Behold the Glory of the Word Who Became Flesh—Lectionary Reflection for Christmas 2 (A, B, C) [John 1:(1-9) 10-18]

John 1: (1-9) 10-18 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹ The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

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                Just a note before we begin. The Second Sunday after Christmas doesn’t come every year. It all depends on the liturgical calendar. Thus, the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary offer us one set of texts for this particular Sunday, whether Years A, B, or C. What better text to ponder on such a Sunday than the Prologue to John’s Gospel, and more specifically, verses 10-18? This prologue to John’s Gospel is rich theologically offering us a sense of how John understood Jesus’ identity. More than any of the four Gospels, John provides the seeds of later Christological developments. It speaks of Christ using words such as Word (Logos), Light, and Truth. If we take the opening verse of the Gospel, along with verse 14, as our guide to what follows then we see that for John, Christ is truly the Word (Logos), who is God, come in the flesh. For millions of Christians down through the centuries, Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity.   

             The reading for the day begins in verse 10, but we might want to go back to verse 6 to get a sense of what John is up to. It is here that we learn of John, the one who came to bear witness to the “true light which enlightens everyone” (vs. 9). The light is the Word who is God. This light came into the world, but the world, which came into being through him, did not know or recognize him or accept him. The question for us this Second Sunday after Christmas is whether we recognize this light shining into the world. Are we ready to receive this Word, who is God, or not? According to John, the world (Kosmos) chose not to receive this light (vs. 11). That is, they (we) chose to remain in darkness. Nevertheless, those who did believe (receive the light/Word) received the power to become children of God. These are born not of blood or will of the flesh but are born of God (vs. 12-13). We get a sense here of what will be revealed later in chapter 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he needs to be born from above. This word found in verses 12-13 serves, according to Karl Barth, as the climax of the first part of the prologue. Thus, Barth writes:

We are not merely to say of the human world that the darkness did not comprehend the light, that the world did not know the Logos, that his own did not receive him. There has also to be said the further and positive thing which comes into the world like a miracle, the inconceivable reality which finally and definitively confounds it, namely, that he gives to some the possibility of becoming the children of God. There were and are those who indeed live in the world like all the rest but who receive him, who believe in his name, and who in so doing show that in principle the darkness, the hostility of the cosmos, is opposed and defeated. They do not do this by their own strength or deed, but because their existence when they do so has its origin totally and directly in God himself and nothing else. [Barth, Witness to the Word: A Commentary on John 1 (Wipf & Stock, Kindle, pp. 86-87)].

Our ability to perceive the light may be hindered, but God is able, according to John, to break through the darkness so that at least some will perceive the light and embrace it.

                With this first part of the prologue complete, John moves on to reveal how this light, which is the Word of God, can break through the darkness so that at least some in the world might perceive the revelation of God. That message is boldly proclaimed in John 1:14, a verse that I memorized long ago in college (actually we memorized the entire prologue), but verse 14 especially has stuck with me. The means by which God’s light breaks through into our world is now revealed: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” Eugene Peterson’s take on this declaration is revealing in itself: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (Jn. 1:14 MSG). In other words, the Word (Logos), who is God (Jn. 1:1) became fully human, and by moving into the neighborhood, became part of the neighborhood. Not only that, but we who inhabit the neighborhood “have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” This is the message of Christmas, right here. Turning again to Karl Barth:

If we wish to understand the meaning of ‘conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary’, above all we must try to see that these two remarkable pronouncements assert that God of free grace became man, a real man. The eternal Word became flesh. This is the miracle of Jesus Christ’s existence, this descent of God from above downwards – the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. This is the mystery of Christmas, of the Incarnation. [Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (SCM Classics) (Kindle, p. 96).

It is this word about God becoming flesh that has proven so problematic throughout history. Whatever we might think of the idea of the “Virgin Birth” as confessed in the Creeds, the message of Christmas is that there is something different about this child born in Bethlehem (a piece of the story that John doesn’t deal with since he doesn’t offer us an infancy narrative). But what the incarnate one does is reveal to the world the glory of God, who is full of grace and truth.

                John the Baptist appears once again in verse 15, where we’re told parenthetically that the one who is the Word become flesh is the one to whom John pointed. While John might have come on the scene first, the incarnate one (Word become flesh) ranks ahead of John because ultimately, he is before John. Could this be the Gospel writer’s way of letting us know that, as the Creeds suggest, the Word pre-existed the incarnation?  Or does the Gospel writer simply want to remind us that John’s witness to the Light began before Jesus came on the scene and continued afterward? We would be safer to choose the latter, but theologically we could see this as a reminder of the church’s Trinitarian vision, which requires the eternal generation of the Son.

                After being reminded of John the Baptist’s continuing witness to the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, John the Gospel writer tells us that those who perceive the fullness of this Word made flesh have received “grace upon grace.” John writes that while the Law came through Moses, grace and truth come through Jesus Christ (vs. 16-17). Here is one of those places we need to stop and remind ourselves of the danger of supersessionism, and unfortunately the Gospel of John has lent itself to Christian anti-Judaism. We should note that the idea of grace is not foreign to Judaism. With this in mind, I want to share this word from Rabbi Shai Held, who declares that grace is an essential dimension of Judaism. “Yet grace (hein/hesed) is foundational to Jewish theology and spirituality. The gift of life is grace—the existence of the world is not something that anyone earned. God’s love for us is grace—it is not something we earn but something we strive to live up to. The revelation of Torah is grace—it is a divine gift given to us through no merit of our own” [Held, Judaism Is About Love, p. 5]. Yes, the Law was given through Moses, but as Held notes it was given as an act of divine grace.

                The reading concludes with John’s reminder that while those who receive Jesus are now children of God, we are not the only Son of God, and thus no human (other than God’s only Son) has seen God. So, it is a given that the invisible God cannot be seen with human eyes, though Moses saw God’s backside, but not God’s face. Even though humans cannot see God, John tells us that God’s only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has seen God. Therefore, the Son (the Word made flesh) who has seen the Father, has made the Father known to the world. Marianne Meye Thompson offers this helpful summation of what John is communicating in this final verse of our reading:

According to John, the Son alone has an unmediated and direct vision of God, because the Son has been with the Father from the beginning. Only the one who is “from God” (1: 1, 18; 8: 58), who has been in the presence of God (1: 1), and is now “ever at the Father’s side,” in the position of honor with God, has seen God (6: 46) and can in turn make God known: and this happens through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. 39 Jesus’ unique vision of God distinguishes him not only from his contemporaries (cf. 3: 13), but also from his disciples, who see the Father in the Son, rather than seeing the Father directly as the Son does (14: 8– 9). [Thompson, John (New Testament Library), WJK Press (Kindle, p. 36)].

While we do not have an unmediated vision of God because we have received this witness of God’s only Son who has been with the Father from the beginning, we can now share the message of God’s glory revealed in the incarnate one.

                While some may choose on this Second Sunday of Christmas to observe Epiphany Sunday, with its story of the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12), for those who choose this reading from John 1, we are reminded that God has made Godself known to the world so that we are not without a witness to God’s grace and truth. As we embark on a new calendar year, with many unknowns ahead of us (this is especially true in 2025), such that we may find ourselves navigating the darkness of this world, it is good news to know that God’s light does still shine in Jesus, who is the light who enlightens everyone. Therefore, let us walk in the light of God while bearing witness to that light each day as we sing:

O Word of God incarnate,
O Wisdom from on high,
O Truth unchanged, unchanging,
O Light of our dark sky:
we praise you for the radiance
that from the hallowed page,
a lantern to our footsteps,
shines on from age to age.

                William Walsham How (1867)

 

Image attribution: Santimano, Eustaquio. Lumen Christi, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59706 [retrieved December 27, 2024]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eustaquio/4488210375.