concern for their historical truth. It’s not that they disbelieved such stories; instead, they could read a story on both an historical and metaphorical level at the same time. Those of us in the West have largely lost the ability to do so, as we are much more concerned about whether or not something is true in an historical sense, only, as if other stories have nothing to teach us.
That said, one way of looking at this passage is to look at Jesus’s names. He has two of them, sort of. In the section of Isaiah the author of Matthew quotes, the person who fulfills this prophecy—Jesus, of course—shall be named Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” This name sums up the importance of the incarnation, in that those who believe Jesus is God on Earth read this information completely literally. Again, one doesn’t have to do so to still be moved by the idea that this birth reminds us of God’s love for humanity and that God is involved and interested in the lives of each of us. God is not simply “with us” when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem or Capernaum, but God is with us because of the relationship we have with the divine, represented by the life of Jesus.
The passage from I John makes this idea clear, as the repeated emphasis on love as the manifestation of God shows. That author reminds us that, when we love, we are acting as God acts, that we are embodying God in the same way that Jesus did, that we are exhibiting God to the world, that we are carrying God with us everywhere we go and to everyone we meet, that we are helping others to see God as we have seen him in the life of Jesus and the lives of our Christian communities. The author tells us that “those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Jesus comes to bring love to all people, including those whom the first century Jewish leaders had forgotten, and we abide in love and in God when we practice that radical inclusivity that illustrates how God is with us.
Along the same lines, Jesus’s name means some version of “God saves” (the Hebrew verb root literally means “rescue” or “deliver,” but “saves” is how most scholars translate the meaning of the name). While the traditional reading of this passage is that God saves humanity from their sins through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, there is more to this meaning than that. This focus on love and abiding in love by imitating Jesus shows us that God saves us from more than simply our original sinfulness. God saves us from our selfish behaviors that push us to ignore the poor or marginal; God saves us from a culture that tells we are nothing more than a consumer, put on this planet to purchase more and more until we die; God saves us from a political arena that benefits from dividing us from one another through the use of fear; God saves us from a life of alienation, as we can become one with others, not out of our own efforts, but through the love of God that defies all explanations, as does a story about a young woman giving birth to a baby boy who shows us that love.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
Where do we see “God with us” today, especially in acts of love and inclusivity?
What do we need saving from, and how does Jesus’s life help show us ways toward that salvation?
Taking Action
Christmas Day
John 1:1–14
Isaiah 52:7–10
Whenever people talk about this passage from John, the idea of logos comes up on a regular basis. People want to lay out how the meaning of that Greek word is much richer than our English word word. They will describe logos as possibly meaning “ground,” as in the very foundation of the world or God’s agent in the world, among a whole host of other interpretations. Granted, translation works this way, as we often take a word from another language that has a rich connotation and sum it up in one English word that cannot contain all the nuances of the original. That’s part of the problem with trying to read the Bible literally.
However, whenever I think of this passage, I think of a Call to Worship that one of my teenage friends wrote when I was either in high school or college. He had been taking Spanish for several years, and he had a copy of a Spanish New Testament. Instead of reading the opening passage of John in English, he started in Spanish, as he wanted to emphasize that word word in Spanish. Instead of using the Spanish word for word, the translators use the word verbo, which, as one might guess, means verb. Thus, one translation from Spanish to English would read, “In the beginning was the Verb, and Verb was with God, and the Verb was God.”
Perhaps it’s my English background speaking here, but I love this word choice. The English word certainly provides interesting interpretations, and logos is much closer to the intent of the author of John, but verb adds a layer that reminds me of who Jesus actually is and what’s important in the gospels. Verb implies action, doing, which is how we usually describe it to students who are learning grammar. In fact, I often talk about passive voice in my classes, and I try to describe it as a problem that occurs when writers move the person or thing doing the acting after the verb that describes the action.
I should say that Jesus is certainly not exclusively about action, as he often took time away from the crowds to try to find solitude, and he encouraged his disciples to do the same. However, even in those moments of solitude, he is preparing for the action, the work he was focused on. He needed those times away from people to be able to actively care for others. Most of the time, though, we see Jesus in action, whether that’s speaking to a crowd, eating with a wide variety of people, or healing those who are suffering.
However, this emphasis on action is not a means to perpetuate guilt, as I’m not trying to use this word choice as a way to tell people they’re not doing enough. Instead, I want to separate dogma from praxis. Dogma is a set of beliefs that one has, while praxis is putting those beliefs into action, essentially embodying those beliefs in some way. This distinction is one the church has often overlooked, at least for much of its history.
Many churches now, and the larger church for centuries, focus on encouraging people to have the right beliefs. They want people to understand the trinity or be able to explain how Jesus’s death on the cross leads to salvation through the idea of atonement. Some churches widen this approach out to social issues, where one needs to have the correct belief on abortion or same-sex marriage or euthanasia. In such situations, what distinguishes people as Christian is that they hold the correct set of beliefs. If people are in line with the rest of the church on this set of beliefs, then they must be Christians.
This approach doesn’t really work with how the gospel writers present Jesus, however. Jesus doesn’t come with a new set of stone tables to replace the Ten Commandments; instead, he comes to act out the life he wants those who follow him to emulate. Even when he does provide instructions on how to live (such as the Sermon on the Mount or the two great commandments), they are often quite vague. Telling people to love their neighbors isn’t all that helpful on a day-to-day basis, as we often find ourselves in situations where loving someone feels much like denying them what they actually want. The parables seemingly make this easier, if we think of parables like the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, but there are many other parables that simply leave us more confused than when we started.
Rather than emphasizing the right beliefs, Jesus emphasizes the right actions. When he is eating with a Pharisee, he praises the woman who is using her tears and hair to wash his feet. He doesn’t ask her what she believes; he simply observes what she is doing, concluding from that action the type of love she has. When people come to be healed, he often responds by saying that their faith has healed them, as it was not their dogma that led to their healing, but their willingness to step out in faith.
This passage from John comes on Christmas Day, a day where we talk about the incarnation, the coming of Jesus as a human. We spend a good deal of time arguing over exactly what that means (as the church has for hundreds of years; see the Nicene Creed for evidence), as we think we need the correct belief about who or what Jesus is. Jesus seems to think
