Some twenty five years ago I recall attending a seminar in Brisbane sponsored by the Christian Television Association. One of the speakers commented that there were about 20,000 product names on the market, and that one of the big aims of advertising was getting you to know a particular product name so that when you go shopping you will tend to prefer the name you know better.
That is a major (and expensive task) when you realise that on average people only use some two or three thousand words - even with a university education the total may still fall short of 10,000! So the advertiser is doing the educational task of teaching us new words and giving them positive associations - increasing our vocabulary!
We are about to send a Christmas greeting and advice of our Christmas Day services to the people who live in the North Buderim, Headland Park and Buderim Forest areas. Definitely not junk mail! What do we do at houses where people state "No Junk Mail", sometimes with the addition, "No Religious Stuff"? We plan to leave a card saying, We were in the area today delivering Christmas leaflets. We respect your desire not to receive "junk mail", but take this opportunity to advise you of our Christmas Day services and to wish you a Happy Christmas.
Is that going too far? We don't regard our leaflets as "junk mail", but will our little card just cause a negative response? And how do we get past the reaction that is happy enough to have Christmas but which regards what God has said and done as "junk"?
There really is a God who is Creator and Lord of all. He is Love and wants us to know him. He has been speaking - are we listening?
John begins his gospel by stating, "Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, and he was the same as God." J.B. Phillips put it, "At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning." This personal Expression of God - his Word - is described as pre-existent, personal, divine, powerful and creative.
The Bible translator has a difficulty. We assume that a word in one language will correspond with another word in a second language - all the translator has to do is to look up his dictionary and he will know which word to put. But this is complicated because the grammars of the two languages - which is how the people think - are different, and because a word in one language has a whole range of meanings and associations, only one of which is similar to the word in the second language.
Take the Hebrew word, dabhar, for example. It occurs over 1400 times in the Old Testament. Most times it can be simply translated "word" - especially the word of the Lord. But it is also used to refer to a matter of interest or concern, or something, or a happening. Now the major translation into Greek, the Septuagint (about 260BC) mostly uses a Greek word, logos, which also means "word". But besides speech, the Greek word also includes the idea of reason, cause, principle of working...
Now back in John 1 we read, "In the beginning was the Logos..." We need to get the feel of a bigger cluster of associations than we usually have - the event, the reason, the principle of working - this Logos who was personal, powerful and eternally part of God himself.
The opening words take us back to the beginning of Genesis. Here God expresses himself in the creation of the universe. By his word ("And God said...") all things come to be. It is in his Word that they continue to have existence and meaning.
Today we study the sciences of geology, biology, zoology, physiology... By these sciences we study and endeavour to understand the logos - the reasons and laws behind the rocks, life, etc.
John is, in fact, making the incredible statement that what we have called the "natural laws" are part of God's self expression. One prominent geologist I knew used to describe his work as "thinking God's thoughts after him". God has brought light out of darkness, order out of chaos - the stamp of his mind is here. And the human race has been created to grasp this order and to respond to the Presence of God. That is part of what it means to be "in the image of God."
Yet the tragedy of the human race is that we have not listened to God speaking.
John writes, "The Word was in the world, and though God made the world through him, yet the world did not recognise him."
God has expressed himself in the very orderliness of creation. The Psalmist has written, "How clearly the sky reveals God's glory! How plainly it shows what he has done!" (19.1). Every discovery of this scientific age ought to cause us to marvel all the more at the mind of God expressed in creation.
Writing to the Romans, Paul said, "Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made" (1.20). But we today, through our material values, continue to make the same mistake that the pagans of Paul's day expressed through their idolatry - "they exchange the truth about God for a lie; they worship and serve what God has created instead of the Creator himself..." (v.25).
But God has not left it to our human reason, distorted as it is through sin, to discover his presence. He chose out Israel as his special people through whom he would make himself known to all people.
Now the Word of God comes to his own home and his own people - through his special messengers such as Moses and the Old Testament prophets But even here it is the same tragic story - "He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him." How they complained against Moses! How they ill-treated the prophets and continued on their own ways.
Yet there were those in Old Testament times who did receive the Word - our mind goes to the well-known leaders like Noah, Abraham, Moses, David... There must have been numbers of ordinary unnamed people as well. To all such people, back in Old Testament times, God, in his loving purpose, gave the right to become his children.
"The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth,lived among us."
Too often we have missed the grandeur of this thought by reading it back into verse 1. We need to see God expressing himself - God's personal and creative Word - in the creation, able to be perceived in the recognisable order of things, in the Old Testament Scriptures - and now in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh! We need to get the flow of the divine action!
That is what we are celebrating at Christmas time - the incarnation, the Word-become-flesh! And there is a beautiful expression here - "1ived among us" is literally "pitched his tent among us". A tent is a dwelling for people on the move. The Israelites had lived in tents when they were coming from Egypt to Canaan. God's tent was there too - the Tabernacle - the reminder that God was with them. And now God was paying them a personal visit as the Word, his own Son. "He became a human being and pitched his tent among us."
And why would God want to speak in human history - in the person of Jesus Christ, God the Son? Over all these centuries had the human race been receiving all these parts of God's revelation of himself and now all that was needed was a personal visit? Was that it? They had grasped it so far - now for the final re elation?
Not at all! He came, not to enlighten our minds with more factual information about his existence, but to deliver us from the rebelliousness that has so consistently refused to recognise his presence and revelation in all the other ways. He did not basically come to give us a set of rules to live by - he had already done this through Moses - but to rescue us, having turned aside from those rules, to forgive us and renew us. He came "full of grace and truth."
God has been sending his message to the human race since the beginning of time, but we have regarded his Word as so much "junk mail". The big question is, "How are we going to respond to the Word of God this time?"
We have arrogantly claimed all the credit for our scientific discoveries which are really only what we have found about the logos of God's creation. We think it shows how very smart we are - and fail to give glory to God the Creator.
But what are we going to do, now that the Logos has become a human being and lived as part of our human history?
The leaders of the day thought it would be a good time to get rid of him once and for all. They didn't need any additional "Word of the Lord", thank you very much! They had the Scriptures, the sacrificial rituals, the traditions... - all under their control! So they schemed to eliminate him - to have him nailed to a Roman cross.
Fellow-up-there, can't you see our message - NO JUNK MAIL? We don't want any more junk mail. You send us junk mail and we'll put it in the bin. Just stop sending it, do you hear?
There's one thing about a garbage system. For a week you pop things in. Then, one morning (for us it's Wednesday) the Cleanaway truck comes and empties the bin and we never see our rubbish again - and we don't want to see it again, either! It's final! How would you react if, three days later, a large envelope with an assortment of carefully-flattened papers appeared with your mail and a note - "Did you mean to throw this out?"?
Their scheme to have Jesus executed worked, but it didn't eliminate him! They could only do it because it was also part of God's plan to accept the death of Jesus as the final and complete payment due for our sins. Our ultimate human sin became the sin-offering! God is saying that he still loves us. He wants to forgive us and receive us back into his family - where he has always meant us to be!
So his promise comes to us - "Some did receive him and believe in him; so he cave them the right to become God's children."
What are we going to do with the Word-become-flesh? He's not junk mail! However we try to get rid of him or ignore him, he is still there, waiting for our response!
We need to receive him - welcome him - believe in him! We can't celebrate Christmas without him! We can't make sense of our own lives without him!
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