In the beginning ...
What? I can't figure it out: defiance? loss of imagination and/or interest? Up at 2:40 AM, a magic mug of decaf with half & half and a sliver of Danish, a quick check of News (nope) and scan new emails.
In my prenonogenarian life I'd likely move quickly to writing a +Time blogpost, but the motivation fails to stir, so I play a few games of solitaire, lose three, win one, and quit. What's the deal, tell me what's happening, what's the deal, tell me what's happening ...
I'll tell you one thing: AI is alphabet stupid, showing cars online as "classics" and they're all imaginary cars that AI has designed, drawn, and posted online. So far I've seen a fake Packard, two or three different fake Chryslers, a fake Studebaker, a fake Ford. If you're a car person, it isn't funny. It's annoying, and it rings the alarm for me, that AI is becoming Big Brother of 1984, with all new truths for the gullible. They got me with the first one, saying an AI car was a 1941 Chrysler New Yorker, and I researched to see if it was some design that never made it into production. Nope, it was just AI nonsense.
Be careful, AI may be trying to pull the wool over your eyes. A few weeks ago I had a marketing call from our HVAC company, with a "special offer." It was interesting, so I asked a question and got an answer immediately, I mean Immediately. That's odd, so I asked another question and got an answer instantly, no pause for thought. A little too quick with answers for a human, nomesane? I asked, "Are you AI?" The answer started out, "You got me, Tom, yes, I'm AI." So, be careful is my suggestion.
Anyway, it's Sunday, what's our gospel reading for this First Sunday after Christmas Day? It's always from John 1, the prologue "in the beginning was the Word"
John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
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.
+++++++++
The bit about John the Baptist is likely an insertion, not part of the original. But then the prologue itself may be an insertion. It's powerful, though, some of my favorite scripture. Tying as it does to Genesis 1:1f. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (or when God was creating the heavens and the earth) , and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over - - I say "unformed chaos" - - and GOD SAID ... " and God Saying is the Word in its both theological and philosophical sense, bringing creation into being. Hearing it always brings to my mind the scenario in C S Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia (The Magician's Nephew) when the two children (before the Pevensies) are in a strange place of total darkness, and from the distance they hear singing. As the singing goes on, things start to happen in the darkness, light begins to dawn, and other things, Aslan is the Word singing creation, Narnia, into being.
Reading Narnia requires a special sort of mindfulness because C S Lewis called it preChristian, pre-evangelism, and you need to be aware that he'll lead you right up to Good Friday, the Cross, and Easter morning before you realize what's happening. I remember the moment, now a generation ago, when I tried to show my class at HNES what Lewis was doing with the story of Aslan at the Stone Table, and I hinted, and hinted, and hinted until one student suddenly said, "OH!! OH!! YEAH!!!"
And I love, in the Narnia story, one of Lewis' exquisite theological subtleties. Arriving in this strange place from downtown London, with a lamppost, the wicked witch is clinging to the lamppost and so is there with them and escapes into creation as it's being formed by Aslan's song. The "wow, yes" is that evil was actually brought into the world by the first humans.
I like that as in my life's quest I continue to seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will, standing on my seminary theology professor's challenge to the class, Who or What is God? And finding the search most disillusioning, a terrible cost of all my certainties, where my basic truth has moved from Earth to the realization that comes in "you are here"
My Methodist clergy colleagues used to have a two person saying, "God is Good!"
and the other person responds, "All the Time!"
RSF&PTL
T90