Christmas Again!

The Reading we have just heard — “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God” and so on — is the Apostle John’s Christmas story. We are accustomed to reading about the shepherds and the angels and the Wise Men, but John’s version tells us in a unique way what it’s really all about: the reality that God loves His human family so much that for centuries, He prepared the world for the coming of Christ. And with Jesus’ coming there came a new understanding and a new experience of how much God loves us.

After John had written his Gospel in this way, he decided it wasn’t enough. There is one other thing this coming of Christ does that is supremely important to us, so John decided to write a little letter about it. All through that First Epistle of John we are told that because Jesus has given us a new understanding of God’s…