Christmas III

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ Today’s Gospel is probably my favorite, and may be the most important lesson in the Gospels outside the resurrection stories. In these few verses of the Prologue to the Gospel of John, we have the very essence of the meaning of today’s celebration. 

While much of this day seems to be more like a baby shower, there’s a lot more to it. It’s in the first few words: In the beginning. Not the birth, for which John gives no details, but THE beginning. The earth was without form and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. 

But God was, to put it in human terms, in body, mind, and spirit. We hear that in Genesis--and a spirit from God hovered over the face of the waters. Then things start getting interesting. It all begins with And God said. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. God speaks, and things come into being. God speaks, and there is light, with all forms of life soon to follow. 

John tells us these things—light and life—are intimately related. Except he reverses the order so they become inseparable. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. Not just some, not a special group. All people. 

Scientists tell us of neutrinos. Slivers of light found everywhere in the universe, present in and around all that is. There is never complete and total darkness, but light is present everywhere. When it gathers into one place, it not only brightens the space around it, but it enables that which darkness cannot overcome. It enables sight, allows vision. Not just seeing, but able to know, in part, as God sees and knows in whole. 

And so here we are today. No singing angels, no fearful shepherds, no manger or lowing cattle. The Word became flesh and lived among us. That Word, John tells us, is light and life, enabling those who receive him, who believe in his name, to become children of God. 
The meaning of this day, and of every day since the birth of Jesus, is found in the continuing life of the children of God who keep revealing God’s glory in the life-giving, light-bearing new beginnings of Almighty God. 

We come together, each of us like a walking, talking, breathing neutrino, gathered so that in some mysterious way the light of Love itself can break into the darkness of our own time to say to a misshapen, purposeless world, “Let there be light,” by being that which we declare so that life can flourish in all the abundance Jesus promises later in the Gospel. 

​You see, the work of creation continues; the Spirit keeps hovering over the deep, shrouded places of our time. The Word desires to become flesh time and again, known in its fulness of grace and truth. Children of God, we have much work to do.