1 Christmas C December 27, 2015
Is.61:10-62:3 Ps. 147:13-21
Gal. 3:23-25,4:4-7 John 1:1-18
The fact that we have four different Gospels in the New Testament is an indication of the diversity of experience of persons in the early churches throughout the Roman Empire. We perhaps ponder the diversity of Christian experience in our own time and what is amazing about our own time is not that diversity exists but that we have such quick communication about any differences. In the time of the early churches, communication was not instant and quick. People did not have that much contact with each other over even short distances. And so we have four Gospels deriving from and edited by people in different communities making different applications regarding the reality of the risen Christ.
The first chapter of the Gospel of John is a traditional Christmas Gospel even though it has nothing about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Mark, likewise does not have any account of the birth of Jesus either; it begins with the baptism of Jesus and the seeming adoption of Jesus as God's Son at his baptism. A heavenly voice said, "this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."
We have four Gospels in the New Testament and they all share some insights, but they also are each different because of the different circumstances within their various communities. The writer or writers of John's Gospel wrote last and so the writing is expressive of a community that had done longer theological reflection upon the effects of how the Risen Christ had been experienced in their lives.
The first chapter of John is perhaps my favorite chapter of the Bible because it establishes perhaps the most credible truth of humanity. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." The Word was God. You can appreciate the poetics of this Christian writer. If Jesus had been called the Son of Man and the Son of God what did this mean when he existed before he actually appeared as Jesus of Nazareth? Who was Jesus before he was conceived in Mary and born as a babe in Bethlehem?
Who was Jesus before time began? The writer of the Gospel of John inherited a book about the beginning, the book of Genesis. And how does the book of Genesis begin? "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, Let there be Light...and there was light. And the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep." These are the elements of the story of creation. So the question for the writer of John, how could the Risen Christ who had continuing existence after a human death event, how could the Risen Christ be shown to be before time?
The writer of the Gospel of John begins with the same three words which begin the Hebrew Scriptures, "In the beginning." But what was in the beginning for the writer of the Gospel of John? The Word was in the beginning, the word was with God and the Word was God. Can we appreciate this metaphor? When I speak, I release words and the words which I speak are me and they can make things happen. And when they are back up with action from the energy of my life, things happen or are created in the human sense of creation.
God spoke a Word at creation and the writer of John's Gospel believes the Creative Spoken Word of God to be the Risen Christ. And the speaking also releases breath. Breath is the metaphorical name for Spirit. And God's Spirit was the energy which accomplished the creative acts.
And so the writer of the Gospel of John wrote the Risen Christ into the original creation story. And this might seem too theologically poetic to make any practical sense to us. We might think, "Well, that's nice, but so what?"
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. I believe this to be the most important insight of life. Why? because I believe all of human life as we can know it is constituted by the fact that we are possessed with language which allows speech acts, written language, organizing structures in the visual field and the body language of our moral and ethics in how we act out our language.
Is life more than words or language? Yes indeed, but one cannot actually get to the life which is more than words or language without using and being used by language. But you might say, "I had pre-linguistic experiences when I was an infant and toddler and when I did not fully use language. And do not apes, chimpanzees and other animals have systems of communication?"
That may be true but one does not actually know one's experience of being an infant or a toddler from not having language. After one has language one uses language to imagine what it was like to be an infant who did not fully possess language. And so one only recreates with language the infant state of having not yet fully possessing language.
O, but I have intuitive experiences which are beyond language. O, but I have meditative states of bliss which are pure silence. O, but I have aesthetic experiences in art and music which allows me to pierce the essence of beauty. Yes, you do but you did not become an unworded and non-linguistic person when you had those experiences. Eventually all experience is recorded or classified in language. And if you and I say we have an experience beyond language, we really don't because we use the words, "beyond language" to classify such an experience.
All thing come into being through the Word; there is nothing that has being without the Word. Can we appreciate the profundity of this Gospel confession about the Word. It is perhaps the chief truth of human life, the human life as we know it.
Sometimes we think that we can encounter and see things without language. But everything that we see always, already has a human name and words. What we see in the world is already pre-classified through having language. It is like we wear inner glasses through which we see and those glasses come with the sub-titles already in place. With education and experience we are continually changing the lenses through which we see and classify our human experience.
The Gospel of John is an invitation to each of us to the life work of Word therapy. By Word therapy, we need to understand how each of us have been uniquely constituted by the word environments within which we have lived. We have been taught to name and value things and ourselves in various ways. Because we have not been raised in perfect environments by perfect people we have had our lives coded in some imperfect ways. These imperfections become manifest in the repetition of some losing behaviors and bad habits. It is as though we are caught in "word ruts" which only allow us to see and do things in the same way over and over again. We can each have our own individual specific "insanities" of doing things over and over again in the same way and expecting different results.
The amazing thing about words too, is that words also have the power to evoke mood and spirit. We can see the same thing in different ways based upon the attending mood. And moods can make us believe that we are enslaved to seeing the cup as half empty rather than being half full. With word therapy we can learn to shift how and what we are seeing out there, because if we can learn to see things differently then we can take creative action to get different results than has heretofore been possible.
It is one thing to say that we need a word lift in our lives to become more creative and see our world in a different light so that we can make different choices and do new things, but how does that happen? Probably the best way for that to happen is to be "inspired." That is to be able to project such positive desire upon a person or an insight as to gain the motivating energy to change one's life.
And that is how the Gospel writers saw Jesus. And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. And the Word because Body Language in the Person of Jesus and we had One onto whom we could project perfect desire and be inspired to change our lives.
Let us also know that the Gospel writer wrote in a time when the Jesus of history could no longer be seen or touched. The Jesus of history had become the Risen Christ, and this Risen Christ partook of the same reality as the Word of God who was the very essence of the beginning of human life as we know it.
The Risen Christ as the Continuing Word and Spirit in our world continues to inspire people. The Word continues to give in people, writing, nature, experience and events a vision of what is more perfect for you and me. We need to be on the look out for those people and events who can become for us the projection of our desire towards our better and perfectible selves. Certainly, there are plenty of negative influences in this world which we do well to avoid.
Today, let us know the Risen Christ as the Word of God who has made our lives and who is continuing to make our lives. Let us seek in the new year new paths of Word therapy toward what might be more perfectible versions of ourselves. Let us seek out the people, the writings, and the events onto which we can project our desire for perfectibility. In short, I invite all of us to embrace this continuous process of the "word lift" of our lives. It is more deeply profound than any cosmetic change that we might ponder in the new year.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelled with us. That my friends is Christmas. And I wish for all of us new Christmas gifts of words in the New Year, to touch us deeply and remake us toward the Risen Christ. Amen.