John's Gospel: An Entirely Different Christmas Story

Christmas Day        December 25, 2011    

Isaiah 52:7-10   Psalm 98

Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12)  John 1:1-14

Lectionary Link

  There are two of the Gospels that do not include the Infancy Narratives of the Christmas Story.  The Gospel of Mark begins with the adult ministry of Jesus.  And the Gospel of John does not include the stories of the manger, the stable, the wise men and Mary and Joseph.  The Gospel of John is the last of the Gospels to come to its textual form and so many more years of making Christian theology had occurred.

  St. Paul spoke of the Christian life as living in Christ, by Christ, for Christ, with Christ and to Christ; in short St. Paul believed that we lived in an “In-Christed” world and that it was our wonderful favor to discover this mystery.

  The Christmas story elevates the Virgin Mary as the paradigm of all Christians since the spiritual path of each Christian is to realize the birth of Christ in ones lives.  St. Paul said that the mystery of the ages was to realize that Christ in us is the hope of glory.  And Christ is known to be in us as our lives are known to be over-shadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  The Gospel of John has moved the metaphor of the physical town of Bethlehem to the speculative origins of human consciousness itself.  What is it that has given birth to what makes us distinctively human in the order of all other beings?  It is the Word that is indeed the very order of human existence in how we know ourselves.  We receive Word without asking for it; it is our past and present ability.  Even when we are not good users of Word, it uses us because even before we can speak or read or write, we have come into a completely worded human world. 

  Adam in the beginning was given the task of naming everything in his world.  Humanity has been engaged in the task of naming everything for as long as we have been human.

 And our naming of this world is still the human task.  Even when we say the word tree we are reaffirming how this tree is recreated in a new moment of our lives since each moment in one sense is a new beginning, a new birth and a new creation.

  So the writer of the Gospel of John identifies that the telling aspect of Jesus of Nazareth to be WORD made flesh.

  Each of us in our own way is Word made flesh too since we have received the creative understanding of our lives from the Eternal Word that always, already was.

  The way that Word was made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth has changed our world.  And the Word made flesh is still an invitation to us to change our world in the direction of the values of Jesus of Nazareth:  Love God with all of our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves.

  The Christmas Story can be an invitation to childlike wonder as found in the narratives of the birth of the baby Jesus, or it can be a fully adult appreciation of a poetic, linguistic, philosophical Christ who is the eternal Word who has given birth to human consciousness itself.  And I like all of the Christmas presentations since each presentation appeals to a different way in which I am human.

  Let us be thankful for Christ as the eternal Word and let our Christmas gift to God be the finding of our Voice to use our words to tell our good news and let the body language of our lives speak the kind deeds that our world surely needs to hear.  The Gospel presentations of Christmas say to us in many ways:  “Merry Christmas!”  Amen.