Homily for Christmas Day (John 1)

Homily for Christmas Day (John 1_1-18)

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for Christmas Day. The Church proposes for us, for the four Masses associated with Christmas Day, different Gospels — well, actually three different Gospels. For two of the Masses it's the Lucan account of Jesus's birth. For one of the accounts, for one of the Gospels, it's Matthew's account, which we actually had last week, but including the genealogy — so it's the whole of the genealogy and the passage we had last week. And for the other Mass we have the beginning of St. John's Gospel. And since for the last two Christmases I've used the Lucan passage, and we had the Matthean passage last week, I thought I'd take a quick look at the beginning of John's Gospel, even though in one sense it seems the furthest removed from what we're used to at Nativity, which is focusing down on the very practical issues of baby, manger, beasts, swaddling clothes, stars, shepherds — all those very particular human, or human and animal, things which attend a birth. And what we get in John's Gospel, if you like, seems so extra-planetary that we pass it off with something like dismay at having to interpret it. So I don't want to attempt a full interpretation of it, which of course would be quite impossible. These 18 verses are some of the most remarkable words ever to have been written in any human language. It would be foolish to try it. It would be foolish to try and expatiate too wildly on them. What I would like to do is to say how much closer I think they are to a more concrete, more human, more historical sense of a little baby in a precarious situation in Bethlehem than perhaps we might give credit for. I'm taking it, as many do, that there is a basic chiastic structure in St. John's Prologue, meaning that the first and the last verses reflect each other, and so on through the middle, until you get to the central point. And of course the chiastic structure has been slightly altered by the putting in of the bits about John the Baptist, which were probably not in the original poetry but were put in so as to help make sense of what was coming. About the first verse — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" — after we've been through the history, it comes out as: "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. Why do I say that's odd? The two explain each other in this strange way. "In the beginning was the criterion, was the Word" — the beginning for us of creation. This does reflect Genesis. It would have been understood by a Jewish audience, or anyone who knew anything about how the Temple worked and how the Holy of Holies was the microcosm of the whole of creation, outside which God and God's angels were. Of course, no one could see God. It was only as God's criterion showed itself — and the criterion shows itself, the Word, in creation. You remember the Genesis narrative: "And God said..." — the creative word, the word that creates. So the Word was at the very beginning of all things. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. So the creative thing is not simply an extra thing that God happens to do; it is God's criterion. For God, we are actually learning something about who God is when God makes God's criterion available to us in and as and through creation. We pair that off with the very end: "No one has ever seen God." Perfectly sensible, absolutely standard. Of course, God is not an object that can be seen. That's not at all what is meant by any use of language about God by anybody rational, really. That would be a god, a god who can be seen. "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." So the criterion that was with God — and the criterion was God — was in the beginning with God. So it turns out that the criterion for everything being is a Son. That is in a sense the most extraordinary claim for us to understand, and from which to get a glimpse of what's going on in the Christmas story. God's only Son is God's criterion, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. In other words, the criterion for bringing everything into being is that of a father's love for a son. The underpinning reality of everything that is, is this sort of affection. The structure — the very structure of reality — is made available to us through this sort of love. Given that, it's perhaps less surprising that the midpoint of the chiasmus — and we could go through verse by verse all the way up and down, but that would take far too long and be far too complicated, at least for me — the midpoint of the chiasmus is: "He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." That's the central line: "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." Here is the suggestion that the very structuring force of reality, which is a loving structure, finally came into our midst, came into the midst as something that can enlighten us, light us up from within — was the light, was the source of our seeing, has come in. And for those who receive him, who believe in his name, believe that his name is the same as the name, he gives power to become children of God, who are born not of bloods — which might refer just to the two people involved in conception, or it might refer to the way in which mythical stories of creation and therefore of birth happen through massacres — or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. So the notion that there is a being brought into being according to who the Father is, who God is, and what God's love is, that actually seeks to bring us into being as children of God. And that means us being aligned with what really is. He enables life, and the life was the light of all people; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. He's talking about people being brought into being so that we may actually participate on the inside of creation and discover what really is. And that the way that this was made available to us started — of course John doesn't say this, you only get this in Matthew and Luke — started with the bizarrely powerless-seeming sign of the babe born in Bethlehem. This was a wholly, fully human sign. It's us learning to detect the love of the only begotten Son, the only begotten God, the only begotten. It also appears to be a way of referring to Isaac in the Abraham story. He was referred to as — in one translation — "only begotten son," which wasn't true of course, because Abraham had Ishmael, another son, and often it's translated as "beloved." So clearly it does not refer to something numerical; it refers to a quality of love. That there is a purpose to everything, which happens — if you like — the friendliness towards us humans of everything that there is, is not known to us. We are so often stuck in darkness, not able to see what is really happening. The law tried to enable us to stand upright a little bit, to learn what is true, to understand something about how the Creator wanted us to see and participate in the creation. But grace and truth came through Jesus Christ — the sense of the tenderness, and not out to get us, the friendly quality, the backdrop to everything that there is, that this is a friendly, gentle adventure. Strangely, it's that — if you like, it's the background colors… to the nativity picture that are some of the most difficult things to get. The background colors, which are of the whole of creation actually being vastly more friendly to us, if only we could learn to find our way into being sons and daughters of God — those who are actually on the inside of creation, as it says, to use Paul's language. But the same message is here. So as you come to Christmas celebration this year, think not only of the 3D figures in the crèche, what they say about God's power being shown forth in being disposed to be absolutely weak, in the middle of a precarious situation, in the middle of the people who were going to make his life difficult and ultimately kill him. But also the vast backdrop of the sheer friendliness of creation — that which we're becoming used to learning about, and seeing ourselves as sons and daughters. This is, if you like, not a moral thing, but us being shown who God really is. "No one has ever seen God. It's God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known." Everything that we learn about God is going to be learned through following the human life of Jesus, and it's going to show us that there is an extraordinary power in weakness, an extraordinary joy in our discovering our likeness with apparent others, and that all these actually tend to show a vastly richer project — an adventure, a friendly adventure, which is creation — and that this is the constant backdrop to everything that is. Curiously, it's the difficulty of receiving and living from that backdrop which is one of the real challenges of our lives, and one of the real joys of Christmas. Asking ourselves: am I a little bit closer to that this year? Is the world a little bit friendlier? Is it out of gratitude that I'm able to give presents, just because I'm so pleased to be part of this world, rather than "now I've got to go through the usual drag of presents and all that"? For me, that's the question that is brought to my mind by these astounding verses from St. John. With that, I wish you a very happy Christmas, and along with the Gospel text in the little bit below the picture on YouTube, I've put a link to Jussi Björling singing "O Holy Night," which for me is one of the absolute must-haves of the Christmas season. One of the most beautiful pieces of singing of that great carol that I know. And furthermore it's in Swedish, so I can't understand it, so we don't have the terrible words of the original French, which are full of exactly the worst sort of sacrificial nonsense that it's very, very good not to be able to understand. Very happy Christmas to you all, and Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Thank you.