Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is almost a bit scary, dear sisters and brothers, how sometimes the prayers and psalms in our liturgy speak into a current situation where there could not have been any chance of predicting such coincidence. Our psalm today, Psalm 147, speaks of peace, happiness for Israel; finest wheat fills the granaries. But Psalm 147 also speaks of the forces of nature like snow, hail and cold which Israel in its own rugged territory continues to experience. Who among us would not have thought of the tsunami, the giant sea waves sent across the Indian Ocean last Sunday when we heard: “... he (God) blows with his wind, and the waters flow.” (147:19b) Israel always mentions the powers of nature in connection with the Creator God who is capable of letting chaos rule, but who in the first chapter of the Bible decidedly is confessed to be the Creator who brings order into chaos.

Israel has never shied away from writing into its holy texts visions and emotions of exuberant joy and - clashing with those - expressions of loss and inconsolable sorrow, sometimes leaving them unreconciled next to each other. Like today where in Jeremiah the almost utopian vision of life back home, after the exile, in peace and happiness and beauty, is followed without forewarning by the shattering cry of Rachel, about the death of her children. Rachel refuses to be consoled. Also by coincidence, this text was quoted last Sunday in our reading of the gospel of Matthew, at a time when the tsunami had already struck in Asia, without most of us being aware of it. Matthew uses Rachel’s mourning cry in the story of Herod killing all children in Bethlehem age two and under. As an expression of our own shock, sympathy, and incapability to grasp what happened in the Indian Ocean a week ago I would like to read Rachel’s cry again:

I am reading from Jeremiah, beginning with two earlier verses for the purpose of contrast:
“Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord. A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” Jer 31, 13 - 15

Vaclav Havel, former Czech President and writer, once said: Hope is not the conviction that there will be a good ending or outcome, but hope is the certainty that there is meaning no matter what will come of something or how it is going to end. In a similar way God does console Rachel and tells her: “Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears ... there is hope for your future, says the Lord, your children shall come back to their own country.” (Jeremiah 31: 16 - 17) It is too early still for the victims of the floods to do that, to have such hope, but we can keep this hope for them alive in our prayers and thoughts as we ourselves try to find ways to help.

Now let’s turn to the Gospel for today, the prologue of John.

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
This is how it begins. John puts Jesus clear back with the beginning of everything, even before there was anything. “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It will take more than a lifetime to figure that one out. “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” This is how the prologue ends. “Close to the Father’s heart” - this God from the beginning, this God so eternal, so almighty - is a Father! Has a heart! And God has made this known to us, through his son, Jesus, a human being, our brother.

These are the two poles, between which the whole prologue unfolds: In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. – No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

I am not going to deal with any details of the prologue now. I make no attempt at dissecting it and filtering out the one thought or the one word which is going to be the good news for you to take home today. I want you to see the whole thing. The entire text. I want you to read it again. Read it over and over. Enjoy the rhythm it has. In some parts it sounds like a poem, in others it is prose. I want you to enjoy the rhythmic prose, its depth, the surplus of meaning that lies so thickly under the surface of the words. I am sure you will find many of the phrases somehow familiar from the language of prayer and our liturgy. I am sure you will discover in John’s words multilayered meaning, something so refreshing when we compare it to our daily use of language. In our conversations, in meetings, in emails, in instant messages, and so on, our language, our words are well-defined, flat, must mean what they say or else...; our use of language is governed usually by the aspect of utility. Not so John: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. What does that mean?

I also trust that in reading the prologue for yourself you will be slightly irritated by the appearance of John the Baptist, who testifies to the light. The human sphere cuts into the divine sphere of Light and Life and Word. The appearance of a historic person interrupts the flow of poetic language. The language has changed to prose, reflecting our human, more prosaic dealings. Especially when it goes on to let us know that the own did not accept him, the true light. (Who would the own be?, us?, the church?, or who?)

It has to be this way that already in the prologue the divine sphere and the human sphere are in tension, that the beautiful language pattern is broken, that the text gets messy in a way. All of Biblical scripture testifies to this messiness by the plentiful versions, contradictions, by different traditions, thickly layered meanings and views. It is a message sent to us by the authors of the Biblical text that the reality of our God freely engages our human contradictions, troubles, our own search for meaning, encouraging us to stretch beyond the world as we know it and have received it. This is exactly the reason why the Word became flesh. Rather than dissecting an email message, a document, a contract, the Biblical text wants us to throw ourselves at it, praying with the psalmist: “You have searched me and known me, o Lord.”

And then, after going through all this, the irritation and the disturbance, our own longings and shortcomings, it will hit us with the original freshness: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’” From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Prologues of books are meant to be read first. But they are written last. When you read a prologue - you know everything. At the same time you know nothing because you don’t know the story yet. So, at the beginning of this New Year, sisters and brothers, we do not know the story of the months to come yet. But we have read the prologue already. We know everything because we have encountered the mystery and wonder of the Word made flesh in the celebration of Christmas and will encounter it again in the sharing of bread and wine. In this year when we celebrate the 60th anniversary of this congregation, I ask you to prayerfully read the prologue again and again, let yourselves be engaged by it, throw yourselves at it, and share with this community of believers how you see the story of this congregation unfold in the years to come. I look forward to your stories of God who is the Word, whom no one has seen, but who was made known to us even to the depths of his heart by his only Son from whose fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
Amen.