“And
the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory
as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
In the Name etc.
John’s gospel begins with a lofty
proclamation of identity between the Word and God. This Word, or Logos as the
Greek has it, is, as we know, not a spoken word in the ordinary sense, but
rather the Word is that through which all things come into being. And that being
is life and light for humans. And, as today’s Gospel makes clear, the Word is
Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, who became human, and who lived in the
world as a man. This Word, this God become human in Jesus, we also name the
Second Person of the Trinity. I don’t want to get into a technical theological
discussion, but rather I want to talk about the great themes that John the
Evangelist introduces in today’s reading. Today’s reading is usually called the
Prologue to John’s Gospel, the Introduction, that is, and in it John announces
the great themes of his entire book: being, life, light, grace, truth.
Being is here more than a philosophical or
a theological term. The Evangelist identifies being with life and light. Light
and life ARE being, and there is no being for humans apart from life and light.
That may be an obvious thing to say, but there are many places in the world
where there is very little light, where life is very difficult, and where any
sense of being as coming from God, of any sense of life as coming from God, is
not obvious at all, is very hard to believe in. I am thinking of the wars in
Syria and the Middle East and Africa and so on. The moral darkness in those
situations is very dark indeed. There are other situations which are equally
dark. We can all think of them, in our own society and elsewhere. That is why
the Evangelist says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did
not overcome it.” That is WHY the Word came into the world in Jesus. That is
the real meaning of the Word, to be light and life in the darkness. The being
that the Word shows forth in the darkness is light, is life.
In verses 10 and 11, the Evangelist
summarizes the story of Jesus’s earthly life. “He was in the world, and the
world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to
what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” It seems as though
the Evangelist is saying that the darkness did in fact overcome the being and
light and life that Jesus brought into the world. But we know that the darkness
of death held Jesus for only a short time. The resurrection reversed that
apparent defeat. John says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and
we have seen his glory.” Glory means light, the light of life and being in
Jesus that could not be extinguished. It could not be extinguished because
light and life and being come from God himself.
And we are not separated from that light
and life and being. The Evangelist says, “The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world.” There are no exceptions to this; the true
light enlightens everyone. Where there are life, light, being, there is God,
there is Jesus. This is easy to forget in our society, which emphasizes
individuality and competition and difference so much. We are constantly tempted
to forget that others are valuable in God’s sight, that others have as much of
being and light and life as we do. The Evangelist says, “His own people did not
accept him.” We usually take this to refer to Jesus, and it does, but it can
also refer to our own lack of acceptance of the other children of God, our
fellow humans, whom we see every day. They are as ‘enlightened’ by God as we
are. It is a good spiritual exercise, to pay attention to the thoughts that
flow through our minds as we encounter other people, and to be aware of how
many of those thoughts are not as accepting as they could be. It is an
enlightening exercise, to say to ourselves of every person we encounter, “The
true light, which enlightens this person, has come into the world.”
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of
grace and truth.” Full of grace and truth. We say of Mary, the Mother of God,
that she is “full of grace.” And today’s reading says that Jesus is “full of
grace and truth.” Grace is that endlessly flowing love of God that keeps the
universe and everything in it in existence, the favor of God that keeps all
things flowing in a Godward direction, in their journey of return to him, to
their final consummation in the new heaven and the new earth. So “full of
grace” is not merely a title applied to two individuals, Mary and Jesus, but is
also a description of the spiritual reality that pervades all things and
people. The Evangelist says, “From his fullness we have all received, grace
upon grace.” We have ALL received. So when we address Mary in our devotions as
“full of grace,” we are reminding ourselves that we and everyone else and
everything else are also “full of grace.” This suggests another spiritual
exercise that we can use in our daily lives. When we encounter others, or even
see strangers on the street, we can mentally address them as “full of grace.”
If we do this regularly and routinely, it will transform us and the way we see
the world.
So we realize that the opening words of
today’s Gospel are not a statement of a remote, aloof eternal reality, but a
description of the world that we know, a clue to right understanding of it, and
a guide to how to live in the world in such a way as to bring us all into awareness
of the reality of God for us and everyone else.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of
grace and truth.”
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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