Second Sunday of Christmas (Year B)
John 1.[1-9], 10-18 (TIB; adapted):[1]
[IN THE BEGINNING
there was the Word;
the Word was in God’s presence,
and the Word was God.
2The Word was present to God
from the beginning.
3Through the Word
all things came into being,
and apart from the Word
nothing came into being
that has come into being.
4In the Word was life,
and that life was humanity’s light—
5a Light that shines in the darkness,
a Light that the darkness has never overtaken.
6Then came one named John, sent as an envoy from God, 7who came as a witness to testify about the Light, so that through his testimony everyone might believe. 8He himself wasn’t the Light; he only came to testify about the Light — the true Light that illumines all humankind.
9The Word was coming into the world—]
10was in the world—
and though the world
was made through the Word,
the world didn’t recognize it.
11Though the Word came to its own realm,
the Word’s own people didn’t accept it.
Yet any who did accept the Word,
who believed in that Name,
were empowered to become children of God—
13children born not of natural descent,
nor urge of flesh
nor human will—
but born of God.
14And the Word became flesh
and stayed for a little while among us;
we saw the Word’s glory—
the favor and position a parent gives an only child—
filled with grace,
filled with truth.
15John testified by proclaiming, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me, for this One existed before I did.’ ”
16Of this One’s fullness
we’ve all had a share—
gift on top of gift.
17For while the Law was given through Moses,
the Gift — and the Truth — came through Jesus [the] Christ.
18No one has ever seen God;
it is the Only Begotten,
ever at Abba’s side,
who has revealed God to us.
Other readings:
Gathering prayer:
O God, you wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully, restored the dignity of human nature; grant that we may share the divine life of your Word made flesh, Jesus the Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
A New Zealand Prayer Book (adapted)
If there’s one thing you may not know about me it’s that the Gospel According to John is my favorite telling of the Jesus story. And I’m not the only one. A 2011 poll at BibleGateway.com shows that 57% of the people responded the same way. It’s such an amazing book. The depth of content surpasses the others by a wide margin. While it doesn’t contain some of the things found in the other Gospels (e.g., the Olivet Discourse), it reflects a deeper sense of Jesus’ life and ministry. That’s one of the main reasons it’s separated from the other three — whereas they all contain similar stories (the reason they’re called Synoptic Gospels), John’s telling of Jesus’ story is more intimate and contains things none of the others reveal.
But maybe “depth” isn’t the correct word. In the Celtic tradition, the symbol used for the Gospel of John is the eagle.[2] The eagle represents a “higher Christology” or “higher theology” than that of the Synoptics. That is, John’s depiction of Jesus is seen as more divine than the other Gospels — the other Gospels focus on the humanity of Jesus (and there’s nothing wrong with that), John’s telling of the story is more about the divinity of Jesus. And nothing points that out more that the opening verses of our Lesson today.[3]
“In the beginning…” is most certainly done on purpose. John is deliberately connecting his readers to the opening words of Genesis. Right from the jump, John is letting us know that this telling of the Jesus story is different, it’s a new beginning — or, perhaps, the true beginning. It’s the beginning of New Creation, a theme that carries throughout John’s telling of the story.
In Genesis, God spoke the cosmos into existence. John tells us the same thing here; God’s “Word” (λόγος, logos) brought “all things” into existence (verse 3). He tells us that God and the Word are the same but, somehow, distinctly different because the Word was in God’s presence “from the beginning” (verse 2). Here we begin to see that “higher theology” as John is laying the groundwork for what would become known as The Holy Trinity,[4] God in three divine persons (hypostases) who share one essence (ousia).
But then John does something extraordinary — he states that this Word that is God became human and lived among the people, “And the Word became flesh and stayed for a little while among us” (verse 14).
Contrary to most Western Christian tradition, the Celtic Christian tradition saw the divine Light buried deep within all creation. The ninth century Irish theologian and poet, John Scotus Eriugena, taught:
To say that light is created on the first day is to say that light is at the heart of life … it is the essence or centre from which life proceeds. At the heart of all that has life is the light of God.[5]
In The Book of Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Spirituality, Celtic teacher, poet, and scholar John Philip Newell wrote, “Sin has buried the beauty of God’s image but not erased it. The gospel is given to uncover the hidden wealth of God that has been planted in the depths of our human nature.”[6]
In our Lesson today, St John states the same thing, “In the Word was life, and that life was humanity’s light — a Light that shines in the darkness, a Light that the darkness has never overtaken” (verses 4-5; emphasis added).
Lastly, I want to point out something that just came to me last year. The last verse in our Lesson states, “No one has ever seen God; it is the Only Begotten, ever at Abba’s side, who has revealed God to us” (verse 18). Think about that statement for a moment. John is saying that no one in the entire Jewish scriptures — not Abraham, not Moses, not David, none of the prophets, no one — has ever revealed God in fullness. It’s only through Jesus that we get a full image of God’s true self.
Now, I’m not stating, nor do I think John is stating this either, that God can’t be found in other faith traditions. Quite the contrary, I know that God is found in other places. But if one wants the clearest revelation of what God is actually like, look to Jesus of Nazareth, no less than when he was hanging on the cross (as John gets to in his telling of the story). That image is the clearest we have of God. As Jesus said later, “Abba and I are One” (John 10.30). Other writers of the New Testament said the same thing:
Colossians 1.15 (NLT):[7] Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
Hebrews 1.3 (TIB): Christ is the reflection of God’s glory, the exact representation of God’s being.
I generally don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I would like to make a couple of suggestions this time around — 1) Let’s look past the falseness of ourselves and others and search for the Divine Light buried deep within all life. And 2) No matter our faith tradition or even if we don’t have one, let’s look to Jesus for the truest images of both humanity and God. If we want to know how God acts and feels and loves, let us look to Jesus. If we want to know how to better treat and love ourselves and others, let us look to Jesus.
~~~
In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
_________
[1] Scripture quotations marked (TIB) are taken from The Inclusive Bible. Copyright © 2007 by Priests for Equality. Used by permission.
[2] The first record we have of the Gospels being given symbols (tetramorphs) was by Irenaeus in the second century. What’s interesting is that while the symbols remain the same, the Gospels they represented were different. Irenaeus swapped John (the Lion) and Mark (the Eagle). This happened several times throughout church history but the most common is Matthew is depicted as a Man; Mark is depicted as a Lion; Luke is depicted as an Ox or Bull; and John is depicted as an Eagle. These same images are found in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4. See here for more information.
[3] I’m not really sure why verses 1-9 are bracketed out as an optional reading. These are the most incredible verses about Jesus in all the Bible.
[4] Another good article on the Holy Trinity can be found here.
[5] Newell, J. P., (1999). The Book of Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Spirituality, pg. 3. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
[6] Ibid., pg. XVII.
[7] Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation, Inc. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Comments