Word to the Wise
Saturday, January 1, 2011 - Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas
[1 John 2:18-21 and John 1:1-18]In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....
The "overture" to the Gospel of John is vastly different from those of Matthew and Luke! Here, the story of Jesus is not about location and ancestors and angelic messengers. The context in this majestic introduction is ETERNITY. "Beginning" in this context is not "beginning" for Jesus Christ, but "beginning" for us humans who are subject to time. The scripture today does not present us with a historical figure from a biography - Jesus Bar-Joseph (born ca. 4AD, died ca. 36AD)! In the "Word," we meet the God of all creation, the voice from the burning bush, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God on Mt. Sinai! This Word "became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth." In the person of Jesus Christ, God lived and lives now amongst us!
Yes, it is perhaps easier to re-enact the events of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke with their vivid characters and locations and actions. The Gospel of John, however, reminds us that the meaning of those events is far greater than meets the historical eye. God's "incarnation" comes from beyond human history, from the creator of all time and matter. All of this is an act of complete self-giving and love on the part of God. It is this love that lives amongst us now and enables us to experience the "grace and truth" that come in Jesus Christ. On the secular calendar, today is the last day of the year. But God is not subject to our calendars. The timeless has entered human time to remind us that we are ultimately destined to be timeless. In faith, grace and truth, we don't have to remember what time it is, what day of the year it is or even what year it is! AMEN