1 Christmas A December 28, 2025
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 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. This is not because they aren't real, but because they have a protean and malleable aspect in 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 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 knowing winks, as if there were some precise harmonic convergence over such words.
A major issue in life is 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. This is not because they aren't real, but because they have a protean and malleable aspect in 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 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 knowing winks, as if there were 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 used language models that he was familiar with from the Hebrew Scriptures, whose opening words were about the divine creator as a language user, bringing things into known identity through the speech of the divine One. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 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 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."
How did the writer of John's Gospel confer a blessing upon our being trapped in the language loop? The writer used language models that he was familiar with from the Hebrew Scriptures, whose opening words were about the divine creator as a language user, bringing things into known identity through the speech of the divine One. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 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 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. In the Hermetic tradition, particularly in the Shepherd of Poimandres (the Shepherd of Man), 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 with the Genesis creation story, the writer of John wrote about how everything which in infancy has a wordless or "negative" status can come to have "positive" status by attaining 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 world was created. Her world went from an entirely negative status to a positive status when things could finally 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 cannot be otherwise. Why? Because God, as the mysterious vagueness of God, can be known by us in a positive way because God takes identity with the emanating and arising Word. That Word completely gave positive wording to the flesh-and-blood life of a person, Jesus. We, as human beings, needed to have a superior Exemplar of how to live our worded lives.
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 world was created. Her world went from an entirely negative status to a positive status when things could finally 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 cannot be otherwise. Why? Because God, as the mysterious vagueness of God, can be known by us in a positive way because God takes identity with the emanating and arising Word. That Word completely gave positive wording to the flesh-and-blood life of a person, Jesus. We, as human beings, needed to have a superior Exemplar of how to live our worded lives.
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. As the Word Master, Jesus consistently warns us: Don't be crassly literal. In John, the literal mind is the "silly" mind, as when Nicodemus was told he needed to be "born again" and responded: "But Jesus, how can I climb back into my mother's womb?"
John's Gospel is a presentation of metaphors on steroids. Poetically, in action-signs and tautology, Jesus is described as the God-exemplar for humanity: 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, Resurrection, Healer of the blind, and Bread from Heaven.
People who try to read John's Gospel as though it were a series of empirically verifiable events are trying to put poetry into literal straitjackets. It does not do justice to 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, you and I are invited to accept our lives within the human language loop. 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 instinctively react like a frightened animal. But coming into her language, she was able to give positive content to her life experience, and her life was created from the Void of Negative Unknowing.
Let us be glad that our Christian tradition affirms that God is co-extensive with Word. Let us happily be trapped in our language loop as we try to act out in our fleshly lives what Word means—what love, justice, peace, self-control, and God mean. Because God, by definition, means "that than which none greater can be conceived," we must always be at the vocation of generating positive word-content to fill up the Divine container of All.
If the Word is God, we—in the image of God—are also word-makers in speech, text, and choreographed deeds. Following God as Word, let us go forth as playwrights, generating endless language products as befits Jesus, the Word made flesh. Amen.
John's Gospel is a presentation of metaphors on steroids. Poetically, in action-signs and tautology, Jesus is described as the God-exemplar for humanity: 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, Resurrection, Healer of the blind, and Bread from Heaven.
People who try to read John's Gospel as though it were a series of empirically verifiable events are trying to put poetry into literal straitjackets. It does not do justice to 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, you and I are invited to accept our lives within the human language loop. 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 instinctively react like a frightened animal. But coming into her language, she was able to give positive content to her life experience, and her life was created from the Void of Negative Unknowing.
Let us be glad that our Christian tradition affirms that God is co-extensive with Word. Let us happily be trapped in our language loop as we try to act out in our fleshly lives what Word means—what love, justice, peace, self-control, and God mean. Because God, by definition, means "that than which none greater can be conceived," we must always be at the vocation of generating positive word-content to fill up the Divine container of All.
If the Word is God, we—in the image of God—are also word-makers in speech, text, and choreographed deeds. Following God as Word, let us go forth as playwrights, generating endless language products as befits Jesus, the Word made flesh. Amen.
