Colossians 1:1-13; John 1:1-18; Philippians 2:1-13; Psalm 8

One of the strange things about our culture that I find is that we are always so interested in what is new, what is upcoming. Let me give you a case in point. Auto manufacturers for many years have worked on making prototypes of the next vehicles that they are going to produce. For safety reasons and for marketing, these auto manufacturers make models of the new vehicles they are going to produce. Fully functioning, but they don’t want the public to see it. And yet they face a dilemma. They have to drive these vehicles on open roads to prove that they are road worthy. And so what do they do? Well, to prevent the press from getting wind of what’s next around the corner, they have taken to putting these prototypes and wrapping them with a type of film with patterns that mess with cameras. So that the press, when they are following these vehicles and trying to get a shot of the next new Lexus or Honda or Chevy or Subaru, thank you, will not get a good picture and not be able to reveal to competitors and to the public what might be around the corner.

I find it fascinating how, to what great lengths, these corporations go to keep an edge on their adversaries. And it’s not just confusing the public or the press. There is the idea of confusing your competitor as well. Have you ever heard of the term “espionage”? That’s when you do some spying, right? You kind of hear the word “spy” in there, right? Well, espionage, industrial espionage that is, is when a corporation inserts a spy into one of its competitors or tries to convert one of the inside employees to reveal sensitive information about the company. It’s like international Jason Bourne, but for coffee makers and toasters.

Why is it, do you think, that people will go to such lengths to keep ahead of their competitors? Well, I did a little thinking about this and I think at the root of this is our human desire to excel. You see, as humans, we have this inborn urge, yearning. I don’t know what word to use exactly, but there’s something inside of us that desires more. And I don’t mean more as in possessions or property, although the human condition as it is is stricken with that disease. When I say more, I mean more of us, more humanity, more working into our potential, more living into our best life, as a certain lifestyle guru would want to say.

The issue comes because something has gone wrong in the system. Remember, the story of God starts with perfection. It starts with a universe not so much already brought to the beauty of which it will be, but a universe in which the potential for that perfection exists and is almost inevitable. Until the unthinkable happens, humans make a choice to abandon their destiny for perfection and accept instant gratification that leads to a long-term downfall. We call that sin. Theologians call that the fall. When humans, represented by Adam and Eve, went their own way, decided that their rules, their view of reality, were superior to that of the author of reality. Sin, missing the mark, not living up to our potential. These things bring harm to God, to ourselves, but also to our communities. Because sin in an individual is bad, of course, is not what we’re intended for, but when you add person to person, the effects of sin magnifies. Large groups of people coming together compound their messiness and brokenness, allowing humans to do unimaginable things that an individual could never even dream of.

And if we’re honest, we are all aware of this painfully in our own lives. We feel the effects of brokenness in our homes, in our marriages, in our relationship with our kids, at the workplace, between coworkers, where instead of being coworkers, we become competitors, trying to outdo one another not for healthy competition, but for personal recognition. The soul of humanity is now permeated by a game of one-upmanship, where how I live my life is dictated by what’s best for me, leaving little room to answer the question, “What does that mean for us?” If we said, “Is this best for our country? Is this best for our city? Is this best for our school?” instead of, “Is this good for me?”

Throughout scripture, throughout this story of God that we’ve been presenting to you, this has been the big problem that God has had to deal with. How does God restrain, mitigate, transform this group of wayward humans who are bent on individual good instead of the common good? You see, when Adam and Eve sinned, they each said, “This is good for me.” But they didn’t ask, “Is it good for us?” and not just their family, but for the human condition as it was. The builders of the Tower of Babel could say the same. They wanted to get close to God, but was the way they were going about it good for humanity, making a name for themselves instead of making a name for God? We should focus on the fact that God did not abandon the creation that God so prized. God did not throw up his hands and start over. Instead, God, because God loves the world and the humans that he made, intervened personally into the situation. And as our reading from John today says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” We need to stop here and focus on what that means.

You see, God is not standoffish. God is an entity that is being in itself. God is everywhere. God permeates this universe. There is no place, as scripture says, that you can go to escape God or in a more positive tone, that God is not there for you, for us. But in Jesus Christ, God takes a step even beyond that presence and inhabits our reality, our way of being in the world. God becomes human, becomes mortal. That seems to be a contradiction in terms, right? But it is the story that the Bible lays out to us. And we need to attend to what that means about humanity, about our destiny, and about our prototype.

Let me ask you a question. Who was the pattern for humanity? Or did God just create us from nothing? If you would ask a third grader perhaps, who did God look to when he was making humanity, they might have said Adam and Eve, right? Because Adam and Eve were the first created people. They were the original models and everyone else looks like them. They were the prototype. And if you read scripture in a certain way, you see that throughout the Old Testament and into the New, there is this reference to us being in Adam, being made after that model, right? Sort of like a manufacturer, we’re in the line of Adam. We’re not in the line of the Lexus X series or whatever. We are Adams, that’s our brand. But who was the model for Adam? We need to go beyond what scripture says in that immediate story, in Genesis chapter 2, and take the whole scripture into view, and we will find something astonishing.

When we read the passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 a few weeks ago, we learned that Jesus Christ is called the second Adam. And I made the connection that Jesus Christ starts a new version of humanity, a new model, if you will. Instead of the Chevy Nova, it is the Chevy Impala version, the new model. Well, that’s fine. But there’s something very confusing and mysterious about all this business. Because, as our Colossians passage says today, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Reflect on that for a moment. Humanity bears the image and likeness of God in their creation. Who is the original image? It’s none other than Jesus Christ. And so as mind-bending as this is, our humanity is based on Jesus’ own humanity. Someone had already created us with a purpose and assigned us a destiny before he walked the earth. No, that doesn’t mean someone predestined us for this or that, but it means that just like the creation itself, we have the potential for perfection, for love, for community, in us from birth.

But now in ourselves, before we experience a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, there is still that desire, still that drive, to excel as individuals over and against our fellow human beings. That desire to keep up with the Joneses, but not just keep up, but move beyond, to go surpass, so life becomes competition from first to last. It’s not just enough to enjoy our humanity. We need to rub it in our neighbors’ faces that we’re doing well, or perhaps even make them look a little tarnished by comparison. Businesses do it. That’s what advertising is. I’ll make a thing. nd therefore in the church, many times, there is this tendency to look sideways at our neighbors in the pews and to judge. We look at our fellow Christians and those outside, but most especially those inside the church, because of course, Scripture says we are to be responsible for one another. And we do this. In the guise of being helpful and holy and spurring them on to their own perfection, we point out their flaws. Perhaps we put ourselves forward as a model. My friends, when we do this, we merely baptize into the church the fallen tendency for one-upmanship and games. That is not the way it’s supposed to be. Instead, when you and I both look forward, as the author of Hebrews says, “at the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ,” when we are single-minded, not as individuals, but as a community, as a church, as the body of Christ here on earth, then we can transcend that ability, that inward tendency in us to look sideways and to do so askance. Instead, we are too busy looking forward to have any time to look to our left or right, no turning back, no turning sideways. We persevere and fight for our faith because we have a clear vision of our intended goal.

All of this is because we took Christ out of the equation, period.  We have no focus except our surroundings.  When we put Jesus back in his rightful place at the top, we see our goal clearly. And instead of fighting our neighbors, comparing ourselves to others, putting others down and pointing out their flaws, instead we bring them along with us towards our goal of being more Christlike. We link arms with those on our sides, whoever they are, and walk together.

I have never made the connection before, but I am making it right now, that is what Jesus means in the parables and his teachings when he says, “You must have a single eye.” Jesus lived in a communitarian culture in which the community always came first. That’s why the laws in the Old Testament have that particular writing style. They break community, and that is the definition of sin by which I live my life. If it harms community, whether it be the community of my marriage, the community of my family, my church, that is sin.

But the opposite of sin is not abstaining from behaviors. It is working for the benefit of our humanity. My friends, this morning as we turn to the table, this is what we celebrate. Again, I’ll repeat that which I’ve said for the past three months, we are not here to proclaim resurrection. We are not here to proclaim even the miracle of new life. We are here to proclaim the mystery of love. The mystery of love in death. That Christ takes upon himself our fate and transforms our deepest existential problem, the thing that we all face, death, and from the heart of love that is in God, converts it to the way by which we experience the life God always intended. Because God will accomplish His purposes, and we can’t even comprehend the extent to which we were made for more. And as we celebrate together, we do this communally. Therefore you can’t have communion individually. Communion celebrates the fact of our common human destiny. And so, it behooves us to do this together. Jesus didn’t say, “Oh, when you pray, the Holy Spirit will be there.” Instead, he said, “When two or three are gathered.” We’re not meant to be alone. We’re not meant to be individual cogs in a wheel that don’t mesh with others. We are a family, a human family. Let us take today, join with our brothers and sisters, and be mindful that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again, and when he does, he will restore the world to its destiny. Amen.