John 1:1-18; Proverbs 8:22-31
two variations on a theme
Yesterday, on the First Sunday after Christmas, I pinch-preached at my parish, Good Sam. Since I preach extemporaneously and only generate transcripts after the fact, using Clipto.ai, I have two different transcripts—one from each mass. Reading them comparatively was an interesting exercise in reflection. Here they are. The idea was to read John 1:1-18 in light of Proverbs 8:22-31, taking Wisdom’s testimony about Creation as a picture of what I called Son’s pre-incarnate childhood. This is the childhood which He gives us power to appropriate (cf. John 1:12), and this is the childhood which blooms to full maturity in his adulthood, which is the main focus of the gospels (cf. John 1:14).
The story about the paranoia of King Herod told in Matthew's gospel in the second chapter is a stirring and important Christmas story.
However, when Fr. Ellsworth asked me to pinch-hit as the preacher, he asked for a homily on John chapter 1. And so that's what we'll have. But before we have that, let's have John chapter 1 itself. I'm going to be reading John chapter 1, beginning in verse 1, and reading through verse 18.
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.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light which enlightens everyone He will come to the world. 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, glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and gave him the word; and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks ahead of me, because he was before me. From his fullness we have all received. Grace upon grace, the law indeed was given through Moses; but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; it is God the only Son who was close to the Father's heart who has made Him known. This is the gospel of the Lord.
When John begins to introduce Jesus, he doesn't tell a nativity story that focuses, as Matthew does, on the figure of Joseph, or, as Luke does, on the figure of Mary, and then say something about the circumstances and the facts of Jesus's childhood.
John has no infancy story but he begins his gospel with the telling phrase “In the beginning.” And as heirs of the Scriptures, as readers of the Bible, we know that “in the beginning” is a clear echo to Genesis chapter 1 and the story of the beginning before there was a world. John records later on in his gospel Jesus's final extended prayer to the Father where he lifts up his eyes to heaven and says, “Father glorify me with the glory that you and I had before the world.” In this prayer, Jesus hearkens back to that beginning that he remembers dearly. Sure, Jesus was born and he had his own childhood. We know some of the facts of it, but the rest are up to conjecture. We don't get a lot of stories about Jesus the six-year-old or the nine-year-old. But Jesus also has, back in the recesses of his memory, another childhood before he took on flesh, when he was simply the only son of the Father, before all worlds were made. And I want to read to you one other creation story that John seems to be referencing when he says, “In the beginning” and “was the Word” and “the Word was with God.” These phrases call to mind another lesser-known creation story in Proverbs 8. If you'd like to turn there, you may.
I'm going to read 10 verses of Proverbs 8, and I'm going to read them in their entirety. In Proverbs chapter 8, a figure named Wisdom, or Lady Wisdom, cries aloud in the street saying, “Come to my house and eat what I have and listen to what I have to say. And in the twenty-second verse of Proverbs 8, she talks about her experience with God before the worlds were made. As I read it to you, I'm sure you'll hear the echoes that come through in John 1. Listen with me:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no springs, abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth. When He had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil.
Can you hear yet the voice of Jesus in this? “Before the mountains, before the hills, before the seas, I was the first begotten of God.” Christ is the wisdom of God. Wisdom's poem continues:
When He established the heavens, I was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress His command. When He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him, like a master worker.
This poem, given by the figure of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, gives voice to Jesus' experience before the foundations of the world. When it says he was in the beginning with God and nothing was made that was not made through him, this is it. Jesus watched. He stood beside his father like a master craftsman, side by side. He watched his father draw the limits and the boundaries that make the earth safe. Those boundaries that, since the world has been broken, have been transgressed. Here's how the poem ends. Here are these final two couplets. After saying, then I was beside him like a master worker, wisdom continues,
And I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Do you hear a childlike picture of the Son of God before the worlds were made and as they were being made? Not only was he beside his Father like a master builder, he was before the face of his Father playing—you know, like a son does, like a child does. He was not playing football. He was not playing tiddlywinks. He was making up his own games. This was before soccer, before basketball, before “Skip to My Lou.” Yes, there was a time before “Skip to My Lou.” Before the Father's face, the Son had an existence, an existence of creativity, play, delight, of watching the boundaries that mark out what play really means, knowing what's fair and what's unfair.
I want us to have this in mind while I revisit just a couple of verses from John chapter 1. John chapter 1 at verse 12, he says, To all who received Jesus, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, born of God.
By the consequence of the fall, we had a pure, divine childhood stolen from us. Some of us had lovely childhoods, some of us had poor childhoods, but none of us had childhoods like the only son of the Father, who watched the earth be framed, who daily played before him, in security, belonging, creativity, and courage, and all the blessings that come from a good childhood. Good. Jesus came into the world. He came into the world to give you, to give us, that childhood.
The early fathers of the church say that “What Christ is by nature, he makes us by grace.” The Son was not created. He always was with the Father. You and I were. We were born in a year that begins with the number 19, or some of you, in a year that begins with 20. We didn't see creation. What we know is the world that we were born into. We have the sins and the virtues of our parents, the sins and the virtues of our age, of our denomination, of our location around America, or wherever else you were born or raised. We have to overcome the prejudices of our time. We have to rise above the partisan causes to which we're called. And the sins that our parents encourage in us, most often by accident.
But Jesus, he had this golden childhood before the Father, and so John says of him that he has the glory of the only Son of the Father. He looks just like him. You know, he looked just like the Father when he was a baby, a one-week-old, a four-week-old, a six-year-old, a nine-year-old, and all these other ages we never got to see him doing things at. But as we transition from the season of Christmas to the season of Epiphany—I know we're not there yet, but it's already time to be thinking about Epiphany—we'll have presented before us in the Gospel text and in our homilies the adult Jesus, who grew up, who was, yes, as Paul said, tutored for a time under the law. But he has a heritage that reaches back before that.
The life he lived before the Father makes him full of grace and truth. And as you watch his life, the things he does, the interpretations of Scripture he has, the way he reinterprets the Sabbath, unlike the Pharisees of his time, the patterns of life he chooses to inculcate, the ways in which he chooses to pray and teaches his disciples to pray, you can notice if you pay attention, a hidden wisdom that reveals the childhood he had before the world was framed, that he had with the Father, that you and I didn't have by birth, but that he makes available to us by grace, by pouring the Holy Spirit into us. He came into the world to give us life, the life that's the light of all people, the power—that is, the Holy Spirit—to give us a new birth, not of flesh, not of the will of man, not of blood, but of God, to make us, like him, full of grace and truth.
He says to the woman at the well, if you drink of me, you will have within you a well of living water that bubbles up and spills over to eternal life. And she didn't get that from where she was from. We don't know what her childhood was like, but she had five husbands, and the man she was with was not her husband. We're not led to believe that she had a charmed existence. But to me, to her and to you, Jesus gives the power to become children of God. We were not there before the world was framed, except insofar as we were foreknown to God. As Paul says, predestined for adoption in him, that we might be raised to the full maturity and full stature of sons of God.
So the word of challenge I have for you is, as we transition from Christmas to Epiphany, as we hear more gospel texts, look for that hidden wisdom in him. Look for that fullness of grace and truth in him. And see as John saw the glory of a full-grown son of God. And know that this is your heritage. This is the power that's within you and the destiny marked out for you. All Jesus endured, he will call you to endure. All Jesus enjoyed before the Father, you will enjoy before the Father.
In the name of God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. – John 1:12
Good morning, all. My name is Jack Franicevich. I more commonly attend the 9 o'clock service, and it's really great to be here with you. I'm the pinch-hitter for the pinch-hitter for the preacher this morning. And I was asked to give a homily on John 1:1–18, so that's what we'll have this morning.
In the other gospels, the more normal gospels, like Matthew or Luke, Christmas makes more sense. They fill out the Christmas scene with all of these visual sets. You get characters like the angels and the shepherds.
You see the perspective in Matthew's gospel of Joseph, and in Luke's gospel of Mary. And you get a little peek at infant Jesus. Jesus who, though he cannot speak, simply by lying there does a significant thing. We don't get very much about Jesus' childhood. We don't know what he was like at nine weeks old, or at six years old, or at eleven years old. There's one little story, but that's it.
Soon comes the season of Epiphany, where it's grown-up Jesus, all the way through Easter, and the Ascension. John doesn't give us a visual, fixed story with characters and scenes and locations. He begins in the realm of ideas. And his story begins with the phrase, in the beginning was the Word.
Cunning readers of the Bible, like you, and like me, will know that the phrase in the beginning is a callback to the book of Genesis 1:1. John wants to tell the story of Jesus by beginning in the beginning itself. But I think that if we keep reading John 1, we might notice that there are other passages in the Old Testament that echo more in John 1. Did you know there are other passages in the Old Testament that have the phrase 'in the beginning' and something like 'was the word and was with God'? There's a less appreciated creation story tucked in the book of Proverbs. If you're an open-your-Bible-while-the-sermon-is-happening-kind-of-person, turn to Proverbs 8, if you would.
In Proverbs chapter eight, we see an extended speech from the figure named Wisdom or Lady Wisdom. And she's making her case for why people should turn to her and listen to her instead of Lady Folly. Wisdom says, 'I cry aloud in the streets. Hear my voice, order your steps according to my ways.' And to defend her authority, Wisdom tells a creation story. And that creation story begins again in Proverbs 8:22. As I read this story to you, I want you to consider the ways in which the story could have been voiced slightly differently by Jesus himself to explain the glory that he shared with the Father before the worlds were made.
You know, towards the end of John's gospel, Jesus lifts up his eyes to heaven the night before he dies and he says, “Father, glorify me with the glory that you and I shared before the worlds were made.” And in doing that, Jesus points back to an ancient origin of his, a childhood that's not told by Matthew, not told by Luke, but is hinted at by John and actually told in the book of Proverbs. With that in mind, I'd like to read you this story.
Wisdom says—chapter eight in verse 22 of the book of Proverbs—“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the very first of his acts long ago. Ages ago, I was set up. At the first, before the beginning of the earth.” Does that sound familiar yet?
“When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills I was brought forth, when He had not yet made earth and fields or the world's first bits of soil. When God established… when God established the heavens, I was there.” The Word was with God. Not anything was made, but that which was made through Him. “When God established the heavens, I was there.”
“When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, its boundary, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundation lines of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker,” says wisdom.
This is not only an origin story for the figure of Wisdom, but Christ, who Paul calls the wisdom of God, takes up this origin story also as his own. When Jesus talks about the glory he had with the Father before the worlds were created, it's this. When the word was with God, he was watching this happen. The Father's making mountains, and Jesus is watching. Or we could say the pre-incarnate Son, who had not yet been named Jesus, was watching. When God set the boundaries around the water, saying, 'Go no further,' Jesus watched that and learned the way in which his Father set up the boundary markers in the world that are important. That are important. That make the world safe and keep chaos at bay.
Then wisdom says, “I was beside him like a master worker that is involved like an apprentice getting his hands dirty and making things the way his Father made them.” This is Jesus's pre-incarnate childhood, if you can think about it that way. The Father didn't create the Son, but he did beget him. The Son is what we call co-eternal with the Father, but he's still the Son. He still, as he'll say in John chapter 5, will only do what he sees the Father doing, only say what he hears the Father saying. He loves his dad.
Listen to the end of wisdom's creation story. In your pew Bibles, you might see the word “rejoice” repeated. If I may, I think the NRSV captures the concreteness of the word behind “rejoice” a little better and uses the word “play” instead. I think it's a key for understanding this passage. Listen to the final verses. After, then I was beside him like a master worker. Wisdom ends by saying, “I was daily his delight, playing before him always.” What is the glory that the Son had with the Father before their worlds were made? One, he was beside him like a master builder learning the family craft. Two, he played before his Father always. He watched his Father mark boundaries. You know what boundaries define? Games. This was before the invention of soccer, the invention of basketball, the invention of “skip to my lou, my darling.” Jesus played before his Father. Playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. I don't know what that means. Was he playing wizard's chess like in Harry Potter, using humans as a chess game? I think that's not quite it. But I don't know the answer. But Jesus, the wisdom of God, the Son of God, flits between and among and around the people, delighting in them. Knowing his Father's boundaries. Knowing his Father's ways. And enjoying the delight of the Father.
I think that hearing the story can reinvigorate the way John introduces Jesus. I'd like to end just by pointing again to a few verses in John's prologue. I'll pick up at 12 and run through the end. If you want to look, you can look. Jesus came to his own. The people among whom he'd been playing. Did they receive him? No. No. But to those who did receive him, he gave them the power to become children of God. Some of the Church's first theologians in the first few centuries had this saying. You can find it in most of them. They said, “What Christ is by nature, he makes us by grace.” Were you there when God set the foundations of the earth? No. Except insofar as you were foreknown by him and predestined for adoption into his family. The childhood of playing and delighting before the face of God that was stolen from you by the Destroyer and by the Accuser, Jesus gives you the power to enjoy again by pouring his Holy Spirit and his life into us that we may receive and enjoy his childhood. What does that mean?
I don't know. That's one of those mysteries. Some of you had really wonderful and charmed childhoods. Some of you did not. Some of you are somewhere in between. But as Jesus tells Nicodemus, all y'all got to be born again from above. You have to have what Jesus said. You have to have what Jesus had. You have to be born from God. You have to spend time delighting and playing before him like the only son of a Father, but among the whole family of God's children. That's the life Jesus came to give. “To all who did receive him, he gave the power to become children of God.”
And John continues, that word that was there from the beginning “became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory.” One way of taking that is, we saw him grown up. What would it look like to have played before and worked beside God from the beginning? What would it look like if that person became a healthy and well-adjusted grown-up in the world? It looks like Jesus. And as a result, he was full of grace and truth. When people listened to Jesus and looked at him, they couldn't figure out where he was from. They couldn't peg him down into a political party. He wouldn't participate in Jewish prejudice against Samaritans. He wouldn't partake in Samaritan bitterness against Jews. He wouldn't say where he was from. He was kind of like his dad, but he also had a hidden wisdom that nobody could peg. And that scared people.
And the way he taught and the way he prayed and what he did on the Sabbath upset the establishment in such a way that they said, he has a demon. To which Jesus says, “No, I watched my Father set the boundaries and the Father is working today and as he is working, so am I.” And people fell away from him, wondering, “How does he know what he knows?” They knew he was full of something. And John said, “Yeah, full of the glory as if this was God's only kid.”
What would it look like if God's kid grew up, and acted with confidence, courage, creativity, discipline, insight, wisdom, mercy, self-assuredness, piety, self-restraint, grace, truth? As Christmas gives way to Epiphany and we move our attention from baby Jesus to grown-up Jesus, let's pay attention to the stories we read about him and see in him the glory of the only Son of the Father.
Let's see that life, that hidden source of wisdom that doesn't come from down here, that transcends both the virtues and the vices of the Northeastern United States and the Main Line. And our denomination. And our ideological camps. And our ethnic battles. And our political battles. Let's look at him and see that life and be transformed. Let's rise up to the full stature of the sons of God. He who is at work in you is greater than the powers of the world. And he will surely do it.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Great sermon! Any reflections from the variations?