God's Logos

The gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary for this week is John 1.1-18, which is often referred to as the "Logos Prologue" of John's Gospel. Rather than Luke and Matthew, who begin their gospels with stories of Jesus' birth and infancy, or Mark, who begins with the ministry of John the Baptist, John begins with what was according to scholars an early Christian hymn. The central theme of the hymn is the "Logos" of God--typically translated as "Word" of God.

"Logos" had a very specific meaning within Greek culture. In fact, it was one of the central terms of Greek philosophy. Although a term of philosophy, it would have been as well known to John's audience as "capitalism" or "evolution" is to a contemporary American audience. The notion of logos had its origins with Heraclitus, who was a Greek philosopher about 6 centuries before Jesus. Heraclitus' central inquiry was about what made human culture work. Heraclitus lived in an age when all sorts of things were being created and sustained--political systems, economic systems, science, education. Heraclitus reasoned that there had to be some engine that made everything run, just like an engine that drives our car. Heraclitus posited that the engine that makes the world run--central organizing principle, or the "logos" is violence and conflict. For Heraclitus, any human system is created and sustained by conflict and violence--and not the kind of senseless violence that we saw this week in videotapes on the news of parents fighting over toys at a Christmas sale, but an ordered and structured violence. The kind of violence where competing systems struggle with one another, and through this struggle create and sustain functional systems. The way this typically works is for one force to show up and drive another existing force out.

This notion of logos was central to Greek thought. And it remains central to our own. Politics, economics, education, business, law. A cultural assumption that we share as Americans is that the engine that drives these systems is conflict and violence. Once again--not the kind of senseless violence that leads to criminal liability, but an ordered and structured violence.

John begins his gospel by telling us that we have it all wrong. There is a "logos"--an engine that makes everything run. We just got the name of the engine wrong. The engine is embodied in Jesus. The engine is not an abstract principle, like "conflict" or "violence". Instead, if we want to see how everything is created and sustained, we just look to the life of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. In this life we see a different "engine" that has always been what drives the world, and will always be what drives the world. That engine is sacrificial love, compassion, mercy, and service.

Notice that John is not saying that this logos is the engine that will drive the world someday when we all get our act together and turn to God. John is saying that this is the engine of the God who is the God of eternity--the God who always has been.

The Church has typically perceived the right God but with the wrong logos. That is, the Church perceives God, correctly, as the creator, and Jesus as the redeemer, but assumes that God and Jesus share the Greek notion of logos--in other words, that the revelation of God in Christ was one of conflict and violence--of something driving something out. Instead, God in Jesus brought an entirely different operating principle that is entirely at odds with the logos of the world. An operating principle that was so antithetical to the world's logos that those operating out of the world's logos found Jesus incomprehensible. And when the world was able to reject Jesus, to drive out Jesus, and to crucify Jesus, the world perceived Jesus as powerless. Of course they did--they were seeing Jesus through the wrong logos.

Giving our lives to Jesus is about more than seeing Jesus as more powerful than the world. It is about seeing that in Jesus, God is presenting an alternative to the way that we think the world runs. What truly creates and sustains all things is sacrificial love, mercy, and compassion. Being God's people is about allowing God's Spirit to enter in so that we can finally start getting this through our heads.