Image from Photos of Biblical Explanations Pt. 2
I wonder if you might close your eyes for a moment – and conjure an image of those last moments before and following the act of creation. In the book of Genesis, we find a description of the darkness covering the face of the deep – the only sound –the divine wind as it sweeps across the face of the void.
Our sci-fi shaped imaginations offer us images to complement the Genesis description of the darkness of the deep. Maybe an image comes to you from the opening scene from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise looking ahead into a vast and empty panorama of receding space; perhaps it’s an image from the Hubble Telescope relaying from its earth orbit images of far-flung star formations – arresting in their resplendent shapes and colors; maybe it’s the gamma ray images from the newer Webb Telescope – which from solar orbit at the second Lagrange point – a million miles away from the Earth – captures images from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang in the evolution of our own Solar System. Whatever images your imagination conjures – sit with them for a moment with eyes still closed.
Now return to the Genesis image of the darkness of the deep – the only sound being that of the divine wind sweeping across the face of the void. Suddenly, the eyes of your imagination catch a pinpoint of light flickering on at the heart of the void. Watch as this pinpoint of light expands at lightspeed to pierce the darkness of the deep – bringing forth the light of life.
You can open your eyes now.
This Christmas Eve, I deliberately chose to use the gospel reading from John’s Prologue in preference to Luke’s birth narrative. How fortunate we are to be given such a rich variety in the NT accounts of the Incarnation – the event of the Creator’s entry into the creation.
In the opening verses of his Gospel, John the Evangelist is constructing a second Genesis event. The opening verses of his first chapter are collectively known as the Prologue – because a prologue comes before the actual story begins. Like the authors of Genesis, John uses the opening words – in the beginning – to set his scene. As in the first Genesis creation account, John tells us that in the beginning there was only the Creator from whom all life came into being – as John phrases it. But John tells us much more than this.
Now close your eyes and once more picture within the darkness the pinprick of light expanding at light’s speed to illumine the void’s deep darkness. Writing in Greek, John identifies this light as the Logos.
Open your eyes again.
Logos has a range of possible meanings, among them – to put in order, to arrange, to gather, to choose, to count, reckon, and discern, and finally, to say, to speak. In the Genesis event God does not create something from nothing. The creator creates by ordering, arranging, choosing, counting, reckoning, discerning, and finally speaking into the elements concealed within the darkness of the deep.
In English we translate John’s logos as the Word. The Word is the communicative aspect of the Creator. The Word is the Creator’s speaking into the void to arrange and structure the elements swirling in the chaos of the deep. In the moment of creation, the Logos – the Word -speaks-out the divine life into the void. Because as John further tells us, the Word is the light of the divine life at the heart of everything. And here John arrives at what is for me – his crucial point. He tells us that this light – the light of the divine life – illumines the darkness in such a way that the darkness can never – ever – overcome it! Let’s listen to John again.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 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 the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it!
John identifies Jesus as the Word. This seems at first sight a rather huge leap to contemplate. So how does he get there? Well for John it’s simple. The Word is Jesus because at a pivotal moment in human history – the Word that in the first moments of creation spoke-forth the light of the divine life into creation -in the second moment of the Incarnation, speaks-forth the divine self into a human life. For John, in Jesus, the divine Word has come to dwell. So let’s just pause here for a moment to let the impression of these words form in us.
Follow me as I want to take a short detour. In 1849, the Reverend Edmund Spears, then the Unitarian Minister in Wayland Massachusetts, wrote the words of his poem It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. The striking feature of Sears’ poem is the way he sets the birth of the Christ-Child’s in Bethlehem not in its historical setting but in the context of his own day’s issues of war and peace – for him most probably it’s the Mexican American War of 1849 he has in mind.
Sears sets the Savior’s incarnation in the harshness of the New England bleak midwinter when the world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels’ song of peace and good will. But he notes that the angels’ song can barely be heard above the clamor of the world’s Babel sounds. And in his third stanza he packs his punch:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
Sears tempers his current despair at the warlike state of the nation with his Christian hope – eventually steering his poem towards the expectation of the Second Coming when the whole world will finally echo (give back) the song which presently, only the angels’ sing.
We celebrate this Christmas amidst unparalleled rancor and vitriol at home and against the background of the heart-rending images of devastation and loss of life in Ukraine and the Holy Land – to name only the two conflicts most clamoring for our Western attention. This year, Christmas celebrations in the Holy Land will be muted. Bethlehem, a town now under the siege of occupation will be dark to protest events in Gaza and the escalation of military repression and settler vigilante violence in the West Bank. This year throughout the Holy Land the liturgical observance of Christmas will be shorn of festive expression.
The irony between the 1st century setting for Jesus’ birth and today is captured in the French expression: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose -things change only to remain the same. O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.
Many of us can be excused if we are drawn to despair by the current course of events. At the heart of John’s Prologue lies the message we most need to hear. The most startling thing about the Incarnation is this. In the human life of Jesus – the Word the light of the divine life – enfleshed – to live among us full of grace and truth. John reminds us that it is our choice whether we recognize this as a reality – capable of shaping our lives – or not. To behold the glory of the light of the divine life shining through the radiance of a human life is a powerful life shaping, earth changing narrative of hope – we just need the courage to believe and to act in accordance with our belief. And courage is what it takes to believe in the face of everything that conspires to entrap us in the darkness of despair.
In the midst of the darkness of this world we can feel like we’ve fallen into the fathomlessness of the primordial deep where we confront all that saps us of Christian conviction and hope-filled purpose. In despair, how easily we forget that the darkness is simply the fuel that the light consumes to shine ever brighter.
In this then, lies the defiance of hope – that no matter how dark things may appear, darkness not only has no power to extinguish the light – but actually, provides the fuel for the light to burn even brighter. Take heart! The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never, ever overcome it. Renewed by this hope we have work to do, and that work is to align ourselves with God in the restoration of the creation – so that the world may be ready to receive Christ’s coming again in glory.
How might we achieve this? By cherishing the light burning deep within each one of us – and by sharing that light with one another – collectively pooling the light – so that it may grow ever brighter and to give a good account of the hope that propels us forward.
Given the state of the world around us at this Christmas in 2023 – perhaps merry is not the word we want to use but hope-filled might be. Amen!
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