Sermon for January 3, 2010

                   Scripture: John 1:1-14

                               “Logos”            

                     Rev. Christopher Fazel

              This prologue to the gospel of John is well known to most of us.  It is beautifully written – lofty and inspiring.  It is great poetry – an excellent example of the fine literature that fills this gospel.  However, it is much more than that.  This prologue lays the foundation for the entire theology of this gospel.  But if we don’t have an understanding of the meaning of the terms that this prologue uses, then we will miss or misunderstand what this passage is trying to teach us. 

              The primary term that this passage uses is Logos.  “In the beginning was the word.”  The Greek word for “word” here is Logos.  “In the beginning was the Logos.”  Now, logos does mean word, but for Greeks for three centuries it had meant much more than that.  By extension, word means reason – the ability to reflect on one’s own being.  It is the consciousness necessary to invent language, to ask the deep questions such as “Who am I?” and “Where do I come from?”  These are the questions that come with the dawn of consciousness, and the answers that have emerged in the human soul are recorded in the myths and religions of all peoples through all times.   This is what Logos meant for the Greeks.  But, in fact, it even came to mean more than that.  Logos came to mean the mind that gave birth to all the universe.  In the East, they called it the Tao.  In the Indus valley, they called it Brahmin.  These different words from different cultures all seek to express the same understanding – behind all the diversity and multiplicity of this world, there is a single unifying principle out of which all things are born.  We might want to call it God, but a better rendering might be the Mind of God – or as George Lucas has popularized in the Star Wars series, “the Force.” 

              Now, once we understand the intent of the writer of this prologue, the passage begins to address many important issues for you and for me. First of all, the passage explicitly states that the Logos is the light and life of humanity.  That means that our minds are a portion of the Logos.  We are in a sense fingers of the great Mind. When Jesus later in this gospel says, “I am in the Godhead, and you in me and I in you,” he is restating this same principle of unity.

Second, it says that the Logos created the physical universe.  That means that mind pre-exists matter.  And that’s important because if mind is just a biological function, then when the body dies the mind dies too.  But if the mind is the creator of matter, then the mind continues even when physical organisms dissolve.  That in itself is good news. 

But there are also cautions given.  In this world, there is darkness.  Now this passage is not talking about physical darkness, it’s talking about the darkness within the human soul.  And the evidence of that darkness is painfully clear to us all.  But then more good news.  The light of the Logos – the mind of God – continues to shine into the darkness.  That would be light shining into our souls.  We are not abandoned.  We are not orphaned.  The light of the Logos continually reaches out to us. 

And then the radical Christian proclamation: there was a man whose life was a perfect expression of the Logos.  In him there was no darkness.  His mind and body were pure channels of the Divine Light.  The Mind of God incarnated in a human being. But the most important point of this prologue follows.

The very fact that a human life could be a pure channel of the Mind of God proves that such is possible.  And if we accept that it is possible, then we find the power to make it happen in ourselves.  To all who accept this good news, they are given the power to become children of God.  And that is the point to the prologue of the Gospel of John.  Thanks be to God for this very good news.   Let us pray.

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