Christmas Poetry

John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, & the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, & without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, & the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, & 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, & the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, & 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 & lived among us, & we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace & truth. (John testified to him & 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 & 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.

It seems to me that Christmas Eve is a time to wonder. Wonder at the love of God, who has come to save us. Wonder at the angles. Wonder at the shepherds. Wonder at the child.  It is not a time to speak of big concepts like the incarnation. 

Maybe this Sunday, though, we can plumb some of the depths of Christmas, and perhaps John chapter one gives us the chance to do this.

In a sermon a few years ago . . . I said this:

If you think about it, while we love the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke best. . . with Mary and; Joseph and; the babe in the manger, with the shepherds and; the angels, and; Mary pondering in her heart - what we imagine Mary pondering, is the first chapter of John. These words give us the framework we use to understand the birth of Jesus. 

I saw that the other day and thought, "that is SUCH a good line! Man, I'm good!"
Then I looked to see if I lifted that line from someone else.
Alas, I did.
As Al Rogness told me, “We all have to steal from somebody. You might as well steal from someone good.” 

I think that, at times, I have been tempted by the beauty of these words, to wax poetic about the Word. 

But the interesting thing is that these lofty words tell of the quite startingly down to earth, frightneningly humble, condescension of God.
PNT had a nice sermon last year, he began by talking about a kid who liked to take everything apart, to see how it worked. He suggested that John (now this is a very terse summation) is taking apart the incarnation here, and that the Logos is the building block of the universe. And that Jesus is the one through whom all is made. He makes all things tick. PNT then takes the hearers through the whole story - to the cross - (I like this line) "the embodied logos will also be the embattled logos. - and ends up suggesting that this one is the one who makes us all tick.
Nice.

Frederick Buechner, in his definition of incarnation in “Wishful Thinking” begins this way:

“The Word became flesh” wrote John, “and; dwelt among us, full of grace and; truth.” That is what incarnation means. It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to Christianity, it is the way things are.

 He concludes his short definition with this great line: 

. . One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.

That gets at the crux of the matter, doesn't it?