Year A + Christmas I
John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” [John 1:1] Referring to Jesus Christ as “the Word of God” may seem very strange to us. It’s not a phrase that we customarily use to describe Jesus. Let’s think about it a bit on this Sunday after Christmas Day.

First, we need to recognize that the Gospel of John is very different from the other three gospels on many levels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are sometimes grouped as the “Synoptic Gospels.” Synoptic is a Greek word that means “seeing together” or “seeing the same thing.” It refers to the fact that there is a lot of overlap in the stories that the three of them tell. Biblical scholars believe that the oldest gospel is that of Mark. Written somewhere around the year 60, or approximately 30 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus as an adult, coming to John the Baptist to be baptized. The shortest gospel, Mark focuses its attention on the miracles, preaching, and ministry of Jesus. Mark begins with no explanation other than the simple fact that Jesus is "the Messiah, the Son of God." [Mark 1:1]

Matthew’s gospel was written at least ten years after Mark’s. Theologians believe that Matthew must have been familiar with the earlier gospel, because so much of Mark is quoted by Matthew. The focus of Matthew is on Jewish Christians, and on explaining Jewish prophesies and customs to non-Jews. Matthew begins his gospel with the Jewish ancestry of Jesus of Nazareth. [Matthew 1:1-17]

Luke’s gospel was written in the same time period as Matthew’s, but for a Greek audience. [see Luke 1:1-4] Luke also seems to have based much of his gospel on Mark. Whereas Mark began with an adult Jesus, Matthew and Luke offered some details about the birth and childhood of Jesus. The three Synoptic Gospels all described things from the same perspective, but with different details, based on the audience to which they were directed and the time when they were written.

So what of John? When, why, and for whom was his gospel written? Bible scholars believe that John was written around the end of the first century (or later), which is years later than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It was written in Greek, but it never identifies its author, although chapter 21 does say that its stories came from the testimony of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” – a clear reference to the apostle John. [John 21:20-25]

Things had changed a lot in the 40 or more years between the time when Mark wrote and the time of the Gospel of John. For one thing, the Jewish state had been wiped out by the Romans in 70 AD, and Jewish Christians were scattered all over the empire. They no longer wielded the powerful influence in the Christian Church that they had enjoyed immediately after Our Lord’s death and resurrection. The Greek and Roman world was now in complete dominance around the Mediterranean, and it is to this audience that John’s gospel was directed.

More importantly, Christianity was now more than one generation old. Most of the people who had seen and heard Jesus were gone, and some troubling ideas had begun to grow up among the widely dispersed groups of Christians. It appears that John’s gospel was written to confront some of those ideas and to explain the truth in contrast to them.

All that is background. Now, let’s look at today’s text. Like Mark, John begins with Jesus as an adult, coming to John the Baptist for baptism. However, John inserts a prolegomenon or prologue in front of that story. Like the Book of Genesis, the Gospel of John starts with the words, “in the beginning.” John seems to have intended to make a deliberate connection between the two books. The Hebrew Scriptures, what we call “the Old Testament,” served to explain God’s creative work in terms that people a thousand years before Jesus could understand. The writer of John brought that explanation forward to his own time. With no reference to seven days or Adam and Eve, John pointed out that Jesus was present when everything was created.

John uses a strange word to refer to Jesus, though. In Greek, it is “Logos” [λόγος] – “the Word.” We see forms of Logos in our language, in words like theology, biology, and psychology. In each of them, “-ology,” which comes from Logos, refers to the study of something, but the original meaning in ancient Greek had a long history.

Aristotle used it to describe the principle of reasoning, or thinking about important things. It was the group of philosophers known as the Stoics in Athens three hundred years before Christ who used it to name the divine principle that was responsible for all life in the universe. This is the meaning that was understood during the era in which the Gospel of John was written. When John used Logos, he was building upon that understanding. He was saying to his Greek audience, “that Logos which you know, the power of creating life in the universe, is Jesus, and Jesus is God.”

John tells us several important things about Jesus – and remember that this is all by way of introduction, before we see Jesus for the first time, as an adult going to be baptized.

(1) Jesus, the Word of God, existed in the beginning – that is, before anything was created. Thus, Jesus was not created by God; he is God. We echo this faith in our Nicene Creed, when we say that Jesus is “begotten, not made, of one Substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” [Book of Common Prayer, pg 358]

(2) The Word was with God the Father, which points out that the Word and God are two different entities.

(3) But the Word was God, which seems to contradict the previous statement. How can be Word be with God but also be God? John is referring to the Trinity, although he never uses that word.

Thus, Jesus was from all time, not created but already existing when everything was created; he was with God the Father when all things were created; and he was God – not the Father, but the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity.

Finally, as we heard on Christmas, “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” [John 1:14] Jesus, the Word of God, existed from all time, participated in creation, and now became a human being and lived on earth with us.

This is one of the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith. By “mystery” I mean a reality that we cannot fully understand or explain. We simply accept that it is true and believe that we will understand better in the next life. [see I Corinthians 13:11-12]

On this first Sunday in the Christmas season, we are reminded once again of the gospel for Christmas Day, a reading that brings us back to the real meaning of Christmas. The gospels of Matthew and Luke emphasize the importance of the birth of Christ by telling us about the extraordinary things that accompanied it, but these things are not the heart of Christmas. It is the Word made flesh, the Incarnation of God as man, that is the event we celebrate in this holy season. Although we can never fully understand the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, we base our faith as Christians upon them as we accept our calling to be the lights of Christ to the world. As we prayed in our Collect [BCP, pg 213], may the light of the Incarnate Word shine in our hearts, and may it shine forth in our lives.