"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.  There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.  He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.  He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.  The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-14)

Introduction
I imagine that if the apostle John were here today he wouldn’t rely on catching fish in order to earn a living.  Instead he would be working in Hollywood, or on Broadway, or in television. And he would be either writing screen-plays or directing them. Why do I say that? Obviously to arouse your curiosity but also because in these first few verses of his account of the life and significance of Jesus, John skilfully uses the same techniques as those employed by screen-play writers and film directors all over the world.

As you know, one of the Christmas traditions of the church in this part of the world is the annual Festival of Lessons and Carols.  The lessons rehearse for us the fall of man, the prophecies concerning the promised Messiah and the circumstances of the birth of Jesus.  And then we come to the final lesson which, traditionally, is the first 14 verses of the Gospel according to St John.  I don’t know about you, but every time I hear the opening words, “In the beginning was the Word”, I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck and tingles shoot up my spine.  There is something powerful and majestic about John’s introduction to his account of Jesus. Why? Because John has seen God’s grand design for the salvation of mankind and shares it with us.

In the beginning …
The curtain rises and we find ourselves, not in first century Galilee as we might expect, but in eternity!  John repeats Moses’ opening words from Genesis chapter 1, “In the beginning…”. And as he does so he transports us back to the dawn of time.  Indeed he takes us back before the dawn of time, into eternity and introduces us to the Word.

Who or what is "the Word"?  We have to realise that, in writing his gospel, John is continually faced with a dilemma.  He is trying to convey deep spiritual truth to a mixed audience.  Most of his audience will have some familiarity with Greek but, for most, it will not be their native tongue so he deliberately keeps his vocabulary simple and his grammar accurate.  Some will be Jews, and thus share with him an understanding of the basics of the Jewish faith but most will be gentiles to whom the customs, traditions and concepts of Judaism will be entirely alien.  His difficulty is not that different to the challenge facing the church today, namely how to communicate the good news and truth of the gospel to people to whom the most basic assumptions and values of the Christian faith are almost entirely alien.  As a church, our response to this challenge is often to simply shout louder and get frustrated that people don’t seem to understand what we are saying.  That is not how John responds to the challenge.  He takes a leaf out of his Master’s book and finds a way of speaking to people in terms that they will understand.  He uses a concept that is understood by both Jew and Greek – the Word.  Unfortunately, we are so unfamiliar with both Greek and Jewish thinking that we need to have this concept explained to us.  Let's therefore take a brief look at what Greeks and Jews understood by "the Word".

Greeks, and those familiar with Greek thinking, perceived a world in which things were not chaotic but orderly.  They did not attribute this to chance, nor to some process of natural selection.  They perceived the activity of a mind, a power with the ability to reason.  This creative and sustaining power they called "the Word".  However, they saw the Word as an impersonal force rather than a creative, loving God.  To the Greek way of thinking, the Word was also the power that gave people the ability to reason.  It was the power that enabled people to understand and express their own thoughts, but most importantly, the Word was also the power by which people could contact and express their feelings to God.  To the Jew, a word was more than a mere sound.  A word was something active.  It possessed power, both to express thought and to achieve results.  Unlike the Greeks, the Jews attributed to God the creation and sustenance of life.  They recognised that it was by His word, that things happened.  The idea that God should say “Let it be so” and it was; the idea of God’s Word being the vehicle of His creative activity, was very familiar to every Jew.

John combines and extends these two understandings of “the Word”.  It is what a man thinks that determines his true character.  A word is the expression of a thought, an idea or a mental image in the mind of a person.  It is the means by which such things are communicated.  And so it is with the Word.  The Word is the expression of the mind of God. The thoughts of God are expressed by the Word; that which God wishes to say is communicated by the Word; that which God desired for His creation is exemplified by the Word.  And the Word is a person, and no ordinary person at that.  The Word is Eternal.  “In the beginning was the Word", says John.  What he means is that there was never a time when the Word did not exist.  The Word was not created, He has always been.  Moreover, He has always been in relationship with God.  The Greek word that John uses means both that the Word has always been in the presence of God and that the Word has always been acting towards, and in concert with, God.  We have here a picture of a perfect relationship - of two distinct persons in perfect harmony. And before we get the idea that this is a master/servant relationship John quickly asserts “and the Word was God”.  John is not saying that God and the Word are in fact the same person, rather that both, though distinct persons, are identical in nature and character.

Having described this perfect relationship between God and the Word, John then lays before us a grand panoramic view of God’s creation and says, 'all of this was done by, through and for the Word'.  He does not deny that it was God who created all things, rather he identifies how it was done - through the Word.  Again we almost lose something in the translation from Greek to English.  When John says “all things” he means every thing, down to the smallest detail. When he says “were made”, he literally means 'came into being'.  We might add 'out of thin air'  because what John means is that creation was not merely a matter of bringing order out of chaos, nor of rearranging pre-existing raw materials into something different, but rather a process of creating something from nothing other than God’s own will and power.   But not only is the Word the one who is responsible for the physical existence of all things (including mankind), He is the one who imparts meaning to this existence.  John identifies the Word as the source of that which transforms existence into life with a purpose. He describes this as both life and light. What is light?  It is that which enables us to see.  In doing so it reveals the true nature of things, it enables us to avoid otherwise unknown danger, it enables us to make informed choices, it banishes fear and chaos.  Light promotes life and health. It is good for us and darkness cannot overcome it.

So we gaze upon "the Word" - the un-created eternal one who is identical to God in both nature and character, who is in perfect relationship with God, who is the agent by whom God made all things, who is in Himself the perfect expression of all that God is and desires, who is the one that transforms existence into meaningful life and is utterly invincible.

The Messenger
As our gaze lingers, the scene changes and we find ourselves in first-century Galilee.  Into our view strides a strange looking character.  He is a wild looking man, dressed in clothes made out of camel’s hair with a leather belt tied around him. It is, of course, John the Baptist who, in accordance with prophesy, is shouting “Prepare a way for the Lord ...” (Isaiah 40:3).  Here is a man sent from God, a man sent with a message from God. Again, a little attention to the original Greek gives us a better understanding of what is being said.  When John the apostle says that John the Baptist was sent from God, the sense is of a messenger being sent from the very side of God.  Let me put it in human terms. There is a world of difference between a message borne by someone who merely works in Buckingham Palace and a message borne by someone who has been in the Queen’s presence and has received their message directly from her.  John’s message is directly from God.  He has, therefore, both immense authority and an immense responsibility.  He was sent as a witness and a herald, to point people to the one who was coming.  His purpose was not to start a movement for God, nor to organise and administer, nor to minister (John performed no miracles) nor even to preach, but to lead people to believe in the Word.  Of this man’s greatness there can be no doubt. Jesus said of him  “I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11).  Yet he is not the Light, merely a messenger.

The Word become Flesh
Again the scene changes. We are still in first-century Galilee, but our focus is no longer on John the Baptist.  Instead we see a figure in the distance and we hear John the apostle narrating the events. We see crowds on a hillside hanging on this figure’s every word. The lame walk, the blind see, the demon-possessed are delivered, the dead live again. And yet, He is rejected.  We see the people with whom He grew up try to throw Him off a cliff. We see the crowds desert him.  We see one of His companions betray Him to the authorities and the leaders of His people hand Him over to the occupying forces for execution.  As John reminds us, He came into the world that He had made, but it did not recognise Him.  He came to the nation of Israel, to God’s chosen people.  They, if anyone, should have recognised Him as their Messiah but they did not.  Instead they sent Him to a criminal’s death even though He had done nothing wrong.  John was there that day.  Of all of the disciples he is the only one whom we know to have stayed at the foot of the cross watching his master and friend die.

If the story were to end there, it would be a story of failure.  It would be the story of the Eternal, Almighty, Invincible Word rejected, humiliated and defeated.  But, praise the Lord, the story does not end there. On the morning of the third day, John stood in the doorway of an empty tomb.  Later that day he saw, and spoke with his friend and master again.  He watched and listened as Peter was restored to his place of leadership.  He witnessed Jesus’ ascension into heaven. He was there on that first Pentecost.  He has spent a lifetime witnessing to and leading in the Church.  Now he looks back and says, 'Yes, most people rejected Him but some received Him and just look at their reward'.  Those who received Him, those who put their trust in Him rather than in anything else in all creation, received from Him both the power and authority to become children of God.  What does it mean to be a child of God?  At its most basic it means to be in that same relationship with God as the relationship that John describes as existing between God and the Word.  It means being no longer separated from God by our sin but being restored into the loving relationship with Him for which He has always intended for us.  And it is only possible through the Word become flesh – Jesus.  It is He who gives to those who put their faith in Him both the right and the ability to enter into a right relationship with God.

The Apostle John tells us with awe and wonder how the Eternal, Almighty Word came to earth in human form.  His name was Jesus.  He was born in a stable in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth and became a carpenter like His earthly father. Then He started travelling around teaching and healing people.  John had followed Him and become one of his close friends. There had always been something special about Him and now John puts his finger on it.  “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth”.  The glory to which John refers is nothing less that the Shekinah glory of God.  It is the same word used of the bright cloud that God used to guide Israel out of Egypt and that rested upon the Tabernacle and above the mercy seat in the Most Holy Place.  This cloud symbolised God’s presence and what John is saying is that we have seen God dwelling amongst us.  Jesus was the very embodiment of all that God is.  John and the others looked at Him, they observed His life and they could tell that He was different.  In Himself He was:
-  the very embodiment of grace and truth
-  the perfect expression of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness
    and self-control
-  the absolute embodiment of all that God can be.

It was Peter who recognised and first blurted out “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” but they all knew, when they took the time to look, because it was so obvious:  Jesus is the incarnate (i.e. put in fleshly form) Word of God.

Yes, I think John would have been an excellent film maker.  He has taken us back before the dawn of time and shown us a perfect relationship between God and the Word.  He has shown us John the Baptist proclaiming the good news of the coming of the Word into this world.  Now he places the focus where it will remain for the rest of his account, and the rest of his life - on Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God.

On whom are you focussed this Christmas?  It is so easy to be distracted by all the fuss and hullabaloo that surrounds Christmas.  It’s easy to sentimentalise Christmas, to be all gooey-eyed over the image of a little baby in a manger and to lose sight both of who He is and why He came.  John bids us see that child both as He always was and as He is now; as the Eternal Word of God and as our Risen, Victorious Saviour and Lord.  Why?  So that we will believe in Jesus and by believing, like John, receive both the right and ability to enter into a right and living relationship with God.  This Christmas, have you put your trust in Jesus?  Are you in that right relationship with God?  Are you rejoicing in what God has done for you through Jesus?  Or does Christmas simply mean to you another few days off work and an excuse for a good feed?  I hope and pray that Christmas has been, and will continue to be, for you happy, blessed and centred on Jesus Christ Himself.   AMEN.
 

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