Lectionary Guide: Christmas 2023

Isaiah 52:7-10 | Psalm 98 | Hebrews 1:1-4 (5-12)

Introduction

John 1 contains some of the richest Christological passages in all of Scripture. It rewards deep meditation on its meaning. Its use as the Christmas gospel text is an opportunity to infuse the deep things of Christ with the deepest joy. The lectionary typically offers some ecstatically joyful readings—and if you don’t use the lectionary, feel free to select some of your own. Consider connecting passages like Isaiah 61:10, Isaiah 62:1, and Psalm 147:1 with the deep joy of the arrival of the Messiah and the vindication of Israel.

The four gospels contain many hints that there is more to Jesus being “the Son of God” than just being heir of David and King of Israel. But John, perhaps because it was penned later than the synoptics, with longer time for reflection on who Jesus is, gives what I call “the inner story of Christmas” in John 1. His gospel practically shouts it out that when you met Jesus, you met God.

The familiarity of this passage is both an asset and a liability. On one hand, because it is so familiar, many will simply hear it with the attitude that they understand it and that there’s nothing new to learn. On the other hand, the familiarity of the passage allows you to do some “practical meditating” on the passage with the congregation. Thinking over the specifics of what is being said — and here familiarity is helpful — paradoxically using that familiarity to help them see the passage in a new way and to know who Jesus is better.

Incarnation

Methodological note: I take it that the Nicene formulas are ultimately a statement of the whole of Scripture’s teaching on the relationship of Jesus to the Father and the Holy Spirit. I’m not making the claim that a close reading of John will reveal a full-fledged doctrine of the Trinity — nor do I encourage you to preach that! Instead, with the perspective of Nicea, we are able to read what the Scripture is talking about more clearly.

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (NRSV)

And then verse 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. (NRSV)

The book of John is about Jesus. The Word is clearly Jesus. And John is saying something truly radical. Jesus was in the beginning. Jesus was with God. And Jesus was God. Jesus was at one time not “become flesh” and had to “become flesh” to live among us. And Jesus’ life revealed glory.

Just think about that. How radical, how revolutionary, is that, coming from a Jewish writer in the first century?!

The first chapter of John reveals the greatest plot twist in history. All of salvation history has been building up to this, but nothing in the Old Testament prepared us for the surprise that God would come among us as one of us. In Jesus we meet God. And traditional monotheism is too small for this picture.

Go back to verse 1 to consider what it is saying:

The Word was in the beginning.
The Word was with God. And therefore distinct from God.
The Word was God.

It took four Ecumenical councils to figure this one out. The Word was in the beginning. There was never a time when the Word was not. The Word was with God – so the Word was not identical with God. And yet, the Word was God. That sounds distressingly like a contradiction.

The Nicene solution is to distinguish between divine persons: the person of the Word is distinct from the person of the Father. But the Word was God: he is homoousias with the Father. Of the same fully divine essence.

If fundamentally forcing a redefinition of monotheism wasn’t enough, in John 1:14, John identifies this Word with Jesus of Nazareth:

            The Word became flesh and lived among us.

This is the Incarnation. In the language of the Councils, the divine person of the Word took on human nature, thereby becoming a fully human being (no less so than any of us). And as a human baby he received the name “Jesus.”

This could not be more unexpected. The great creator God of Judaism becoming a weak human? Madness! For the self-contemplating God of Greek philosophy to take on the frailty and distractions of flesh? Scandal!

But this is what we celebrate on Christmas! He entered the mess and the glory that it is to be human. To be loved by a mother, to be a helpless baby dependent on her body for his life, to skin his knees, to have a heart that can fear, trust, love, and be broken… “to endure all the shocks which flesh is heir to.” By doing so, he shows the unfathomed depth of the love of God for humanity. Rather than sullying divinity, he enobled humanity.

Light and Logos

So, John reminds us at Christmas that we are dealing with a once-off in the history of the world – in Anselm of Canterbury’s terms, “the God-man.” To meet Jesus was to meet God.

Remember that the God of the Old Testament had no image. It was forbidden to make images of God in the second commandment. But now, the unimaged God of the Old Testament had a face. To meet Jesus was transformative. John tries to capture this with the language of life and light.

In verses 4 and 5:

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. (NRSV)

And 9

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (NRSV)

To understand what John is saying here, it helps to say a little about what John means by “the Word” or in Greek, “ho Logos”. On our first read-through, we might have started by thinking that John only means by the Logos the words which God speaks in creation.

But we have to take it as intentional that he says Logos not the plural logoi. It’s a little controversial to draw on the philosophical millieu of the 1st century, because John’s gospel is a Jewish text, first and foremost. However, because Logos can also mean reasoning or a rational principle, theologians have interpreted this as referring to the reason or wisdom of God behind creation itself. But we don’t really need any suspect appeals to Greek philosophical thought to get this connection. As many later Christian interpreters noted, there are more than surface similarities between John’s description of the Word and Proverbs 8’s Wisdom, who says in her monologue:

The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be…
Then I was constantly at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind. (Prov. 8:22, 23, 30, 31, NIV)

But John might have also had another Old Testament reference in mind when he writes about the “Word.” Early Jewish readers of John would have remembered the way that the “Word of God” is used in the Old Testament, such as when “the word of God came to” this or that prophet. Further the instruction of God—Torah, is extolled as light and life in various places in the Psalms.

Logos, therefore, is more than the words of creation and more than divine wisdom. Somehow the second person of the Trinity is behind the self-revelation of God – period.

To meet Jesus in the flesh was to meet the life and light of the world. John and the disciples saw his glory, glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. And that John’s gospel is an eyewitness report is our extremely important link back to the historical events central to our faith.

And John’s emphasis on the divinity of Christ and his identity as the agent of divine self-revelation has another important point, especially for those of us (all of us here present), who did not see Jesus in the flesh.

Remember the story of doubting Thomas at the end of the gospel? To Jesus, having just appeared to him, Thomas exclaims: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas is the first person to actually grasp what John is saying in the Prologue. But remember Jesus’s reply: “Because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed” (NASB).

If Jesus is the Word—the revealer of God—even though you and I never got to see Jesus in the flesh, we have direct contact with him as Logos when we read John’s gospel. When God speaks to us in Scripture, God reveals himself—therefore we are in contact with the Logos in whom is life and light—even having not ever seen him in the flesh. In essence, John 1 explains why Jesus says we are blessed to Thomas.

Made Children

This contact with Jesus, the Logos, must be part of the reason why we are able, at this great distance of time and space receive Jesus by believing in his name.

And with verses 12 and 13, there is an even greater and more joyful revelation!  We are invited into the loving inter-Trinitarian relationship. We see this in verses 12 and 13

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (NRSV)

Those who become children of God (the true Israel) are contrasted with those who were “his own” and did not receive him. Those who receive him are the real Israel, not constituted by lineage from Abraham, but through our relationship to the only begotten Son of the Father. By receiving Jesus, we are adopted  into the same sort of relationship that the Father and the Son have to each other. No wonder John says that,

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. (NRSV)

In spite of being mere creatures of God—in spite of being sinful and fallen creatures at that, we are admitted into the loving relationship of the Trinity.

Conclusion

John 1 reveals the great depth of the joy of Christmas – that the child of Mary is himself God – the Logos – the Son – even the agent of the creation of the world which he inhabits as one of us – and that we are invited by his life to share in the relationship the Father and the Son – in spite of what we each know to be true of us.

From here, a clear application is a call to holiness. If we are children of God, we should live like it. If we are children of God, we shouldn’t keep on sinning—we should turn toward God, accept his grace and his help in living a life worthy of our adoption.

Key Quotes

Discussion Questions

Opening Prayer

Prayer of Confession

Assurance of Pardon

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 

But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

The Spirit you received brought about your adoption. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Adapted from Romans 8:1-2, 10-11, 15b-17.

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