JOHN 1: 1-5, 9-14, 16-18
Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2019
Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures launches with its magnificently imaginative & evocative story of a Creation told into being by YHWH God: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth..…’ Is it simply a co-incidence that the writer of John also chooses to start with ‘In the beginning…’ & a magnificently & imaginative, evocatively poetic, expression of how the New Creation comes into being? Can any account of Creation improve on that of the Genesis tale-teller? Any account of how the New Creation comes into being improve on JE’s? For me, it’s always JE when it comes to Christmas Gospel & Christmas preaching!
I omit vv.6-8 because they’re an interruption - who dared to do this we don’t know - to JE’s original hymn. A distraction that destroys its integrity. They belong, with v.15, after the hymn where JB properly makes his entrance after v.18. Let’s not interrupt JE’s mind-blowing, spirit-expanding verses! Interrupting the flow of the Gospel like that might represent our inserting of ourselves between God & God’s purposes.
But has JE’s Hymn to the Word with its deep, meaningful, imaginative, & creative take on the Christmas event become too hard to preach? Compared with stables, mangers, & other MT & LK trimmings? Some Christmases ago, I’m sitting near another priest I know at a Midnight Mass. The ‘sermon’ turns out to be a kind of watered-down ‘kids’ talk’. This at one of the biggest, largely adult, congregations of the year. After the Dismissal, as we’re leaving, my colleague turns & whispers to me, “He sure dumbed that down, didn’t he?!” Christmas is never to be dumbed down!
The Word who speaks Creation into being in the beginning now speaks the possibility of a new & restored us into being in Jesus. God’s Divine Word in the Person of Jesus is God’s ‘new beginning’ for us. Jesus doesn’t just speak God’s language to us, He is God speaking to us today. In response, are we living lives recognisably ‘speaking’ God’s language, God’s ‘Word’ for others, today?
Brian
Afterthought: However else JE wants us to respond to his magnificent poem, he wants us to glorify God as Jesus does in His Person. If our Christmas worship, including a sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, JE, John the Poet, has achieved what he sets out to do! Not simply back in his day, but now in ours.
