In the Beginning was the Word

Homily Christmas Day Proper 3

When the Bishops of the church meeting together in the fourth century had to choose the Canon of scripture, that is the books that they judged were worthy of being sacred texts, inspired by God, they settled on four Gospels—all different accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Today’s Gospel is John’s alternative to the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and the absence of a birth narrative in Mark, which begins the life of Jesus with his baptism by John.

Instead of story, John uses poetry in what is often called the prologue to his Gospel.

Since John is writing to a persecuted Jewish Christian community which has been expelled from the synagogue, this prologue is an attempt to clearly establish Jesus as the Son of God, who has existed since the beginning of time as part of the Godhead.

The word, or logos, was with God from the beginning of time-the creation. The word is the light in the darkness.

John comes as a witness to the light, to testify to the light. And then Jesus, the word, becomes flesh, and dwells among us.

Yet as John’s community found, Jesus the word, was not accepted by his own people.

So John’s Gospel provides a theological view of the incarnation, the birth of Christ, the word made flesh.

While there is no birth story as such, it seems to me we need to think in larger terms about the birth of Christ, and its place in history.

Paul’s Letter to the Hebrew does this too. He reminds his readers that God has spoken through his prophets in many ways, but with Jesus, God has spoken in a new way—with an heir “of all things.”

Paul says Jesus is "the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

This reminder to a Jewish Christian readership emphasizes the continuity between the Hebrew scriptures, and the stories which would later become the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.

We always have to remember when Paul was writing, there was no New Testament, and Jews and Jewish Christians alike would only have had the Hebrew Scriptures and the oral tradition of stories about Jesus.

So as we celebrate the birth of Christ today, it’s helpful to add to the wonderful story of a babe in manger, the more cosmic story of John.

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God."

And the conclusion of this stirring passage—“And the word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

In a broken world, that glory, that grace and truth, reminds us of God’s gift to us—a gift that keeps giving, and kept be taken away. Thanks be to God.