St. Francis of Assisi is attributed as having said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” So in the spirit of Holy Francis of old, let’s sing!

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C, when you sing you begin with Do-Re-Mi…the first three notes just happen to be…”

What better way to begin a new year of preaching than with the words of an old song from a classic and timeless musical reminding us to start at the very beginning. [”When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!”] In her own unique and inimitable way, the voice of Julie Andrews can help point us back to this incredible gospel text which itself is also an old song — indeed an ancient hymn — singing us back, hearkening us back - to the very beginning — to our primordial genesis — to the very birth of time as told by the writer of the biblical book of first things.

So, as long as we are singing lyrics of old songs this morning, on this first Sunday of a new year and new decade, listen again to these lyrics: the poetry of the biblical book of firsts: from the first chapter, the first three verses. Listen to them as you would listen to the lyrics of a song. Listen to them like you would a storybook. Listen to them as poetry, not as science or as history. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” Beautiful words. Imaginative words. Ancient beginning words.

Then flip ahead through the pages of the old songbook, past the next 38 works from the Hebrew scriptures (trying your best not to get waylaid or distracted by “Leviticus: The Musical”), then fast forward a bit more through the first three works of the Christian scriptures (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and then hear again these timeless lyrics from St. John’s Gospel, echoing the first musical which inspired them:

“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.” Beautiful words. Imaginative words. Ancient beginning words.

Preaching on the prologue (the first words) to the Gospel of St. John is sort of like trying to explain why a song is beautiful. It sort of ruins the song. Sometimes it’s just best to sing it again, to repeat the words, and let it be.

Oxford University professor of divinity & Episcopal priest Marilyn McCord Adams, in preaching a sermon on the Holy Trinity as divine comedy chides us, “We are always at our silliest when we put on our Sunday best, don pious expressions, speak in tones of extreme unction, and pretend to tell the truth about God.” She goes on to say, “Such a God, we feel, must dwell in a world of his own, approachable at most by favored servants, in secret inner sanctums, under protection of faultlessly performed liturgies!” (endquote)

Instead, on this first Sunday of a new year, on this first Sunday of a new decade, perhaps for some on this first Sunday back since the silent and holy night of Christmas Eve, we hear these words about a Word, words about The Word. Words, words, words.

In the beginning, words are thoughts. In the beginning, words are ideas. In the beginning, words are emotions. And then, words spill over our tongues and off our lips or onto the paper or the computer screen and they start making their mess.

After all, words do not always rhyme. Words are not always beautiful and poetic. Words, as they say, get in the way.

Which is precisely the point of these messy, faltering words of mine this morning.

In the beginning, the Word got in the way.

St John uses the Greek word for “word” which is logos, from which our word “logic” originates. It is a thought, an idea expressed in a saying, an utterance.

In the beginning, John writes, the Word was with God and the Word was God. Mysterious words. Cryptic words. Confusing words.

But then, as John’s words unfold, we hear that the Word became flesh. In other words, what God had in mind since the very beginning finally came into being. God’s thoughts became words, first spoken through prophets, and then by a baptizer named John. Finally, God spoke God’s first and final Word, God’s defining Word, and it became flesh and blood.

Words get in the way.

Jesus is the word who gets in our way.

Jesus is the word that became messy flesh and blood, born in a barn, amid the steaming dung of livestock, a weak human baby, and lived among us and all the steaming dung of humanity.

And — of all things - this is the glory of God.

Not in some angel-lit sky. Those were just the words of the angels. The angels were singing of the glory of God which had now came down from the highest heights to the lowest lows and pitched a tent, set up shop, made a home — among all the messiness which IS us. The Word became … us.

O magnum mysterium — O great mystery. For centuries, the church has had no better words for God becoming weak human flesh than this: O great mystery and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord lying in a manger.

O magnum mysterium.

From the very beginning to the very end, words fail us.

But not this Word.

Amen.