The Pattern (Christmas 1 ABC)

In principio erat verbum, Book of Kells, 8th century

The Pattern  
John 1:1-18
Homily delivered First Sunday of Christmas (All Years RCL TEC)
29th December 2019: 8:00am Said and 10:00am Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)
Readings: (Isa 61:10-62:3; Ps 147, Gal 3:23-25; 4:4-7; John 1:1-18)

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The day after Christmas, I got a message from a friend, an Episcopal priest in Tuxedo Park, New York, one of my sibling priests in the Society of Catholic Priests, that included  a picture of a young girl standing reverently before his Church’s Christmas Crèche with her hands in a pious “little church” praying position.  He wrote:  “There are so many frustrations in ministry, but when I saw this little girl praying before the crèche, my heart grew three sizes. Keep teaching the faith. They are listening.” 

Worship Jesus in the manger.  That is what we Christians do at Christmas.

Our carols and hymns say it all:  “O Come, Let us adore Him.” “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity,” “Of the Father’s Love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,” and “God from God, Light from Light, Lo he abhors not the Virgin’s womb. Very God, begotten, not created. O Come let us adore him.”

Today’s Gospel does not tell the story of Jesus’ earthly origins.   John tells us of something quite a bit deeper and much, much more hidden.  He begins also by quoting a hymn, this one to Christ as

the Logos, the eternal word of God.  It begins, “In the beginning was the Word.”

This translation misses the richness of the Greek en arche en ho logos. Another way of translating might be, “At the start, at the root of all, the logos existed.”  The usual way it is translated in Chinese captures the idea much better than any I have seen in English: 太 初 有 道 “At the great beginning of all things, there was the Tao.”

The Greek word logos is where we get our words logo, logic, and analogue and dialogue. It means much more than just “word.”   Its basic meaning is whatever it is that creates or conveys meaning or sense, whether in our minds or on our lips.   Something is logical, or has logos, because it coheres and is patterned.  Geo-logy is the patterns we see in the physical world, Gaia.  Theology is a patterned and coherent way of talking about God, Theos.   Logos is a deep pattern, a coherence, that lies behind and beneath disparate and apparently random facts. 

This is how I translate the verses that come from this early Christian hymn:

At the root and heart of all things,

There was a meaningful pattern.
The pattern was God’s; God was the pattern.
At the moment of creation, this pattern was already with God.

Everything came into existence from it.
Nothing exists that didn’t come from it.
The pattern brought forth life and

    the light of meaning for humankind.
This light shines in darkness, and darkness cannot put it out. … The genuine light, the source and meaning of everyone's life,

was coming into the universe,

and though the universe came into being by the light,

the universe did not recognize it for what it was.  

It came into its own realm,

but his own kin did not take him in.

But he empowers all who do receive him,

those who trust in all that he is,

to become children of God:  

children not born from masculine will,

    reproductive instinct, or the blood of birth,

but rather, begotten from God alone.  

The pattern and meaning of everything

Took on human flesh

and lived with us a short time.

We experienced how wonderful he is:

as wonderful as a father’s only child,

full of joyful promise, where things are as they should be.

John 1:1 in the Cuthbert Gospel, from c. 698.

The hymn says that the Word/Meaning/Pattern of God took on flesh. The choice of the word “flesh” is deliberate. In Semitic culture, basar “flesh” was the physical, earthy part of a person that you could see, touch, and smell. It was a key part of you, and not wholly separable from your mind or spirit. The symbol for a man to be part of God’s covenant with Abraham was that he be circumcised in his flesh. For Greeks, sarx “flesh” was the changeable, impermanent part of a human being. For some Greek philosophers, it was the part that resisted reason and had a mind of its own, the part that I think we would identify by talking about addictive, obsessive, or compulsive behaviors. It was in this sense that Saint Paul had occasionally used the word—sarx for him sometimes is shorthand for that part of a human being that resists God’s intentions for us.

When the prologue of John says the logos became sarx, it means that Reason, Pattern, Meaning itself, took on all it means to be a human being: all the limitations, all the doubts and fears, the ignorance, all the handicaps.

The hymn adds “he dwelt among us.” The word used for “dwelt” is eskenasen: he “set up his tent” among us. The image is of a temporary habitation, like the Tent of the Meeting or the Tabernacle of the ancient Israelites, where God Himself was made manifest to Moses. 

 Copyright ©  Word Made Flesh, Donald Jackson, Copyright 2002, The Saint John’s Bible, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota USA.

The hymn adds, “and we saw his glory, as of a father’s only Son, full of Grace and Truth.”

Grace—joyful and tender love, without condition.  Truth—genuineness, authenticity, things being as they ought to be. It is here that the conflict between divine and human, the perfect and imperfect, the boundless and the bounded is resolved: Grace and Truth. For despite all our limitations, we human beings can on occasion transcend ourselves and open ourselves to Grace and Truth. On even fewer occasions, we can even become the channels or instruments by which Grace and Truth can be given to others.

“We saw the glory of God made flesh, we saw the beauty of the pattern behind the worlds placed within this apparently meaningless world—and we recognized that glory as Grace and Truth.”

It is in Jesus’ gracious love and authenticity that the Gospel of John says we can recognize the pattern of the universe, look to it, and see Jesus.   But he adds “the only child of the father.” Jesus is monogenes—one-of-a-kind.   Despite all he shares with us, he is different in this one way.  Despite the limitations his humanity imposed, Jesus as Eternal Pattern of Meaning is Transcendence Itself.

The hymn to the Logos ends by saying, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”

The Ultimate Meaning of the universe found a place in human flesh, in the person of this helpless baby.

This only Son of God offers us Grace and Truth.  He is the midwife who helps us be born as Children of God, to share in his pattern and meaning.  Grace and truth:  Joy, love and thankfulness on our part. 

As helpless, pathetic fellow human beings, let us accept what he offers, and in Love offer the same Grace and Truth to those around us.

In the name of God, Amen.