In the beginning was the Word. It’s a strong beginning. Genesis – the story of creation – not the band – begins in the same way. It’s not dissimilar to ‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.’ Or – Christmas Quiz – which film begins with these words: “The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much, that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it.” But this is more epic. More cosmic. It also sounds mysterious – something like a spell, or possible Elvish – especially in Greek: ‘En arche eyn ho logos’ as Professor Snape incanted over in potions. For the biography of a humble Jewish peasant it’s a fairly grand beginning.
The family are already struggling – rumours of illegitimacy, the cost of living, With raising a family in an occupied country. This universal miracle of birth; the simple indescribable joy of a child coming into the world. Whether you’re more like a shepherd, a king or an angel you can relate to this pilgrimage to see this every day, commonplace, but quite extraordinary thing. But, at the same time, the first Christians, wanted to communicate that this ordinary/extraordinary thing – and we all know something of the glamour and the mundane aspects of new babies – This simple every day thing is the key to understanding what life is all about. In the beginning was the Word.En arche eyn ho logos. John means simply that from the beginning the universe had meaning, purpose. A Word – such as we use to make sense, to give expression to what we see, to name: And that Word is love. In the beginning was Love. Because, as we heard, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Here at Christmas as a fragile new baby, helpless and fiercely loved.
This is the heart of Christianity. There is a meaning, a purpose. For you also, there is meaning and purpose. There has been from the beginning. And that purpose is love – As told by Nat King Cole and later David Bowie: The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
So in all the grandeur of the big carols and fancy choir pieces, the archaic, familiar readings that we hear every year – in Putney thousands of miles and thousands of years from this beginning, the story told and retold by mothers and fathers, folk carols sung as lullabies to your parents’ parents – Retold in adorable nativity plays about obscure animals – This simple thing – A child coming into a dirty, difficult world, with the usual crying and incomprehension – As the baby Jesus very much did in our Nativity play 3 days ago; To show everyone in his short, difficult life that they are loved and therefore should love one another. Something magical. Something cosmic. In the beginning was Love. But what is hard for us, whose childhood skin has scaled over, with experience, with entitlement, with dulled expectations; Is to see this. My phone’s memory had filled up a couple of weeks ago, so I started deleting photographs by the thousand but of course it’s videos that take up the most room. So I brought up videos on my found. Literally 100s of videos of our first child Oberon. 1 or 2 of the spare, number two, Apollo. How quickly wonder turns to assumption. Watching an Octopus change the colour and texture of its skin to fit its environment is all you need to see the work of God’s Word in the world, but in so many contexts how many of us are caught complaining, “Is this really it? Is this all there is?” Like a child with too many presents, who looks round avariciously:“it’s only 36, I had 38 last year.”
The problem for most of us, most of the time, is not that we’re not seeing it. That we’ve missed something. It’s that we’re not looking in the right way. Like all the astronomers who figured out patterns and maths to predict how the sun and planets moved around the earth, we sometimes need to be the one who changes everything with the thought that we might not be the centre of the universe;There might be something a lot bigger, a lot hotter. We haven’t been looking at the world in the right way. And that begins at Christmas with the birth of a baby, with the start of a new family, with a child coming into the world who was loved before he arrived and brought with him an unconditional love that is the answer you are looking for. And as many of us know, a child changes everything.
At Christmas the line from CS Lewis holds more true than ever: That faith is not a spectacle – of dressed up children, schmaltzy carols, Christmas jumpers – But a pair of spectacles through which we might look at the world and see every life, every being, every relationship, as created, defined and redeemed by love – God’s Word among us.
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