Every once in a while, a pastor or church leader asks me to preach in their pulpit on Sunday mornings. I am very humbled because a) I am a woman and many pastors feel that women shouldn’t preach in churches and b) I am not a scholar of theology. I have said, “No thank you,” on many occasions, but sometimes I say yes. This Sunday is one of those Sundays.
Every once in a while, a pastor or church leader asks me to preach in their pulpit on Sunday mornings. I am very humbled because a) I am a woman and many pastors feel that women shouldn’t preach in churches and b) I am not a scholar of theology. I have said, “No thank you,” on many occasions, but sometimes I say yes. This Sunday is one of those Sundays.
Before I give a sermon, I have a ritual. First, I don’t begin perusing the scriptures that I might talk about earlier than two weeks ahead of time. It’s not that I like testing God or even that I am a procrastinator. I have found that if I begin preparing for the sermon too far ahead of time, I become so charged by the topic that it becomes all I think about until I get to preach. The ideas I process, the lessons I glean from reading the Bible and studying the Hebrew and Greek influences on the words dive deeply within me, and I feel myself changing. It’s as though a light turns on and something I have never seen before comes alive.
That’s where I am today and since you are nice enough to read this, indulge me a moment. I am studying John’s gospel chapter 1, verses 1-14. I read it to my husband the other night and he told me that the particular verses were far too mysterious, complex, and difficult to talk about so I should choose an easier scripture. His words sealed the deal for me. John chapter 1 it was going to be.
John was Jesus’ best friend and he wrote his gospel to paint a picture of Jesus so that we could understand him the way he did. (That made me wonder what my best friend would write about me.) John starts by stating some pretty wild things.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Those three sentences alone could take a month to figure out. John tells us even before the beginning of eternity, God existed but had someone else with Him. Someone else? Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just say “In the beginning was God?” Then consider that the Hebrew meaning of “Word” implies action. There is a dynamism tied up in it almost rendering it a verb. John says that all things were made through him and since Word implies action, then when the Word opened his mouth, life came! That is extraordinary power.
The Greek translation of “word” is logos, which means “the reason of God” or “mind of God.” Since John says that life came through this Logos, then it (Logos) was the point of contact between God and us (since we are his creation). This allowed both Jews and Greeks to understand what John was saying because both groups comprised his audience.
