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December 31, 2006

Anne Jensen - Dec 31, 2006

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

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My first response to today’s gospel is that we should sit in awe and let the enormity of the mystery of God surround us. We could have something of a Quaker meeting in which we sit in silence until the Spirit moves us to share our spiritual insight.

However, since we are not Quakers, but Episcopalians, I’ll share some of my thoughts. This gospel, the prologue of John’s gospel, is poetry: scholars believe that it is an early hymn, a song of praise. Like art, poetry is to be experienced as well as thought about. This passage is so familiar and so beautiful that we could well bask in it and love it for its beauty alone. Yet the richness of thought amplifies its beauty. As I prepared for this morning, I found myself pouring over different translations, examining their similarities and differences, absorbing the gift of the Word and words.

This gospel is a reminder of God's initiating the relationship with us -- God's movement toward us -- of God's choosing to be with us. This is God coming into our world and into the midst of our lives -- each of us -- whoever and wherever we may be.

This introduction to the Gospel of John takes us back to the very root of our existence, the foundation of our universe. Listen to the parallels we find in Genesis.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
John’s gospel begins, “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…

In Genesis we hear, “And God said, (that is God spoke a word) ‘Let there be light; and there was light.’ The gospel says, “What has come into being in the Word is life, and the life was the light of all people…”
From Genesis, “And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness…”

This gospel says, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” This Jesus that John is about to reveal in his gospel is the incarnation of the Cosmic Christ…the one present with God from the very beginning and who is the expression of God.

John is presenting the origins of the man those first Christians had come to worship, putting forth his birth story. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”


Why is this story so different from the other birth stories? As early as 60 years after the church was formed, there were 100,000 Greek Christians in the church for every Jewish born Christian. The first Christians were Jews, but the real growth in the early church was among Greeks. Paul understood himself to be called as an apostle to the gentiles, to the Greeks, and started many churches in Asia Minor and Greece. The story of John’s gospel is told to a church of Christians in Ephesus who had heard no stories of an expected Messiah or the lineage of David. This crowd had never heard the words of the prophet Isaiah.

Through missionaries they had heard the words Jesus spoke, witnessed the healing he brought, experienced the sacrifice in this death and the victory in his resurrection, but how would they come to understand his birth, his coming into the world?

By definition God cannot be fully grasped, but we have had glimpses of God. As our gospel says, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Here we have a new revelation of who Christ was and is – a new explanation that would finally bring the story of Jesus’ origins to life for this community of believers and for other Greek communities, and ultimately for us as well. The great divide in the early church was between Greek and Jew. They came from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Yet for both Jews and Greeks the Word is important, and it became the bridge to a shared understanding of God’s revelation.

For the Jews words had an independent existence; they had power. They did things. God’s words created the world out of a void. God’s said “let there be lights in the vault of the heavens…let the earth bring forth living creatures…let us make human beings in our own image… God spoke creation into being through words. God spoke to Moses through the burning bush and on the mountaintop, and to Elijah in the still small voice. God spoke through the prophets.

For Greeks the Word, or Logos, was the principle that held everything in existence; without the order imposed by words, chaos would reign. The Word led to understanding; understanding led to right action. Right actions, in turn, led to virtue and piety, all of which were highly valued in the Greek culture. The Word made everything possible. Without the Word nothing would exist. and once there was existence the Word becomes the organizing and ordering principle.

John tells us “the Word was always with God; indeed, the Word was God.” What came into being in this Word was the life of the Son of God, and this life was the light of all people. It was the same light that dawned as the world took form. That light illuminates the darkness, bringing sight and insight and understanding. It is the Light that exposes evil for what it is, and opens the darkness in which evil hides. He is the light that illuminates the pathway ahead and guides stumbling feet. These were images which the Greeks could grasp and which still have meaning for us today.

Finally this story reveals a shattering truth to the Greeks. It was a scandal to the Greeks that God would demean Godself to become human, because for them the body was a prison, an encasement of the spirit. In this gospel we hear: “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.” The Word, Jesus, was born of a woman in a real flesh and blood human birth. He lived or dwelt among us. The word “lived” comes from a root that means “pitched his tent with us.” I like this idea because it is so graphic, so earthy, living with us at such a basic level. The purpose is so that we know God. As one translation has it, “He who is nearest the Father’s heart has made him known.” God has made it possible for us to know God, and perhaps almost as important psychologically, God has made it possible for us to know that God understands our human lives, our joys and delights as well as our pain and suffering. God is with us always.

This is good news for us, just as it was for that community in Ephesus. John says, “…to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. My friends, we have only to believe in him, in this Word made flesh, to be adopted as children of God.

One writer puts it this way, “Since the beginning, God has paced the corridors of heaven, burning with the hope that we would see the world as God sees it. God made gardens…we did not get it. God sent floods…we did not get it. God sent prophets…we did not get it. God sent laws…we did not get it. Finally, finally, God sent flesh, God’s own flesh. Surely God thought that now, now we would get it.

John's Gospel account that we heard today is the story of how God became human so that we might rebuild a connection we once had but no longer acknowledge. So the Incarnation, this God becoming human, invites us on a new path so that we may become the very children of God and thus know how to be truly human, as God intended in creation.

In Advent we prayed, “Come Lord Jesus, be our light in the darkness.” Well, Christmas is here! Jesus, the Christ, the Word made flesh, is with us. He has pitched his tent with us. He is the light that illuminates and gives life to all; He is the light that exposes evil for what it is. He is the source of our salvation and our hope.

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