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John 1:10-18 (1-9)
Here are some
memorable opening lines--let's see how many of
them you can guess! I'll start off easy!
"Once upon a time
there were four little Rabbits, and their names
were - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter."
(Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit)
"The sun did not
shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the
house all that cold, cold, wet day..."
(Dr.
Seuss, The Cat
in the Hat)
"The night Max wore
his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and
another ..."
(Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are)
Once there were four children whose names were
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about
something that happened to them when they were
sent away from London during the war because of
the air-raids.
(C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet
Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly
normal, thank you very much."
- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sourcerer's
Stone)
"I'd never given much thought to how I would
die-though I'd had reason enough in the last few
months-but even if I had,I would not have imagined
it like this."
(Stephenie Meyer, Twilight)
"Call me Ishmael."
(Herman Melville, Moby-Dick)
"It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times...."
(Charles Dickens, A
Tale of Two Cities)
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The Gospel of John has it's own memorable opening
lines, and like all great first lines, of course,
they hint that what is to follow is something
important, something worth reading: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God." There are some scholars
who believe this first line was a deliberate
attempt to attract the interest of a wider
audience, like all great lines should, because in
Greek it uses the word "logos."
We here at Black
Mountain Presbyterian Church know the word
"logos"--it's the name of a very popular
educational and fellowship program for children
and youth that is held most Wednesdays during the
school year. But you won't find that word in our
English Bibles. The Gospel of John was surely
originally written in Greek, but the Greek word
"logos" is translated into English as "Word" (with
a capital W). So if we mixed the two languages
together the first line of John's gospel would
read something like this: "In the beginning was
the logos, and the logos was with God, and the
logos was God."
Much of the world
at the time the Gospel of John was written knew
the word "logos" as well. To do business and move
around in the Roman world of that time you had to
know Greek, and if you knew Greek, you knew the
word "logos" well. If you had any schooling, you
would know what the "logos" was. Greek
philosophers used it often to indicate the origin
and fundamental order of the universe.
Now we come to the
first thing that jumps out at me in the passage
from John for today. For unlike Matthew and Luke,
the gospel of John has no story of Jesus as a
baby. In the first few verses of our passage for
today, John hints at an amazing story that he will
tell, a story that has elements of a Greek
tragedy, a tragedy that might be worth reading
more of: this source of all being that was in the
beginning, this source of all being that was with
God, this source of all being that is God, this
source of all being that created the
world.....this source of all being came into the
world and the world acted like it didn't even know
who he was. Unbelievable, says John! How could
that be? says John. For others, the story of Jesus
may begin with a settle down in your chair, lean
back, and imagine the stable, the animals, the
shepherds, the stars, and the baby, but for John
this story is a spine-tingler, a sitting up on the
edge of your seat story that we already know is
going to have some unpleasant and perplexing
things happening in it. For this, John's story
needs an adult to start it off.
--------
John, having already "hooked" his readers, does
not take long to make a new, surprising twist in
the plot. All those who knew anything of Greek
literature would be reminded of the many stories
of a god visiting the human world. Sometimes the
stories were positive, other times the stories had
negative consequences. In any case they were just
visits.
But just in case anyone was even thinking of
putting THIS book down, John moves quickly to the
most shocking part of his story. If there is one
thing I learned studying Greek, it's that verbs
are important. John uses two of them in quick
succession in verse 14 where the plot twist takes
place. This God, this logos, became flesh and
lived among us. This God, this source of all
being, did not just visit, this God became flesh
like us...became a human being. And did
what?.....lived among us. And here the English
NRSV just doesn't quite carrry the weight of the
meaning. For the Greek verb translated as "live"
has more of the idea of making a dwelling, setting
up a home. John even indicates the location of
that home....among us. The logos didn't just come
for a visit, the logos came to stay. And not to
stay on the top of some remote mountain....but to
make a dwelling among us. I really like this verse
in Eugene Peterson's The Message: "The Word became
flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood."
And John knows that this is a good thing!
Now, John says,
"we" have seen his glory, and that glory was full
of grace and truth. And before this prologue to
John's gospel is over, John will use the word
"grace" three more times to indicate to the reader
that this coming of God, this coming of God as
flesh and blood, this coming of God to live among
US is indeed good news. For grace is a good word.
It is not just what we say before meals. We can't
really describe it, but it is a reassuring word.
It is a wonderful gift that we don't deserve.
And, John assures the reader, those who recognize
this logos don't just experience this grace once,
they experience it again and again. The New
International Version translates verse 16 as "From
the fullness of his grace we have all received one
blessing after another."
So here is the second thing that jumps out at me
in this passage from John today: as we keep
reading, this spine-tingler about God coming into
the world as flesh and blood and moving in among
us and then being rejected, this story is a good
story for the reader...a story that, if taken to
heart, offers grace....offers "one blessing after
another."
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The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, an adjunct
professor of spirituality at Columbia Seminary, is
also a professor at Piedmont College in northeast
Georgia and tells the story of one of her
students, a young woman, who just made her smile
every time she walked into the classroom. I think
back to all the classrooms that I have been in and
I know the type--they wear what they want to wear
when they want to wear it....they don't really
care what other people think.....they say what
they want to say and usually it's worth
hearing....I might call them "unique". Genuine
might be a good description. Authentic might be
better.
But I better let Taylor tell the rest of the
story:
"Some time
during her last semester, I noticed a new tattoo
on her shoulder--"and" it said--all lower case,
courier font. Just "and".
"'And' what?" I asked her one day. "Is there more
that I can't see?"
"Nope," she said, "That's all there is. Just
'and'." Then she told me about this project she
was involved in--a living novel project, as I
recall--in which someone who was writing a work of
fiction had put out a call on the internet for
anyone willing to tattoo one word of that novel on
his or her body. My student had volunteered to
take part. "And" was her word.
When the author came up with enough volunteers,
she explained, and they all had their word
tattooed on their bodies, then they were all going
to get together some place where there was plenty
of room and be the living novel--I guess by
standing in the right order and [showing] their
assigned word....
Meanwhile, the author was apparently taking great
satisfaction in thinking of the words of his novel
all walking around in the world, doing whatever
their host bodies were doing--shopping for
groceries, going to school, painting
houses....--and no doubt explaining their word to
all the curious people who asked, so that the
novel forged relationships even between people who
would never read it--because some crazy person
like my student agreed to bear one word in her
flesh."
1
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As John has been trying to tell us all along,
there is and has been only one logos. That logos
was in the beginning , and was with God, and was
God. And in some way that we do not and never will
understand, that logos became flesh and blood in
this world of ours. It takes John seventeen verses
and 244 Greek words before he thinks he has hooked
us into reading enough that he will name that
logos as Jesus Christ. And Jesus, says John, had
one great purpose: to show us what God is like.
Stick with me, says John.....I have a lot of
stories to tell you about Him....the time he
turned water into wine, the riddle he told a man
named Nicodemus about being born again, the time
he healed a sick man's daughter, all these people
on a hillside that were hungry and were fed with a
few loaves and fish.... I could go on and on,
says John....keep reading.....I've got stories
worth listening to.
------------
The story of God's love for us and God's
requirement that we demonstrate that love to our
neighbors does not end with John's gospel, of
course. It continues to this day and it will not
be over until God says it is. But when I read this
passage from John, I hear a warm invitation from
an early community of Christian believers to join
their story and add to it.
I have a young friend up at Montreat right now who
is running the sound and lights for the College
Conference who has the word "love" tattooed on her
arm....in Hebrew yet!
There are a lot of grand and important words like
"love" in the story that we Christians should be
using to continue to make God known in this
world: peace, justice, patience, kindness,
humility....and I personally know that there are
some of you sitting here today that have made
those words a part of your story and a part of
God's story.
But God's story needs other words as well. God's
story needs verbs like "pray" and "feed" and
"visit". And now I can keep on showing off the
vocabulary that I learned in school a long time
ago but had to re-learn in seminary
classrooms....God's story needs gerunds like
"accepting" and "rejoicing" and "consoling." God's
story needs a lot of conjunctions like "and" and
"when"; definite articles like "the", indefinite
articles like "a" and "some". And punctuation
marks....how important are they? Without them,
you couldn't tell one part of the story from
another! Why, I can remember a time in my life
when I wanted to be part of God's story but all I
was able to contribute to the story at that time
was a question mark. I think that God is and
always will be ready to take whatever you have to
offer and make it a part of the story.
But enough....I'm sorry if this turned into a fun
quiz on great first lines, or a grammar lesson.
For great first lines are only great if the rest
of the story is great. And we do have a great
story!
Today, as we leave the season of Christmas in our
church year, I hear John wanting to remind us:
--Christmas is not just about a baby, but about an
adult.
--Christmas is not just about a God who visited
under mysterious circumstances, but is good news
about God who moved into the neighborhood among
us.
--Christmas is not just about an amazing event
that happened 2,000 years ago, but is about an
amazing story that..is..still..unfolding......
in US.
-------------------------Amen.
notes
1
This story comes a lecture by Taylor, given in a
class on July 2, 2008, at Columbia Seminary in
Decatur, Georgia
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