St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Ps 147
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18
How we love Luke’s beautiful story ….. the Great Myth or Truth-story we all hear on Christmas Eve and day! The familiar Christmas story that features angels and shepherds, a brilliant star and a silent night, Mary and Joseph in a stable, and the newborn child asleep on the hay – this is a story that captures the imagination - source for countless carols and pageants, greeting cards and paintings, and nativity scenes. It appeals to our imagination, as does Matthew’s version, with Wise Men and flights to Egypt. Mark is a little boring - nothing to read at Christmas!. I have learned that great truths must be presented to us in such a way that they engage our Imagination. Human beings thrive on the Imagination; we are shaped by Wonder and Mystery.
When we hear the Gospel version called John, we may think that the appeal is again to our Imagination; the language itself is mysterious, strange: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. What does “Word” mean? What is a time before Time? The reason John is different is because it’s appeal is not primarily to our Imagination, but to our Intellect, to our Minds. So, while we don’t want to lose track of the Mystery we are participating in as we gather around the altar today – namely, the presence of the Holy in the whole of Creation and specifically the presence of the Holy in each of us – the Prologue of John asks us to stretch our minds – and Episcopalians are good at exercising our minds along with our hearts and spirits and Imagination!
So let’s think a bit about the word Logos. We translate it in English simply as “Word”. But it has a much deeper meaning in its context in the Greek Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time. Let me do a quick, brief and by no means fulsome history.
The Greeks used Logos to mean, besides “word”, “speech”, “account”, or “reason” – and Reason is critical in Anglican thinking. Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), used the term to mean the principle of order and knowledge. The Sophists used the term to mean “discourse”. Aristotle applied the term to "reasoned discourse" in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.
After Judaism came under Helenistic influence, the great Alexandrian Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 40) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. Which brings us to today: the Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine, and further identifies Jesus as the Incarnation – the coming in flesh - of the Logos.
Plotinus (204/5–270 AD, the first neo-Platonist, interpreted Logos as the Principle of mediation. This is important for us; John’s Gospel presents Jesus as the Incarnate Logos who makes it possible for you and me to know God (“mediates” God to us), Who is essentially otherwise Unknowable.
The concept of Logos is applied in Sufism (Islam); it is used to relate the "Uncreated" (God), to the "Created" (man). In Sufism, for the Deist, no contact between man and God can be possible without the Logos. The Logos is everywhere and always the same, but its personification is "unique" within each region. Jesus and Muhammad are seen, in Sufi theology, as personifications of the Logos, and this is what enables them to speak in such absolute, authoritative terms.
To return to John’s Prologue: a priest colleague of mine, in reflecting on John’s Prologue, says this (1)
“First, [Logos] refers to the structure that underlies the universe, what holds everything together, what makes things work. It is this Word that scientists of our time endeavor to hear and understand, whether they be physicists or biologists or astronomers. The glue that somehow unites all aspects of our wonderfully complex cosmos – this is part of what John means in today’s gospel in making reference to the Word.
The second meaning has to do, not with what is, but with what ought to be, the divine law and intention. Atoms and galaxies are obedient; they follow laws appropriate to what they are. Human beings are manifestly not obedient, yet still we understand there is a law. All people recognize this, however imperfectly, and ethicists and legislators work to express this law. So the way we are meant to live, in all its power and profundity – this is part of what John suggests in making reference to the Word.
Yet another sense of this term has to do with meaning and purpose, with a question that haunts every human heart: What’s it all about? We endeavor to connect with purpose and meaning through myriad forms of philosophy and religion, literature and art. We rage against the suggestion that the grandeur and sorrow of earthly existence is without significance. A persistent sense of purpose in the universe – this is part of what John means in making reference to the Word.”
So: this is just to “wet your whistle”, to set Logos” within a context, to get you thinking as you ponder John’s Prologue this week! But the principle reason we are here this morning is this phrase from John’s Prologue: What has come into being in him was Life, and the Life was the Light of all people.
Life is the Great Mystery. Who knows whence Life came? Or “when”? Or “from What”? Today we celebrate and wonder at the emergence of Life out of the Hiddenness. We gather in Thanksgiving that we are, that our World is, that the Logos has flooded us in Sacred Light, with a power that Darkness cannot defeat. With heart, mind, imagination, spirit, we pose that eternal Question: “What’s it all about?” And every Sunday morning, as the Bread of Heaven, the Body of Christ, is eaten, and the Cup of Salvation, the Blood of Christ, is drunk, our minds and Imaginations begin afresh the Journey into Life.
John’s Prologue says:
We all live off [God’s] generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (1803-82) words:
Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence,
the universal beauty, the eternal One.
So: Let us Eat. Drink ….. and Know.
How we love Luke’s beautiful story ….. the Great Myth or Truth-story we all hear on Christmas Eve and day! The familiar Christmas story that features angels and shepherds, a brilliant star and a silent night, Mary and Joseph in a stable, and the newborn child asleep on the hay – this is a story that captures the imagination - source for countless carols and pageants, greeting cards and paintings, and nativity scenes. It appeals to our imagination, as does Matthew’s version, with Wise Men and flights to Egypt. Mark is a little boring - nothing to read at Christmas!. I have learned that great truths must be presented to us in such a way that they engage our Imagination. Human beings thrive on the Imagination; we are shaped by Wonder and Mystery.
When we hear the Gospel version called John, we may think that the appeal is again to our Imagination; the language itself is mysterious, strange: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. What does “Word” mean? What is a time before Time? The reason John is different is because it’s appeal is not primarily to our Imagination, but to our Intellect, to our Minds. So, while we don’t want to lose track of the Mystery we are participating in as we gather around the altar today – namely, the presence of the Holy in the whole of Creation and specifically the presence of the Holy in each of us – the Prologue of John asks us to stretch our minds – and Episcopalians are good at exercising our minds along with our hearts and spirits and Imagination!
So let’s think a bit about the word Logos. We translate it in English simply as “Word”. But it has a much deeper meaning in its context in the Greek Mediterranean world of Jesus’ time. Let me do a quick, brief and by no means fulsome history.
The Greeks used Logos to mean, besides “word”, “speech”, “account”, or “reason” – and Reason is critical in Anglican thinking. Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), used the term to mean the principle of order and knowledge. The Sophists used the term to mean “discourse”. Aristotle applied the term to "reasoned discourse" in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.
After Judaism came under Helenistic influence, the great Alexandrian Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 40) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. Which brings us to today: the Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine, and further identifies Jesus as the Incarnation – the coming in flesh - of the Logos.
Plotinus (204/5–270 AD, the first neo-Platonist, interpreted Logos as the Principle of mediation. This is important for us; John’s Gospel presents Jesus as the Incarnate Logos who makes it possible for you and me to know God (“mediates” God to us), Who is essentially otherwise Unknowable.
The concept of Logos is applied in Sufism (Islam); it is used to relate the "Uncreated" (God), to the "Created" (man). In Sufism, for the Deist, no contact between man and God can be possible without the Logos. The Logos is everywhere and always the same, but its personification is "unique" within each region. Jesus and Muhammad are seen, in Sufi theology, as personifications of the Logos, and this is what enables them to speak in such absolute, authoritative terms.
To return to John’s Prologue: a priest colleague of mine, in reflecting on John’s Prologue, says this (1)
“First, [Logos] refers to the structure that underlies the universe, what holds everything together, what makes things work. It is this Word that scientists of our time endeavor to hear and understand, whether they be physicists or biologists or astronomers. The glue that somehow unites all aspects of our wonderfully complex cosmos – this is part of what John means in today’s gospel in making reference to the Word.
The second meaning has to do, not with what is, but with what ought to be, the divine law and intention. Atoms and galaxies are obedient; they follow laws appropriate to what they are. Human beings are manifestly not obedient, yet still we understand there is a law. All people recognize this, however imperfectly, and ethicists and legislators work to express this law. So the way we are meant to live, in all its power and profundity – this is part of what John suggests in making reference to the Word.
Yet another sense of this term has to do with meaning and purpose, with a question that haunts every human heart: What’s it all about? We endeavor to connect with purpose and meaning through myriad forms of philosophy and religion, literature and art. We rage against the suggestion that the grandeur and sorrow of earthly existence is without significance. A persistent sense of purpose in the universe – this is part of what John means in making reference to the Word.”
So: this is just to “wet your whistle”, to set Logos” within a context, to get you thinking as you ponder John’s Prologue this week! But the principle reason we are here this morning is this phrase from John’s Prologue: What has come into being in him was Life, and the Life was the Light of all people.
Life is the Great Mystery. Who knows whence Life came? Or “when”? Or “from What”? Today we celebrate and wonder at the emergence of Life out of the Hiddenness. We gather in Thanksgiving that we are, that our World is, that the Logos has flooded us in Sacred Light, with a power that Darkness cannot defeat. With heart, mind, imagination, spirit, we pose that eternal Question: “What’s it all about?” And every Sunday morning, as the Bread of Heaven, the Body of Christ, is eaten, and the Cup of Salvation, the Blood of Christ, is drunk, our minds and Imaginations begin afresh the Journey into Life.
John’s Prologue says:
We all live off [God’s] generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (1803-82) words:
Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence,
the universal beauty, the eternal One.
So: Let us Eat. Drink ….. and Know.
