“In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
What do we celebrate at Christmas? Of course, the answer is obvious, even trite—the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World. But what do we celebrate at Christmas, what does the birth of Christ mean? Last night we heard the familiar story from Luke’s gospel. We know it well. The images are fixed in our memories, down to the marrow of our bones, the crude stable, the angels, the shepherds. Indeed, so familiar to us is the story that sometimes it becomes difficult to hear it afresh. Luke’s nativity story is as comfortable to us as our favorite pajamas or sweater, as familiar to us as the back of our hand.
Today we heard another gospel, a different gospel, but it too is familiar to us. Its words and images flow over us, surround us. Their beauty and brilliance have been dimmed as well by our repeated hearing of them. What new thing can we say about Christmas? What new or renewed faith, what transformation can come about in the midst of such old familiar stories and words?
In fact, that’s one of the problems with rituals. Human beings are by nature, ritualistic. Ritual takes us out of ourselves and out of our daily lives. Ritual draws us in, brings us into the presence of eternity. We like things to stay the same. We are comfortable with routine. We think things have always worked this way, that, for example, Christmas has always been celebrated in the way we do it today. Of course, that’s not true. We know approximately when Christians began celebrating the incarnation of Christ—it was probably in the fourth century. We know by whom and when the first crèche—the first nativity scene—was erected: by St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century. We know that Christmas was not celebrated in colonial New England, that Santa Claus came on the scene in the mid-19th century, that “White Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” date from the 1940s. We know all this, but when somebody messes with it, we get mad. All of that accumulated tradition combines to make Christmas an evocative and powerful event.
Yet all that familiarity, all the ritual does something else, too. It prevents us from encountering the gospel anew, it keeps us from hearing the words of Luke or of John with open hearts and minds, open to the possibility that Christmas, besides being the “most wonderful time of the year,” that Christmas might transform us, and transform the world.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The profound and mysterious hymn with which the Gospel of John begins makes some extravagant claims about Christ. What is proclaimed in these words is that Christ, the Word, has been present in the world since creation, indeed that the Word was itself the creative process through which the world, and we, were created.
There’s something of an irony here. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Christ, the coming of Christ into the world, but John begins by asserting that Christ has been present in the world from the very beginning of creation. The problem, of course, is that we don’t get it. We don’t recognize Christ’s presence among us, in us.
In the beginning was the Word… There are few texts of scripture on which Christians have thought and reflected than the opening verses of John’s gospel. The English translation captures only a small portion of all that lies in the Greek word logos that connotes as well, reason, natural law, the order of the universe. And behind the Greek lies the Hebrew concept of wisdom—the idea expressed in the Old Testament that it was through wisdom that God created the universe.
These rich words convey to us something of the faith of the early Christians who confessed them and sang them in worship, but the profundity of what they confessed elude our grasp. What might it mean for our faith not just to confess, but to believe that in creation in this world around us, we see the presence of God, we detect Christ?
We live in a world that loves to compartmentalize and to criticize. We tie things up into neat packages—this is science, that is religion. This is my faith, there is the rest of my life. This is Christmas, that, well, that is the rest of the year. We tie things up in neat packages, even though life resists such neat categorization. We want things neat and tidy, but life is messy. On Christmas, we want to hear the old familiar story, to sing the carols, to go home and have a nice Christmas dinner, exchange presents, and tomorrow wake up, and get back to business as usual.
What we don’t want, not really, is to encounter Christ. Oh yes, we love the baby in the manger, we love the story of Mary and Joseph, of shepherds and angels, we love the warm fuzzy feelings that Christmas is so good at providing. We want Christ on our terms, not on God’s terms.
John’s gospel reminds us that Christmas is not just about all of that. John proclaims to us loudly and powerfully that the Christ who was born in Bethlehem is the Incarnate Word, present in all the universe, present in all our words, present in us.
Christ comes to us, of course, as the little baby in a manger in Bethlehem. But our faith also proclaims that Christ is present all around us, even when we fail to recognize Him. Christ is here, in this place as we worship. We encounter Christ as we gather around the altar and share in the Eucharist. Christ is present, too, in the poor, the homeless, the destitute. May the spirit of Christmas infect us and transform us, that we see Christ in all that we do, in everyone we meet, in our neighbor, and yes, in our enemy, too. Amen.
Preaching Grace on the Square 