JOHN 1: 1-14
Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2017
There are various options for the Gospel at Christmas, but I’m an avowed & unapologetic traditionalist. John for me every time - as it once was! Has the Evangelist’s great Hymn to the Word, with its deep, imaginative, & creative ‘take’ on the Christmas event become too hard to preach, compared with stables, mangers, & other MT & LK trimmings? Another priest & I happen to sit in a pew together at Midnight Mass a few Christmases back. The Gospel isn’t John. The ‘sermon’ isn’t a sermon either! It’s a talking down, we suspect from an earlier ‘children’s service’. This to the biggest congregation of the year! My colleague whispers to me, “He sure dumbed that down, didn’t he?” We can do better than that!
The bit about John the Baptiser may be someone’s attempt to give the context, but is an interruption of the original hymn; a distraction that spoils its integrity. Whoever inserted it, these verses would better precede v.19 where JB properly makes his entrance. It’s a kind of vandalism to gazump JE’s spirit-exalting, mind-blowing verses with these interruptions. Or a ‘children’s talk’! Mind you, interrupting the flow of JE’s hymn of the New Creation in Jesus Christ may be a sermon in itself. An example of the way we can insinuate ourselves between, interrupt, be distracted from, God & God’s purposes. Choosing to ‘fall’ in another Eden of our own making, rather than becoming part of the Restoration and Renewal Jesus the Logos, the Christ, comes to bring. Not just at Christmas, but all day, every day!
The Word who speaks creation into being in GN1 now speaks a new, restored, creation into being in Jesus. God’s ever-new beginning for you & me. Jesus doesn’t simply speak God’s word. He is God’s Word, speaking to us across all divides, like light from darkness, & life from death, core thrusts of John’s Gospel. Jesus is God’s in-house, in-Person, Word with us & for us. Inviting us into an en-Spirited Body raised & restored to life as God has intended from eternity. In the world at large, preachers have often acquired a reputation for being ‘wordy’ rather than ‘of the Word’. Jesus, on the other hand, lives out God. Not just ‘talking’ God, but Being the Word, ’Doing’ God.
Human languages are often barriers rather than a means of communicating meaningfully & lovingly. As ‘social media’ turns anti-social & divisive when we misuse it. The Word God speaks to us & our world - God’s world, actually - in Jesus made flesh then, & dwelling among us now by His Spirit, speaks across all such barriers. Time itself, darkness & light, life & death… Jesus is God’s Word speaking to us across, over, & through them all.
Whatever else JE wants us to take into our souls from his great Hymn of the Word, of a New Creation, he wants to glorify God & God’s Grace & Truth Jesus embodies. If our worship at Christmas, including a meaningful sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, & speaks of God’s Grace & Truth in Jesus, JE, the Hymnist, will achieve his purposes.
