Showing my age now! Anyway, sticking with John, (not Travolta), we are informed the key word is Word, which does make for a fascinating descriptor and an intriguingly powerful character name. John reveals that Jesus is this Word, (1:17). I can’t imagine it was ever used of Him during His earthly life. Nonetheless, it would surely beat Ishmael or even, dare I say it, The Dude.
Theologically speaking, John can’t state that ‘Jesus’ was there at the beginning because that’s His given name when He becomes human. John needs another word for the Person or personality of Jesus that must have pre-existed His becoming human and was thus present at and involved in the beginning of the universe. With Word (or Logos in the original Greek), things get very interesting for Story.
Logos means something like the-speaking-that-makes-happen. More like an event than the mere opening of the mouth. Just as the universe begins because it is spoken into being, so too does Story. In this sense, Story is grounded in the life of the Word, the one who is Jesus. This isn’t pietistic - it absolutely doesn’t mean every story has to be like the story of Jesus. Rather, it means the blueprint for Story is found in Word.
Given the number and variety of stories written, this is patently a very grand claim. I might as well utilise it before Lady Megan trademarks it forever - a related word to blueprint is archetype. The celebrated Hero’s Journey of epic literature (in that it encompasses the tragic, romantic and comic) is the x-ray-bones of Story. A New Testament archetypal summary can be found in the celebrated Philippians hymn (2:6-11). Ultimate Hero stories obviously predate Christianity, (eg Abraham, Gilgamesh, Horus, Odysseus) but with the coming of the Word they are definitely redefined.
In the First Letter of St John (1 Jn 4:8) we find the words: God is love. The Ancient Greek word for love here translates as self-sacrificing love. In other words, the very nature of the One who created all things is self-sacrificing love or, put another way, the love that loves even unto death. All story (and so life) is now measured against this: the spectrum permanently recalibrated between selfless love and selfish hate. The self-sacrificing hero/ine becomes the cornerstone of the epic and, supremely, they are motivated neither by self-destruction nor personal glory but love in a noble cause. The new paradigm is that a noble death destroys evil and breaks death’s power over us. Rogue One is surely the most powerful of the Star Wars films, (he stated, utterly uncontroversially).
The gauntlet is, thus, laid down to any aspiring Christian writer. Find Word! Show salvation: the dying to selfishness that leads to a truly fulfilled life. Pass beyond the obvious truth that every story is dependent upon contingent being or the unfolding of time and space. Explore the very far from obvious truth that every story is also dependent upon ultimate being or eternity. To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, show the mystery within the manners. In other words, allow the eternal day to break out of the everyday. Even in things as simple as mustard seeds. Or, especially.
This truth extends to how a story is created; written into existence. The struggle to find any good words let alone royal ones itself becomes a journey in self-sacrificing love. It isn’t in itself about getting published, hubris, agon, or becoming faymuss but rather more the daily deepening of love for Word. Every immeasurable moment turns out to be the beginning, every fresh pen-stroke is Word still creating in the beginning; still fleshing-out in the beginning.
In the Book of the Apocalypse, Jesus is described as the Alpha and the Omega (Rev 21:6), notably again, letters: the first and last of the Ancient Greek alphabet. So our whole story somehow begins and ends in the beginning. The beginning is nested inside eternity and so is already mysteriously complete. The finest prolonged meditation on this I’ve encountered is T S Eliot’s Four Quartets but if you’re looking for something more summary, this is hard to beat:
Yes, as the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes forth from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do. (Is 55:10-11)
It may not always feel like it, but everyday is in fact a new adventure of Word; originating, re-expressing, revitalising and returning. And when you’ve exhaustedly put that finishing touch to your final, final, final edit, whether you realise it or not, a mysterious foot is already set upon another destined path towards an ever deeper completion.
Header photo: Patrick Tomasso, Unsplash