A Word that creates, saves and judges

Christmas Mass during the day

Remember the old adage, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me”. It’s a standard response to an insult, implying that “You might be able to hurt me by physical force and violence but not by insults.” It implies, that “words”, at least hurtful words, have no power over us. But the truth is that, this is a lie. Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. Words can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, they bleed afresh whenever we remember those words. Yes, “sticks and stones may break my bones”, but let’s be honest, words do hurt me.

If there is power in words to destroy, to tear down, to hurt and break, what about the power of words to restore, build up, and to heal? Such power of words, like its evil counterpart, should never be underestimated. In fact, as our Christmas gospel today proclaims, it took only One Word to create the world, One Word to save it, and One Word to judge us all.

If you had attended the Mass during the night, you would have heard the story of Christmas, the birth of Our Lord and Saviour in Bethlehem, taken from the Gospel of Saint Luke. But this morning, the gospel reading comes from the Fourth Gospel, Saint John’s gospel. Now unlike the gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, John’s gospel does not have an infancy narrative. What John does here is quite simply profound. While Matthew and Luke trace their accounts of Jesus back to Joseph and Mary then to the patriarchs, John traces Jesus all the way back, to before God created anything. He does this in order to show us that the Son of God existed before even creation existed. So, in place of an infancy narrative, Saint John gives us a prologue which speaks of the “Word”. There is no mention of angels or shepherds or a manger or even the Holy Family but describes Christmas in this short, simple but deeply profound verse, “The Word was made flesh, He lived among us, and we saw His glory.” This is at the heart of the Incarnation – the enfleshing of God. If the infancy narratives in the other gospels speak of what happened; the Incarnation tells us what it means.

Yes, “the Word was made flesh.” Word is a good name for the Son of God for many reasons. Jewish people used “Word” (dabar) as a name for God and God's action. To call Jesus “Word” then, was to say He was God. To the Jewish people words make things happen. They do things. In Scripture, God says that just as the rain and snow bring forth plants, “so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). Jesus the Word was God's active, dynamic power.

The “Word” or in Greek, “Logos”, had already been employed by Greek philosophers before its introduction in the Fourth Gospel. In Greek thought, the word ‘logos’ had diverse meanings. On the one hand, it contained the idea of reason, but also that of discourse’, the spoken word. The first to develop a definite philosophy of the Logos was Heraclitus (550-480 B.C.). He spoke of the Logos as a universal mind, responsible for the harmony and order of the world, a mind which permeated everything but which most people were unaware of or did not understand. Plato (427-347 B.C.) principally used the concept of Logos according to its meaning of “discourse” and “reason,” though assigning to it a character of transcendence. But beginning with the Stoic philosophers (from the 3rd century onwards), a more sophisticated doctrine of the Logos emerged. The Logos took on characteristics of a divine, spiritual principle. It is prefaced by the adjective “divine” and at times substituted by the name “God.”

Finally, it was in the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.-50 A.D.) that two different worlds converge: the theological elements gathered from the Old Testament, especially from the Books of Wisdom and Proverbs, and the teachings of Neo-Platonic philosophy. According to this understanding, Wisdom intervened in the formation of a world it did not create, but of which it was a mediator. It had the task of leading human beings to God and of revealing the plan of salvation. This finally prepared the foundation for Saint John’s powerful and theologically deep exposition of the Word of God.

One can safely say that Saint John’s treatment of the Logos is unique and original. His Logos is not just a rational concept, a personification of logic, or mere discursive speech. His Logos is not trapped in the world of ideas nor even a subordinate mediator of God’s creative power and revelation. No. Saint John makes several important claims about his Logos right from the very start: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God…” The evangelist, using an opening line that draws us back to the first book of the Bible, to the beginning of creation, in fact to the time before creation, makes this powerful and audacious claim. This Word was already existing at “the beginning” and He was not only “with God” but He is God Himself. Yes, the Word is Eternal, the Word is distinct from the God who begot Him but the Word is also God. In just this one opening line, Saint John plunges with us into the ocean depths of mystery and profundity of the Most Holy Trinity.

Saint John explicitly affirms the role played by the Logos in the creation of the world: “Through Him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him …” He is the Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all things seen and unseen. The Word also possesses the divine attributes of life, holiness, and light. He possesses the fullness of grace, of truth and of glory. But the most shocking statement is to follow, a statement that would challenge every Greek philosopher who viewed the world of matter as inferior or illusory, whilst the spiritual realm of ideas or the Logos as superior. For Saint John, His Logos was not an aloof concept. His very mission was to be sent into the world, because “this” Logos “was made flesh and lived among us” (v. 14). The Logos Saint John was describing was not the impersonal force of the Greeks, but a true person, one with God and yet capable of walking as a man among men. He’s not just a brilliant idea or an inspiring word. He was with God in the beginning and in fact He is God – the Transcendent God. But John’s Logos also possesses all the concreteness of what is visible and capable of suffering, as He “was made flesh.” Saint John presents the Logos as He who is truly accessible, He who John’s own eyes have seen and his hands have touched (1Jn 1:1), and He who is, at the same time, the one and same heavenly Logos, the eschatological judge at the centre of the apocalyptic vision of the final battle (cf. Apoc 19:13).

So, as we gather to celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus, we must never fail to forget that we are celebrating the birth of the Word that “was made flesh.” For all eternity going backward and for all eternity moving forward, Jesus, the Son of God, has always been with God and has always been God. The Word was God at the time the beginning began. There has never been a time when the Word of God was not God. A Christmas without acknowledging this central truth, is a Christmas shorn of its very essence and meaning. Today, I appeal to you to not just listen to my words. My words have no power on their own. They do not inspire. They do not excite. They can’t possibly give life. No, today, God presents to all of us the power of the Word. The One Word who created the world, the One Word who saves it and the One Word who will come again to judge the living and the dead. This Word “was made flesh and lived among us, and we saw His glory.” This Word has a name, it is “Jesus”!