Let’s Take John More Seriously

25 December 2025  John 1:1-18

The Feast of the Nativity of the Lord

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

Once in a while you get to hold in your hand a text that truly changed the world:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.   – John 1:1

John’s Gospel begins the same way the Old Testament begins: “In the beginning….” This would have startled none of John’s original readers. There was no New Testament at that time – for those earliest Christians “the Scriptures” meant the Old Testament.

Perhaps it is time to take John a little more seriously. Perhaps a lot of people already are: Jesus is the Word, Jesus is God, Jesus is here, Jesus is offering His life to you, at every Mass, every day, everywhere. Today. Now.

What came next, however, was not from the Hebrew scriptures, but from Plato: “In the beginning was the Word.”  The Greek term was logos, which in Plato refers to the rational organizing principle of the universe. John was saying that the rational organizing principle of the universe is Jesus. If you want to understand the world, and everything in it, you have to start with Jesus.

The truth about the universe is not a What, but a Who.

Who was that for? What sort of audience did John have in mind when he wrote this? It seems pretty clear that he had in mind an audience that had a passing familiarity with Plato, as well as an audience that would recognize Hebrew elements like, “In the beginning….” John, it seems, was translating a very Jewish story into terms that Greeks would understand. He used words like logos; he used images like light and darkness, being and becoming, all of which would have been familiar to a Greek-speaking audience of the first century A.D. who, like Plato, were frustrated by traditional Greco-Roman polytheism; who thought that traditional stories about the Olympian deities showed them to be mean, petty, immoral, and violent; who, like Plato, were looking for a higher principle to understand life and the universe. Plato called that logos; John called Him Jesus.

In other words, John was evangelizing a religiously and culturally discouraged audience who were beginning to think that there might be something special about this Jesus, who were starting to suspect that claims He is God might not be as crazy as they used to think, that maybe the real crazies are the people who oppose Him.

Sound familiar?

In England this year, which has been far more advanced in secularization than the U.S. for some time, 60% of young adults attended Church on Christmas. In the United States 56% say that it is likely they would show up at Church if someone they knew invited them, including 40% of the religiously unaffiliated.

Influencers in the Roman Empire were not ready to adopt the message of John in the first century, or the second, or the third. They used all their might to disbelieve, discredit, and destroy the Christian movement.

Yeah, but look what happened to the Roman Empire.

The problem with contemporary non-belief is that it is so uninteresting, and intellectually sterile. The influencers of today, however, largely non-believers, have been more skillful in operating the machinery of public opinion. For several generations Christians have dealt with this by giving the non-believing world less and less to disbelieve, trimming their message, thinking that this would make the gospel more palatable. All that accomplished was putting once-mighty denominations on life support.

Perhaps it is time to take John a little more seriously. Perhaps a lot of people already are: Jesus is the Word, Jesus is God, Jesus is here, Jesus is offering His life to you, at every Mass, every day, everywhere. Today. Now.

Merry Christmas.