Christmas Day: The Beginning of Everything

A reading from the Gospel of St John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. 

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The Christmas cards on the mantlepiece and the carols we sing remind us again and again that we are celebrating a birth. Christmas is a baby in manger. Yet, when we turn to John’s gospel it is not a baby we meet. Instead, there is a great theological drum roll. Christmas, says, St John, is all about beginnings. Today is the beginning of everything. 

In the beginning was the Word. John begins with God. The book of Genesis starts – ‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth’. Like Genesis, John knows that the story must start with God. The way that John tells us this is by saying ‘In the beginning was the Word’. John wrote in Greek and what he actually says is, In the beginning was the logos. And logos is indeed Greek for ‘word’, but, a logos is not just any word, like ‘tinsel’ or ‘turkey’, a ‘logos’ is an explanation. A logos is like a definition in a dictionary. In mathematics, a logos would be a proof. John’s gospel declares, ‘In the beginning there was an explanation’. John’s gospel starts with things finally making sense. There is indeed a story with a beginning and an end, and an author. 

Scripture insists that God is the author and origin of things, our destination and our explanation. John reminds us that, at Christmas we encounter that explanation and it looks like one of us. The explanation arrives as the thing we know best, as a human life. That is the great and mighty wonder, that we can know God and know what it is to be truly human by following Christ, living as he lived. In all the confusions we face there is still and always an explanation - a story to be told. That story is Christ the Word made flesh, and we have seen his glory.