When the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible was first published 22 years ago we finally got a translation of scripture that at least begins to do right by the theology of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, a person who lived at the end of the first century or beginning of the second in the midst of a Middle Eastern world occupied by the Roman Empire and that suffered greatly because of it. The writer was a person who had heard the stories about Jesus of Nazareth and maybe had even read the written accounts of Mark and Luke and now wanted to describe Jesus and his life theologically and do that with a certain amount of rhetoric but also with poetry and metaphor, as is the case of this last scripture reading.

 

The writer of the Fourth Gospel seems to want to say, I think, that Jesus’ life had  eternal meaning – he was in the beginning with God and from the beginning with God – and also universal meaning…for all things and all people, none were excluded, even by implication; all now were included. Now with the publication of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, we got a translation that fits the gospel writer’s eternal, universal theology.

 

Another thought on this grand night of candles and light is of the role of ordinary humankind, us ordinary citizens of Creation, in bringing the light of Christ who was of the Word of God and in the beginning with God, to whomever in the world (or in all creation) doesn’t have it yet. What’s our role and responsibility in all of that?

 

But we’ll get to that. To take the first thought first: Prior to 1989, just 20 or so years ago, the most reliable modern-era English language version of scripture that we had, the Revised Standard Version, which was published in 1946 by the National Council of Churches and then remained the standard for most mainline Protestant churches for the next 40 some years, translated John 1, verse 4, like this: Inhim – referring to the Word that was in the beginning with God as masculine:“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

 

Now, I know that the gospel writer’s intention in the late first-century was surely to be generic and all-inclusive. Surely it was. If it wasn’t, then all that this evangelist wrote was internally contradictory – a fraud – and it wouldn’t have lasted, let alone make it into the Bible as canonical scripture. The original was fully inclusive. Why, then, did it take so long for the church to figure out a way to say it that way? Why did it let the exclusive, male gender-specific language remain for such a long, long time? Why did the authors and translators of scripture and the authors of all our holy books, our hymnals and books of order and confessions of faith, use the masculine form for generic references into the 1990’s and beyond, and even to this day? Why?

 

I think it’s because we still have a masculine, male-dominant orientation to our lives, even to this day, this night…or, at least…an “all the world is like us or ought to be” orientation…to our ethics, to our politics, to our economic orders, to our commercial and industrial activities, to our faith activities. And that “all the world is like us or ought to be” orientation is just as insidious and just as destructive as the old male-dominant orientation used to be. We are we, and they are they, and it is to us (the “we” of the “we and them”) to whom Christ certainly came. Them, we’re just not so sure about. Only if you push us will we say that God came at Christmas to them as well.

 

Come on, dear friends, its fessin-up time. We do it, we do it. And such mental or emotional orientations – such attitudes – deeply rooted as they may be, almost as though they’re genetic in nature – such orientations and attitudes fly in the face of, and butt head-on into, Christmas’s most fundamental meaning, which is that life and light have now come, and the life that is light is the light of all people. Ain’t nobody left out in the Greek word that John used. It’s no longer the light of men or the light of all like us, or the light of all Presbyterians, or even the light of all Christians; now, what has come is the light of even non-Christians, it is the light of all people – John 1, verse 4, in the New Revised Standard Version – a huge translation improvement that we have badly needed even to this moment.

 

You see, folks, if the meaning of Christmas is that God has now come into the world, incarnate for all Creation’s beings, which is the grand theological proposition of John the gospel writer-poet, then there can be no diminishment of the good news of the absolutely inclusive natures of life, love, and the church for any reason whatsoever. And no excuses can be made for any of the isms or phobias that remain: sexism, racism, intellectual elitism, age-ism, and homo-phobia. We gotta get over them.
 

If the one who came at Christmas is life – and that’s what we have here, “life,” the word in Greek means all human experience – and that life is light, the light of all people, then we’ve got to assume that whatever it is that we’re celebrating tonight has happened for all people, women as well as men. We need to say it: The young as well as the old, the old as well as the young. We need to say it: black as well as white, brown, and in-between. We need to say it: the able-bodied, keenly thoughtful and sharply expressive, sure, but also the disabled and challenged. All are illuminated and equally affected by the light that John describes as having come among us: the sleeping and the wakeful, the repentant and the unrepentant, the married but also the single folk, the straight folk and the gay folk. All are illuminated by the light. There’s no more exclusivity; Christmas shines it all away.

 

And as to my second thought, the thought that we ordinary citizens of Creation have a role in getting the Word that is light and now come into the world out to whomever doesn’t see it yet, it just impresses me, I guess, that all who accept this stuff as truth are given power to become themselves children of God. That’s verse 12 of this lesson. If we’re given power as children of God, then we’re responsible to use it and use it well.

 

Christmas, for a lot of us, is pretty much a passive thing that we feel like others do much better, I think. But the message of tonight’s text – and also the meaning of the candle-lighting thing we’ll do pretty soon – is that we who have been affected by the light of Christmas – and there’s nothing wrong with feeling good about tonight and the season, certainly – we have a responsibility to pass along the illumination that came into the world when Jesus was born.

 

Lots of possibilities for getting on with the job we’re given in this regard. For some, those endowed by God with more of the sunshine, the task is to reproduce the light of Christ in like measure. For some, those endowed with different rays of sunshine, the responsible stewardship will be appropriate to those endowments. The point is, we’re all illuminated by the Christmas light, and we’re all charged up like the Energizer bunny to pass the light along, not willy-nilly wherever we like or to just an exclusive clique of like-minded, like-spirited, like genetically arranged people, but to wherever there is darkness. Pass it along to mysterious and distant places, I guess, to mysterious and strange people, but also in familiar and local places to familiar and well-known people – to be the light coming into the world that John describes. In Tanglewood and River Oaks and Memorial, and the Heights and West U, but also Pasadena, and Spring, and Spring Branch, and Montrose Boulevard, and Richmond Avenue, and Downtown, and the Medical Center, and Uptown and the Galleria, and the Ship Channel, and West, North, and South and way, way beyond. On San Felipe Street, even in St. Philip Presbyterian Church, wherever there’s darkness, we who experience light are called to be light and bring the light that John describes as life and word…exclusive of none, inclusive of all. Amen.