Christmas 1B, 31 December 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Isaiah 61:10-62:3. You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.
- Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7. So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
- John 1:1-18. No one has ever seen God.
O God of our sacred story, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
First a poem by Irish theologian Padraig O Tuama, called “Narrative Theology #1”. [1]
And I said to him
Are there answers to all of this?
And he said
The answer is in a story
and the story is being told.
And I said
But there is so much pain
And she answered, plainly,
Pain will happen.
Then I said
Will I ever find meaning?
And they said
You will find meaning
Where you give meaning.
The answer is in the story
And the story isn’t finished.
If you were in church here on Christmas Eve or anywhere else on Christmas morning, you probably heard the prologue from the Gospel of John, verses 1-14 of it anyway. So you might be wondering why we hear it again with four more verses for the First Sunday of Christmas. I don’t know why, but I’m glad we do, because there are just some places a preacher shouldn’t go in a Christmas Eve sermon. On the seventh day of Christmas, however, I can take you there. Today I can teach (or remind) you of some Biblical Greek, because we’ve got some elbow room in this service, and I’m going to take full advantage. “The answer is in the story, and the story isn’t finished.” Listen to the story, says John the Evangelist, because no one has ever seen God.
David Bentley Hart’s translation of the Second or New Testament of our Bible is rough, halting prose, unpolished and provocative in its disregard for the Church doctrines that developed in the long, long wake of the life and love of Jesus Christ. In other words, this is my kind of translation! Don’t get me wrong: I find the prologue to the Gospel of John to be beautiful and mystical when chanted by candlelight. In the daytime, however, it’s like recounting a dream that doesn’t really make complete sense when you say the words out loud.
Here’s what David Hart has to say about the beginning of the Gospel of John: “There may…be no passage in the New Testament more resistant to simple translation into another tongue than the first eighteen verses – the prologue – of the Gospel of John….It very elegantly proposes a theology of the person of Christ that seems to subtend the entire book…but it also, intentionally in all likelihood, leaves certain aspects of that theology open to question, almost as if inviting the reader to venture ever deeper into the text in order to find the proper answers.” In other words, “The answer is in the story, and the story isn’t finished.”
The first big translation challenge is the word Word (from logos). The Greek word originally meant to gather, but later it came to mean human reason. We still use gather this way in English (as in, “I gather that you decided to come to church this morning”). [2] By the end of the first century of the Common Era, logos had a metaphysical meaning. Hart says that in Hellenistic Jewish writing, “It referred to a kind of ‘secondary divinity,’ a mediating principle standing between God the Most High and creation.” [3] This seems to be how the Gospel of John is describing Jesus. Later, Trinitarians would look back and say, “Aha! There’s the second person of the Trinity,” but that took several centuries, considerable military power, and a certain amount of mob violence to hammer out. Curiously, all sides quoted these verses from John in their arguments for and against the coequality of the Christ with God.[4] (It’s not lost on me that following my sermon, I’m going to recite the words of the Nicene Creed and ask you to join me. As with the Prologue to the Gospel of John, I love the language of the Creed more when we chant it than when we say it.)
Here’s another thing: in Chapter 1, Verses 14 and 18, of John, we hear the familiar description of only Son and of course we know that this means Jesus. The problem is that the word that gets translated only Son is monogenes, sometimes translated only begotten (I’m glad the word begotten has gotten out of there!) Monogenes literally means one of a kind, unique. The word has nothing to do with son or begotten or born. It is often used to describe especially beloved children in the Bible (for example, Isaac was described as monogenes, but he had brothers). Listen to this rougher, literal translation of the end of our Gospel portion for today: ”No one has seen God at any time. Only-one god, the one being in the bosom of the father that one has revealed (or made known, translated, or articulated).” I think this rough translation helps us to gather that Jesus was as close to God as one could be, and Jesus revealed, translated, or articulated God. The Greek word exegeysato has to do with exegesis or interpretation, or what I like to call “mining for meaning.” According to John, gospel is not a static thing, but something that is being shown and carried out by Jesus, who is both the Word of God and the interpretive manifestation of God, Who has never been seen. [5] John is asserting if you look at Jesus, you will see something about God. “The answer is in the story, and the story isn’t finished.”
Our readings from Galatians and the Gospel of John set up a contest between Jesus and the Law, which I have to acknowledge as either wrong or misinterpreted and misused. I think it’s the latter, but I don’t know for sure. To borrow, however, the words of the prophet Isaiah: “For the sake of Zion I will not be silent. For the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest.” If the Law is referring to a legalism corrupted by collusion with the Roman Empire, devoid of the spirit of grace, loving-kindness, or truth (ḥesed v’emet), then that is not what Moses delivered at all. That is not The Law; that is not Torah, which is precisely what Rabbi Hillel taught before Jesus, and what the Apostle Paul taught after Jesus. Jesus and Paul were mostly likely both teaching in the Pharisaic tradition begun by Rabbi Hillel around the time Jesus was born. It was Rabbi Hillel who said, “If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?” He also said, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.” In other words, Rabbi Hillel was saying, “The answer is in the story, and the story isn’t finished.”
On this last day of 2023, let’s acknowledge that we know too much about religiosity that rests on intellectual assent, pietism, and legalism but does little to ease suffering for people in prison, poverty, war, or other kinds of peril. We know a little, but not enough about what a parish like Emmanuel can do in the coming year to provide spiritual sustenance to people who are hungering and thirsting for thoughtful, theologically-coherent direction, and refreshed access to the deep well of wisdom, which can be found in our Christian teachings. Together we can continue to learn. Together we can continue to encourage and inspire one another to take the next steps on our spiritual journeys (wherever we are). Pain will happen, of course. We will find meaning where we give meaning. So, to what will we give meaning in the coming year? On what will we focus our energy? To what will we give our broken hearts? In what will we put our trust?
I urge you to take the next step in your spiritual journey, from wherever you are. Turn again toward the One who loves you, who is Love, and take the next step so that Love comes in and out of your pores. Go deeper into the heart of that Holy One by taking the next step: seeking and welcoming grace and truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
- Pádraig Ó Tuama, Readings from the Book of Exile (Norwich: Canberbury Press, 2012), p. 4.
- See John Petty’s blog post on December 27, 2009, about this passage of the Gospel of John at www.progressiveinvolvement.com .
- David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 534.
- Ibid.
- Thanks to John Petty for this idea.