In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. AlI things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 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.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify, to the light.

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

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. 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.' ''

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 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.
- John 1: 1-18

In the first words of his gospel – “In the beginning” – John echoes the very first words of the Bible. In the beginning, God’s creative words gave life and light. From the very beginning was the one whom John calls “the Word”. “Word” in Greek (the language John was using for his non-Jewish audience) is Logos, which to those schooled in philosophy meant much more than “word”. It meant everything from “word” to “intellect” all the way to “the meaning of existence”. So John was announcing that in Jesus we find the ultimate explanation of the meaning of life.

Our use of the word “word” still shows its importance. How often do we say, “I give you my word”? When we’re after some deep information, we ask, “What’s the word,” and there are few condemnations worse than “You can’t take his word for anything.”

In the Jewish scriptures, a word was far more than just a sound. It was something that was alive, charged with power. The Jewish scriptures are full of examples of that. In the creation story, for example, at every stage we read “And God said…”, and an aspect of creation came into being.

John saw that “the Word was with God” –not as a single action of the past, but in a continuous, timeless existence. But not only “with God”: “the Word was God” – so that the Word, Jesus, is in the best position to reveal who God is. Sometimes we think that, when Jesus came, he changed God – from angry into loving. But God has always been like Jesus. It isn’t God who’s changed, rather, it’s our understanding of God that has changed.

John, like a composing artist, enunciates the two themes of his work: life and light. The life is the life of God: the eternal life that God lives, the opposite of destruction, condemnation, and death. Life for human beings isn’t mere existence – even inanimate things exist – but a sharing in the very being of God.

The word “life” is frequently on the lips of Jesus. Jesus regrets that people won’t come to him, that they might have life; he asserts that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly; he says that he’s the way, the truth, and the life (14:6).

In John’s Gospel, the word “life” occurs more than thirty-five times, and the verb “to live” or “to have life” more than fifteen times. At the very end of his Gospel, John says that he has written that through belief in Jesus we may have life in his name.

John’s light is the everlasting light, the light revealed in time, the light manifested in the flesh although hidden by nature, the light that shone around the shepherds and guided the Magi. It’s that light which came into it’s own people, and they didn’t receive it. The word “light” occurs in John’s Gospel no fewer than twenty-one times. He says that Jesus’ light is that which puts the darkness of disorder to flight, like God moving upon the dark chaos and replacing it with the creation of light. Darkness, the opposite of light, refers to whatever is in opposition to God. It stands for life without Christ. One of our oldest fears is the fear of the dark, still present among many children, but even for adults the world is full of forebodings and threats. However, no matter how hard the darkness has tried, it hasn’t overcome the light.

“Jesus is the true light”, who dissipated the shadows of doubt, the blackness of despair, the starkness of death. When the star brought the wise men to the humble cave instead of to a regal palace, God was making a statement about our value system: that it wasn’t His. The tragedy is that, though “the word came to be through him”, he came to people who were his own, but they didn’t accept him.

That brings John to the climax of his hymn, what we celebrate today: the Word became flesh. Flesh is all that’s transitory, mortal, imperfect, and at first sight seemingly incompatible with God. This is the tremendous mystery of the incarnation, the story that brings the Infinite One, the Creator, the Divine, to the insignificant town of Bethlehem where in a smelly stable He became one of us in everything but sin.

Our maker truly became human, so that the Ruler of the stars was in the very thick of life. He came in the most unlikely circumstances. A helpless baby, the child of a poor family in a subjugated country – all of it doesn’t seem a hopeful seedbed for liberation, redemption and freedom. He could be hungry and tired from his journeys, and he was accused by false witnesses, evaluated by a mortal judge, beaten whit whips, crowned with thorns, suffered, and died. It’s the stuff of life as it’s lived around us.

That’s the depth of the Christmas story. People who don’t understand that don’t understand the goodness of humanity. When God created us, He saw all that He had made and found it very good. Yet down through the centuries there have been those who claimed that one aspect of God’s creation, humanity, is bad.

At the same time as he is human, Jesus is God. The early Christians realized that they couldn’t think of God without thinking of Jesus, that all the word “God” conveyed found adequate expression in Jesus Christ.

For a time, Jesus “made his dwelling” – literally, “pitched his tent” – with us. And we saw His glory: Jesus’ whole life was a manifestation of the glory of God as spoken of in the Jewish Scriptures, which indicated the presence of God in the desert during the Exodus, on Mount Sinai at the giving of the commandments. Over the Tabernacle, and above the Temple. Now this glory was uniquely Jesus’ own. By living among us, Jesus enables us to come to the heart of God. That’s the message of Christmas.