Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard the Christmas story, drawing readings from the Gospel of Luke. That gospel writer tells us about the baby being born in a stable and wrapped in swaddling clothes. He tells of the angels and the shepherds. If we want to add the angel’s appearance to Joseph, we can read Matthew.

            But that leaves two other gospels. One of those, Mark, has no Christmas information at all. The remaining gospel, John, has no Christmas story either, but John’s got this magnificent opening chapter in which he tells something else about Jesus’ birth into the world -- he tells us why it is significant.

            One difference between Luke and Matthew on the one hand, and John on the other, is that while Luke and Matthew tell the story of Christmas, John theologizes about the event. Theology isn’t always the easiest of reading, and in the hands of some writers, it can be wooden and dense. But not with John. He manages to make it both meaningful and poetic.

            His statement of Christmas is this: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us ....”

The Word

            John’s gospel was the last of the four to be written, perhaps as late as A.D. 100. By that time, Christianity had expanded far beyond the Jewish community into the Greek-speaking world as well. In fact, it’s been estimated that even by A.D. 60, there were 100,000 non-Jewish Christians for every Jewish Christian. John therefore sought to use terminology that would be understood by both Jews and Gentiles.

            The term “Word,” in Greek thought meant the controlling and organizing force in the world, the higher mind that held everything together. In Jewish thought, “Word” was shorthand for the creative power of God. In the creation story in Genesis 1, everything that came into being came not because God acted, but because he spoke. Each of the six days of creation begins with the phrase, “And God said ....” So, if we put these two understandings, the Greek and the Jewish, together, the term “

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