St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

December 30, 2007; The 1^st Sunday after Christmas

John 1:1-18

THE SCIENTIFIC WORD – ALWAYS, FOR EVERYONE

The Word was how the people of Jesus' day understood the universe. It was another word for science. “Word” was “Logos.” And logos is the word from which we get logic. It is the word at the end of biology and theology and psychology. It means study, statement, organization. It was how educated people saw the universe – not through the lens of religion and ritual, but through the lens of study and science.

So when John is saying, “In the beginning was the Word,” he is appealing to these people, these studious, secular, philosophical people and addressing them using their terms and their own concerns instead of using the terms and concerns of religion at that time.

He is being a missionary by redefining religion in the terms of the culture, rather than asking the culture to redefine itself in the terms of religion. In the same way we could say 'brokenness' when we mean 'sin;' for the culture understands one but hasn't heard of the other for instance, and doesn't really know what it means. So we use missionary words, non-jargon words, as a missionary people.

So a good way to paraphrase John today, in a way that would be perfectly acceptable to the meaning of the scripture, and perfectly understandable to the people of our own day, would be this – as John addresses both cultures, of both the world and of religion:

“In the beginning was Science, and Science was with God, and Science was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who accepted him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh, but of God. And Science became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) From his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”

I think that is what a 1^st Century person would have heard, when he heard these words of John the evangelist. He would have heard that the organizational principle of the Universe that he had long studied and sought to understand, was God, the Jewish God, and that it had come into being in the World as a person, and had talked of itself and had told others how to live in accordance with the way the universe itself worked in order to access the power of the universe - “become children of God” as the words say – and spread that power, and use that power for themselves, for the enhancement of all of life.

And we know that when we live and work in concert with how the environment works, how people truly work, how power truly works, good things happen, and they happen very fast, almost excessively so.

And when we work in a way that hurts other people, does not respect the environment or is against the way people ordinarily and naturally organize themselves, bad thing happen very fast, people do get hurt, and it all falls apart very quickly, almost excessively, if it is not constantly maintained.

So - “Science became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth . . . From his fullness have we all received, grace and truth.”

Oh my goodness. So we have all received, all – slave and free, powerful and powerless, rich and poor, lay and ordained, important and unimportant, in group and out group, outcast and those who stalk the halls of power – have we all received, grace and truth.

God has made his power instantly accessible to all.

He has broken down the wall of religion and science and politics to get to us. You don't need a degree or an initiation or a consecration to get to Him.

Imagine how threatening that was to those in the halls of power! Infinitely threatening.

People didn't have to go through them to get that special charm, that special spell to make the wheat harvest come in on time.

They didn't have to go to them to get that blessing that would make them important before all of their friends.

They wouldn't have to get that must-have, expensive product to get that all-important sense of self-importance. They wouldn't have to get that job that displayed all kinds of worldly power, to have a sense of their inner power.

We wouldn't have to be dependent on what people thought of us, in order to have a strong sense of what we thought of ourselves; for God has already come to all of us – in group or out group, lay or ordained, rich or poor, outcast or walking the halls of power – and we have felt his glory! Glory as of the only Son of the Father; Glory as of the only son of the Creator of everyone else, including us. That is the one who has come to us, all of us.

So we have instant access to him and all his power. And we can walk with him and talk with him, and he'll tell us we are his own – as the song says – and the joys we'll share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

And it doesn't matter who we are or what we've done or not done or ever will do! He is here with us – the scientific power that organizes the universe is here with us and we are with him.

And whoever we are we can take his Word and do it, and we don't need special access. It is given by him alone.

And how do we spread his power and use it? The same way he did. With his Word, and by Speaking It.

And the Word here, and everywhere else, is Love.

This is the Word throughout John. And it is the word throughout Science. For the Greek word for Love, as also the Greek word for gravity. The word is eros, which might as well be called 'attraction,' that which attracts one thing to another, that which binds and organizes the whole universe together. Only God's gravity and love is given freely, whether or not we respond or believe, and that word is agape.

But now we have the power to use it anywhere we want. Gravity, attraction and love is how we reach out to any other person – outcast or in the halls of power. Gravity, attraction and love is how and why they reach back to us for they feel the love that was there at the foundation of the universe wake up in their own hearts no matter how much they have cloaked it with crime on the one hand or silks and satins or furs on the other hand.

Love comes into their own hearts when we show it as freely as God does, as surely as it came into the world when he came in a stable even though the mighty and rich Roman empire did all it could to to keep it out.

Love came down at Christmas and lived and loved and talked of love. And it – or he, Jesus Christ our Lover and Teacher – did not use power or money to get people to do what he wanted. He just spoke, with words and love. And they listened to the words; and the love with which they were created was awakened.

And the love with which we were created in the beginnings of our own time in the world is also awakened whenever we hear his words of love or anyone's words of love for that matter.

And the power we have inherent in our systems, our bodies and minds, is also awakened and we want to spread it.

For the Word was made flesh among us. The Science that we always suspected was behind the making of the universe was of God. And God was of it. And there was no division though both the Scientists and the Religionists would have you believe there was for both are trying to protect the halls of their own power from anyone.

But the jig is up. For all that power by which the Universe runs – whether we known him or not – has become flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory.

Why has he become flesh and dwelt among us? Because he loves us of course, with a gravitational attraction that will not quit just as gravity will not quit. And now we can love others, all others, with the same gravitational attraction which likewise will not quit, cannot quit, and never runs out of energy, for it is powered by the very Soul of the Universe.