Midnight Mass: Just a Cosmic Word

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: John 1:1-14

In the Beginning was the Word. For me this immediately conjures in my mind some image of galaxies, like something out of Star Trek. The vibe is cosmic. And it’s deliberate.

John had probably read Mark’s Gospel, which begins with the same word ‘arche’ ­‘beginning’; But while Mark starts the beginning of his Gospel with John the Baptist, John takes us back to the beginning of creation. John is thinking Big – Because the other book that starts ‘in the beginning’ is Genesis, and nothing comes before Genesis. Unless of course you’re Phil Collins in which case there was a few small acting jobs and a band called ‘Flaming Youth’, before Genesis.

In the beginning was Phil Collins. Sorry ‘In the beginning was the Word’. Technically this is really before the beginning. Creation isn’t starting till verse 3. Perhaps ‘at’ the beginning would be better. And the ‘Word’: ‘logos’ In Greek, it can refer either to ‘thought’ or ‘speech’. For the stoic philosophers it meant ‘rational thought’; We’ve already referenced Genesis with the first words of God ‘let there be light’ so we might also think of it as something like ‘creative power’, or ‘revelation’.  As the psalms tell us: ‘by the word of the Lord the heavens were made’ (33.6) Or as we hear through the prophets ‘Now the word of the Lord came to me’ (e.g. Ezek. 1.3, Amos 3.1) In both these cases the Word is not abstract, but active – creating, revealing.

And the Word is probably best associated with Wisdom. So in the book of Proverbs (8) we read:

“The Lord created me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work,the first of his acts of long ago. 
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 
then I was beside him, like a master worker”

So John in this first sentence, ‘In the beginning was the Word’ has pulled together a fusion of Jewish, Greek and Early Christian thinking to say that at the beginning, before, without creation, a universe; there is a thought, an expression, wisdom, something active, creative, revealing. To paraphrase: within the universe, there is hidden meaning, that seeks to reveal itself. It’s like the universe is a great Punch and Judy show with all the nonsense, violence and crocodiles you can imagine, but behind it – spoiler alert! – there’s actually a puppeteer trying to tell a story, though these toys seem to have a life of their own.

So this first line. The line we remember from each Christmas, along with  ‘It was Christmas Eve babe, in the drunk tank’ This line, is a statement that life has a point. And I think, this year, that’s almost enough in itself to contend with.

Now, organised religion has not fared terribly well in Europe since the 60s. And yet, curiously, people remain ‘spiritual’; They often believe in life-after-death, in the supernatural; they practice meditation, mindfulness and keep gratitude journals. It’s only a small number who are die-hard fundamentalist atheists. I always think they’re curious. It’s like if you want to play cricket and you’re looking to see if there’s a cricket ball in the bushes in your garden – An accurate summary of most of my childhood – If you find it, you have it.  You know it’s there. It’s in your hand. Though you might be surprised that it doesn’t look like you expect, having soaked up rain and been nibbled by squirrels. But if you don’t find it, can you really be sure it’s not there? Especially if your brothers are playing catch?

But actually, it may be that the spiritual non-religious people are more perplexing. Religions present world-views and cultures which have been reflected on for hundreds or thousands of years; they’ve been developed, examined and critiqued by great minds of our species; they’ve been illustrated, given expression, in the finest arts and culture that we possess; and yet people so often seem to think that their ideas, formulated out of teenage anxiety, a bad relationship and a whiskey-fuelled conversation late one night, have more validity and greater perception than the combined wisdom of millions.

And actually there is such diversity within Christianity, so many voices who have wrestled to uncover the truths hidden in our fabric, building on past generations, that I think we might be justified in asking people to consult outside of their own experience. And it seems people can believe in ghosts and not God; follow horoscopes, but not philosophy; practice meditation, but scoff at prayer. But what do I know? I’m biased.

What this first line of St John’s Gospel has been telling us for two thousand years, is that there’s meaning in the world. But it’s not just your truth, your wisdom, your experience, It’s wisdom and truth for the whole world. And it’s active – it wants to be revealed, to be discovered. It is a light shining in the darkness.

But how easy is it to believe that life has meaning today? What threatens most people’s beliefs is when the world isn’t as they want it, or think it, should be. Which is extraordinary if you think about. “I realise God that, according to Wikipedia (which you’ve probably come across), the universe is 13.8 billion years old and 558 billion trillion miles in diameter, and I’m only 5’9” and 26 years old, but let me tell you…” But regardless, in a world where disease is at the forefront of our minds, and news, it’s natural to ask why, and does this meaning justify the suffering we see?

The Gospel’s answer to this is that no amount of suffering can correspond to or outweigh the infinite value of love. So if a statistician were weighing on a scale, on one side suffering, on the other love, our faith says that even the smallest act of love is enough to tip the scale against all the suffering of the world. It’s not the suffering doesn’t matter, it’s simply that love matters infinitely. John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus came to reveal the love of God to the world. And yes before Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, John revealed that: This love is the light that shines in the darkness. And no amount of darkness can snuff out a candle.

In a sense we can see this with how people have reacted to the pandemic. I was reading through the statistics last night. 94% of deaths are people over 60. 99% of deaths are people older than me. And mostly those missing percentage points are covered by people who have other health conditions, who are poor, overweight, or smoke. Natural selection is not on their side.

But we’re not hearing a great clamouring to open the nightclubs, the malls. Apart from 400 youths on Saturday in a disused Marks and Spencer’s in Putney, which is according to the Sun a ‘posh suburb’. There’s a wide recognition that we must protect the vulnerable. And when you think how quickly we’ve adapted; how completely humanity has changed to protect a small and largely economically unnecessary part of the species, we should be a little impressed. And unless you’ve completely departed this planet, I’m sure you’ve also noticed in the last year some remarkable sacrifices; an upsurge in fundraising and charitable activity; in care within streets and communities; there is a light shining in the darkness.

This revelation, this Gospel, that John penned two thousand years ago, he wrote having witnessed this truth that God loved the world. Not in order to make it perfect, to make everyone happy, to get everyone the things they like at Christmas Which is how we usually judge God’s work – the cosmic Santa – but for the sake of love. Love is what makes us the best version of ourselves, even in suffering, and even in death. And this love shines in the darkness and neither suffering nor death can understand or overcome it.

And perhaps faith is difficult in these times.  Trying to make sense of a frenetic and anxious world. But if we can put the metaphysics to one side, our own preconceptions about religion; our grief, fear and stumbling science; we can perhaps grasp that this life does have a point; and that meaning hidden since the foundation of the world is love;

And actually that’s very simple. Because we know it instinctively in our families; we are already living it and seeing it through this hellish year. And the joy and light that springs from showing another person love, or having love shown to us, is for many enough to convince that it’s the most important thing in the universe. Or, to put it another way, since it’s Christmas, and at Christmas you tell the truth – Love actually does make the world go round. Amen.