What's in a Word?

PROPERS:          CHRISTMAS 1, YEAR B     

TEXT:                 JOHN 1:1-18

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2017.

ONE SENTENCE:        The concept of “the Word” (Logos) is deeply rooted in biblical-era philosophy and says so much more than we are prepared to hear.

                                   

            The first chapter of John, read as the gospel lesson today, is very familiar.

            I wonder, though, how well we are prepared to hear it.

            I wonder how fresh and open our ears are to receive the depth of its meaning.

            I wonder if our familiarity with its words makes us too inured to its meaning.

            Hear some of the words again:

“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. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

            Those are beautiful and familiar words.  They are the foundation of what will come later – the most theologically-profound of the four gospels.

            But before we can approach the essence of John’s gospel, we must first understand its premise. That premise is found the concept of “word.”

            Some people make the mistake of reducing the idea of “word” merely to the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  While there is some significant overlap, to reduce the powerful meaning to a person diminishes the potency of the concept.

            Likewise, some people make the mistake of confusing the concept of “word” with “the word of God” – the sacred scripture. That identifies the overarching meaning the divine “word” with a book of books, in other words, the Bible.

            The magnitude of the divine “word” can hardly be contained in a book – even something as wonderful as the Bible. It is hard enough for the idea of “word” to be contained in a person. To limit it to a book raises the possibility of bibliolotry – the worship of a book.

            The Greek expression for word in the gospel lesson today is logos.  As in, in the beginning was logos.  It means so much more than word.

            The idea of logos – and its very complex meaning – has its roots six centuries before Jesus.  The philosopher Heraclitus used the concept to describe a principle of order and knowledge.  Logos was the supporting evidence for an argument – it was the grounding for reasoning.

            Later, others would adopt and modify the concept. To some schools of thought, logos was the reasoned discourse or the argument, in a debate.  But it had not yet reached its zenith of understanding.

            Logos began to gain strength as a philosophical concept under the Stoic philosophers.  This understanding began to develop some 400 years before John’s gospel was written. They saw logos as the divine animating principle weaving through creation.  The saw it manifested in God or Nature.

            It was into that milieu that the writer of John’s gospel wrote the powerful and poignant prologue to his gospel – “In the beginning was the Word…”

            The writer of John saw so much more at work in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus… so much more than a special man with a unique call.  He saw the animating force of the universe… the creative nature of God… moving and weaving into this world in the person of Jesus Christ.

            He saw the force which had been a part of God from the beginning.

            He saw the creativity of God present in the Incarnation.

            He saw the light of the world – a light which illumines the darkness of life.

            He saw a light which was irrepressible – it could not be overcome.

            He saw in that Word the regenerative power of God – the ability to make all things new.

            He saw in the logos the ability for human beings to overcome their limitations and be reborn in the Spirit.

            What was remarkable, the evangelist saw, was that the essential animating force of the universe took on flesh, became a human being, and dwelt among us.  That incarnate being was full of the divine attributes of grace and truth – beyond the capacity of a mere mortal.  And we human beings – successors, among others, to Adam and other broken, flawed, fallen human beings – have received grace upon grace.

            The writer finishes with this observation: No one has seen God.  But we, by virtue of having known and encountered the logos, have come to know his infinite goodness and love.