Texts: Isaiah 52:7-10 + Psalm 98 + Hebrews 1:1-4 + John 1:1-14
“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; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Gen. 1:1-5)
Those of you who have worshipped at St. Luke’s on Christmas morning may remember me sharing that I not-so-secretly prefer Christmas morning to Christmas Eve. There are plenty of reasons this is so, and I won’t inflict them all on you unless you ask, but the one I will share is that Christmas morning tells the story of God’s incarnation as a poem instead of a narrative. Christmas Eve is all about Joseph and Mary, angels and shepherds keeping watch in their fields by night. Christmas morning is,
“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 it.” (John 1:1-5)
For the last few years it’s been my habit to share a bit of poetry on Christmas morning, in honor of the gospel of John’s deep love of metaphor and imagery. This year what struck me again is how my inclination to use poetry to interpret scripture is learned from John’s own gospel. Unlike the three gospels that precede it, John’s gospel doesn’t begin with a narrative about the historical figure of Jesus, but instead begins with a poetic reimagining of the story of creation — the first five verses of John echoing the first five verses of Genesis.
The symmetry is beautiful, from the repetition of the phrase “In the beginning” to the parallel themes of light and darkness and their separation. John’s gospel has gifted us with a prologue to the Jesus story to follow that makes extraordinary claims: that Jesus is the visible incarnation of the invisible God whose creative power brought into existence everything that is; that the teacher, whose words give meaning and order to our lives, is also the pre-existing Word who gives meaning and order to the cosmos.
This symbolic link between Jesus and Genesis has had a profound impact on Christian theology over the centuries. In the second century Irenaeus of Lyons, who was born in a part of what is now Turkey and who became the bishop of a part of what is now called France, explained the meaning and consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection as such,
“[Christ] was in these last days, according to the time appointed by the Father, united to His own workmanship, inasmuch as He became a man liable to suffering … He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam — namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God — that we might recover in Christ Jesus.” For Irenaeus, the divine Word becomes human flesh in order that our humanity might become divine; or, in his own words, “[he] became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
That is a noble sentiment, though so often difficult to imagine as being within the realm of possibility. Our lives are hard, some so much more than others, and if all we had to account for was our daily struggle it would still be difficult to understand our lives as divine. But there is more to account for. There is our hard-heartedness. There is our pettiness of spirit. There is our persistent sense of entitlement. There is our refusal to forgive. There is our hatred of those who challenge us. There is our greed that starves our neighbor. In short, there is our sin. How can we, who know ourselves too well, imagine our own lives as holy?
The point of the creation story, as I understand it, was for ancient Israel to assert that the world and everything in it are the product of a good and loving God, who called creation into being with an act of speech and not an act of war, as the creation myths of Israel’s neighbors suggested. By planting Jesus in the middle of that myth as the essence of that very world-making Word, John’s gospel reminds us that God is not at war with us. God’s heart is not like our heart. It is not petty or entitled, it is quick to forgive and filled with love. Hard as it may be to imagine that we are holy, that we are wrapped up in God’s divine life just as God is wrapped up in our human frailty, we can trust that it is true because it is God’s nature to make it true.
Which is another way to say that it is a gift to us, that it is pure grace, that we are being made new this Christmas along with the whole creation by the God who is always making all things new. Whatever stories you tell yourself about the kind of person you are, whatever immutable personal flaws or character defects you think define you, the poetry of Christmas morning says you are wrong. You are not all that you hide away in the dark. You are creations of the Word called into being by love. You shine with the light of God, which can never be extinguished in you or in this world.
Of all the gifts given and received this Christmas morning, let us give thanks for the gift of life and of the new life that is always being born in us by God’s grace, which will not be overcome.
Amen.
By Proclamation 