In the Beginning: A Christmas Morning Reflection on the Fourth Gospel’s Prologue

December 25, 2003 (The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Christmas Day)

By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good…

Thus begins the Hebrew account of how the world began. It is a mythic story. Not mythic in the sense that it is untrue, but mythic in the sense that it is more than true. I imagine a learned rabbi rising on the steps of the temple in Jerusalem and instructing a gathering of school-aged Jewish boys and girls, saying, “Now I am not sure that it happened this way, but I know that this story is true…” The story of creation in Genesis is about far more than how the world was made. More importantly, it is about why the world was made. More important still, it is about who made the world, and what kind of God that must have been, to do this wondrous thing.

It is no coincidence that the Gospel of John begins with the same three words that Genesis does. John, more than any other Gospel, is concerned far more with the why than with the how, and even more concerned with who. And so there is in the Gospel of John no mention of how Jesus was born. All of the poetry of these most precious verses are spent in the telling of why Jesus came to recreate the world, and who sent him, and what kind of God that must have been, to do this wondrous thing. Like the story of creation in Genesis, this is a mythic telling of beginning. And like the story in Genesis it is mythic not because it is untrue, but because it is so much more than true. John, like no other Gospel, does not even pretend to know the details of how Jesus got here. John, like no other Gospel, begins in a transcendent, poetic avalanche of sheer meaning. Meaning that drowns out the how with the utterly overwhelming why, and who.

It is, I think, no coincidence that on Christmas morning we read from the Gospel of John, and not from Matthew and Luke as we did last night. There is special power in the Gospel of John, and the lectionary use of it is evidence that we are very aware of that power. Our Sunday readings rotate on a three year basis, each year featuring primarily one of the three synoptic Gospels: Mark, Matthew, or Luke. Yet while John does not have his own year, we turn to him every year at those times of particular significance. John’s Gospel permeates the readings of Holy Week and Easter, and we come again to the beginning with John here at this feast of the beginning, this feast of Jesus’ incarnation.

And so we are finished with preparation. All of our Advent anticipation and December excitement is spent. The Christmas pageant has been performed, the gifts opened, the parties thrown and attended, the magic performed. And after all of this, we come, not to the end, but to the beginning. And we come here, to this place and time of beginning, with John’s Gospel, that Gospel that no birth story at all, and yet is most profoundly about the birth of Christ. Here on Christmas morning we have no angels, no shepherds, and no manger. No wise men are coming, no cattle are lowing, and the Holy Family is not Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but rather just God and the Word.

We stand this morning on Holy Ground, at a place of unutterable beginning: a place that for the Christian story is every bit as profound as the creation of the world itself. We can see it all from here, everything is before us, nothing behind us. Past, present, and future spread out before us like a vast landscape of divine will. It is as if we stood on the summit of Mt. Everest, and there were no clouds over any part of the Earth, and we had the eyes of eagles. This is no cozy manger scene John has brought us to. It is instead a place of stark vision, a place where creation and incarnation are the same thing, and the beauty of a God that loves us so much will break our hearts, if we could only come a little bit closer to understanding how it could be that God would be made human. Nevertheless, on this day,

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of Grace and Truth.

AMEN.