God Moved into the Neighborhood
January 5, 2025
Karen, my best friend growing up, just became a grandmother. Two other friends are about to be grandmothers. I met little Kayden in October when I did a memorial for my mom’s friend. There is nothing like holding a newborn baby in your arms and breathing in that wonderful new baby smell. Kayden is the newest chapter in Karen’s family, a beginning and a continuation. I was there when Jessica, Kayden’s mom, was born and baptized Karen’s second child. Seeing Kayden’s warm welcome into his new family touched my heart. Of course, Kayden was featured in Karen’s Christmas card, working much like a birth announcement.
Matthew and Luke announce the birth of Jesus, but John chooses not to. Instead, John writes a creation story where “God has chosen to recreate God’s very self in Jesus. God has been reborn into the world, now as God’s creating Word in the flesh” (Working Preacher, Karoline Lewis). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through him…in him was life… and light” Jn. 1:1-4). One commentator writes, “The mystical poetry of John’s prologue opens with the story of creation and the Word in whom is life. (Jesus) the Word pitches God’s tent of glory in the beloved and dangerous world and makes visible humanity’s true nature as the place where fullness of joy joins in the eternal, swirling dance of divine love” (Working Preacher, Meda Stamper). Here is the second half of the prologue. READ John 1:10-18.
Over the holidays a new neighbor moved in next door. I haven’t met him yet, but his U-Haul blocked my garage for a while. One of the joys of condo living. Then one evening when Brad and I were walking Bauer, his mini-Aussie, Bauer did something very unusual. He went up to a big white dog to say hello, that’s not unusual, Bauer is very friendly. But then he barked angrily at the dog, snarling really. The owner was mad, Brad called Bauer, and I kept my distance. As luck would have it, we discovered the dog’s owner is my new neighbor! He is the person I share a wall with, who I have not even really met, yet I fear we are not on the best of terms. Neighbors can enhance your life with support, like Kim on the other side. She and I watch out for each other, picking up mail when the other is away. Or Pat who is in her eighties and always brightens our neighborhood with thematic and festive decorations for all the holidays. I am not sure how it will go with my new neighbor. Writing this motivated me to knock on his door to make amends. He was not there, but connecting with him is a new year intention.
The Russian proverb got it right, “Don’t buy the house; buy the neighborhood.” We all know how important our neighborhood is to our wellbeing. Being able to walk along the ocean is a gift of living here, of living in this coastal community neighborhood. Having amicable neighbors also provides blessings. Maybe that is why when Eugene Petterson translated this passage from the Greek, he wrote, The Life-Light was the real thing: Every person entering Life he brings into Light…But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (The Message). When Jesus was born, God moved into the neighborhood. God moved in next door. God experiences what we go through, because Jesus lived on earth. OK Jesus did not use a smart phone or travel the globe, but God moving into the neighborhood is an intimate way for us to think about what the Word became flesh and dwelt among us means.
“The great writer Max Lucado talks about his neighbor who was trying to teach his six-year-old son how to shoot a basketball. They were out in the backyard. The father shot a couple of times, saying, ‘Do it just like that, son; it’s really easy.’ The little boy tried very hard but he couldn’t get the ball ten feet into the air. The little fellow got more and more frustrated. Finally, after hearing his father talk about how easy it was for the tenth time, the boy said, ‘It’s easy for you up there. You don’t know how hard it is from down here.’
You and I can never say that about God. When Jesus became man and lived among us, (when he moved into the neighborhood) he walked where we walked, he suffered what we suffer, he was tempted as we are tempted. He was Emmanuel which means ‘God is with us’” (Sermons.com, Bill Bouknight).
Think about when someone moves in. My neighbor moved in with his dog, a baby moves in after being born, a couple moves into a neighborhood after they are married. We often move into a neighborhood after a family event. When God moves into the neighborhood, we are made our “child-of-God selves, our true selves.” You see Jesus is God’s only Son. Jesus is close to God’s heart and when Jesus is incarnate in our neighborhood God is made known to us (18). Scripture promises, once God moves in, we see God’s glory, Jesus, full of grace and truth (14). The “we” here “draws us into this cosmic love story of God and the world and every human in it” (Working Preacher, Meda Stamper).
When I was a kid, my family used to go camping with several other families down at Doheny State beach. We pitched our army green tent that would sleep our family of six. We even had army cots to sleep on. We would get several campsites close together and the kids would play at the beach, the parents would enjoy adult time, it was a real natural and raw community. The verb for “lived among us” means “to tent” “to tabernacle.” So this idea that God became real in Jesus is very intimate in that God pitched a tent and Jesus joined us around the camp fire.
One commentator shared this, “The dwelling of God is a deeply intimate, personal claim and assumes God’s commitment to and continuity with God’s people. Moreover, in the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, now God not only goes where God’s people go, but is who they are. That is, God now dwells with us by taking on our form, our humanity. This ‘different’ dwelling of God is God being where God’s people are, and now who God’s people are” (Working Preacher, Karoline Lewis). God does more than move into our neighborhood when Jesus takes on human form, God shares our tent, God lives and dwells where we are.
There is a wonderful story about Maya Angelou. She was a member of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco before her death. She wrote that when she first came to San Francisco as a young woman she became sophisticated. She said that was what you were supposed to do when you go to San Francisco, you become sophisticated. And for that reason, she said she became agnostic. She thought the two went together. She said that it wasn’t that she stopped believing in God, just that God no longer frequented the neighborhoods that she frequented.
She was taking voice lessons at the time. Her teacher gave her an exercise where she was to read out of some religious pamphlet. The reading ended with these words: ‘God loves me.’ She finished the reading, put the pamphlet down. The teacher said, ‘I want you to read that last sentence again.’ So she picked it up, read it again, this time somewhat sarcastically, then put it down again. The teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ She read it again. Then she described what happened. ‘After about the seventh repetition I began to sense there might be some truth in this statement. That there was a possibility that God really loves, me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew if God loved me, I could do wonderful things. I could do great things. I could learn anything. I could achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person, with God form a majority now.’” (Sermons.com, Mark Trotter)
God moved into the neighborhood. Amen,
