In the beginning

Christmas IB

December 31, 2017

Merry Christmas still

Christmas eve we heard lovely, well known birth narrative. Today, we hear another three part birth story.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Let’s unpack that.

It begins with a phrase we’ve heard before, “In the beginning”. This harkens back to Genesis. In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth. So there’s something about John’s “birth narrative” of Jesus that he wants us to connect with Genesis, with the very beginning, when everything was created.

To tell you how important this choice of descriptors is, let’s go back to Genesis. In the beginning, God created heaven and the earth. It goes on, “God said, let there be light. God said let us make mankind in our image.”. God spoke all of these things into being, with what? The spoken word. God said. Now I’m not suggesting that God picked up the phone, or read a line. Rather the word has always been seen as fundamentally life changing and life giving, starting with God saying, let there be light, and there was light.

Some argue the Word cannot be translated. In Greek, it’s logos which is basis of logic. Trying to capture the essence of logos, it’s the mastermind behind all things, it’s the reason and source. And in John’s gospel, the word refers to Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word. A couple interesting things about this sentence alone.

1. Jesus was in the beginning. Jesus who we just heard was born in a manger, was in the beginning. Hard to understand. In fact, outside our concept of time.

2. Jesus as the logos – the mastermind, the reason behind everything that was, that is, and that will be.

3. Words create new realities. God spoke the heavens and earth into being, us into being. This is the choice of images that John uses to describe Jesus.

This ‘cosmic birth story’ as it has sometimes been described as, continues with The Word was with God, the Word was God. Jesus was with God, in relationship with God, and further, Jesus was God.

Have you ever seen pictures from the Hubble Telescope? If you haven’t I’d encourage you to go look it up. I’m not an astronomy nerd, and I don’t understand exactly what I’m looking at. What I can tell you is that these photos are spectacular. They are bright, colorful and capture a host of galaxies, of newly created stars, of whole nebula. Again, I can’t fully explain these, but this is what I picture when I hear, In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And what we hear today links Jesus to the creative force that masterminds the creation of heavens and earth. In the beginning, God, Jesus, spoke all things into being.

So first we hear that the Word, Jesus, is in relationship with God, is God, and is the mastermind behind all of creation. This is a vast, incomprehensible, and very non-liner opening to Jesus’ birth story. This a good narrative, to support our belief that Jesus is fully divine. Fully God. And while that’s true, we also believe that Jesus is fully human. The birth narratives we heard on Christmas help ground us in this truth too. Jesus is born to a homeless undocumented immigrant pregnant teen, born in an animal stall.

Although it’s not as earthly as Luke’s recounting, John does tell us about Jesus’ fully human-ness, when the reading continues, “And the Word became flesh, and lived among us.”

I told you that I think of the Hubble Telescope pictures when I think about God creating heaven and earth. I use these images because I’m a really strong logical, concrete thinker. Abstract thinking and poetic language frequently leave me scratching my head. So these visual images help me wrap my head around John’s Gospel which is pretty abstract, full of allusions. The Word became flesh. Here’s my image. Bear with me.

My image for this is something like a genie coming out of a bottle, except with a few modifications. Run that image backwards, so that what comes out of the bottle is sucked back in. And now imagine that what’s coming back in to the bottle isn’t a genie. Instead, it’s those amazing Hubble Telescope images – new stars, galaxies, heavens being created.  And finally, imagine that the bottle isn’t a bottle. It’s a human infant.

This human Christ child has all of this. This infant, this galaxy producing, from the beginning of time, God child lived among us. It’s no wonder that the shepherds quaked with fear. 

To be clear, this is not the first time God has interjected in our humanity. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories where God helps and gets involved. Moses and the Red Sea. Daniel and the lion. But this is the first time God enters our world as a human. Theologian Richard Rohr says it well, “Christ is the image of the invisible God”.

I’ve talked about Jesus’ origin and incarnation. The third part is this reading is an interesting interruption, that falls in the middle of the story of Jesus. In the middle of that cosmic birth story, we hear that “There was a man sent from God whose name was John”. Not John the author of the Gospel, but John who we frequently call John the Baptist. Today we do not hear about John the Baptist. We hear about John the Witness. John who testifies to the light. So that all might believe through him.

There must be some really important reason why John is introduced in the middle of Jesus’ story. I’d suggest that it’s because there is a critically important role John played during Jesus’ time. He testified to the light so that all might believe through him. The light shines and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Here’s where you and I come in to this story. It’s not just John that’s sent by God to testify to the light, to point people to the light. You and I are called by God to testify to the light.  We can shine that light, and others can see it in us, can see Christ’s light in us.  And that light points them to God’s love.

As many of you know, in my day-job, I work for the Eugene Police Department. Friday morning, I had the opportunity to accompany my co-workers to the St. Vincent de Paul day center for our community’s homeless. The police had volunteered to prepare and serve lunch to this group of our must vulnerable – and sometimes most challenging brothers and sisters. The officers knew many of the guests, from past and frequent police contacts. Some guests were nervous, some came up and gave a hearty hello to EPD folks they knew.  I was washing dishes in the background but had the opportunity to peek up and look at the service line where the officers and staff were plating up food.  You know what I saw?  I saw Christ’s light shining in the face of the servers. To a person.  I don’t know what their faith tradition is, if they have one at all. But I saw Christ’s love shining through them.  I also saw it reflected in the faces of the people getting lunch. Those co-workers were shining Christ’s light, and absolutely testifying to God’s love. 

That is what Christmas is about, and why we hear this interrupted cosmic birth story.  We are sent by God to testify to the light, to be the light and to point others to God’s unbelievable and unending love. 

So go be the light.   Merry Christmas. 

Amen.