Fr Robert Hendrickson
Dear Friends in Christ,
Last week our older son commented on the service. It was Advent IV and he mentioned the Last Gospel (the prologue to John that is read at the conclusion of the service). It’s the gospel for today and hearing it through Advent is a way to ground ourselves in the unfolding story.
He said, “It’s neat to hear it because it’s like a genealogy of Creation.” I honestly can’t think of a better way to describe that first chapter of John. It is a genealogy of creation—and it’s a genealogy which holds together Christ, the created order, and you and me, as well.
If you think of the dual nature of Christ this is one part of his nature as it lays out the cosmic nature of his life (and ours). It runs parallel to the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. There, Christ’s earthly lineage is laid out tracing his line back into the earliest history.
Luke is a genealogy of blood; John is a genealogy of spirit. Christ’s two natures are laid out in those two patterns.
Christmas knits those two threads together as the cosmic and the earthly meet in the person of Jesus in Bethlehem.
Looking to Christ as our model we quickly realize that we are not made to be just spiritual beings with no earthiness. Nor are we made to be sort of enfleshed automatons devoid of deeper substance. The two genealogies of Christ show us that both parts of his history are who he is.
We hear in the prologue to John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word. In the Prologue, John identifies Jesus as the logos—λóγος, the Word or reason, the philosophical concept of God’s unifying principle for all of creation.
The Prologue begins and ends in eternity, which effectively emphasizes the Word entering time and history through the Incarnation in verse fourteen. We who are the Body of Christ and reborn by the Spirit in Baptism are welcomed into the interplay, the divine exchange of love, that is the Trinity. We are welcomed into the sweep of eternity to spend eternity with God.
The beauty of this is that we are welcomed not to cognitively conceive of God in a certain way but to know ourselves adopted by love into this mystery.
It is easy to get caught up in the stuff of our every day—in the anxieties and anger and fear and busy distraction. But ultimately what we are reminded of in this Gospel is that eternity is ours. The Kingdom of God is our true and eternal home not by our will or our action or our merit but by the grace and love of God.
In the beginning God created everything that is, and through him all things have their being. And it was good. It was made for love’s sake and so are we. This is our charge now: to show forth that glory to all the world offering a vision of divine love that welcomes all into the holy and redeeming love of God in whom we are all one.
The prologue to John’s gospel does what every prologue does. It sets the stage. It tells us where we’ve been.
Now, in our lives, the rest of the story is still unfolding. We’ve heard the prologue and now the question is: how will we finish the story?
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Robert
