Christmas I
A blessed Feast of St. Stephen to you all, by the way. Boxing Day for our Canadian and British friends. Sing 'Good King Wenceslas' to yourself (or sing along here), especially the closing lines: Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.
And, you don't have to be an Anglophile to appreciate Queen Elizabeth II's annual Christmas message - a simple and profound statement of hope and light.
Or to respond to Pope Francis' remarkable 'Urbi et Orbi' address and blessing, calling us all to care for one another as sisters and brothers.
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Our Gospel reading is the prologue to John's Gospel. A friend who grew up in the Waldorf education movement told me that they memorized the Koine Greek of the original (fascinating to imagine the setting for that...): in the beginning was the Word...
John, of course, is echoing the 'beginning' language of the Genesis tradition: 'in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep...' He is signaling that in his writing he is constructing a parallel creation story: a new creation. A new heaven and a new earth -- renewed -- which is an image that returns forcefully in his 'Revelation'. He's going for the Big Project. Go big, or go home, as they say...
John's prologue continues... what has come into being through this Word was Life, and this life is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Does not overcome it. Or, in the King James Version: the darkness 'comprehendeth it not.' "And this Word became flesh, and lived among us... and this Word reveals the divine energy that created and creates all things -- it reveals this 'glory' to us, and in us, and for us and for the life of the whole cosmos.
That's an origin story I can get behind. I love astrophysics, and this more than overlaps in an interesting Venn diagram with all sorts of disciplines and their framing questions about who we are in this vast cosmos and what we are for.
Understandably, we can equate 'Christmas' with the familiar characters in Luke's telling -- those rustic shepherds and Gloria-singing-heavenly-angels, and with a baby. 'Christmas' can focus on this story, and its contemporarily-drawn-out themes of renewed innocence (or with dreams and revelation in Matthew's telling), the hope of a new life amid 'the bleak midwinter.'
And, amen to that. I was feeling that bodily need for light, warmth, and protection on Christmas Eve. About 60 people gathered safely in the church courtyard -- being outdoors and mask-wearing allowed us to sing together, which was itself an incredibly moving, embodied communal act that had been sorely lacking these many months of pandemic-tide. We are past the winter solstice now, and - come what may, through no doing of our own - there will be more light in our days, here in the northern hemisphere of our watery home in the cosmos. We lit lights in a vigil, and told and sang of another story of another nighttime gathering, and the birth of a baby called 'prince of peace.'
Just as Mark's Gospel ignores all this and jumps right in with Adult Jesus Doing Things In The World, John's Gospel says: wait. Let's jump way, way, way back in time. In fact, let's step back prior to 'time' and outside of 'time' and name what God is doing here: God is recreating all things, continually, through this true and lively word (to use old Book of Common Prayer language). Always. And, to reveal this ultimate reality to us, this Word became flesh and lived among us.
And the darkness comprehendeth it not. Several meanings of this old word: it did not understand the light that this Word brings into the cosmos; it does not 'vanquish' it. And, I'll add, neither does it do the same task. For, of course, in the Genesis telling, the darkness is not pejorative: it is the deeply generative space where divine agency works and creates, and brings (all) things into being over whatever span of "time" divine agency and presence work.
For, God is making all things new. You. Me. The cosmos. Our politics and economics. Always.
As the Apostle Paul wrote to the scrappy little community in the city of Philippi: "I am confident of this, that the One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion..."
'John writes: What has come into being with him was life, and the life was the light of all people."
Merry Christmas.