“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
Our reading today from the Gospel of John is perhaps the single most important reading we will encounter this year – only contested by the Easter readings.
“In the beginning, the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
This slightly cryptic beginning to the Apostle John’s Gospel is packed with meaning. In the simplest reading of the overall passage, the reading is telling us that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh who dwelt on earth and who talked with John and the other disciples. “The Word was God”. Very simple and to the point. Jesus Christ was God. Completely. Not a man taken over by God, not a man who listened to God, but God Himself, walking on the earth. And this is where the formula “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit” begins to form.
But there is much, much more to this. Today, we’re going to look at just how revolutionary an idea this was and what it means for us, living a couple thousand years after “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
In the Greek, the word that we translate as “Word” is “logos”, from which we get our modern word “logo”. A logo is more than a word, it has more to it than just a word. Logos has a long history in Greek – in particular, in its earliest, simplest meanings, logos means “Word”, but the logos has a meaning which is far more than simply “Word”. Some 400 years before John, the Greek Philosopher Plato used logos to indicate the underlying principle of the Universe, the first word which created and began the Universe. If you want to think of the Universe as a story, the logos is the beginning of everything, the first word in the story.
But to Plato, the logos does not have a personality. The logos is, if you will pardon the Star Wars analogy – The Force. It has no mind, it has no will, it has no personality, it just IS. In this way, the logos of Plato is almost exactly the same the grand unified theory of everything that some physicists such as Stephen Hawking are attempting to work out. To the ancient Greeks, the logos was a lifeless equation that begins everything. It is more than just a word, but has all this baggage connected with it – it is tied up with creation, with the foundations of the Universe, with stupendous creative force. Yet to the Greeks, the logos was forever lifeless.
A half century after Plato, Plato’s famous pupil Aristotle also had a pupil. Aristotle’s pupil was named Alexander – and he became known as Alexander the Great as he conquered first Greece, then the area that is modern Turkey, then all of Palestine, Eqypt, Iraq, Iran, and even reached into Pakistan. And in all the area conquered by Alexander, which included Jerusalem and Galilee, Greek customs, the Greek language, and Greek ideas began to be used. And so just as modern Frenchmen and Germans and Italians speak English and watch American movies because the American and British armies conquered Europe during the Second World War, the educated Jews of Jesus’ time learned the Greek language and Greek ideas such as the logos of Plato because Alexander had conquered the country 300 years earlier. Greek ideas were deeply embedded in the thought of educated people in Palestine at the time of Jesus. And John was an educated, thinking man – the Greek in which he wrote shows this. And he understood the Greek idea of the logos force.
The Apostle John was a special disciple. In his Gospel, he refers to himself as “The disciple that Jesus loved”. He mentions that Andrew and another disciple – probably John – were the first two of John the Baptist’s disciples to speak to Jesus. Many scholars think that the Apostle John was related to the high priest’s family in Jerusalem. At the last supper, as Jesus and his crew were leaning back against pillows on the floor, reclining and eating, which was the custom of the day since couches and chairs and tall tables were so expensive in a land with little wood, the disciple John tells us that he was resting his head on Jesus when Jesus declared that one of the disciples would betray Him. John was also one of just three disciples who saw Jesus transformed during the transfiguration on top of the mountain, speaking to Moses and Elijah. John was special. And he probably spent more time with Jesus than any of the other disciples. John knew who Jesus Christ was.
It is pretty clear when you read the Gospels carefully that John wrote his Gospel well after the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been written and circulated. John fills in the gaps. John’s style of writing is very polished, written after long thought, and fills in the meaning of the events that the other gospels often tell without much comment. It is as though John is saying, “You’ve heard the stories of Jesus – now, as His best friend on earth, let me tell you about Him.”
And so John begins his story of Jesus farther back than the others. Mark tells of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness. Luke begins with the birth stories of John the Baptist and Jesus. Matthew goes farther back and begins with Jesus’ ancestory – a whole listing of “Begats”. But John begins before time itself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. ”
“In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.”
John tells the Greek reader – and us – that this foundational word, this logos that creates all things is not an impersonal force, but is a person, and that person was with God and that person was God and that person became flesh and dwelt among us as Jesus Christ. For John knew the Greek concept of the logos and John knew Jesus Christ and John put them together.
From before time began, Christ was a person – a better word is persona - of God. There is God the Father who provides the Creative power – the great I Am – and there is God the Word. Christ is that part of God that actually guides creation. And John also tells us that life was in Jesus and that life is the light of mankind. Jesus was responsible not only for guiding creation, but for life itself – as would be seen one day when Jesus overcame death itself.
And so from the Beginning, in the Old Testament we find that Adam and Eve walk with God in the Garden – they walk with God and God walks with them, not a spirit floating around, but the same language is used as if a man were walking with them – and He was – the Christ upon earth. Abraham encounters three men, one of whom is called “The Lord” walking and eventually destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob wrestles with God one night, Joshua encounters the Angel of the Lord before the Jericho battle, Daniel’s friends are thrown in the furnace and a fourth man is seen, and several other times a divine Man appears – and does not claim to be an angel. The early Christian teachers identified these appearances as the pre-incarnate Christ – The Word of God walking upon the earth before Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem and all that.
In John’s Gospel, Verse 18 makes this clear: “ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” You see, it was the Word, the Christ, who was seen when the Old Testament talks about The Lord walking on earth.
And what does this all mean for us?
First of all, it means that we can never look at Jesus as just a man. Jesus is an integral part of God, an eternal Person, part of the Holy Trinity that we call God. When we call Jesus the Son of God, our modern American culture’s way of looking at things misses a lot, for we assume that this means that this is a way of saying that Jesus was a special, holy man. We may assume that God was indeed Jesus’ biological Father, for we live in a time when our stories and movies praise the rebellion and separation of father and son and their individuality, because that is what sells in movie theatres and on television and in books.
But to the ancients, who knew that a part of the father is included in the body of the son, more than just sterile DNA programming code, and to the ancients, who understood that a part of the father’s spirit is included in the son because of they knew that a family has a spiritual heritage that is passed from father to son, and they understood that a son’s will is largely the same will as his father’s will, for in those days you were raised at home, you did not spend 7 hours a day in the company of people outside of your household attending school, and you were not an individual, but you were a member of a family first and foremost, and so to the ancients, the declaration of Jesus as Son of God was of immense importance and in fact they were right and our culture is wrong, for you see, Jesus the Son of God is of the same substance of God the Father, and is the Person of the Holy Trinity who directs all Creating.
And this has consequences for us.
If this Person came to earth for a time, than this shows the tremendous importance of everything that Jesus said, for Jesus is the fundamental Word of God that underlies the Universe. When Jesus speaks, Creation occurs. And so it is with us.
When we hear Jesus’ words, a new creation happens within our souls. Our hearts are changed by Jesus – our wills change – we begin to act differently and speak differently, our nature changes from selfish, self-absorption to concern and love for people around us. When our neighbor is sick – we ache in hurt. When we hear about evil happening to people around the world, the spirit of Christ in us reacts and we feel anger that people are being hurt. When someone attacks a person and harms them, we feel compassion toward the one who has been hurt – the creation of Christ has been damaged, and because we have been changed by Christ’s Word, we feel hurt. The creating Word of God has joined us into a great structure, the church, the Body of Christ, and we now share the burdens of the other parts of the body, we now lend our strength to them and they lend their strength to us and this tremendous structure grows stronger and more vibrant and alive, like some huge creature appearing before our eyes, ready to do battle with evil, with despair, with destruction, with death itself as the Word creates new life and new Light before our eyes.
And that power of the Word of God, Jesus, to change things is not limited to Words directly spoken by Christ. When you speak Christ’s Words, you are speaking the Word of God and this has the power to change the world. Many, many times when someone tells me that a particular sermon has been moving or changed their life, I’ll ask them what part of the sermon and they quote something from the Word of God – not my words, but the Word’s words. That is where the power resides.
So often in our world today we encounter people who want to change the world for the better, but don’t want anything to do with Christianity – they just want to be good. And so we see young people doing things which raise money for this or that cause, for this or that purpose, and there is a big splash made for a few days or weeks or even a few months – and then when you go back five years later, nothing has changed. That’s because the power of people to do real good alone or in groups is relatively limited, because, even though 10 people may be working together, there are only 10 people working.
Jesus tells us that when two or three believers are gathered together, He will be there with us. And there is great power in this, power that our churches have largely forgotten because we often want to misuse power for our purposes instead of Jesus’ purposes. When the Word of God is with us, we have the power of creation ready to work. The power is there to create new realities – if our will is aligned with Jesus’ will, if we are working within His will, if we are implicitly trusting in His power – not our power. There is the power of creation itself ready to accomplish great things.
And what is that will? We find it written in Holy Scripture – in various places in the New Testament. We will need to search out that will if we want to use that power to change our world for the better through prayer and the speaking of the Word of God.
And thus we come to another great mystery.
When Christians talk about the Word of God, we are ambiguous. Do we mean Jesus, the Word of God? Or do we mean Holy Scripture, the Word of God. The answer is: Yes.
If you asked John, he’d probably tell you that the Logos that made all things is found both in a written form – Holy Scripture – and in a walking, talking, breathing Man named Jesus Christ. And both change the world every day, even every hour.
And that is why we gave you a read-through-the Bible checklist last week – more are available. For reading the Bible allows you to be changed through the Word of God – and to understand the will of God better – and to know the Word of God better so that you can repeat it and change the world around you.
This year, for a while, we will be focusing upon the Word of God, connecting both with the written Word – and the living Word.
Jerimiah wrote in the 31st chapter of his book:
“Make your praises heard, and say,
‘Lord, save your people,”
And what does God say will be done in return?
8 See, I will bring them from the land of the north
and gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the lame,
expectant mothers and women in labor;
a great throng will return.
9 They will come with weeping;
they will pray as I bring them back.
I will lead them beside streams of water
on a level path where they will not stumble,
10 “Hear the word of the Lord, you nations;
proclaim it in distant coastlands:"
And if we proclaim the word to people?
"They will be like a well-watered garden,
and they will sorrow no more.
13 Then young women will dance and be glad,
young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness;
I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow."
Praise the Lord, hear the Word, speak the Word. The Lord has promised great things if we will do these things.
Praise the Lord, hear the Word, speak the Word. And be blessed.
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