(John 1)

 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. 6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

In this passage John absorbs some of the thinking of his time and then represents it as explaining the coming of Christ. This Greek philosophy (known as Platonism) was that there were two worlds, which existed in parallel to each other. There was the earthy, physical, transitional world in which we live and there was the eternal, unmoving spiritual world of which we can only ever glimpse. What John does is to collapse these two worlds into each other and suggest that they are fulfilled in the person of Christ. John is doing to Greek philosophy what the church has been doing to culture ever since which is to absorb, adapt and represent it in Christological terms. It is what we do on the run into Christmas when we baptise a commercially driven celebration and draw out hidden and underlying implications and meanings of what is happening – what is the true meaning of Christmas becomes the echoing cry of the church.

This passage puts the Christmas story into the context of eternity. Jesus was a baby lying in a manger crying out to his mother but the was also the eternal word of God evident at the creation of the world. It highlights the loss of narrative by which we live our lives. We are locked into a commercial framework where we see something as ours by right because we have earned it and paid for it. The attitude of the consumer creeps into how we understand our lives – church is judged on the basis of whether it does or does not do something for us. Governments are judged at election time solely on the basis of how they will or will not improve the economy – experiential consumerism takes over from material consumption. What do you buy for the person who has all they want? You pay for an experience (as I am doing this year in taking my mother to the theatre).

There is a family narrative that locks people in at Christmas which can be as affirming on some occasions as it is destructive on others – there is nothing like the assumption that everyone must be having a genial and glowing time to make you feel depressed and miserable; for many this is the reality of Christmas. ‘When people don’t believe in anything they don’t end up believing in nothing – they end up believing in everything. This means snatching at truths without the context to appreciate them – of course family life is important but it is not worth parents going into debt trying to purchase the perfect Christmas – the challenge to parents is not give the best but to be the best.