John 1:1-18
January 4, 2004
2 Christmas C
John 1:1-18
January 4, 2004
Dear Christian Friends; Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from our newborn Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Most of us don’t realize it, but there are really three different Christmas stories in the gospels. The first two stories come from Matthew and Luke, and those are the ones we are most familiar with. We can see these stories, visualize these stories, and imagine such stories as Zachariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and the baby in the manger. We can imagine the joy of the shepherds, hear the song of the angels, and have a mental picture of the visit of the Wise Men. That’s how Matthew and Luke tell the story, and we know it well.
But there is a third telling of the story of the birth of Christ, found in John’s gospel. That’s the one we heard on Christmas morning, and that we hear again today. John’s story is not one that we can see or visualize or even imagine. John’s Christmas story is abstract and philosophical. The language is dense, and hard to understand. You may notice that when I read to you from John, I am very careful and deliberate. I don’t look up very much! It’s not easy language to read, let alone understand. But this morning we’re going to take a crack at it. It begins;
"In the beginning was the Word.” The Word. In Greek, the word for Word is “logos”, from which we get our word “logic.” And so we might translate the first verse of John’s gospel this way; “In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God.” That sounds logical, right? Well, it’s still pretty hard to understand.
What John is doing, in his own enigmatic way, is laying the groundwork for the pre-existence of Christ. In other words, John is telling us that Christ was with God before the creation of the universe. Jesus was not just a divine afterthought. He was with God, and was God, from the very beginning.
Before there was any creation, before there was any matter, before there was light and life, there was an intelligence, with a definite plan in mind. There had to be some logic to it. In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God. What the Bible is saying is that before something could be created, there had to be a mastermind and a master plan behind it—and from this logic, all light and life was created. Jesus was that Logic, the Logos, the very Word of God. That is the first part in John’s Christmas story, and that alone is quite a bit to take in. But John tells us more.
John tells us that when the time was right, “the Word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Christianity calls that the “incarnation”—God coming in human flesh. I like that word, “incarnation.” Some of you speak Spanish, and know that in Spanish, “carne” means “meat.” Jesus became “meaty”, flesh and bones, just like you and me. Jesus became flesh, and was born as a human baby, just like you and me.
Now, why is that so important? The Bible is saying that the master intelligence of the universe did not stay up in heaven. God did not remain in heaven, far away from the evil and suffering of the earth. God didn’t stay in some kind of eternal suburb, safe from it all. The Bible is saying that instead, God came down here to the rough and tumble of this world, to live and suffer just as we do. The Bible is saying that Jesus’ birth and living and suffering and death was authentic—the real thing—just like yours and mine is.
Do you know that there is not one other religion in the world that dares to claim that their god became human? That’s right. Christianity is the only religion that claims and believes that the master intelligence of the universe actually became a real-life human being and occupied the same turf that we do. This means that God became Jesus who was a little baby who wet his pants and spit up, cried and whined in the synagogue at age two, and later drove his parents crazy during the worship services. Jesus was a true, authentic, real human being.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 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.”
So far, we’ve discussed Jesus as the Word, the Logic of God, present with God from the very beginning. We’ve seen how he became flesh, and dwelt among us. Now, just a few words about Jesus as the only son of God.
Maybe you have a Bible that calls Jesus “the only begotten son of God.” That’s what we say in the Nicene Creed—that Jesus is “true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.” The phrase, “only begotten” is used in only one place in the Bible, right here in the opening of John’s gospel. In order to understand it better, we have to look again at the original Greek that John wrote in.
The phrase “only begotten” comes from the Greek “monogenesis.” That’s not really too hard to figure out—mono means one, and genesis means beginning, like in the book of Genesis. Monogenesis. One beginning. The only genesis. And here’s how we might understand this;
Our modern word “genetics” comes from the word genesis. In modern language and thought, we might say that Jesus has the only genes from the Father. Jesus is the only begotten son, the only genetic son, the only biological son from the Father. In old language, the Church would say that Jesus is of the same nature of the Father. Today, we might say that Jesus has the same chromosomes as the Father. There is only one only begotten, mono-begotten, monogenesis of the Father, and that is the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. And if you want to know what God the Father is like, look at the identical copy of the Father in the Son.
What the Bible is saying is that Jesus is identical to the Father. Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, and has the same nature. If you want to know what the Father is like, look at the genetic replica of the Son. That’s what Christmas is all about—that God, the logical intelligence behind the universe, was born into the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, and lived among us.
We all love Christmas. We love the Christmas stories that we can easily visualize in our minds; Mary and Joseph and the baby, the straw in the manger, the sheep and the shepherds, the angels and the Wise Men. But in John’s gospel, we hear none of this. And yet, we do hear the precious story of Christmas, the timeless and eternal story of God’s great love for us;
In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic became God. All things in the universe were made by this Logic. And when the time was right, the Logic that made the universe became a human being who was full of grace and truth. And from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace, one blessing after another.
Merry Christmas. AMEN