O God of grace, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. 

      There’s nothing like Christmas at Emmanuel Church in space we share with our friends at Boston Jewish Spirit, with the ark of the covenant present in the sanctuary, to remind me of an old Hasidic Jewish saying: “God invented humans because God loves stories.”  That’s what the Gospel lesson from John made me think of.  But what kind of story is this?  This is the beginning of the Gospel of John’s story of Jesus.  This is John’s way of saying  “once upon a time.”  This is the writer of this Gospel’s birth narrative, his particular story about who Jesus was.  It’s not the story that you might have been expecting – that is, the Gospel of Luke’s story of Mary and Joseph and a baby away in a manger.

     Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, “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 was shining in darkness and darkness did not overcome it.”

      This is not the kind of story that would make a very good Christmas pageant.  And there aren’t a lot of catchy Christmas carols which refer to John’s story of the beginning of Jesus.  This is mystical poetry.  Sometimes I like it the best because no one ever says about John, I don’t believe that – although that is probably because no one knows quite what John is talking about!  John’s beginning is true the way poetry is true – which is a way that I believe all of scripture is true. This is the perfect story for a Christmas Eve service where exquisite beauty and excitement often mingle with a kind of breathless exhaustion and profound sadness.  This is the perfect story for adults who have some experience with Christmas, and some experience with life in general, because this is a love story.

      Listen to the Gospel of John translated another way.  Substitute Story for Word and remember that another word for God, according to John, is Love.  “In the beginning was the Story, and the Story was with Love, and the Story was Love.  The Story was in the beginning with Love.  All things came into being through the Story, and without the Story not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in the Story was life, and the life is the light of all people.  The light was shining in darkness and darkness did not overcome it.”

      This holy and dreamlike poetry is a story about Love -- Love that is so steady, so wise, so brave, so life-giving, that it cannot be overcome – it cannot be vanquished.  This is a story about the beginning of Jesus, yes, and this is a Christmas story not just about him – about one child, but about all of us children.  All who embrace Love receive the power to become children of Love, John the Evangelist says.  It’s Love that creates the Story and the Story creates life.  Love – not always easy to see – has always been there, creating the Story, creating Life.  John wants us to know from the very start, that this story of the beginning of Jesus -- of Love come down from heaven -- has something to do with us.  John doesn’t name players in the Story of Love become flesh.  John’s cast of characters in his nativity narrative becomes whoever is hearing the story.  The Gospel of John’s nativity story is the story of what Love can do with us and in us when Love becomes embodied in us, by us.

      This is a story, the Prologue of the Gospel of John, that knows that we have walked in darkness and it sets before us the idea of Love as something constant and unbroken – like Belden Lane’s description of an encounter with desert spirituality in his book called The Solace of Fierce Landscapes.  Lane writes, “You find yourself alone in a vast and empty terrain, standing before a naked wall of red-hued rock rising hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. The stone never moves as you sit there facing it, but after a while it poses a question. How did the stone face of the canyon cliff change on the day of your divorce, the day your father or mother died, the day you came to admit your dependency on alcohol or drugs?”  He continues.

      "Surely, it would seem, the whole world must have fallen apart when your world collapsed! But the realization dawns (if you stay there long enough, without running) that the stone cliff never changed at all. It remained entirely unmoved. Something continued constant and unbroken throughout the utter depth of your pain. Something stayed there, in all of its majesty for you present, waiting, and still. The landscape's silent immensity – and the God to whom it points – is able to absorb all the grief one can give it."1

      I offer this because behind the Christmas Eve cheer in this beautiful sanctuary with beautiful music, I imagine that some of you who are here are missing someone you love – someone who loved you but is gone. Some who are here are missing someone to love who will love you back. Some are missing a place – or a time past. Some are yearning for a place or time that doesn’t exist yet. What I want to tell you is that this is the Christmas story for you. This is a love story for you.

      “In the beginning was the Story, and the Story was with Love, and the Story was Love.  The Story was in the beginning with Love.  All things came into being through the Story, and without the Story not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in the Story was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light was shining in darkness and darkness did not overcome it….And the Story became embodied and lived among us, and we have seen Love’s glory … full of grace and truth.”  John is using these words to describe what we can barely comprehend – that no matter what, God is grace and love; and God is truth.

      One of my favorite contemporary theologians and Episcopal priests, Bill Dols, writes, “The truth of light breaking through at the darkest hour of the darkest night spans history and crosses continents.  It is also as close as the sighing of a broken heart when a dream is shattered, a hope broken, a promise violated and trust breached, a marriage unraveling or dead, a body aching or diseased, and when death comes like a thief in the night to claim those whom we love and need the most.”  This is the story of Christmas where “God comes alive in the world at the darkest hour of the longest night.  May whatever you know of such a moment in your life be also blessed and sanctified by a new birth…Depart from this place [tonight] believing that [this] Christmas story is … your story; that it still waits to happen.  Be brave enough to…ask how.” ²

      Of course being brave is so much easier when others are around to encourage – that is, to lend courage.   That is one of our most important reasons for getting together as a parish.  Being brave is very difficult when one is trying to go it alone.  And it’s much too much to figure it all out on one late night.  So if we want to know what difference this Christmas-y love story might make in our lives and for our whole world, we’ll have to come back together again and again and soon!  My Christmas prayer is that we will.³