We don’t use John for our Christmas pageants. We love dressing the children up as shepherds, with Joseph sporting a fake beard and as Mary holding a doll. We mix the Gospel stories up and bring in some wise men to rub shoulders with the shepherds. Even though we all enjoy the sight of children acting out the story, we should take care with making the birth of Jesus too cute. Having to trudge to Bethlehem at eight-and-a-half months pregnant was not cute. Herod’s jealousy was not cute. Nevertheless, we can make a Christmas pageant out of Luke and Matthew. We skip John for those pageants.

            Certainly, we can understand why we don’t use this passage for pageants. John begins with the creation itself, not shepherds on the graveyard shift. The Word existed before anything. God used the Word in the process of creation. By using the term “Word,” John reaches in two different directions. He reaches back to the Old Testament to make that connection. In Genesis, God created the world by speaking: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’: and there was light.”¹ In Proverbs, God uses Wisdom as a tool of creation: “When he established the heavens, I [Wisdom] was there.”²  In biblical thought, Word and Wisdom were means of creation. John reaches in another direction with the use of the term “Word.” The Greek term Logos, which lies behind our term “Word,” was considered the unifying force of the creation in some forms of Greek philosophy.³ John accomplishes much with one term, a term that carries a lot of freight.

            How would we dress a child up as a creative force? How would we dress a child up as a philosophical buzzword? Does John begin to leave us behind with his language?

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