Why does Word that is God nearly completely disappear from the rest of the scriptures?
Gospel Reading: John 1:1-14
For Sunday, Dec. 25 , 2011: Year B—Christmas Day
Abandon the co-opted narrative—it has become unrecognizable. This baby is not the Christ child—this baby is stillborn, lifeless, plastic, inanimate. Remove the figurine from the manger scene; it is a distraction—a distraction we cannot afford.
The Word…
Jesus was not in the beginning. The Word was in the beginning, before the beginning, before time and all things came into being through the Word. The Word emanates from God, the Word is God, hovering over the primordial waters speaking life into being, hovering over Mary speaking life into being, impregnating the world, becoming flesh.
The Word became human, the child Jesus, the man Jesus, only son of the Father, who was crucified, dead and buried, who rose on the third day. In that rising, taking up death with him, encompassing death in life, and that life is the light of everyone, whether we recognize it or not.
Limitless Limiting
The prologue of John is a story of the limitless life—the creating pulse of the God—the Word. It is the limitless God acting at a particular point in time, in a particular way, to re-enliven creation.
Not re-borning it of the blood of the Empire that projects and protects power through sacred violence. Creation is not being reborn of the will of the flesh, which seeks a self-dulling, a sort of zombie-like half-life through consumption. Not being reborn of the will of man through the subjugation of the gestatators of life and all others by imposing schemes of expansion and erection of his own reflection. No.
The Word became flesh, limited the Word’s self, so that all may be reborn of God; that is, to be reborn through the Word emanating from God, creating and recreating all things. The Word limits the Word’s self for this brief moment in time, to bring to us the possibility of participating in the limitlessness of Creation.
Paraclete
It seem a corrupting move to limit this in-breaking of Creator God to this narrative of the ever narrowing interpretation of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. However, John, in the fourteen chapter of his gospel writes the God is sending another, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will teach us everything and remind us of everything Jesus, taught us.
The Word is still among us, but no longer in the flesh, but as Paraclete. The Spirit is the Word that is not limited but makes possible for us a limitless understanding of the Light, the Truth and the Life. Where is the Word as Spirit in our Christmas pageants? Let us embrace this person of the Trinity that has not been commoditized.
The Hardest Question
Why does Word that is God and whom through all things are created and recreated, and who comes to be among us, nearly completely disappear from the rest of the scriptures?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
