What's the Word?

In the beginning ...

The Bible, of course, starts there.
The Gospel of John starts there.

Where do we start with the power and relevance of scripture?

I began, there's that word again, a Bible study in Kinder last night with the first 18 verses of John's Gospel, some of the most encouraging, well-known, important words ever constructed. It was good to be back in a Bible study, though teaching four a week, my new schedule, might be a tad nutty I've come to think.

But I taught this last night and I was moved to think, ponder, reflect again how wonderful and powerful these words truly are.

In the beginning was the Word (logos)... John tells us just how important his prelude is going to be. This is "are you ready for some football" at the opening of Monday Night Football before they went crazy and banned it. This is a foreshadow of the importance of what is to come.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ... Wow. The Word was with God in the very beginning. The Word, then, must be pretty darn important, for the earth, the things of the earth, the things above the earth were not.

And then the most incredible, most improbable, most impossible, but most meaningful words of all.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

So what's this Word?

Of course, we know he was talking about this man named Jesus. But what on earth must his early readers have thought, especially those who did not know the story?

How about those who don't know the story today? Those who choose to not believe the story today? Those who simply can't grasp the story in all its fullness today?

When John wrote these words, as I believe him to have done so, he must have been struggling mightily to understand what all this means. What did it mean for Jesus to have come, to have healed, to have raised the dead and then eventually to have died and been raised himself? What did it mean to the world in general? To his followers?

This is his answer. It is our answer. It is what we get up each day and pour ourselves in to. We are the ones who believe the Word was with and the Word was. Jesus, this fully human person capable of loving even his enemies, existed before birth, before time, before Adam. That's the premise. That's the thing.

That's John's Christianity. It must be ours or we have no beginning ourselves.