The Gospel - John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All 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.
Homily by the Reverend John S. Ruef
Go and do thou likewise.
The Christian year has begun. We have lived through
four Sundays of Advent with its message of the coming of the end of the world.
But we seem to have won a reprieve. The child born to Mary and Joseph is hailed
by angels and Magi as a Savior. But in the Gospel attributed to John it is the
Logos, the Word of God, which has become flesh and dwelt among us. The
Fourth gospel takes us beyond time into the very mind of God.
To put it simply, in the language of today, Jesus is what it’s
all about. He represents God’s plan most fully. A fallen world must look to him
to see what God really intended in Creation. The Fourth gospel seeks to
look beyond the material and physical to the mind of God to comprehend the
central reality of God. The answer turns out to be love. This is what is in
the beginning.
The Old Testament account
renders the Creation Story in terms which were comprehensible to a
civilization in their thought forms. This writer begins with the first three
words of the Creation Story as it appears in English, In the beginning.
In the birth of Jesus he sees not simply the birth of a child, but the
realization in human form of the very person of God.
The Fourth Gospel is the answer to the very human thought of one caught up in the material world and its disappointments: there must be more to it than this. Jewish thought expressed this something more as the world to come. Greek thought replaced the world to come with the notion of heaven.
The writer of the Fourth Gospel attempts to get behind all these notions to the essence of them all. It is the Word. It is Jesus. It is love as it is expressed in Jesus’ life. It is the Jesus who girds himself with a towel and washes the disciples’ feet. It is the Jesus who pours out his blood for many.
But it is also the Jesus who says to the inquisitive lawyer who wishes to know about eternal life, go and do thou likewise.