“Kai o logos sarx engeneto”
John
1:1-18
On this first Sunday after
Christmas, we our homes are returning to back to normal. If your house is like mine, Christmas
decorations have been repacked and put back in the attic. Leftovers have been eaten. And Christmas gifts have found a new home in
the closets and shelves of our rooms.
And yet at the same time, the images of the Christmas story are still
fresh in our minds, the images of the shepherds encounter with the angels, the
images of Mary and Joseph as they looked at their new born baby with both
excitement and apprehension. And in the
end, we too departed from manager rejoicing and pondering what the birth of
this baby means for us. We left the
event of Christ’s birth having been interrupted and encountered and touched by
God in a way we cannot fully comprehend.
Even though this baby was a normal baby, flesh and
blood just like us, we also know that he is someone more, someone bigger than
life itself, someone beyond our understanding, someone beyond ourselves.
And so on this first Sunday after
Christmas, we once again return to the beginning, so that we might further
reflect upon the identity of this baby named Immanuel,
and the implications of his presence in our faith and life. The birth event may have been a snapshot in
time, but the reality of this event and the understanding of the central person
in this event continue on for us. This
Season of Christmas is a time for us to look beyond the fresh images of the
nativity scene, beyond the hills of the Judean countryside, to the larger
vision of this miraculous and gracious event that took place.
Kai o logos sarx engeneto (and the Word became flesh). These are the words of John
Mark starts the story of Jesus with his baptism. Matthew and Luke go back a little further and give us stories of Jesus’ birth, close up shots that puts us right into the action, but John does something different. John pulls the camera back, way back, and gives us a much more expansive view. For John, this birth event was more than just snap shot in time, an event confined by the temporal; this birth event has a cosmic significance to it that goes back to the time before time, long before the world came into being. Like a stone throne into water, John wants us to know that the impact of this event sends out ripples in all directions, to the past, the present and the future.
For John, Jesus is the eternal
entering the temporal, the infinite entering the constraints of time and space,
the divine entering the routine, the Creator entering the creation. Jesus is the logos of God, the Word of God,
the self-revelation and self-communication of God’s very being. He is the genesis of all that there is, the
one who was with God from the beginning, who is God from God, light from light,
true God from true God, of one being with the Father, the Creator of the cosmos
and of life itself.
How important these words are for
us to hear during the Christmas season.
They paint for us a picture of Jesus that transcends our understanding, that declares both the majesty and
sovereignty of God as well as God’s wholly otherness compared to us. If the other gospel writers want to point us
to Jesus’ humanity, then John wants to point us to Jesus’ divinity as a
reminder that this person is someone different than just a representative of
God, but that he is in fact God’s very self and therefore worthy of the title
of Lord and Savior.
John’s words are powerful words;
words of Holy Scripture, words we should not and must not too quickly
overlook. But there is no doubt they are
lofty words, words suited best for hymns, theology textbooks, seminary
classes. They point us toward the
heavens and give us a glimpse of the divine, but our faith and life is lived in
the world, among the best and worst that the world has to offer.
In this
Christmas season, we may want to stay in the lofty confines of the eternal
realm with glimpses of the divine mystery revealed, but we still have to live
in a world that is neglectful, divided, and indifferent toward the good news of
the Jesus Christ. We still have to live
in a world among people who find the good news of Jesus Christ offensive and threatening, and in some cases outright rejects it all
together. And yet, in the midst of this
world in which we live, John reminds us that the logos of God, the one who was
with God in the beginning, the one who is the eternal and creative and
illuminating power of the divine, is the very same logos that became flesh -
Kai o logos sarx engeneto.
The logos of God, who became flesh and blood just as us, is the great reminder of the depths to which God has gone to be with us and for us in the real world in which we live. God is not so wholly other that he is not concerned about our real human lives with all the inconsistencies and injustice we have to deal with day to day. In the incarnation of the logos, God demonstrated to the world that light is more powerful than darkness, love is more powerful than hate, life is more powerful than death, and grace is more powerful than sin. The Word of God made flesh is none other than opening act of God’s grace to and for the world in order to embrace the world and bring God’s scattered children together to be one with God and with one another.
For John, the logos of God is not only the fulfillment of God’s own promise, he is not only the mystery of God’s own purpose in and for the world, but he is also the one to whom we can touch and feel and come to know in a profound way. Through this one who is o logos sarx engeneto, the barrier between God’s self and humanity was breached, and the transcendent became one with us so that you and I and everyone could become one with him and through him.
The Gospel is more than just a
story of a man named Jesus, it is the story of the Triune God, the story of the
one who did and continues to do what we could never do for ourselves, the story
of God’s saving grace upon grace poured out for us so that we may have the
power to become children of God.
Christmas is not only the story of the birth of God’s self-communication
to the world, Christmas is not only the celebration of God’s gracious decision to
become human in the baby of Bethlehem; Christmas is the event by which God made
God’s intentions known to the world, and directly intervened in the lives of
people, so that we may participate in God’s redemptive plans for the cosmos and
see the salvation of God at work.
O logos sarx
engeneto is the Gospel of God, the fulfillment of the
promise that the incarnate ministry of forgiveness, healing, and redemption of
the logos sarx engeneto
belongs to all of those who seem unlikely members of God’s family – a
What we discover in these lofty
words is none other than the God who has sought after us all along with a
pursing love that will not take no for an answer, with an amazing grace that
has washed us clean with the waters of baptism, and with a saving faith that
will keep us until the day when all things will be made new. What we discover in these words of this
gospel writer is the reassuring promise and encouragement to all believers that
we have indeed seen the logos sarx engeneto in the one born for us, the one who is God with
us, the one who was, and who is, and who will ever be the Savior, the Messiah,
Christ the Lord. Amen.