Jan. 2, 2005
St. Mark’s
Let us pray.
These are the
first words of today’s Gospel reading. And they are appropriate ones if ever
there were any.
This reading
from John is really in effect an echoing of the creation story at the beginning
of the Book of Genesis.
Both begin
the same way, with the same words—in the beginning—and both tell of God’s
working in our midst.
In effect,
they’re the same story, told from two very different perspectives.
In Genesis,
we hear the story of God creating the earth and eventually the creation of humankind.
In John, we
hear the story of how God existed at all times and that with God, there existed
God’s Word.
Now we’ve
heard this passage from John so many times that it’s become quite familiar. It is just as familiar, in many ways, as the
creation stories in Genesis or the story of Noah’s ark or any of those familiar
stories we know so well from scripture.
But the
difference between those stories and what we heard this morning is that they were
stories in a very real sense.
They were
basic narratives that are easy to relate to and easy to re-tell over and over
again.
What we hear
at the beginning of John’s Gospel is different because it is, in fact, a hymn. Or
at least, a portion of a hymn.
It is a hymn
explaining the Word and what the Word is and does.
The hymn was,
like the rest of the New Testament, originally written in Greek.
In Greek, the
word for “Word” is “Logos.”
That
word—Logos—means more than just a sound that comes out of our mouths.
It means
knowledge.
We still use
the word in this way. We find it such words at zoology—which means, roughly, “words
concerning animals” or more correctly “knowledge concerning animals”
—psychology—words
or knowledge concerning the mind
—biology—words
and knowledge concerning life
and so on.
So, what
we’re encountering in this Hymn is more than just a word. It is knowledge. But
even knowledge doesn’t quite convey what this hymn is trying to say. I think
the more correct word would be Wisdom.
The Word—the Logos—of
God is the Wisdom of God.
What is John
talking about here? John is talking about Christ, of course. Christ is the
Logos—the Word of God, the knowledge of God. When we hear his words, we are not
hearing the words of some brilliant prophet.
We are
hearing the words of God.
Did you ever
wonder why, in some copies of the King James version of the Bible, the words of
Jesus were in red?
This is why.
They were in red so that we pay special attention to what he was saying.
What came
from his mouth, in a sense, came from the mouth of God on high.
See how this
is different than those other stories from scripture.
It’s kind of
heady stuff we’re dealing with here.
It’s not easy
to grasp what’s being talked about and it’s not easy to explain to others.
However, this
concept of the Word—or Logos—of God is really the heart of all Christian
theology.
Now that
sounds wonderful—at least to me. I’m a priest and I like theology. I like
systematic thinking about God and Christ. I like examining words in Greek and
exploring the full range of their meanings.
It’s what I
do.
But for the
rest of us, this passage is a difficult one to wrap our minds around.
“The Word was
with God and the Word was God.”
Those are
hard theological concepts—concepts that the Church as a whole has struggled
with from almost the very beginning.
In the ancient
Church, people fought hard to interpret what this meant exactly. Some felt that
the Word—Christ—was similar to God, but was not equal to God. Certainly they
did not feel that Christ was God.
Others truly
believed that Christ the Word—the personified Wisdom of God—was God, plain and simple. Just as our
words are part of us, just as what we know is a part of us, so is the Word and
knowledge of God a part of God.
A lot of dirty
deeds were done over this simple passage of scripture. People were banished,
people were tortured, some were even killed.
But no matter
what we might believe about Christ’s co-equality with God, this scripture does
do a lot in helping us understand who and what Christ is.
Let’s take a
look at what God is doing in this scripture.
God isn’t
simply sitting on some throne in some far-off heavenly realm.
God is not sitting
back and letting creation work itself out.
What this
passage shows us, more than anything, is that God is busy.
God is at
work in our lives—in the world around us.
God is
moving.
God is doing something.
More than
anything what this scripture is telling us is that God is reaching out to us. And
not just one or two times in our history.
God has always been reaching out to us. From the
first day of humankind to this moment, God is reaching out to us. God is
calling out to us. He is talking with us and communicating with us.
This Word of
God that we hear is Christ and Christ, as we learn in this passage, had always
existed. Even before Christ came to us in the person of Jesus, Christ always
was. And Christ always will be.
God, in
Christ, is moving toward us, even in moments when it seems like God is distance
and non-existent.
There’s an
excellent book I read a few years ago called the Disappearance of God.
In it, the
author explained that when we look at the Bible as a whole, we find God slowly
disappearing from creation.
As the Old
Testament progresses, God seems to be pulling back further and further from our
lives.
God no longer
speaks to his prophets as he did to Adam or Abraham or Moses.
There were
fewer and fewer visions of pillars of fire.
There were
fewer instance in which God worked miracles in the lives of his people. God no
longer went out before the armies of the Israelites and fought their battles
for them.
By the time
we get to the New Testament, God seems to be gradually fading away from the
lives of humans.
But then we
come across the Gospel of John.
Here, in a
sense, God’s presence is renewed.
God comes
forward and becomes present among us in a way we could never possibly imagine.
God appears
to us in the Gospels not cloaked behind pillars of fire or thunderstorms or
wind. Instead, God appears before us, as one of us.
God’s word,
God’s wisdom, became flesh just as we are flesh.
God’s voice
was no longer a booming voice from the sky, demanding sacrifices.
God instead
spoke to us as one of us. And this voice is a familiar one. We cannot only
understand it, we can embrace it and make it a part of our lives.
And even
after Christ dies and rises again from the tomb and ascends to heaven, the Word,
in a very real sense, remains among us.
It continues
on in the first followers, who wrote it down.
It continues
on in what Jesus still says to us today.
It continues
on in the Spirit of God that dwells within us
and that speaks in us in our lives.
The Word is
among us.
It is spoken every
time we carry out what Christ calls us to do.
The Word is
spoken when we reach out to those in need.
Look at what
happened a week ago today in
We all
reacted to it in some way.
We felt
dismay. We felt shock and terror. We felt horror. And most importantly, we felt
pity for those people.
Hopefully, we
found ourselves praying for them. Hopefully we tried in some way to help them
in their misery, in whatever limited way we could.
When we are
motivated in such ways by the misery around us—when we pray for them, when we
reach out to them in any small way we can—that is the Word speaking.
And more than
that—that is the Word at work in the world.
So let the
Word and Knowledge of God be in you and speak through you.
Be open to
that wonderful reality in your lives.
Let your
voice be the voice of the Word and Wisdom of God.
Let your
lives be a loud and proud proclamation of that Word in the world around you.
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