
But on Christmas morning … at the beginning of this new day … as we start to retell the story and wonder again about what it means to look for God among us – now that we know how it all panned out – I think our call and joy and blessing is to look for and to see the colorful parts more readily and to notice the good news more often.
Our snorkeling guide gave us some clear instructions before we jumped into the ocean that day – long before we ever saw a thing. She said that if and when we spotted anything noteworthy – and especially if we came upon an octopus or a sea turtle – we were supposed to shout to tell the group what we were looking at, call them over to our location, and point to where the rest of us could see it too.
That seems like a simple, sacred charge for Christmas morning and the days to come … that we keep our eyes peeled for evidence of God’s unhidden grace, rising to the surface of this gray, murky, messy world where we live … that we shout, sing and share that good news with whoever will listen … and that we point others in the same direction so that they’ll be blessed and better for knowing what we know about God’s love, beauty and grace in our midst.
Amen. Merry Christmas.
