My mom had an expression she used quite as I was growing up.  Way back when things were hectic and filled with things and events, mom would say, we need to regroup.  “Let’s regroup” she’d say and we’d huddle around to get our new marching instructions.  It was her way of letting us know we needed to take a step back from whatever it was we were engaged in and reassess what’s going on.  We needed to slow down and reexamine the events and people in our life.  We need to regroup.

  I think such a statement works pretty well following last night.  Wasn’t last night wonderful.  Both here at church and at home, didn’t we all experience the kinds of warm feelings that we’re longing for come December of every year?

  Christmas Day has a different feel from Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is about the excitement and flurry of activity that takes us to the manger. 

  Today, however, is more quiet, less crowded, and more calm. Today is about slowing down, re-grouping, and taking another look at Christmas. St. John makes us face Christmas without the angels, the shepherds, Mary and Joseph, or baby Jesus in a manger.

  St. John tells a very different Christmas story from the one St. Luke tells.  It’s not better than Luke’s, just different. We need both.

  Luke tells the Christmas story with facts, John tells it with poetry.  Luke tells it looking from the outside, John tells it looking from the inside.  Luke tells us what happened, John wants us to reflect on what it means.  Luke describes an event, John describes a way of being.  Luke tells a story of particulars – “In those days” and “in that region.”  It’s about a particular place, time, and people. John’s story is cosmic – “In the beginning….”  It’s a creation story. Luke has us focus on the child Jesus. John asks us to consider what it means for us to “become children of God,” for the Word of God to dwell in our flesh to the same degree it does in Jesus.”

  John’s Gospel opens with this sweeping, cosmic vision of who Jesus is and what He means to and for us.  In fact, there is some belief that parts of this cosmic opening were parts of an early Christian hymn.  That would be an interesting thing to do, to set this entire piece of poetry to music.  We’ll get Clayton on that for next December, right? 

  One of the things that makes John’s Gospel more difficult to preach is because of its sweeping vision.  On top of that, we deal with huge concepts like creation and redemption, sanctification and justification.  These are big honking terms in the Christian lexicon and John’s Gospel approaches them all without timidity in the opening verses of the book. 

  Another thing that makes John’s Gospel more difficult than Luke or Matthew or hard to preach is that it’s pretty theological.  Doctrinal even as Timothy Keller tells us in a sermon he preached the last time Sunday rolled around on a Christmas Day.  We don’t typically like doctrinal things.  Especially sermons.  If I were to get up here and talk about the stereological implications of the incarnation for thirty minutes, I doubt there would be an awake eye in the place.  Frankly, if you get too theological, too doctrinal, you turn people off.  And it makes sense, really when you think about the incarnation.  Jesus took flesh to do save us from our sin.  That is to say He did something far more than just talk to us.  Taking is fine to a point but we are human beings after all.  That is to pay homage to the fact that we’re in motion, we’re doing things.

  Yes, John’s opening verses are doctrinal.  And it should be pointed out that there’s a difference between doctrine and being doctrinaire.  Doctrine, isn’t a bad thing.  In fact, we all need doctrine in our lives Doctrine just means a set of beliefs that is taught by some group or organization.  In this case, the organization is the church and the doctrine being talked about is the divinity of Jesus.  And the church needs doctrine.  First, our Bible gives it to us.  One of the great things about leading a Bible study through the entire Book is that it exposes you on an ongoing basis to all the things that the church truly does believe because it’s recorded in the Bible.  In our class we’ve been through Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Proverbs, Genesis, you name it, we’re doing it.  We just got done with Proverbs and there’s a book that goes out of its way to tell you how to live your life.  Which, in a way, would be meaningless without doctrine.  For it is doctrine that tells us that Christ died in order to bring us to a new plane of existence.  Being doctrinaire, on the other hand, can be annoying, small-minded, insufferable, even.   Being doctrinaire means – “seeking to impose a doctrine in all circumstances without regard to practical considerations.  We all know people like this.  I’ll never forget having a particular used car manager who was fanatical about particular things.  I recall one day bringing him a deal sheet that I was working on with a customer.  A deal sheet simply showed the cost of the car as it was being negotiated.  But the thing is, I couldn’t find any other colored pen that particular day.  So, to write the numbers down that we were negotiating on required me to write with this red pen.  Well, I came up into that sales tower with that work up sheet and you would’ve thought I’d killed this guy’s mom by the way he yelled at me.  “Red PEN?!?!?” he yelled.  It startled me.  What was so bad about writing things up in red pen?  Well, it would turn out, this man had recently been to a sales seminar in which they suggested every deal be written up in GREEN INK.  The reason why?  Green says GO.  Red says stop.  According to these Sales seminar people, the color ink used to write up the negotiation numbers had a profound impact on whether or not people bought cars.  I kind of disagree but it’s not my field so I’ll leave it be.  I will say that I just didn’t appreciate being yelled at that morning.