On Christmas Day, after Morning Prayer, Fran and I went to our Cottage in Butternuts where we spent the entire day reading and dozing, with an occasional foray for something to nibble on.  In the evening we had dinner with friends and swapped war stories and talked theology over a bottle of Port late into the night.  … It was a perfect Christmas Day; . . . it was a day nothing less than sacred.  . . . On Saint John’s Day, our sons Robert and Scott arrived with their wives and our grandchildren.  And for three days the Rectory hummed with the human litany of squeals of wonder, cries of petulance, and gales of laughter . . . suffused with the incense of pancakes, baked chicken parmesan, Father Bob’s hungarian goulash, and vegetable lasagna.  These too are days that have been sacred.

    I mention this to you because it has reminded me of a tremendously important aspect of our Christian Heritage which is often overlooked and forgotten.  . . . I mention how sacred the domestic rhythm of this Christmastide has been for me, because it brings to mind the truth that our Christian Heritage takes great pains (if we pay attention); . . . our Christian Heritage takes great pains to teach us that before Christ suffered for our sins . . . He hallowed our comforts; . . . that by His ordinary birth into an ordinary home the Son of God has sanctified our hearth and our board and our bed as well as our souls.  . . . And nowhere is that doctrine more clearly stated than in the lovely Christian hymn which is the Gospel Lesson I have just read to you.

    I call the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel a hymn because that is what it is.  It was not written by John, but John has used it to begin his Gospel.  I guess John used the hymn because its theme is a summary of the theological discourse which is at the heart of the Gospel which John the Evangelist did write:  that God’s Holy and Life-creating and Life-giving Word (God’s Logos, as it says in the original Greek) . . . God’s Holy Word has come to us in order to give us a magnificent light; . . . God’s Holy Word has come to us in order to give us a light which has the power of life in it:  a light which will scare away the boogie men and restore us to our original dignity and peace, . . . so that we might belong to the Light and not carouse and die in the dark.

    And so, this ancient Christian hymn with which John begins his Gospel . . . this ancient hymn declares that the beginning of all things was the consequence of God communicating Himself.  God spoke His sacred Identity; . . . God spoke His Logos, His Word, into formless chaos, . . . and chaos was made orderly  and became Creation.  For this reason, the hymn continues, all of Creation is an expression of Who God is, and all the creatures of Creation are alive with God’s Life.  . . . But of all the creatures of Creation . . . it is the privilege of humanity alone to be enlightened by that Holy Life; . . . it is the privilege of humanity alone to be aware of Being.  And, consequently, it is the privilege of humanity alone to know God intelligibly; . . . to participate in and to share God’s Holy Image.

    But that was only a beginning; the best was yet to come, . . . because in the fullness of time, the hymn goes on to say; in the fullness of time the creative Word of God became incarnate.  The Holy Word of God took on a human personality . . . so that through the Incarnate Word, Who is Christ Jesus, we might enter into a new epoch of Creation in which we might not remain mere creatures of God’s Word, but in which we might become kin to God’s Word; . . . so that we might not merely be children of God by act, but become children of God in fact, sharing the same relationship with God as His Word, from Whom we received our essential nature, … which is like His!

    Sadly, however, the darkened human intellect has misconstrued these things to mean that it is God’s will that everything we love should receive His blessing; . . . that everything we desire should be embraced by Heaven.  And so, the ancient hymn declares, . . . even though Jesus has come to His own; . . . even though Jesus has come to everyone who is alive with His Light, . . . they refuse to receive Him because they refuse to desire God’s nature more than their carnal affections.  . . . But, the hymn concludes, to all who have seen in Jesus the God who loves us and Who has enlightened us with His own Life, . . . to us is given what the hymn calls charis:  gracious love -- love which is; . . . love that is neither earned or merited; love that is forgiving and enduring and unforsaking.  For, while God gave Moses to the children of Israel to lead them and to teach them, . . . to us, who are the children of God, God has given Himself(!); . . . we are led and taught by God’s Word . . . by God’s Son; . . . we are led and taught by Jesus.

    This hymn of Christian Faith which begins John’s Gospel takes a somewhat different approach to the Incarnation than we are accustomed to hearing.  It is the tendency of classical Western theology to emphasize sin as God’s motive for becoming Incarnate.  But the Prologue to John’s Gospel suggests that the Incarnation is more a matter of perfecting our spiritual progress; . . . that the Incarnation is more a matter of bringing our souls toward perfection than of fixing our defects.  And so, even though our Church Lectionary consists of a three year cycle of Scripture readings, it is our privilege to hear John’s Prologue read every year on the First Sunday of Christmastide.  . . . We do it, first, so that we might keep our balance.  . . . During the Winter months, whenever I am in this Church for Morning Prayer, my senses are quickly aware that all the windows are glowering at me with a black and cheerless countenance.  Surrounded by Church Light, the blackness at the windows conveys a certain sense of isolation:  that we are alone and cut off from the rest of the world.  . . . The Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel declares that this is precisely so; . . . that the Light which burst forth from the womb of the Virgin Mary -- the Light in Whose Presence we sit at this very moment -- is the light of Heaven.  And we are, indeed, isolated; . . . we are, indeed, apart from the darkened minds which inhabit large portions of our world.  . . . And by this Gospel we are reminded that it is not our duty to embrace those who have refused God’s Light in such a way as to be filled with their darkness.  Rather, the Prologue to John’s Gospel encourages us to keep to the Light and to bear Him into the world … so that the world might be persuaded to embrace the Light; . . . so that the world might yet embrace Him Who is Light and Life.

    The second reason we read Saint John’s Prologue every year on this particular Sunday is to keep our focus.  We read John’s Prologue to remind ourselves that since we belong to the Light and have yielded our allegiance to Him, Who is God’s Word -- Who is Jesus; . . . that since we belong the the Light, we are not only apart from the world, . . . but we are more than the world is; . . . we are more than the world is and certainly more than the world thinks we are.  We are more than a mere collection of similarly minded people who gather, from time to time, in similarly constructed buildings, and who are forced to deal with all the little problems which both things create.  What we truly are; the thing that makes us apart from the world and sacred . . . is that we are a tabernacle of God’s charis; . . . we are a tabernacle of God’s gracious love.  What we truly  are is a well from which God’s tender regard is lavished upon the world . . . whether or not it has been earned; . . . whether or not it is deserved; . . . we lavish God’s tender regard upon the world simply because God desires it . . . and we are His Beloved; we are a sacred Family; . . . we are sons and daughters of God!

    Balance and Focus:  on the First Sunday of Christmastide we read the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel in order to keep our balance and focus; . . . to remember that by the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ at Nazareth and by His Holy Birth at Bethlehem . . . God has sanctified us and our homes by having needed one . . . and by having been nourished and loved in one by a mother named Mary and by a father called Joseph.  . . . God has sanctified us and our homes by making them households hallowed by God’s Delight; hallowed by God’s Light and Life and Love.  All of which means that . . . we who are a Family in Christ . . . all of us together . . . are a living continuance of the ancient Christian hymn which proclaims God’s glory.  We are the living hymn which begins John’s Gospel.  Therefore, Beloved in Christ, . . . make your sanctified life a hymn which is beautiful; . . . make your sanctified life one which is full of Light . . . so that the world around you might encounter God’s Light . . . and believe in His Name.