City United Reformed Church
CHRISTMAS FOR ADULT CHRISTIANS
Session 7
Have a look now at the Gospel of John. I think most of us would agree that his “Christmas story” comes in the first chapter, which is always read around Christmas: In the beginning was the Word….” (verse 1). Read John 1.1-18.
Now read Provers 8.22 and following:
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth--
when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
And now, my children, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.
Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD;
but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death."
In John the birth of Jesus (at his baptism/conversion? biological birth?) seems to imply the incarnation of a Holy Wisdom that has existed alongside God from the very beginning, as a dimension of God. The trouble is, the word “wisdom” in the Bible is a feminine word: “Sophia”. John couldn’t very well identify Jesus, or what Jesus embodied, with the feminine gender, so he changes “Sophia” to the Greek word “Logos” (a male gender word), which doesn’t mean just “Word” but is also a dynamic, creative power, much like “Wisdom” in Proverbs.
Now look at John 1.10-13. Notice the ambiguity. When John says the Word came into the world, does he mean “Jesus” came into the world? Or the Word or Wisdom of God that he embodied in his life and teaching? See, there is a difference. Notice how the above passage from Proverbs (and much else in that book) warns us (verse 36, the last line in the passage quoted above) of what happens to those who do not accept Holy Wisdom. Here in John those who accept “the Word” (all the wisdom that Jesus embodied in his life and teaching) are “children of God”. They, too, have embodied or incarnated or put flesh on God’s Word. They are sons of God, like Jesus.
There is a huge tension of ambiguity here. On the one hand, throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus is the one unique Son of God. On the other hand, you and I are constantly invited to do everything he did, as children of God. “We are now children of God” (1 John 3.2). And remember the “new commandment” is to be like Jesus: “to love one another, as I have loved you” (John 13.34). And again, from 1 John: “God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in union with God” (1 John 4.16).
The only virgin birth in the Gospel of John is your virgin birth. Those who accept the Word as the shape of their lives are born not of a human father but from God. YOu are a child of God, embodying the will of God. This is your own virgin birth, just like that of Jesus in Luke and Matthew (and at his conversion/baptismin Mark and Paul?):
They did not become God’s children by natural means, that is, by being born as the children of a human father; God himself was their Father.
Now, write something—anything. A poem, a hymn, a story, a narrative of resistance or of acquiescence to the persence of the Wisdom of God in your life. Title it: “I am a Child of God”. How will your life put flesh on the desires of God? How will your life mediate God to the world around you? How will you live as the sister or brother of Jesus? This will be your own Christmas story as an adult Christian.