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Jesus, the Incarnate
Word:
Grace upon Grace
John 1.1-18
[This sermon was preached January 2, 2005 at St. Paul United
Methodist Church in Muskogee, OK, the Reverend Kevin Tully pastor. Posted
here 1/3/05]
The passage I have just read from the Gospel of John is
typically referred to as the “Prologue” to the whole gospel.
In it we have one of the most profound and influential statements of the
significance of Jesus of Nazareth that exists anywhere in the literature
of the early church. It is fair to say that what came to be known as the
‘orthodox’ tradition of the church was deeply dependent on
the language and theology of the Gospel of John.
It is, I hope, a special blessing for us to have this text as the lectionary
reading for this Second Sunday of Christmas, at the beginning of this
new year of 2005. I propose to give the text a close reading and interpretation
in the hope we all might find ourselves better grounded in the understanding
of Jesus as the Incarnate Word of God and enlivened in our faithful living
by that understanding.
Let us start by looking closely at the first five verses:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was Life,
and the Life was the Light of all people.
The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
In its originating context—a largely Hellenistic world in Palestine
under Roman rule and domination—anyone who might be entrusted to
read the scroll upon which this whole gospel was written would know that
the gospel is about Jesus the Jewish prophet from Nazareth. And in knowing
that, they would also know that he preached the coming Kingdom of God,
was crucified on a cross of shame by the principalities and powers of
his first century world in Palestine, and that his followers had claimed
that—though he died a terrible and brutal death—he was raised
from the dead by the One he called Father, the God of Israel.
We can now understand that anyone reading this gospel in that early context
would be astonished at the claims now being made about the significance
and reality of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. If anything
is clear in this gospel, Jesus of Nazareth is being placed in
a cosmic drama with significance for every being that has existed, does
now exist, and might exist in that cosmos. But we will not get
very far in our understanding if we do not appreciate some dimensions
of the Palestinian world in Jesus’ time.
Remembering now that the New Testament was written in Greek by Jewish
followers of Jesus, let us look at two Greek words that are crucial to
this text: theos and logos.
Our translators have rendered them “God” and “Word.”
We should not suppose however that, in their Palestinian setting in a
Roman subjugated world with many religions, these terms had agreed on—or
common—meanings and references. Quite simply, theos refers
to whatever is regarded as in some sense divine. As such the word theos
does not tell us anything further about who or what is divine. Hence,
the divine could be the many gods of the Roman mythological pantheon,
and a succession of Roman Caesars claimed to be divine, while the various
philosophers had teachings as to what should be regarded as divine. Hence,
there was a continuing linguistic battle going on as to what or who is
divine.
The sole exception is that among Jews—and Jesus and this gospel
writer were Jews—theos referred
first and only to the God of Israel, who created all things,
elected and covenanted with Israel, spoke to Israel in giving her commandments
and in giving her guidance through prophets who declared God’s Word
to the people of Israel.
That other word, logos, had a rich linguistic context as well.
We certainly must believe that the writer of this gospel was reaching
into the deep resonances of other uses of this word in the Hellenistic
world. Logos is translated “Word”
here largely because of its Jewish background: the God of Israel
is a God who speaks words, who creates a world by speaking and who sends
prophets to speak God’s truth and commandments.
But even a Jew in this Hellenistic world would know that the word
logos was related to logic, to right order and meaning among
words and to right order within the world, to the basic rationality that
it is at the heart of how things go in the world. To have fathomed
the logos—the intelligent and understandable order—of
the world was to have grasped what it means to live as a human being in
this world. To grasp the word or logos is to have grasped something
meaningful and intelligible.
A skilled carpenter—who knows how to identify types of wood, who
knows how to read the grains of the wood and knows how to use tools to
fashion wood into attractive and useful forms—is a person who has
understood the logos of wood and carpentry.
In our time we do not seem to value words very highly, being aware that
people often use them superficially and chaotically. But I have argued
elsewhere that the length and breath of the language we have available
to us and in which we are skilled in speaking, in hearing, and in writing
is precisely the most basic way in which we have a world and live in it.
The language a person possesses is the foundation of how she has
a world, and the limits of her language is the limit of her understanding.
Put another way, I think one of the most basic challenges to any one of
us is how to make sense out of our lives and the world in which we live.
Sense-making is a fundamental human activity and it is
profoundly dependent on the words—on the language—we know
how to use and understand.
If we call ourselves ‘people of the book,’
then surely we all know that words do matter and that the words of this
gospel matter; these are the words that we need to be able to speak and
to understand and by which our lives should be formed.
Further, the very words “In the beginning…,” which come
first in this Prologue, reminds us of the words in Genesis chapter one:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
God speaks the cosmos into being. And this God who creates
by speaking is the God whose Word forms and orders and enlightens all
things and is the Word that comes into the world in Jesus Christ.
So, let us note firmly that this profound language is referring to that
reality that is Jesus of Nazareth and is saying something
like this: if you want to understand how things are and who is
finally in charge of all life and light and truth, then come to grips
with the reality witnessed in the narrative of the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus of Nazareth.
As the prologue narrative goes on, the One who is the Word and light of
the world came to his own Jewish people who by and large “did not
accept him.”[v.11] We know, of course, that all of Jesus’
earliest followers were themselves Jews, and they did “receive him,”
and “believed in his name,” and to them he “gave power
to become children of God.”[v.12]
These followers, however, became children of God born “not
of blood, or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man,” but
born of the grace of God.[v.13] This means that they are so decisively
born of the Word of God that it is sheer grace that they come to believe
and to become children of God. They are not children of God by their own
arduous exercise of their presumably free wills: they are children
by the grace of God.
Then, the narrative goes on: whether the Word was well received by all,
whether the Word that enlightens every person that comes into the world
is acknowledged or not, and whether the persons of the world cry ‘hallelujah’
or not, “the Word became flesh and lived among us.”[v.14]
Here the narrative joyfully exclaims: “we have seen his
glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”[v.14]
The stark boldness of this claim should not escape us—I mean escape
us present-day Christians. Some of us say loosely that Jesus is God but
we say it without passion and life-shaping power. Some of us prefer to
say Jesus is merely a man, perhaps a good and interesting man, but nevertheless
finally only a man. It should not escape us that this gospel writer is
claiming that the very Word that is God and is the Word of truth
and light that is at the heart of the universe, has become a human being—a
Jewish human being, born of a Jewish mother in the turbulent times of
first century Palestine, and named Jesus, which any good Jew would know
means “God saves.”
The gospel writer is careful not to say that the Word that is with God
and is God became flesh in such a way that the Word ceased to be God and
became instead a human being. Rather, let us read this carefully: it
means that the Divine Word itself became a human being without ceasing
to be the sovereign reality of the Divine Word itself. It also
means that in Jesus, the Incarnate Word, the reality of God becomes vulnerable
to the human world. Yet it is a vulnerability—even on the cross—for
the sake of the redemption of the world.
This is not entirely easy of understanding, and the church has grappled
through the centuries in trying to unfold the thick richness and boldness
and beauty of this claim about the Word becoming the human being Jesus
of Nazareth.
The gospel writer goes on to say: “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.”[v.18] A palpable bodiliness of
God was not what a Jew would expect of God. Yet to see this bodily
Jesus with the eyes of faith is to see that love, grace, forgiveness,
reconciliation, and peace that are the heart of God, even at the heart
of the universe.
However much people repeatedly choose to live in the darkness of hate
and lies, the darkness of violence cloaked as justice—choose to
live, in other words, as though the darkness is itself the power and truth
that engulfs and rules over every human that comes into the world, Jesus
nevertheless reveals the true heart of God and the universe.
Let us pause now and think about what is being said in this Prologue.
We have seen that it starts out using words many of us would regard as
somewhat abstract and even obscure: words like “Word” or “logos,”
and “that all things came into being through” this Word or
logos. I have already called our attention to the fact that the
God of Genesis is a God who speaks the world into existence, is a God
who speaks through the covenantal law and speaks through the prophets.
Surely our awareness of these uses of the phrase ‘God speaks and
it is so’ gets us more anchored.
This gospel writer is telling us here in the Prologue—will tell
us throughout the following gospel text—that it is only
in Jesus that we are to understand how we ourselves are to grasp and speak
such words as “God,” “logos,” “truth,”
“light,” and “life.” It should now be
apparent to us that this Jesus of Nazareth—the one who proclaimed
a Kingdom of peace and reconciliation, who was crucified by the powers
in charge of the political order of the day, and who was raised from the
dead in vindication of his life—this Jesus speaks and enacts
that power and truth that is at the heart of the universe and that is
the gracious truth about every human being that has come into being or
will come into being.
Jesus as the Word made flesh has enacted how things really are about a
world that has repeatedly refused to dwell in the light of truth and peace.
Jesus enacts that “grace upon grace” that is the rational,
intelligent, and sense-making Light at the heart of all things.
Notice further that—because Jesus was himself crucified by those
who thought themselves in control of the known world—it is also
the case that Jesus is the suffering of God on the cross of human
arrogance, pride, and violence. Jesus—the logos
of all things—has suffered death on a cross that symbolizes the
human claim that we humans are in charge of the world.
In all of the world’s dark messiness, in all of its violence, we
humans—just like the Romans—repeatedly claim that we are just
doing what is realistically necessary to protect ourselves from the rage
of others who envy our power. We live as though the real logos
of the world is the power to do as we please and to impose our will on
others as we please. In fear we rush to embrace this darkness
of power and conflict.
God suffers this arrogance of ours and yet offers us grace and
reconciliation—offers the most basic truth of the universe—and
those who receive this Jesus gladly will know the very heart of
God.
Here we must emphatically say that, for the church and Christians, the
word “God” can never be used to refer to a reality that vaguely
transcends the world and is hidden behind the scenes. The word “God”
for Christians can never again be used to refer to One who is above the
fray of human life and aloof from human affairs. No, now our use
of the word “God” is tethered to and ruled by Jesus Christ,
the Word made flesh. The words Jesus spoke and preached and enacted, the
pattern of life he lived and died, the suffering he endured on behalf
of the world, the grace he expressed—these are the clues to who
God is and what is the final logos of the whole creation.
We live in a turbulent time as well. We live in a time when some church
leaders teach that the logos of the world is quite different
from what John has declared to us. As these teachers forecast the imminent
end of the world, they see a different Jesus coming back to do something
vengeful and destructive to those who will be “left behind”
by Jesus. They see a Jesus who is not the grace upon grace, the truth
and light, that is at the heart of world God has created. They see a dark
angel of violence bent on revenge.
But I ask you, could anyone who has seen Jesus with the eyes of faith
ever construe Jesus as the One who is out to destroy and incinerate this
world God has created? Could anyone construe this Jesus as the great provocateur
of hate for enemies near and far? Could anyone construe God, therefore,
as the One who will finally punish and banish to hell all those who might
still live in darkness unaware of God’s love and grace in Jesus
Christ? Is it not then the case that folk who continue to construe God
in ways that repudiate Jesus as the very gracious truth about human life
and God—these folk speak lies and covet the darkness, even if they
know it not.
Yet is it not also true that those who live in the darkness of untruth
have not overcome or extinguished the truth and light of Jesus? He still
shines brightly and is that ultimate Word of Grace that is already in
charge of the destiny of the world and of all of us humans that live in
the world. God’s truth, God’s true word from the beginning
of all things, is undefeatable and irresistible grace.
We come to be through acts of grace, and even when we and the world fall
into darkness, God’s grace is the true and final Word that
will be spoken even unto the end of the ages.
There is much herein for us to ponder. May it be that as we enter this
new year, we Christians might become knowledgeable—even intelligent—about
that Word that is at the heart of the world God has created and is intent
on redeeming. Grace upon grace! Can we hear it,
can we feel it, can we live it?
All this dear friends in Christ I have dared to preach in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all. Amen.
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