Hear how the Old Testament Book of Genesis starts: "In the beginning … God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.

Hear how the New Testament Gospel of John starts: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

In the beginning, God simply was. And in Genesis we learn that when God spoke, when God formed something outside of God’s self, it was that agency, that word, that brought all life into being.

God’s Word acted using God’s energy and brought all things into being, and without the Word, not one thing came into being.

This mornings Gospel reading – John’s magnificent poetry -- articulates for us and for all time the wondrous miracle of creation through God and through God’s agent, the Word. We learn that this same agent of God, the Word, came to dwell in the world. And it is through the Word, now become Jesus Christ, that not only was creation accomplished but so too was realized that greatest of all human longings: God be with us.

John joined together with the most ancient of Biblical writers in recognizing that the use of the metaphor of the Word, called "memra" in Hebrew, "logos" in Greek, best pointed to that moment when God acted beyond God and creation began.

And then John goes one step further and identifies Jesus Christ with the Word, when he says: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us…"

That is at the core of what we are celebrating at Christmas time. Beyond the annunciation, the dream of Joseph, the trip to Bethlehem, the star, the birth, the shepherds, and the wise men from the East. Beyond all of the glorious decorations and the fabulous, heavenly music. Beyond all of the human accretions heaped upon Christ’s birth over the ages, beautiful though they may be.

The miracle is that the Word, the Memra, the Logos, was, and is, in the world. "And the Word became flesh and lived among us."

And the bitter sweetness that many of us experience at the impossible hope of Christmas tide comes, in the final analysis, from the knowledge that then, and now, the Word did come to the world, but the world did not, still does not, know it.

In the particular lifetime of the baby whose birth we celebrate, in that lifetime of the sacred Word, when he "came to what was his own, his own people did not accept him."

What a sadness. Along with the joy of birth, we must remember, often, and just now at Christmas, the woeful end of the story. "He came into the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him."

Do we know Him today? I don’t think I do. I don’t have any basis on which to believe that I recognize, that I would know, God or God’s Word as it presents itself to me today.

All I can do, I think, is try to be open. Be open to the beauty of this season. Be open to the miracle of the birth so long, long ago. Be open to what I know is the tragic end, hinted at even at the beginning. Be open to God’s word, God’s creation, God’s son which is close to the Father’s heart and can make God known.

Be open to the miracle of God with us.

Isn’t that why we call our selves Christians? Because in the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, we believe we can learn to glimpse God? Jesus, the Word, the Memra, the Logos of God, of whom St. John sings in his masterpiece:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. … He was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. … From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. … "

For all of which we say: Thanks be to God. Amen.