God's Family Tree

Here is my sermon for this Sunday. As I note in the footnote, I was inspired to preach on this text, in part, from a sermon I recently heard David Lose preach, as well as by conversations had at the same preaching conference.

Eric Lemonholm
January 11, 2009
Baptism B – with alternate Gospel from 2ChristmasB
John 1:1-18



God’s Family Tree

We humans are story telling beings.

We understand our lives through telling stories.

If I want to get to know who someone is, I ask them to tell me their story.

Our stories make sense of who we are.

I have begun putting our family tree together, collecting pictures and facts that tell the stories of our family history.

Now, if all I had were names and dates on a family tree, it would not mean much to anyone.

It’s the stories of our ancestors, the lives they lived, that help put our stories into the context of a family history.

For example, my great-great grandfather Nels Holm used to be just a name on my family tree, until I found the life story that he wrote down. Now, we know a little about his struggles as a boy of 15 in Sweden, living on his own as a farm hand; how he learned to make nails out of iron and became a craftsman and machinist; and how he came to America in search of a better life for his family. We also know of his faithfulness to God, a faith which he passed on to his children. The story of me and my family is connected to Nels’ story as a part of our family history.



Your stories, and my story, are part of a bigger story.

It’s a wonderful story.

We are characters in the story of the Bible.

As someone has said, we live somewhere in between the book of Acts, which tells the story of the early church, and the book of Revelation, which tells the story of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

We heard a part of that big story in our reading from the Gospel of John. John begins his story of Jesus with this prologue.

Whereas Matthew and Luke begin their Gospels with stories of Jesus’ birth, John goes all the way back before the creation of the world.

Just as the book of Genesis begins the story of the Bible with “In the beginning” – “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” so John begins his story about the Word of God, Jesus Christ, with “In the beginning”:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He [Christ] was in the beginning with God.

Christ is one of the three persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They have been and will be forever one God in three persons.

John tells us that the Word of God took part in the creation of the universe: “All things came into being through him.”

The Word is the source of life: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”



The amazing thing about the Word of God, the Christ, is this, as John tells us:

14And 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.

The Word became flesh and lived among us.

God became one of us in Jesus Christ.

That’s the amazing truth we celebrate each Christmas.

If you remember those Greek philosophers that Paul spoke with in Athens, they would have followed along with John up until this point nodding their heads, and then they would have said, “What’s that you said?”

Stop right there!

The Word of God became flesh and blood?

God’s Word was born in that physical, difficult, messy way that babies are born into the world?[i]

John’s answer is yes.

The Word became flesh – one of us, a human being.

We need to step back and see what an amazing, earth shaking truth that is.



The last verse of this passage tells us two important truths, as my professor David Lose points out.[ii]

First, “No one has ever seen God.”

No one has ever seen God.

If seeing is believing, then with God we’re out of luck. If someone asks, “Where is God?” You cannot point and say, “Right there!”

In ancient Israel, there was a belief that a human being cannot see God face to face and live to tell about it. God is too awesome, too amazing, too far above and beyond us.

If you remember the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant, the only people who survive are Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood, because they keep their eyes closed in the presence of God.

No one has ever seen God’s face – and lived.

That is a reality we experience; sometimes painfully.

(Remember Mother Theresa, and the decades she spent without experiencing God’s presence with her.)





Moses came close to seeing God face to face. He asked God, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

God replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’ [YHWH]; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he [God] said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:18-23).

God is holy, and too awesome for mortal eyes to behold.

In another time, Elijah the prophet experienced God while hiding in a cave in this way:

[God] said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

God was not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or fire, but in the sound of sheer silence.

No one has ever seen God. However, there is a second truth in John 1:18:

It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made [God] known.

Do you want to know what God is like?

Look at Jesus.

Jesus is close to the heart of God.

God reveals God’s heart of love for us in Jesus.

We can know what God is like, when we get to know Jesus.



In this life, we cannot see God in God’s self, face to face.

But God has made God’s self known to us in Jesus Christ.

The Word [of God] 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.

It’s a little like children. Children first learn about God and God’s love for them through their parents or other loving adults.

You learned something about God through your earthly parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, and other caring adults.

That’s why strong, loving, nurturing families are so important.

That’s why it is so important that our church is intergenerational, with children and adults learning about God’s love for them from people of all ages and stages of life.

Hopefully, as a child you learned something about God’s unconditional love for you from adults in your life.

Hopefully, you learned something about how far God would go for you, how much God would give for you.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

That is the love of God that Jesus reveals to us.

The light of Jesus Christ shines into the darkness of the world, the darkness of our lives.

And the darkness did not overcome the light.



John says,

10He [the Word, Jesus Christ] was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

That is the promise of God revealed in the Word of love that God spoke, Jesus Christ. To all who receive Jesus, who trust in him, Jesus gives power to become children of God, born of God.

From Jesus’ “fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

We become members of God’s family, branches grafted onto God’s family tree.

Our story becomes a part of God’s great story of creation and salvation.

It’s the greatest story ever told.

And it’s your story.

Thanks be to God!





[i] David Lose makes this point, in reference to Tertullian’s debate with Marcion, during a sermon preached on January 6, 2009. This sermon was inspired, in part, by Lose’s sermon.

[ii] During a sermon preached on January 6, 2009.