Thoughts on Christmas Carols III

“O Come, All Ye Faithful”

John begins his good news about the messiah not when Jesus begins his ministry, and not when Jesus is born, but much, much earlier. John’s gospel opens with the words “In the beginning.” That’s a bold way to start, because he is borrowing that line from the very beginning of the book of Genesis, the first words of the Torah, or books of Moses. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s our creation story in Genesis, and here is John, giving us a new version, because he thinks there is something else we need to know about the creation of the world. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”

The word. In the original Greek, the word is Logos. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God. Word is kind of a shallow translation. Logos means word, but it also means speech, conversation, even language itself. Logos means the wisdom and reason by which we communicate and make ourselves known to one another. Logos is God’s word to us, expressed in the scriptures and prophets. Logos is the expression of God’s love for us, beginning with the very act of creation. As long as there has been God, there has been God’s logos: God’s word.

Let me put it this way. If you to Washington D.C., and go to the Lincoln Memorial, you will find that grand statue of President Lincoln who faces out past the pillars over the reflecting pool toward the Capital building. Written on the walls of that monument are two of his speeches. The Gettysburg address:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

And his second inaugural address, given near the end of the civil war:

“As God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”

Those are the words Lincoln spoke, but they are also his word. They capture his spirit, his compassion, his vision, and his values. They contain his essence. That’s what Logos means: the word of God is the essence and character of God.

John writes about the word of God, through whom everything was created. He writes about the word because he needs to tell people the amazing thing that happened: The word became flesh, and dwelled among us.”

Isn’t that amazing? The logos of God - God’s essence, God’s wisdom, love, creativity – God’s logos was all packed into a human being, and he lived right among us. He dwelled among us, which translates literally as “He pitched a tent among us.” He lived just like the rest of us.

And that is why, in the final, culminating verse of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” we sing, “word of the father, now in flesh appearing.” Can you believe it? Can you believe this amazing thing that God did?

And here’s what’s even more amazing, John says: people didn’t even notice. “though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” They didn’t realize what had happened. Maybe it was so far beyond their wildest dreams that they couldn’t see it. The word was living among them, and they didn’t see it. And that poses a question to you and me. Do we notice? Do we recognize the presence of the risen Christ in our world? Or do we still not notice what God is doing right here among us?

We sing “word of the father, now in flesh appearing.” Now. Not a long time ago, but now. And then we sing the refrain: O come, let us adore him.

That refrain is interesting. “Let us adore him” might sound like “aaahh, isn’t the baby adorable?” But this is more than that. To adore is to love. Let us adore him means “let us love God; let us love his way of mercy and compassion above all else. Let us love the peace that he brings above other interests. Let us love the good news he brought above all other desires, let us adore bringing good news to the poor, the hurt, the lost, the lonely, the outcast, the foreigner. Let us adore Jesus Christ, as we seek to become like him in our own lives.”

It is more than “isn’t the baby adorable?” I am sure that’s not what they had in mind back when they first told these stories in the gospels. They did not have quite the same baby culture that we have. To us, babies are cute and adorable. To them, babies were vulnerable. That’s the main impression they would have had. Imagine the shock, then, that God would come to the world this way, vulnerable, exposed to the pain and cruelty of the world in the most tragic ways, just like us. Word of the father, now in flesh appearing. In this small, helpless, vulnerable flesh, God comes near. O come, let us adore him. Let us love him with our whole lives.