“The world itself could not contain the books that should be written”
The three holy days of Christmas illuminate our understanding of the Christmas mystery in wonderful ways. The Feast of St. Stephen on the day after Christmas reminds us that love is sacrificial and nothing less than the love which is God moves in us even in and through the sad realities of human suffering and evil. The Feast of the Holy Innocents tomorrow teaches us about innocence and purity as properties which ultimately belong to the Incarnate Christ and to the forms of our participation in his holy life, even by way of anticipation such as in the disturbing yet profound story of the slaughter of the little ones of Bethlehem. It is a hard but deep and radical saying that “thou madest infants to glory thee by their deaths” – yet how else to think about human life without its ground in God? How else to conceive the radical nature of the goodness of God who alone can make something good out of our evil?
But in between the martyrdom of Stephen and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents there is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. With it we have the divine ground of human lives in all of their complexity. With it we are returned to the wonder of Christmas Eve in the pageant of God’s Word and Son in the Letter to the Hebrews and in John’s Prologue. With it we contemplate the radical mystery of the Incarnation by way of John’s first letter and the ending of the very last chapter of his Gospel. These endings and beginnings are nothing more than the ways in which we are enfolded in eternity, enfolded and embraced in the love of God toward us.
Our Parish tradition on the Sunday after Christmas at the 10:30am service is to have the Christmas Service of Nine Lessons. It is a glorious parade of words, of words written and proclaimed. It complements the Feast of St. John the Evangelist with its emphasis on the witness of John by way of his Gospel and letters, and perhaps his Revelation. Certainly the life of the Church and the doctrine of the Christian Faith is greatly influenced and shaped by “the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John”. Once again, the Divine Word signals life and light communicated to us through what has been seen, looked upon, touched and handled concerning the Word of life, and heard and declared, but importantly, “these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”
Is the Word of God only what is written? No. Neither the Christmas Gospel from John’s Prologue nor the last words of the last chapter of his Gospel allow us to draw that conclusion. God’s Word and Son is more than words written. The greater mystery is how the words written lift us to the wonder of the eternal word with us whose thoughts, words, and deeds, we might say, far exceed all that could be written. “The world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” This is not about more information or facts or data; it is about the eternal Word itself as exceeding human comprehension. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55. 8). And so too, we might say, My words are not your words.
We do well to remember this because it helps us to appreciate the wonder of the mystery of the Incarnation. God’s Word incarnate in Jesus Christ is God with us and that Word is always and by definition that which exceeds human knowing on its own. The Collect strikes the right note about the “bright beams” of God’s light that enlightens the Church through John’s doctrine. The emphasis is on the teaching, the doctrine itself, and not simply the medium through which it is conveyed.
Christ as God’s Word and Son is the intellectual principle, the arché, upon which all things in their being and knowing utterly depend. That Word incarnate is the eternal Word with us. That is the wonder but the wonder of that Word is inexhaustible. In every way, we are opened out to the wonder of the Word made flesh in whom we behold “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”, the Word beyond all words, the Word which is life and light. In God life and light are inseparable. This is the wonder of Christmas and the counter to the fears and anxieties of our dark and dangerous world.
We are, perhaps, as Bruce Cockburn suggests in a song popularized by the Barenaked Ladies, “lovers in a dangerous time”, but only because we are loved. We are the beloved of God whose Word and Son makes known the love which is God. We behold the wonder of that love in which we have our life and our abiding in his light. This is the wonder of Christmas, the wonder of a world bathed in the light of God’s love.
“The world itself could not contain the books that should be written”
Fr. David Curry
The Feast of St. John the Evangelist
Christmastide, 2020