The Sánchez Archives CHRISTMAS ABC

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

ISAIAH 52:7-10
HEBREWS 1:1-6
JOHN 1:1-18

For the celebration of Christmas, the lectionary supplies several sets of texts (vigil, midnight, dawn, day). The ones treated here are for proclamation at the day Mass.

Eternity enfleshed in time is the gift of grace we call Immanuel, God-with-us. Infinity is made finite in a daring act of loving and giving (John). He is good news and salvation (Isaiah). He is Father and brother and Lord; he is the message of glory we celebrate today (Hebrews)!

Isaiah 52:7-10.

On occasion in the ancient world, the bearer of bad news was put to death, but there would be no danger of that happening to the messenger portrayed in today’s first reading. Part of a longer enthronement hymn in honor of the devastated city of Zion (Jerusalem), today’s pericope envisages the joy and hope of the people on hearing of their release from exile and their imminent homecoming. Written in the sixth century B.C.E. by a prophet known arbitrarily as Deutero-Isaiah, these verses give us a glimpse of the “phoenix quality” of Israel’s hope, a quality she owed entirely to Yahweh’s sustaining love and provident care.

During exile for over a generation, Israel’s beloved capital city of Jerusalem had remained in its demolished condition, the ruins a bleak witness to the political and military might of its Babylonian conquerors. For over a generation, the elite of Israel’s populace had been degraded, displaced in a strange land where they had no rights of proprietorship or freedom to pray and worship as was their custom. During that time of imprisonment and curtailed freedom, a liberating enlightenment gradually took place among the exiles, due in no small part to the prophets who shared the exile. As mediator to his people of God’s revealing word, the prophet helped his people to interpret all that had happened to them, both good and bad, as a part of God’s message of salvation and justice. Each event in their history could be read, as it were, like a word through which God was speaking his mind, his will, his ways for his people. In joyous times, that word could be one of blessing. The darker periods, the failures and defeats, the prophets interpreted as God’s word of redress and deserved punishment. In the events of history, the prophets read for their people the creative, redeeming, purifying, loving, blessing word of God.

Hence the event of Israel’s return from exile was truly a gospel-glad tidings, good news. Not only what God had said to his people, in spoken or in written words, but what he had been and how he had acted within the realm of their history enabled his people to know him as redeemer, saving God. In creation and in history God’s plan is accomplished and clarified. As T. Maertens has pointed out, the event is central; all else, the spoken, written and prophesied words, are in service and in ministry to the event.

Today’s feast celebrates the Christ-event. In fact, the glad tidings of the Deutero-Isaian messenger were only fully actualized, only fully heard and made comprehensible in the event of Jesus Christ. In the event of the incarnation Yahweh truly returns and restores Jerusalem; in the event of the nativity Yahweh draws near to comfort and console his people. In the event of Christ-made-flesh God’s message of salvation achieves its utmost clarity. What we celebrate as gospel, as good news is not mere words but persons and events.

Hebrews 1:1-6.

 In a sort of “before-and-after” or “then-and-now” comparison, the author of the document addressed to the Hebrews enunciated the differences between the revelation of the old and new covenants. Our reading today comprises the introduction of his work which can readily be compared to the prologue of the fourth gospel. In both texts, the image is one of Christ’s divinity and equality with God.

In vv. 1 to 4, the first paragraph of our text today, the author of Hebrews speaks of the superior revelation which God has spoken in Jesus Christ. Unlike the piecemeal and fragmentary revelation of the Old Testament which had to be interpreted by the prophets, the revelation in Jesus is whole and entire, living and absolute. J. Moffatt has said, “Christ is God’s last word to the world; revelation in him is final and homogeneous.” Jesus Christ is a living being. The word of God he has spoken in the event of his ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation does not cease to be heard. The word of God in Jesus is “living and active” (4:12), ever new, ever in the process of communicating to believers the love and care of God. That living, speaking word-become-flesh is the basis for our celebration today.

Besides asserting Christ’s superiority to the prophets and Old Testament revelation, Hebrews also underscores the Lord’s predominance over the angels. As refulgence or reflection (v. 3: apaugasma) of the Father and as the exact representation (charakter or eikon) of the Father’s being, Christ is placed on a par with wisdom (Wisdom 7:26). In the old dispensation, wisdom was regarded as sharing with God

both a cosmological and soteriological role (Proverbs 8:2236, Wisdom 9:9-18). This equating with wisdom in such an operative role placed Jesus Christ on a level far above the angelic hosts whom late Judaism believed were present at creation and who were granted by God a role in its government. Jewish tradition called these angelic beings “sons of God,” and Alexandrian Jewish theologians called them logos, word. Because of these prevalent notions, the Hebrews’ author was adamant in establish Christ’s transcendence and divinity. In New Testament times, popular Jewish belief regarded the angels as mediators of the law for humankind. In a medley of texts from the Jewish scriptures, Hebrews leaves no doubt as to Christ’s superior and unequalled position. The first two texts from Psalms 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14 were thought messianic by late Judaism and by the Qumran community. In both quotations the unique sonship of Christ is established as well as the divinity of his messiahship. The third text (v. 6), a combination of several Old Testament citations (Deuteronomy 32:43; Psalms 97:7, 104:4), forms a compelling invitation to those angelic beings to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. With them, we the faithful join our voices in praise and honor.

John 1:1-18.

John Paul Sartre in an essay on literature once wrote, “The word is a commitment, an enterprise by means of which the author embraces his age.” Although unintentionally and probably inadvertently, Sartre has provided believers with an apt description of the scenario of the incarnation, the central thought of the gospel today. In the speaking into flesh of his word, in the person and event of Jesus Christ, God has committed himself to humankind and to the world in an eternal embrace.

Up until Vatican II, today’s gospel text was proclaimed at the end of every Eucharist, thereby earning for itself the misnomer “last gospel.” Though this practice has been discontinued, it did serve the purpose of climaxing every celebration with the compelling and beautiful truth of the incarnation. Though most situations do not warrant reading the shortened form of the gospel, today may be the unique instance in which the short form would be preferable for the sake of clarity. Verses 6-8 and 15 are prose comments concerning John the Baptizer which were probably inserted into the poetic prologue at a later time by the evangelist or by a disciple-redactor of the fourth gospel. To omit these comments is to allow the hymn to flow more freely with the continuity originally intended.

This hymn that introduces the gospel serves a dual function. First, it provides for the words and works of the incarnate word an eternal background or origin and proclaims as false the theories against Jesus’ divinity prevalent at the turn of the first century C.E. Secondly, the prologue serves as an overture to the gospel, containing a summary of its major themes as well as a means of interpreting Jesus’ message and person. Many believe the hymn to be an adaptation from a Jewish or gnostic wisdom hymn, or a preexisting Christian hymn, adapted by the evangelist for the purpose of expounding his christology. Because the hymn exhibits similarities to semitic, Greek and gnostic ideas, a clear solution as to its origins is almost impossible.

In true semitic style, the prologue begins with a genealogy; however, unlike most Jewish genealogies, it traces Jesus’ origins to the eternal divinity. “In the beginning” is, of course, a deliberate reference to Genesis 1:1 and the creation by God’s word of the universe. In John 1:1 that creative word is speaking again, but no longer as subject to object, as creator to created. In John 1:1 the word who speaks a new creation has become a part of creation itself by that very utterance. That word continues to speak within human history (vv. 4, 9-10) and especially through Israel (v.11). Those who hear and truly listen to that word can become sons and daughters with the Son. Verse 14, “the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” draws together all the Old Testament references to God’s presence with his people, in the cloud, in fire, through the prophets, in his glory, by his law (Exodus 24; Exodus 33:18, Isaiah 6:1). The same root (S-K-N) lends itself to the verbs for God’s presence in nature (shekinah) and his dwelling among us (literally: “pitched his tent”) in his word (eskenosen).

It is difficult to ascertain whether John wanted his readers to understand word or logos in a Greek or in a semitic sense. To those of a Hellenistic background, the logos-word was regarded as an intermediary between God and the created universe. That logos gave the world its order, thus making it intelligible and comprehensible. Humankind, in turning to the logos, could find a key for unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos. Understood in this sense, Christ as logos-word would be the key to knowing about created things and about God. To the semitic mind, the logos or word is a challenge which a believer can accept or reject. A word or a call from God, the logos confronts or encounters the believer and compellingly invites a response. In this sense, Christ as logos-word would be a challenger or initiator of faith, a living epiphany of a loving, saving creator. Probably, the evangelist has combined the best of both cultures in his concept of the logos or word. As T. Maertens has said, Jesus is not only bearer of the word; he is also its content.

The figure of Moses (v. 18) brings to the fore another important semitic idea. For the Jews, Moses was the mediator, through whom the law or light of truth was mediated from God to his people. In the prologue, the evangelist enunciates Christ’s superiority not only as mediator between God and humanity but also to the law. Rabbinical Judaism in the last centuries B.C.E. and the first centuries C.E. glorified the Torah and identified it with wisdom, source of light and life for all (Sirach 24:22-27). In his treatment of Jesus Christ-logos as superior to Old Testament wisdom and law, John’s purpose is in one sense polemical. Over and against the Jewish idea of an eternal and nearly divine law, John posited Christ the word as existing from all eternity, through whom alone would come truth and light, life and grace.

For us who believe and who celebrate the enfleshment of the word of God as the source of life and light and truth, today is a renewal of our faith and of our commitment to the challenge of that word. Let us remember that because of the incarnation, we respond, not to a concept or an ideology or a philosophy, but to a living and loving person.

1. The good news of Christ proclaimed by the church in the pulpit must resound more loudly and more joyfully in the marketplace (Isaiah).

2. No longer through a glass darkly, but in the light of Christ, we behold the fullness of the Father’s love (Hebrews).

3. In the word enfleshed, God speaks the language of our flesh and blood, in the pulsing of our needs and aspirations and even in the shadows of our sinful darker side (John).

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