A Sermon preached on Christmas I 28 December at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7, John 1:1-18
Today we got to hear the third Christmas story. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we read Luke’s version, that’s the one with angels and shepherds and the birth in a stable in Bethlehem. Then there is Matthew’s version that begins (Matthew 2:1) with the words “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea” and introduces the wise men and their three gifts, although in nativity plays or our creche scene here we tend to merge these two stories into one. But this morning we heard the words of the prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What, that’s a Christmas story? Well, yes, it is. It too is about the incarnation, about how God becomes human, even if we don’t hear about the baby: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son” (1:14)
I know it does sound a lot more abstract than the other stories. One thing we are seeing here is the early church interacting with and integrating existing philosophical concepts, just as they were integrating new believers who had not grown up in the Jewish tradition. The Word, in Greek Logos, stood for the idea of a divine reason embedded in the universe, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. John combines this with the Jewish concept of Wisdom as an active, divine agent of creation, which later Jewish thought would identify with an embodiment of the Torah, the Law (the first 5 books of the Bible). But for John, this pre-existent divine Word and agent of creation, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being,” (1:3) is a person, Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, the personified source of life and light – illumination - of humankind. And one point John is making, is that the birth of Jesus is indeed a new beginning, but not the very beginning and that Jesus – as the Word – was there at both.
It’s really not as abstract as it sounds. At the core of the prologue is the same story that we hear in all Gospels and in the Epistles, and that we believe is consistent with the First Testament: God so loved the world and so loves the world and all of creation that he sent his only Son that we might live.
We sometimes use the term “People of the Book” as a common denominator for Judaism, Islam and Christianity. For all three religions a book, or a collection of books, is it the heart of our faith. Clearly, we and our Jewish siblings share a lot of books in what we call the Old Testament, and they refer to as the Tanakh (from the abbreviation for Torah, Prophets and Writings). And while the Quran is a book in its own right, it nevertheless contains many stories and characters, such as many of the prophets, and especially Jesus and Mary, from our scriptures.
But I’m always a little wary of the term. Christians do not worship a book; the book is not divine. We worship the Word. And yes, that word is described in the pages of the Bible, but by no means restricted to it. The Word became flesh and lived among us. As the living word, Jesus shared our lives, died for us, rose again for us, and is today still our constant companion. Jesus shows us who God is. Jesus makes God known to the world. God and Jesus’ life and mission are described and interpreted in the Bible but not limited by it.
Anglicanism, beginning with the Elizabethan Theologian Richard Hooker, developed what is called the "three-legged stool" as a metaphor for three interconnected sources of Christian authority: Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. We interpret the Bible with the help of the Church's historical teachings and teachers (Tradition) and our human intellect (Reason). This not only enables us to live out Christianity today, but also to adapt and change as the world and circumstances change (though if we are really honest some of the things we changed – like no longer restricting the priesthood to men, or expanding the doctrine of marriage, were never explicit in the Bible in the first place, but were based on the societal customs of a particular time). Our Methodist friends even add a fourth source of authority – experience – to make up the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral. John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, was assured of both justification - being right with God - and sanctification – our transformation - because he had experienced them in his own life. "What the scriptures promise, I enjoy," he once wrote in a letter.[1]
With Rose’s baptism today, as with every baptism, we celebrate another great beginning. Now, I’m not going to claim that Rose was pre-existent, though we believe that what God said to the prophet Jeremiah (1:5) „Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” applies both to her and us all. Nor were all things created through her, though again, as a being made in God’s image, she certainly has a role in caring for that creation and in the course of her life she will create many things.
Her new beginning is shared with all faithful Christians; it is the beginning of a new life in Christ. Where the prologue, and her story, and all of our stories as Christians converge is that she is now being called to be a “witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through her.” And while according to the prologue John the Baptist “was not the light, but he came to testify to the light” who is Christ, I believe that Rose and all of us can and should be a light to the world, reflecting the divine light of Christ, shining it into dark corners to expose and transform injustice, bringing hope to take away the darkness of so many people’s lives, all simply by showing them “the true light, which enlightens everyone,” the one that came into the world 2025 Christmases ago. Amen.
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