Christmas brings an end to Advent and to some of the frantic craziness. The packages are wrapped, the cards mailed, the grocery shopping done. We can relax a little, even though we may have driving to do today or tomorrow. In any case, we have come here to worship, so for this time, at least, we can put away the baggage of the Christmas rush.

            The Gospel of John begins when everything was new, before the creation itself had any baggage. John begins when the only thing that existed was the Word. We cannot do full justice to the complexity of John’s thought even just in his opening sentence. We could spend all our sermon time for this upcoming year trying to bring out all the nuances of this opening phrase from John: “In the beginning was the Word.” John drew here on Greek philosophy, in which the Word (Logos in the original Greek) was the ordering principle of the universe. He drew from the book of Proverbs as well, where personified Wisdom said, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”¹ We can say that, in John’s mind, at the very beginning of everything, God’s creation had order, purity, goodness and wisdom.

            This Word — this manifestation of goodness and order — was not static and unchanging. This Word was creative and dynamic. This Word brought into being the world and all that exists. As abstract as this language sounds, it helps us to hear that our world has meaning and purpose. God created the world; it didn’t just happen.

Darkness

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