PROPERS: CHRISTMAS 1, YEAR C
TEXT: JOHN 1:1-18
PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S, MOBILE, ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2024.
ONE SENTENCE: “The Word” expresses the evangelist’s best effort to describe what the young church had experienced in the person of Jesus.
One of the challenges of being a person of a “certain age” is a frequent inability to come up with particular word or name, no matter how hard I try. As a friend described it, the memory cells are there, it’s just the retrieval system that is lacking.
I have read that a good escape from the discomfort of such a moment is to say, searching curiously, “I can’t remember the English word for it now…”
That immediately does two things: It get’s me out of an uncomfortable bind, and it causes the person to whom I’m speaking to think I am multilingual. Which I am not.
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Searching for a word or concept. That was precisely what the early church was doing as the writer of John’s gospel prepared to pen his testimony.
The Gospel according to John is unique. It is the latest of the four gospels, probably finalized about 100 A. D. – some seventy years after Jesus’ earthly life.
It is also radically different. It is profoundly theological. It deals with the why much more than the what. Like the Gospel according to Mark, it does not concern itself with Jesus’ birth. Like the Gospel according to Matthew, it seeks to explain Jesus’ origins – but in a distinctly theological way.
The young church was seeking to explain this thing that it had experienced. They wondered: How do you describe his teaching? How do you describe his healing? How do you describe his raising Lazarus from the dead? What about his humility… his battles with religious authorities? What about his trial, execution, and resurrection?
Why do we still sense his presence all these years later?
Jesus’ followers had experienced all this. And those who came to the movement later also knew of his mysterious transforming power – long after his earthly life.
How do you capture this in a scroll?
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This is what the author of John pondered.
In Greek philosophy about that time there was a concept of logos – which we translate as word. It represented logic and reason – the foundation of sound thinking, argumentation, and philosophy. It was a simple but profound concept.
But the author of John’s gospel saw much more in logos. And he used that approach to what is known as the prolegomena to his gospel – the first 18 verses. “In the beginning was the word…”
As the author saw it (and described it), this marvelous experience the world had known in this Middle Eastern man called Jesus, represented the essence, the creative power of 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.”
And that essence of God was a part of God – and not separate of the divine being. The logos touched and transformed people’s lives: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 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.” The logos – like God – permeates creation.
I love that simple passage: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Just as the logos is the essence of God, the child we worship this season is the essence of God’s grace upon grace.
