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Lectionary Study - December 25, 2007

CHRISTMAS DAY

Isaiah 52:7-10; John 1:1-18; Hebrews 1:1-12

John 1:1-18.

“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 has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome I” (John 1:1-5).

With these dramatic words, the Gospel of John begins its Christmas story.  But unlike Matthew and Luke that tells us of the birth of Christ, John tells us about creation itself – and Jesus’ relationship to that creation. 

“In the beginning was the Word”.  The Gospel of John opens with identical words to Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning”.  Through the Hebrew creation story runs a profound theme, repeated eight times (Gen. 1:3-6 and 7, 9, 11, 14-15, 20-21, 24 and 26-30).  That theme is “And God said . . . And it was so.”

Genesis tells us that God spoke the world into existence.  So, John is declaring the same truth.  The Word – in Greek, “logos, in Hebrew “dabar” – is not just a word spoken by human beings.  It is the word, for the “dabar” or “logos” is the conduit by which Yahweh invades humanity and writes sacred history into our history.  The “logos” of God is God, the voice of God speaking the creation into life.  Without the Word, there is no world!

For whom is this Word intended?  The Word, John is telling us, is intended for the world.  The Greek word used here for “world” is “cosmos”.  The cosmos is not simply the geographical world – our sphere.  The cosmos, to the Greeks, was the entire created order, the universe.  The Word, John tells us, has entered the “cosmos” which God created, bringing to that cosmos “life”, “light” and “power”.

But how did the cosmos and its people respond?  “The cosmos did not know him.”  “His own people did not accept him.”  Rejection of the Word (and therefore of God) occurred at two levels – societally (i.e., the cosmos) and individually (i.e., people).  The “cosmos” and its “people” had refused to come into an intimate relationship with its creator because “darkness” had kept it and its people from the “light”.

However, such rejection of the Word is not universal.  “But to all who received (the Word), . . . he gave power to become children of God” (1:12).  There are those who have responded to the Word and have become right with God.  But how do they do that, John asks?

God’s people are to be shaped around their embracing of the free gift of God’s redemptive love (1:13), and making that “amazing grace” the foundation for their life together.  God’s “shalom”, the “cosmos” as God intended it to be will come into existence through “all who received him, who believed in his name” and who therefore create together a new community, an alternative society built upon God’s love and grace.

The magnificent prologue of the Gospel of John now rushes toward its climax, as it gives to the reader the essential theme of the remainder of the Gospel of John.

“The Word became flesh”.  The Word – the “dabar” of God, the “logos” of God, has become an actual, living human being.  The Word “lives” among us within a human being!  The Son of God, the enfleshment of the “Word”, is journeying through the human experience, John is telling us, as the personification of “grace and truth”.

But what does John mean by “grace and truth”?  What John is doing here is using two Greek words to capture the essence of one Hebrew word – “chesedh”.  “Chesedh” is the depth of God’s love expressed towards us, a love that accepts us as we are and yet calls us to become all that we have the potential that God has created us to be.  And now John is telling us that God has “tabernacled” (the actual meaning of the Greek) among us so that we might become God’s people as we live out “chesedh” in both our private and public lives and in the very ways we carry out the political, economic and religious functions of our society.

Now the Prologue reaches its climax.  It names the “Word”.  The “father’s only son, full of grace and truth” is Jesus Christ.  “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17).

God’s “chesedh” is not going to come to humanity and the “cosmos” any longer through “Moses” (that is, the Jewish political, economic and religious system).  The Law created by God to incarnate God in humanity’s structures has become the exact opposite, for it has become the oppressive system of the first century that is designed to maintain power for the few while holding the populace in economic, political and religious slavery.  The “Law” has become so exploitive and dominating that it is beyond redemption.

But “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.  God has had to find another way.  And that way is Jesus!

What John is proposing here is radically revolutionary.  Is he right?  The remainder of the Gospel According to St. John is his effort to demonstrate through the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth the authenticity of what he has here proposed.  And it is to demonstrate that authenticity against the landscape of the horrendous oppression of the Jewish and Roman systems!  This is the magnificent Christmas story of the Gospel of St. John.

Isaiah 52:7-10.  “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, rings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”” (Isa. 52:7).

In a passage that would later be echoed by Paul in his moving description of the preachers of the early church spreading the gospel (Rom. 10:15), that would over a millennium later enter the Anglican liturgy and would then become the text of one of Handel’s best known arias in The Messiah, the prophet tells us of the most beautiful sight in the world – the feet of a messenger running with overwhelmingly good news.

This rich Old Testament lesson begins with the description of a messenger running from the scene of a battle with the good news that the general and ruler, Yahweh, has won against the foes of darkness!  As he runs, shouting the good news at the top of his voice, the watchmen of Jerusalem, standing guard over the rubble of its walls destroyed by the enemy hear his cry, and respond with a shout of triumph (vs. 8).  The people hear the joy of the guards, and so join in with a riotous triumphant shout of victory and of rejoicing “for the Lord has comforted his people” with the news of triumph.

Then, suddenly, behind the shouting, ecstatic messenger comes God himself on his great steed, leading the conquering army.  God has returned to the destroyed and devastated city.  And he has returned as both redeemer (vs. 9) and liberator (vs. 10) of Israel.  God has brought spiritual salvation to his people (vs. 9), and political and economic deliverance (vs. 10).[3]   But that liberation is not for Israel alone, the prophet declares.  It is so “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (vs. 10).

The striking poem that begins the Gospel of John and introduces Christ as the Word and Light of the world is not the first statement in scripture that presents God as political, economic and spiritual liberator and savior for the entire world (that is, “to all who received him, who believed in his name”).  What would someday become the magnificent prologue of the Gospel of John initially is given voice in this magnificent prophecy of Isaiah who sees God coming in human flesh to his people, setting them free from the tyranny that had previously oppressed them.  

Hebrews 1:1-12.  “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.  When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:1-3).

This Epistle Lesson for Christmas Day is the logical successor to Isaiah’s image of the redeeming, liberating God returning in triumph and of John’s poetic prologue of the creating Word of God being made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth to become redeemer and liberator of the world.  The unknown author of Hebrews tells us that God did reveal himself and his saving work to and through the prophets of the past.  But now, he has acted in a unique and a definitive way through God’s Son.  And with that revelation of the Son, the world has moved from an era of preparation to the era of fulfillment.

Hebrews then goes on to make seven affirmations about the Son – Jesus Christ.  And those seven affirmations, considered together, present one of the clearest affirmations of the deity of Christ that appears in the Bible.  The affirmations are as follows:

1.  Jesus is “the heir of all things” (vs. 2).  That is, he is the predicted, anticipated messianic Son.

2.  Jesus is the creator of the “worlds” (not just this planet, and not just the solar system, but the entire universe); as the Word, Jesus is the means through which God created the cosmos (vs. 2).

3.  Jesus is the radiant “Light” (vs. 2) of God (vs. 2; cf. John 8:12, 9:5).

4.  Jesus is the exact representation of God upon the earth (vs. 3), the Greek word used for “exact imprint” being the word for a newly-minted coin taken from its die.

5.  Jesus is the one who sustains the world (vs. 3).

6.  Jesus is the one who redeems the world from its sin (vs. 3).

7.  Jesus is the one who has taken his throne as co-regent at God’s right hand and now rules the world as the representative of God (vs. 3).

This is whom God brought to earth as a little baby lying in a manger in a peasant stable in an obscure province of the Roman Empire, watched over by a teen-age mother, an awe-filled father, shepherds among Israel’s lowest of the low and the cattle of the field.  This is the miracle of redemption, of liberation, of transformation for “those whom God favors” and for the society that they would be called to build (Luke 2:1-14).

“He comes, a Child, from realms on high, He comes the heavens adoring; He comes to earth to live and die, A broken race restoring.  Although the King of kings is He, He comes in deep humility; His people to deliver, And reign for us forever” (Joseph Barlowe, “Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light”, stanza two.  The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration [Waco, TX: Word Music, 1986], hymn 129).

(Copyright © 2007 by Partners in Urban Transformation)