Of Things Cosmic (John 1:1 - 14)

     In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . So begins what is for my money the most beautiful passage in the New Testament.  And perhaps the most puzzling, too . . . We kind of skate over it, we’re so used to it, but there’s more cosmic talk, more mind-bending ideas stuffed into this one passage than just about any I can think of, off the top of my head, anyway.  In the beginning was the Word . . . In the beginning of what, for Pete’s sake?  The world?  The universe?  And how can anything be there in the beginning?  How can something be there before anything else?   Where did this Word come from, anyway?  Who—or what—made it? Just thinking about it makes my head hurt, I get this little pain, right between my eyes  . . .

But wait . . . there’s more!  The Word was with God and the Word was God?  What is that supposed to mean?  How can a person be somebody and be with that somebody at the same time?  Now the pain is getting stronger, and it's throbbing, as if somebody’s driving an ice-pick into my brain.  And all this in just the first sentence, too.

To paraphrase a certain Midwestern girl, we’re not in Kansas anymore, and why should we be?  We're dealing with the eternal here, with things of the divine, our puny minds aren't supposed to get this stuff, God is way beyond us so we might as well just go with it,  etcetera, etcetera . . .  But perhaps part of it . . . Certainly not all, but part . . . is how we’ve been conditioned, how we’ve been taught, as much as anything else?

As I've said before, Western reasoning—and by “western” I mean Greco-Roman, which holds sway in Europe and the Americas—western reasoning is based on the notion that if something is one thing, it can't be another.  That the answer to any yes or no question is either . . . yes or no, and nothing in between.  It's how computers function, as a series of binary operations, and how we've all been taught to think.  “Rational” thought is a series of “if-then” statements: if A is true, then B must be true.  If not-A, then C, and so on.  And thank goodness without this kind of reasoning, which might be called dualistic, we wouldn't have computers, or space flight, or cold medicine.  All scientific and technological and advancement depends on this kind of thought.

And yet . . . In Eastern thought there is another way.  In Buddhism, it's called advaita, the non-dual, and right here at the outset, in the very first verse, there is a statement right in that groove,  a “non-dualistic” statement or, as Richard Rohr might say, a “both-and” declaration: this “Word” both was God and was with God.  And following close on its heels is another claim: all things came into being through him and at the same time, in him.  In and through . . . all things, the entire creation.  This Word who was God and was with God . . . everything was created in and through him, the whole shebang.  Things were created in him and through the Word, but that selfsame Word was God, was it not?  So all things were created by him as well . . . weren’t they?  Are your heads starting to hurt too?

Let's just stop there a moment to catch our breath . . . or our heads . . . we’re talking about a cosmic being here, are we not?  A cosmic entity . . . And we often conflate this entity with Jesus, do we not?  But note carefully: this entity is not Jesus, not yet anyway.  It is the Word, which is what we use to translate the Greek word logos . . . but “Word” doesn't really compass all the nuances of logos . . . It is full of inference and meaning.   It could mean a single word, or an idea, a concept, or it could mean a reckoning, a settlement of accounts.  In Stoic philosophy it was the rational principle of the universe, by which all the cosmos was ordered, but John was a Jew, and in Jewish thought it was rich with significance . . . the word of God spoke creation into existence . . . God's word ordered Jewish lives in the form of the law, and through the prophets it spoke out in comfort or in judgment . . . it is related to Lady Wisdom, who is called Sophia, who in Proverbs works alongside God, accomplishing God's plan for humanity . . . all of these associations – creative force, rational principle, law, judgment, wisdom – all are bound up in that one word Logos, which we translate as "Word."  And when John uses it here, all these associations come along with it.

And what came into being both through and in this Word?  What came into being was life itself.  But not life in the narrow, biological sense—as in something with ribonuclease acid that reproduces itself—but in the sense of all created things, for where would we biological things be without rocks and carbon and oxygen?  Where would we be without silicon and soil and sunlight?  What came into being through the Word, what came into being in the Word was everything, it was indeed life.

Others in the New Testament have recognized this eternal, cosmic nature of the Word as well.  There, he is called the Christ, and in Ephesians, Christ is “all in all,” in 1 Corinthians, Christ is the power and wisdom of God . . . In Revelations, Christ is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.  But nowhere else—besides John, that is—is the notion as well-developed as in the Christ Hymn in Colossians’ first chapter, where Christ “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.”  Sounds remarkably like our passage, doesn't it?  Yet it was written considerably before, and there’s little evidence that John had contact with Colossians . . . but once again, all things were created both through Christ and in Christ.  Further, Colossians claims that “in him all things hold together.” That is, Christ is both superstructure and infrastructure, endoskeleton and exoskeleton of the whole shebang.  Christ is the organizing principle of the universe, the fundamental particle, the superglue that keeps all things together . . . only this superglue actually works.

Finally, Christ “is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell . . .”  The fullness of God . . . poured out into Christ . . . an important thing to note, about all these things, that it's not Jesus they are talking about, but Christ . . . It wasn't Jesus there at the beginning of things, it's not Jesus who holds all things together, it is not Jesus who is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.  It is the Christ, which is Greek for anointed one, who is eternal.

As some of you know, I’m involved in a two-year Living School, and one of my instructors is Richard Rohr, who used to be here in Cincy . . . And when he was asked what he wanted to get across in one particular unit of study, he said he'd love it if he could get folks to stop thinking so much about the little baby Jesus.  And by that he meant not only that Jesus had a ministry as an adult, but that Jesus was a particular instantiation, which we call incarnation, of the divine Word, and that it's not Jesus up in the sky, in a what a friend we have in Jesus kind of way.

What Rohr was talking about is what many theologians call the Cosmic Christ, or the Christ Principle, and it is what John describes in this first breathtaking, confounding, wonderful chapter, and though John goes on to describe the particular instantiation as human—which we think of as the incarnation, and which as we will see next week might be better thought of as an incarnation—it is worth considering the Christ Principle, for it is that Cosmic Christ that is the divine spark that underlies all of creation.

It is also that cosmic Christ, that cosmic ordering principle that holds all things together, that divine spark that I believe underlies and ties together the world faiths, East and West . . . What we call Christ, Buddhists call karma . . .  Hindus call Devanagari . . . All describe eternal ordering principles, fundamental divine particles that hold all creation together, that are intertwined, suffusing all of reality.

Now, before you accuse me of heresy, and I have to beat a hasty retreat—feets don't fail me now—let me say that what is unique about Christianity, what is our ace in the hole as Jim Finley likes to say, is the notion of incarnation.  Which John describes next and which we take up next week.  What gives us our power, what gives us hope is that we believe that this divine, eternal being—co-existent in the beginning, who was with God and was God—emptied himself of his God-hood for you and me.  And that's where we take up the story next week.  Amen.

John the Who? (Luke 3:1 - 6)

      And our third reading is from the Second Book of Presidents, the fourth chapter and the 15^th verse: In the eighth year of the reign of President Clinton, when Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Jeb Bush was ruler of Florida and his brother George ruler of the region of Texas, during the high priesthood of Clifton Kirkpatrick and Attorney General Janet Reno, the word came to Peter Jennings, anchor of ABC News in the City of New York.  And, Lo!  It went into 7 million homes across the land, proclaiming the victory of Albert, son of Gore, in the region of Florida. And jubilation arose in the camp of the Democrat warriors, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in Republican lands, until lo, an hour later a different word came and Albert son of Gore was cast into the fiery pit of undecided,  adrift in the sea of “too close to call.”

      And behold! This was a warning unto the nations, that the prophets Dan and Diane and Matt Lauer should not be trusted in their pronouncements, that they are not true prophets of the Lord God of Israel, and that yearning and longing for the coming of the President would be long upon the land.

      Well, enough of that . . . you get the picture. At just this time of year fifteen years ago, in a time normally reserved for waiting on Christ, we were in fact waiting on a President. And the first warning sign wasn't a star in the east, or an angel whispering in the ear of the Virgin Mary. It was Dan Rather, prophet of the technological age, rushing to judgment on “Election 2000" or “Decision 2000" or whatever it was called, declaring Florida going to Gore, then retracting it barely an hour later. And in the hours after that, it happened not once, but twice more, driving Gore to first concede, and then un-concede to then-Governor Bush.

      And according to the media, the candidates had a few choice words to say to each other. But who really knows?   The press, with their million-dollar polling, and their billion dollar satellite links weren't exactly on top of their game that night.  If the wise men had been the media, they would have followed a 747, instead of the star, and they would have ended up in Turkey or Bulgaria instead of Bethlehem.  Thank God that God’s prophets are a little more reliable than ours.  Take John the Baptist for example. As far as we know, he got it right the first time.  There’s no “At this time, the polls are closed in lower Judea, and Jerusalem Broadcast Corporation is able to project that Jesus is the Messiah . . .” or if there was, Luke doesn’t tell us about it . . . he’s too busy telling the story, too busy quoting Isaiah, telling us that John’s is “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord’”

      Luke interweaves the stories of Jesus and John – one of whom is the Son of God – and it's clear we’re meant to compare the two, so similar are their stories. He begins it with a story of a birth almost as miraculous as Jesus', when John was born to Elizabeth, who was barren.  And an angel comes to Zechariah, her husband, but he doesn’t believe it – and does that remind you of Sarah?  Laughing?  – so he’s struck mute, not a particularly good thing for a Temple priest, who has to say the ritual words and chant the ritual chants.

      And right here, we’re pointed in those two Advent directions, to the past and to the future, for the Advent of King David was also marked by a miraculous birth, as was the Advent of Israel, when Jacob was born to Sarah. In fact, all through the scripture, such births are signs of divine transformation, symbols of God's radical acts, as new life is brought forth, and new hope springs into the world.

      And so angels come to Mary, and say to her – as they said to Zechariah – that a child will be born. And right off the bat, we know that this child will be great, even greater than John, because Mary was a virgin, and a virgin birth trumps a barren birth, any day of the week.  If John was great, Jesus would be greater still, as signified by that greater miracle.  Jesus would be the super-John, John raised to the umpteenth power, magnified again and again. John was born of a barren woman, but Jesus would be born of a virgin; and in all Hebrew and Christian scripture, there are many opened wombs, but only one virgin birth. So John's very birth is a pointer, a looking-forward, to the coming of the Lord. Not only would he proclaim it in his ministry, but enact it in his very life, even in the manner of his own coming.  And even before he was born, John proclaimed the advent, the good news of Christ, leaping for joy in his mother's womb.

      And with that long laundry-list of rulers, Luke tells us when all this took place – about 30 AD, give or take a year or two—but more importantly who is in charge.  It was the time of Emperor Tiberius, of Herod and Pilate, when Philip ruled in Ituraea and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests.  And although it seems like just one more list of rulers or ancestors—like who begat who, who begat someone else—it places John's ministry within a historical framework. It shows the divine breaking into human history; it shows the kingdom coming near.  And there’s something else, too.  Luke's stress on the powers that be – his monotonous recital of political movers and shakers – emphasizes the counter-cultural nature of the Gospel.  It was a time of all the great rulers – Tiberius, Herod and Pilate. Philip and Lysanius. Annas and Caiaphas. All these powerful people, in all their powerful splendor, with all their powerful armies and police and temple guards, and where does the word of God go?  To whom is the gospel given to proclaim? To a crazy, wandering Judean, who lived in some cave or another in the wilderness. And although Luke doesn’t describe the Baptist, Matthew has no such qualms – he says he wore camel-skin clothes and ate locusts and wild honey. You could probably smell him a mile away.

      All the glittering stars in the world – all the Herods, all the Caiaphas's, all the Caesars, all the Barbara Steisands and Beyonces and Barack Obamas –  and the word of God made flesh comes to an unknown prophet, out in the wilderness, no less.  Where’s the satellite feed?  Where are the media outlets? How do you make deadlines in the wilderness?  Surely God could have done better than that.  Surely the Gospel could've been sent to, say . . . a senator with access to the Roman mail.  Or a TV anchor, someone who could get it heard around the world.  But the word of God, like the Spirit, goes where it will, and we cannot guess where that will be.

      I can only imagine what would happen today . . . without a press agent, you’re nothing.  Without spin-doctors, you can’t even get to first base, can’t even get near first base, when it comes to media coverage.  I can see it now . . . CNN Atlanta gets a call from someplace called Chill-cote, or Clear-coat, or maybe Chilly-coffee –  something like that, anyway – saying there’s some half-crazed chicken farmer wandering the fields, proclaiming the end of the world, and the first thing out of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth is . . . “who’s he killed?”  Uh, nobody . . . “Is he holed up, then, with a bunch of hostages?”  well, no . . . “Well, what about suicides?  Have his followers committed suicide yet, like those, whatchamacallums . . . saucer people did?”  No . . .  he’s just roaming around the woods alone, predicting the end of the world . . . and you know he wouldn’t be given the time of day . . . especially since his proclamation isn’t all sweetness and light, isn’t some new-age, feel-good personal self-actualization . . . it’s a harsh, uncompromising message of repentance, of “turning away” from old, sinful paths “For the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says.

      And the Baptist’s quoting of Isaiah is more than just prophecy-fulfilling language, although it’s certainly that – at a time when the world was filled with exclusive religions, which actively sought to exclude outsiders, John says that “Every valley shall be filled, Every mountain shall be made low.” All the lands, everywhere, will participate in the Kingdom of God.  And in the last line of our passage he spells it out: “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” All flesh – not just the rich and the powerful. Not just the Jews or the Greeks or the Baptists or the Catholics or the Presbyterians, or maybe even Christians—last time I checked, all means all—but all people, all flesh shall see the salvation of God.  In this age of religious freedom, it's hard for us to realize just how radical this message was. We're used to believing – or at least professing to believe – that salvation is for everyone, regardless of race, creed or color.  But in Luke's day, a religion which offered salvation to all smacked of revolution.  The priests and scribes and temple-hangers-on jealously guarded the keys to the kingdom, and kings and princes and potentates regulated who got the goods.  But the Kingdom of God, which John proclaimed, was freely available to all . . .

      And as a sign of that inclusiveness, as a sign of that revolutionary, stone-cold grace, the word of that grace didn’t come to the Emperor, or the Governor, or the head priests in Jerusalem – although they were all around – neither did it come to the President, or the media moguls or the stated clerk of the PCUSA – God could’ve sent it there, you know . . . instead, it came to an unwashed, hair-shirted locust-eater, out in the worthless wilderness lands, beyond the edge of social acceptability.  Is that a sign, or what?

      Well . . . what about today?  Things are different now, aren’t they?  After all, there’s a certain shortage of virgin births and demon-oustings and other assorted miracles . . . where are the signs of the good news?  These are enlightened times, where we don’t believe in no ghosts, where everything must be logical and provable to be true . . . how do you proclaim the Gospel without any flash and dazzle, without any special effects, without any proof?  Signs of the kingdom, pointers to the word of God, are in short supply.

      But . . . I know a man who was cured, against all odds . . . I know a family that was fed, when they had nothing to eat . . . I know a wanderer – like John! – that was sheltered and given food . . . and I know the church that did all these things,  a 75-year old church that was on the edge, but now is a lot closer to the middle . . . We are a pointer to the kingdom, just by our very presence in this community, in this nation and in this world.

      Like John, the Word has come to us, in this church, here in this time and place, it’s been given to us, and it will burst upon us anew -- fresh and green in just a few short weeks.  In the seventh year of Barack Obama, when Joseph Biden is vice president and John Kasich rules in the region called Ohio, the word of God has and will come to Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian.  And like John, we are called to proclaim that Word, to prepare for the coming of God’s reign, within us and without—when all the valleys will be filled, all the rough places made smooth and straight.  We’re called to be a sign of that Word, of that on-rushing, already-here, already inside of us, kingdom of God, where war and poverty and hunger are no more, where homelessness and abuse and loneliness are erased as if they had never been.

            This Sunday and every Sunday, we will be a sign of the all-inclusive hospitality, the overwhelming, open-hearted welcoming that is God’s Kingdom.  And as the coming year progresses, I challenge each and every one of you to open your hearts, and renew your commitment to living into that hospitality, and by so-doing spreading the Gospel . . . the Word of God has come to us, here in the state of Ohio, in the land of the Bengal Tigers, and that word is wild and precious and saving and true, and it is our duty – and privilege! – to pass it on.  Amen.