In addition, those of Jewish background would have heard the resonances of the nearest Hebrew equivalent, dabar. So perhaps we had better begin there. Recall how the Old Testament opens: 'In the beginning God created ...' and then, at verse 3 and repeatedly thereafter, 'God said' and there was light and so on. John's first verse is thus deliberately phrased to remind his readers of how the world began with divine words and how it now continues in this new Word: a word, however, that, so far from being set apart from the created order (as in the earlier case) now enters into that very reality. As the poet Christopher Smart puts it, 'God ... a native/Of the very world he made.'
The first creation began with a word, but it now deepens in that word made a person. To the modern mind this is of course a somewhat strange notion. How can a human being also be described as a word? To properly appreciate the idea, you really need to enter into a different and more ancient way of thinking. For us today words are essentially arbitrary. Any old term will do. But the Hebrews, and indeed ancient people more generally, did not think like that. Words were intimately connected with what they named. So, for example, when in Exodus 3 God reveals to Moses his name as Yahweh, this is seen as a profound moment of self-disclosure. God is 'I am that I am,' the one who can be guaranteed to be absolutely steadfast in his purposes. Or, again, Isaiah call his children names that reveal both hope and the terrible fate of the nation in which they will be participate: the manageable Shearjashub ('a remnant will return' 7.3) and the real tongue-twister, Maher-shalal-hash-baz ('the spoil speeds, the prey hastens' 8.3). Imagine saddling your child with a name like that! But my point is that words were seen as expressive of the reality with which they are identified, and so names were used in this way. Thus, just as those first words in Genesis brought the world God intended into being, so now with this word, a person is brought forth that represents the summit of creation: creator and creation as one.
Were that not profound enough, for Greek readers this particular line of thinking is carried several stages further in a way that both solidifies and deepens the Hebrew claim, for in Greek Logos means not just word but also idea, expression and definition. So, for example, when the philosopher Plato was searching for appropriate definitions for some of the key concepts in his works, he asks his interlocutors, didonai logon, literally, 'to give a logos,' a word or definition. So, for any moderately well educated Greek reading this passage, St John would be seen as saying that Christ is actually the definition of how God is to be understood, the perfect expression of divine identity. That is to say, if we want to find out what God is like, then it is to the gospel that we must turn, for Jesus not merely points the way to God, he is the very definition of what it is to be God. And, because this is so, he must also provide the principal clue to the world's intelligibility: 'without him was not any thing made that was made' (v.2). He is at once the source of all creation and its culmination. It is only through him that the ultimate meaning of the world is to be found.
That said, and you will have noted one major difference between modern conceptions of language and users of those two ancient languages of Greek and Hebrew. For the Greek and the Hebrew, words were not primarily about texts at all, they were about what the words point to: the clues they provide to understanding reality, and it is that underlying reality that really matters. The modern obsession with texts, including the biblical text, is thus not really John's concern. He offers us something much more exciting, a person who embodies the character of God himself. That is what is meant by the final verse 14: 'And the word became flesh and lived (or dwelt) among us.' Again, 'dwelt' is a rather poor translation (and 'lived' even worse), for the Greek actually says that Christ 'tabernacled' or 'made his temple' among us. In other words, just as God's presence was once seen as most easily accessible in the Temple at Jerusalem, so now it is to be found in the bodily reality of this particular human being.
But not only must we get texts out of our head if we are to understand the passage correctly, we must also get rid of the term that came into English from logos - the 'logical' and its Latin equivalent, the 'rational'. Certainly the claim is that Christ offers a definition of God, his perfect expression, and the clue to the intelligibility of the world, but that should not be taken to suggest that everything is thereby explained. Words for the ancients remained for the most part mysteries - which is why so much of Scripture and indeed of Jesus' teaching is in the form of metaphor, simile and image, suggestive rather than narrowly tied down to one particular meaning. It is precisely this kind of strategy that John will utilise in the rest of his gospel, to fill out the first chapter's major claim.
Now, don't worry, I am not about to embark at this point on expounding the rest of John's gospel! But I would like to end by taking two examples of John's technique to help clarify for you what I mean.
Take first the miracle John records in the following chapter, water into wine at Cana. Preachers could easily spend all their time stressing its extraordinary character, and how it is something only a god could do. But really to place all the emphasis there would be to miss the point. John in fact provides numerous clues that his principal contention lies elsewhere. To mention only one of those clues, the provision was for 180 gallons of wine, enough even to give the guests at the wedding of, say, a Scottish rugby player, massive hangovers! The point is thus that Christ has come to give us life in abundance, rich wine compared with the water of the old religion. But to experience that true life we need to be a bit like the drunkard, and see things askew. The wisdom of all those around us has to be overthrown, and, like those first disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2.13), we need to be ready to be mistaken for drunks, as our intoxication with a new value system takes hold.
Nowhere, John says, will this be seen more clearly than if we look to the crucifixion. Not once does John allow it to be spoken of as a defeat or tragedy. Instead for him it is the quintessential victory. Christ actually reigns from the cross, and his final words from the cross in this gospel are not a cry of dereliction but in fact a great shout of triumph. Sadly, in most English translations that point is easily missed. The usual version, 'It is finished' can all too easily sound like a last desperate gasp of relief, but that is not at all what the Greek means. The form of verb used is what is called a perfect tense, and so more accurate translation would be 'All has been accomplished,' in effect just such a great shout of triumph. Even in suffering and death God is now at one with humanity, there alongside us, and so nothing can defeat the divine purposes for us.
Christmas is of course a time when we especially focus on children. From that perspective it is easy to think of it also as a time for childlike naivety in thinking, a hopelessly dream that actually bears little contact with the real world. If that is your temptation this Christmas, let me end by inviting you to reflect where blinkered naivety really lies. Recall Wordsworth's famous lines:
Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy;
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.
......................
At length the Man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.
Do we not need to return to a childlike wonder, so that we too can hear the message of the angels - see the capacity for a world transformed through this great mystery of the Word made flesh, God an inhabitant of the very world he made?
Sermon by: David Brown