Christmas Eve Sermon
Category: Christmas
Speaker: The Rev. Shearon Sykes Wiliams
These words that begin John’s Gospel are the words of an artist, a poet, a visionary. Artists are people who invite us to look at the world in a different way, a way that goes beyond our ordinary, pedestrian interpretation of human experience. They are often hard to understand because their way of expressing reality is so unusual. And yet over time, we come to appreciate them because they speak the language of the heart, the language that pierces our defenses and opens us to new realms.
The prelude that we heard tonight is a stunning example. Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria is a masterpiece of sacred music. Written about 1715, it was well received in Vivaldi’s day, but didn’t come to widespread acclaim until much later. After Vivaldi’s death it lay as a forgotten treasure for two centuries. It was rediscovered in the 1920s and performed for the first time as it was originally intended in 1957. The world immediately embraced it for the extraordinary work that it is- finally after a 200 year gestation period.
Vivaldi was a Roman Catholic priest in Venice, but he stopped saying the Mass after a few years because music was the deeper expression of his vocation. There is an apocryphal story of him running into the sacristy from the altar to write down a fugue that came to fruition in his imagination as he celebrated the Eucharist. He continued to be a priest, but he lived out his call to mediate the divine through his music rather than at the altar. He was deeply faithful to the end of his life and his faithfulness shines through with every lovely and surprising interplay of notes and voices.
Vivaldi’s Gloria has an alpha and omega quality to it. It begins and ends-with great fanfare and jubilation, praising God as he envisions the angels in heaven praise God night and day. And in between, the piece searches harmonically for peace on earth. The voices and instruments seek resolution. They overlap and crisscross with one another as they fervently seek reconciliation between the way God intends things to be and the way things really are. There is a rich interplay of sounds as God and human beings express their mutual longing for harmony with one another.
Antonio Vivaldi and the writer of John’s Gospel have much in common. What Vivaldi does with music, John does with words. And like Vivaldi who is now understood as a great visionary who brought us something no one had ever given us before and who was hugely influential for later composers including Bach, the writer of John’s Gospel gave us this stunning prologue that laid the foundation for centuries of Christian theology and devotion.
Unlike the other three Gospel writers who took a much more grounded, historical approach to Jesus coming into the world, John chose to write lyrical poetry to convey the profundity of what God was doing in sending Christ into the world. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” And being the visionary theologian that he was, John shows us that that didn’t just happen in the birth of Jesus as a baby in a manger- Jesus, the Word of God, had existed from before time. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We hear resonances of the creation story, “In the beginning.” The Word is in intimate relationship with God, and is part of God’s ceaseless creativity. They are in relationship in a unique way. “He was in the beginning with God.” And the Word mediates God’s relationship with creation. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Jesus coming to be with us in the flesh was the visible manifestation of what God had been doing through him from before time and forever.
John’s description of the Word is based on the Greek philosophical concept of the Logos. The Logos is a unifying principle in the universe that holds all things together. John gives poetic expression to the Christian understanding that Jesus gives our lives meaning and coherence. We are part of something that began long, long ago and continues forever.
John’s vision is cosmic and sweeping. Like Vivaldi’s Gloria, there is an alpha and omega quality to it- of God’s never ending glory and our never-ending need for reconciliation, of God’s ongoing, purposeful creativity and our deep need to realize that we are part of it.
John’s unique view of what God was doing through Jesus Christ is an incredible gift to us. John’s poetry became the basis for the development two centuries later of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity. Like Vivaldi’s Gloria, John’s masterpiece had a long gestation period before it was fully embraced. And still today, John’s words make our hearts sing and fire our imaginations.
Allowing our imaginations to be kindled is the purpose of our gathering tonight. Stepping into this space, literally and figuratively, giving ourselves over to the power of this experience and allowing God to speak to us through sacred music, through sacred story, and through the sacred meal. Being here together and allowing our reason to be pierced with insight and our experience to be shot through with glory is such a gift. We experience the cosmic, panoramic view of God creating through the Word “since the beginning” and recognize that creative activity coming into being in a beautiful child who grew up to be the world’s ultimate visionary who calls us into that vision still. God’s perfect Word, spoken from the beginning and spoken afresh to each of us tonight, giving our lives meaning, context and coherence and calling us to be a part of God’s reconciling presence in the world.
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”
Sources:
1. Sacra Pagina, Vol 4, The Gospel of John, pp. 33-47. Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Editor. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998.
2. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol 1, John 1:1-14, pp140-145, Theological Perspective, Charles M. Wood, Editors David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville: Westminster JohnKnox Press, 2010.
3. Vivaldi notes from Dr. Benjamin Keseley by Robert Eisenstein and Peter Carey.