If you had to tell your life story, where would you begin? Maybe you would begin with your birth, your arrival into the world. Or maybe you would like to rewind the clock and start before that, with your parents or grandparents or further back in your family tree. Or instead, maybe you would like to fast forward to a moment when you feel that your life really began – perhaps a moment when you realized who you were for the first time, or a moment when you understood the real meaning and purpose of your existence.
The four Gospel writers all have a different approach to this question of where to begin in telling the life story of Jesus Christ. Matthew begins (after a lengthy genealogy) with the nativity story itself, with Mary engaged to Joseph and expecting a child. Mark begins later, at the baptism of Jesus. This is a transformational, milestone moment when Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit before the start of his public ministry. Luke begins earlier than Matthew, with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth who are the elderly parents of John the Baptist.
John’s Gospel starts earlier than this, even earlier than the genealogies of Matthew and Luke – it starts at the beginning of time itself, before the creation of the world. Before Adam walked the earth – before there was an earth to walk on – the Word was with God. In fact, it was through the Word that all things came into being. John’s retelling marks the start of more than one life story – it intimately connects the story of the Word with the story of our world. All of us can trace our lives back to the first verses of John’s Gospel which speak of the birthing, not only of Jesus Christ, but of every human being. Viewed through this lens, Christmas is the day of our becoming.
Revd Angela Sheard
