1 Christmas A December 28, 2025
Is.61:10-62:3 Ps. 147:13-21
Gal. 3:23-25,4:4-7 John 1:1-18
The writer of the Gospel of John probably had read the other Gospels and did not choose to repeat traditions about Jesus, about how he was born or even about his baptism by John the Baptist.
Writers usually write with their immediate listeners and readers in mind and with a motive of being winsomely persuasive about how they understood their favored values.
A major issue in life is about how we give positive content, even revealed positive content, about things which seem to be common in human experience but often are tinged with so much non-specific mysterious vagueness, not because they aren't real but because they have a protean and flexible malleable aspect because of how they come to be applied to individuals in different ways. What are examples of such non-specific mysterious vague stuff? It is what we might call the sublime, love, joy, peace, justice, and God. These are words which are common to people but when one tries to pin such words down they turn out to be mysteriously vague events that many people nod about with with knowing winks as if there was some precise harmonic convergence over such words.
The writer of the Gospel of John was trying to give positive explanation and description to impart a delight in the experiences of the Sublime. How does one give the unworded fullness of the impinging All, any positive content? We can only do so by using words. The prologue of John's Gospel, which we read at Christmastide is the proclamation of permission for us as mere humans to be caught within the language loop. By this, I mean that ultimately everything if it is to have a knowable existence has to come to language. It has to pass through the threshold of non-linguistic being into being signified in language. We are caught in the language loop because we have to use language to signify everything that is not language.
How did the writer of John's Gospel confer a blessing upon our being trapped in the language loop? The writer of John used language models that he was familiar with from the Hebrew Scriptures whose opening words were written words about the divine creator as a language user and bringing things into known identity through the speech of the divine One. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." And there was a familial unity between God the one who said, and the actual Word that God said. The writer of John piggybacked upon the God of Genesis as a Speaking Creator who was One with the Divine Word and the writer of John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God. And everything came into being through the
Word." The writer of John's Gospel also knew literature from the Greco-Roman corpus of writings, and the writer was writing for people who were looking for communicative finesse in their own situation. In the Hermetic tradition, particularly in the Shepherd of Poimandres, the Shepherd of Man, Link the writer refers to Logos, as the son of god. John's readers were familiar with the Logos as divinity. By wedding the language of Logos as divinity with the Genesis creation story of God and God's Spoken word being the mode of creation, the writer of John wrote about how everything which in infancy has wordless or negative status, can come to have positive status by attaining a worded existence. Things come into being because of having a worded existence. This in the modern era is poignantly known in the story of the sight, speech, and hearing impaired Helen Keller receiving language through the signing of her hands and in activating her language, her entire word was created. Her world went from entirely negative status to positive status when things could be brought to language for her.
The writer of John is confessing that we too are human language users caught in the language loop, and that is okay because we can't be other. Why? Because God as the mysterious vagueness of God that is, can be known by us in a positive way because God takes identity with emanating and arising Word. That Word, completely gave positive wording to the flesh and blood life of a person Jesus. Why? Because we as human being needed to have a superior Exemplar of how to live our worded lives.
And the amazing feature of the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel of John is that Jesus as a word master whose words were spirit and life, is presented as one who taught us how to use words, especially about God and about each other.
And Jesus as the Word Master in John's Gospel consistently warns us about word use, and what does he say? Don't be crassly literal in words about God and how how to live. The Gospel of John presents the literal mind as the silly mind, as in when Nicodemus was told that he needed to born again, he responded with a very literal, "But Jesus how can I climb back into my mother's womb?"
John's Gospel is a presentation of metaphors on steroids. Poetically in actions signs and in tautology, Jesus is poetically described God exemplar for humanity. Jesus is Life, Way, Truth, Light, Good Shepherd, Servant who taught service, Lover who taught love, Vine, Christ, Messiah, Alchemist of water into wine, Calmer of wind storms, Walker on stormy waters, Calmer of fearful hearts, I AM, Son of God his Father, Resurrection, Healer of the blind, the lame, and the sick child, he is mind reader for how many husbands one has had, he is sender of the Comforter, Bread from Heaven who provides bread for the masses, Drawer of all to himself on the Cross, and God's unique Son given to the world so humans could believe.
People who try to read John's Gospel as though it was empirically verifiable events are trying to put poetry into literal strait jackets, and it does not do justice to what we call modern history writing and it does not do justice to the holy sublime which the writer was sharing from his mystical experience with the Risen Christ.
Today on the fourth day of Christmas, you and I are invited to accept our lives within the human language loop. Try to imagine the life of Helen Keller who had language ability but could not activate it. The mystery of her not knowing was frustrating and dreadful; all she could do was to instinctively react like a frightened animal. But coming into her language, she was gradually able to give positive content to her life experience and her life was created from the Void of the completely Negative Unknowing.
Let us be glad that our Christian tradition affirms that God is co-extensive with Word, in the way that God might be known. Let us happily be trapped in our language loop as we try to act out in our fleshly material lives what Word means, what love means, what justice means, what peace means, what self-control means, yes what God means, because God by definition means that which none greater can be conceived, so that we must always be at the vocation of generating positive word content to fill up toward the greater Divine container of All.
And if the Word is God, we in the image of God are also word makers in speech, text and choreographed deeds of our morals and our ethics. So following God as Word, let us go forth as playwrights generating endless language products as befits Jesus the Word made flesh. Amen.
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