JOHN 1: 1-5, 9-14, 16-18

Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2018

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 more than accounts of how the New Creation comes into being can improve on JE’s? For me, it’s always JE when it comes to Christmas Gospel & Christmas preaching! 

For one thing, it offers us the opportunity of reflecting on our own physical & spiritual beginnings. 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 happen to be 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 big, 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?!” Do we really need to do that? Are we really called to do that?

I always omit vv.6-8 because they’re an interruption - by whom 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 gazump the Evangelist’s mind-blowing, spirit-expanding verses! Is interrupting the flow of the Gospel with the insertion about JB perhaps a metaphor for us inserting ourselves in the wrong place between God & God’s purposes. A warning we need to heed all year around, not only at Christmas!

The Word who speaks Creation into being now speaks a new, restored Creation - personal & universal - into being in Jesus. God’s Divine Word, God’s ‘new beginning’ for us. Jesus doesn’t simply speak God’s language to us, He is God’s own language! Are we recognisably God’s language, God’s ‘Word’ for others?

Brian

Afterthought: Whatever else John wants us to take in from his magnificent poem he wants us to glorify God as Jesus does. If our Christmas worship, including a sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, John the Poet has achieved what he sets out to achieve, hasn’t he?