A
Reflection for 1st Sunday After Christmas All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC
December 27, 2015 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Prologue
Beginnings
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| An p;d Calvin and Hobbes strip |
I
want to focus today on the Prologue to the Gospel of John, that part
of the first chapter of John’s Gospel which is a poetic
introduction to the themes of the Gospel. Introductions… some of my
first introductions to music as a child were to simple tunes and I
was invited to sing along with them, to take them into my life. Then
I started to see that the music could tell a story, as in a musical
or operetta, where the songs were mileposts of the relationships
between the characters in the story. Unfortunately, I saw overtures
as inconvenient noise until the real show began - until I realized
that overtures were actually the show in miniature, with the themes
bouncing off of each other as they told the story that was to follow.
I remember when I realized that the 1812
Overture
was more than a bunch of music thrown together but a reflective
re-telling of the story of the Battle of Borodino during the
Napoleonic Invasion of Russia. That explained why the French National
Anthem, La
Marseillaise,
was playing against the Russian Imperial Anthem, God
Save the Tsar. Tchaikovsky
took those two pieces (neither of which would have used by the armies
at the time - Napoleon had banned the use of La
Marseillaise
because it was a battle cry to overthrow tyrants, and God
Save the Tsar
had yet to be composed in 1812) and creates this tension in the
listeners’ minds decades later in 1880 Russia.
The
Gospel lesson for today, the Prologue to the Gospel of John, is not
just an introduction but is a kind of overture to the Gospel of John.
The writer of the Community of the Beloved Disciple, sixty years
after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, expands on a
favorite hymn that the community uses in their worship and uses
phrases and themes in dynamic tension that will be repeated
throughout the Gospel. The Community of the Beloved Disciple is not
at all interested in telling a standard history of facts, but in the
creation of a work of art which reaches back to the beginning and
beyond to give meaning to the present and hope for the future.
The
experience in the Community of the Beloved Disciple was based on the
Jewish thought that God was unseen, unknowable, and beyond our
imagination, so far beyond the ability of humans to understand, but
somehow the very heart of God became known through the person of the
Christ Jesus. However, there is some confusion. The writer of John is
a poet who uses words that mean two to three things at a time as a
way to say that we cannot fully understand. There are times the
Gospel reads like a version of the old vaudeville routine, “Who’s
on First, What’s on Second, and I Don’t Know’s on Third”, to
show that in this life the very words we use and trust without
thinking are shaken from their moorings unless we use the Christ
experience to come to a new vision of the world. The Greek word Logos
was a word that meant that which one said out loud in the past (e.g.
“He said the word.”), or the plan on which one bases all action
(e.g. “That’s the word coming down from the top.”), or the
promise that one gives as assurance for the future (e.g. “You have
my word on this.”), or an audit of continuing action (e.g. “The
word on the street is good on this project.”), or a philosophical
discourse (e.g. “We shared some words.”)
The
poet does not say that “The Word” has only one meaning, but when
it is used, it contains all the possibilities at the same time. God
is before there is a past, before the beginning into the past,
present, and future, and is the freedom to enter into dialogue with
us for a deeper life. The Prologue reminds us of all of that. For
centuries the Roman Catholic Rite of the Mass ended with the Priest
giving a blessing to the people and then facing the Altar again and
saying the Prologue to John, in Latin, as part of the blessing - a
way of saying that God is present in the church, but the God of past,
present and future continues with us wherever we may go as we leave
this place and enter fully into the overture of life.
Prologue
Beginnings (poem)
Before
there was the beginning, there is Being
in
relationship within the dynamic of Being Self
Energy
flowing, moving, receiving and freeing
Complete
satisfying, solely within the one self.
But
Love’s community making risky expansions
reaching
within Oneself imagining an invention,
a
new art, stirring up building of new mansions
of
same being but free in new creative tension
with
an ability of being able to say to love, “No”.
Knowing
hurts may happen; Love spoke a “Yes”
Which
shuddered into a wind; a hovering blow
of
banging Spirit, growing and bringing a Bless
evolving
into lives when we, returning to Word,
finding
new freedom when Love’s Being heard.
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