“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Over the next few weeks we will become well acquainted with this sentence and that will help us to become better acquainted with God and with ourselves. With our study of the Gospel of John we have embarked upon a path of discovery. But that does not mean that we come to this Gospel without firm Christian convictions already well formed in our souls. Nor do we embark upon this path of discovery by suspending our Christian formation as though that will somehow eliminate prejudice from our study so that we may more purely discover the truth in these texts. No, this notion that by suspending our Christian convictions we will discover the “unvarnished truth” is an idea that is only a few hundred years old and that makes it rather new in the scheme of things. But new or not it has spawned a spate of errors and one of its most egregious errors is the “myth of objectivity.” Now when I say, “the myth of objectivity,” I’m not saying that we cannot really and truly know, affirm and communicate reality — we most certainly can know the Truth and as Jesus said it will set us free. But the “myth of objectivity,” as it is conceive in our day, is the idea that the truth seeker ought to empty his head of his Christian convictions in order to see what is really real. The “myth of objectivity” ought to be called what it really is which is the “myth of the empty head.” The “myth of the empty head” says that the less you know about a text the purer your interpretation will be. The more you bring Christian convictions to a text the more your reading of that text is prejudged, the more you are reading into the text what is not there. Now to be perfectly clear let me say that is complete nonsense, rubbish, and claptrap. We do not need an empty head, we need heads full of knowledge and responsibility, but most of all we need insider information and that is exactly what we have — insider information, indeed we have the apotheosis of insider information.
What I mean when I say that we are embarking upon a path of discovery in our study of the Gospel of John is that our study of John will clarify the Christian convictions you already have and I also expect our study will not only illuminate what is already shinning bright in your Christian heart, but we will also make some progress in our understanding of the meaning and purpose of men and things, much of which concerns finality which, as you know, is equivalent to God’s purpose in creating anything at all in the first place. And specifically we will learn more about his purpose for creating human beings whose creation was the first step in building a sort of bridge by which creation may passover to and participate in the uncreated life of God himself. This goes back to Pope Benedict’s understanding of the purpose of creation that I mentioned last week: “God created the universe in order to be able to become a human being and pour out his love upon us and to invite us to love him in return.” I say our creation was the first step and the second step was the Incarnation by which the God who is God entered into the creation as a creature — passing over by the bridge of our flesh — in order that the creature may, astonishingly, enter into and share in the uncreated life of God. Permit me to say a bit more about the bridge.
There is a word you all know that communicates this reality and that is the Latin word “pontifex.” The use of that word to signify an esteemed and lofty purpose goes way back in Rome before the Church; but it is a word the Church adopted examples would be when someone speaks of “pontificals,”which means books of liturgies, or when someone speaks of a “pontifical mass,” or “a Pontif.” The word came to be used in the Church to designate bishops, so a pontifical mass is a mass celebrated by a bishop. It is made up of two Latin words, “pons,” which means bridge, as in the word “pontoon.” The second word is “facere,” which means “to do or to make.” Put them together and you get the word pontifex which literally mean a “bridge-builder.” Now a bridge is built for the purpose of crossing over an obstacle, a chasm, a wide space to get to the other side. I am suggesting to you that human beings were created with a purpose and that purpose is, at least in part, to be a bridge-builder — but with the twist that the builder himself is the bridge. “How is that possible,” you ask? Hang on and I will show you how that is possible. But first you have to realize this: that which we are meant to traverse in this case is not a river or a valley, but it is the distance that separates the Creator God from the creature which great distance is all but impossible to imagine. But Jesus helps us understand the radical distance a little bit with the parable of a certain callous, cold-hearted rich man who was known for his unsympathetic treatment of the poor. That man died and he went to straight to hell. And then one day in hell he had a vision of “Abraham afar off,” and a poor man he once knew was being held like a little child in Father Abraham’s lap. The rich man cried out to Abraham for help, but Abraham responded:
“Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.”
Luke 16:26
The poor man who name was Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham and Abraham was in the bosom of God and the reason Abraham was in the bosom of God is because Abraham is in Jesus and Jesus’ natural dwelling place is the bosom of the Father:
“the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has made God known…” John 1:18
But, apart from Jesus, the bosom of the Father is afar off and the distance is too great for anyone to span. This is not a sermon about what happens when we die, though I will preach on what we may expect at our death later on in this study. But I do mean to emphasize that there is a “great gulf fixed” between the Creator and the creation, but God has crossed that great gulf by the bridge of our created human nature.
“God created the universe in order to be able to become a human being and pour out his love upon us and to invite us to love him in return.” The part that we play in God’s drama of creation, the part we are meant to play, is the Pontifex, the builder who becomes the bridge and the upshot is that Jesus, our Incarnate God, is the Pontifex Maximus, the Supreme Bridge Builder as well as the resplendent and only Bridge between God and his creation. Our created humanity has become the Bridge of God’s Human Flesh — the bridge by which God’s love has crossed over the great divide and conveyed the fulness of his Divine life right into the arms of Mary, the Mother of God and thus into the arms of all humanity.
Now I have used a lot of words here and I have spoken these words out loud, but the word spoken out loud first existed inside of me, in my interior life undisclosed to others. Words have occurred to you as you listened to this sermon and they existed first in your interior life and if you wanted to you could have uttered those words out loud with your voice. Last week someone did that and said, “Amen,” out loud as I was preaching. And I want to say, I appreciate that support! Thank you very much! If you want to say amen, say amen. You know the word “Amen” rose up in the interior, from within that person first, and then it was spoken out loud. Now stick with me. That word, “Amen,” was first of all an interior word, but once it was spoken out loud, it became the speaker’s exterior word.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
I’m getting ready to finish up now so listen: In a way God has an interior life and an exterior life and when he created us in his image he created us with an interior life as well. That is in part what it means for us to have been created in the image and likeness of God. We know that we have experienced an interior and exterior word and we know as well that we have what we might call an interior and exterior life. Furthermore our own personal everyday experience of a real interior and exterior life corresponds, in a way, to God’s interior and exterior life. But we are not God, we are not even similar to God strictly speaking — we are created in the image and likeness of God. We try to put into words our understanding things — like the universe and interstellar space or even human interiority. God understands everything perfectly and what God understands he loves and it is his Word that is the expression of his perfect understanding and his perfect love for his creation.
We try to put into words what we learn about thing and about ourselves. But our word is alway imperfect and it is never the same as we are. However, God’s Word is his perfect knowledge and his perfect love of all that is and that begins with himself. God’s Word is of the very same nature as God:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Last week I spoke of the sacramental principle that there is an interior and exterior aspect to every created thing. I also spoke of the doctrine of signatures which is the conviction that God had marked everything he created with an exterior sign, a signatur that reveals its true meaning, finality, God’s purpose, for all that is. And in particular God has marked humanity with his own divine signatur and with that the unthinkable, the inconceivable has become reality — the interior Word of the Father, the Son of God, has signed his own name upon our created flesh.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made… And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…”