The most interesting thing, to me is that John uses a very loaded word to get this message across. Ironically, that loaded word is the word "Word" itself, which in Greek is "Logos." "Word," or "Logos," was a very loaded word in John's day because it had been claimed hundred of years before by the Greek philosophers to refer to God. So for John to claim the divine "Word" of the philosophers as being personified in Jesus was quite a claim, especially since Jesus is not the kind of "Word" the philosophers had in mind.

The philosophers' God was the divine Word who ordered all things according to an inner logic. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus identified this Logos, this Word, with War, not Love. He claimed that "War is the father and king of all things; he has made some gods and others men, some slaves and others free." (Fragment 53) "War is common to all and strife is justice; all things both come into being and pass away through strife." (Fragment 80)

In John's day, the Romans had bought this notion hook, line, and sinker. They had built an Empire on it. In fact, they seemed to be the very incarnation of the sort of order that comes from the chaotic Logos of War: once a nation was conquered and subjugated, long, straight roads were paved, aquaducts built, literacy increased, and "civilization" introduced. War and strife were the very lifeblood of the Empire, and since "might made right," the form of justice meted out by the Romans was the highest authority.

Until Jesus came along. John's prologue is a manifesto against the Logos of War, asserting instead the ultimate victory of the Logos of Love, and pointing to an authority higher than that established through military might. But instead of being a revolutionary manifesto that engages in the very strife it opposes to establish itself, John's gospel tells the story of one who willingly gave himself over to the Logos of War, so that he might demonstrate its emptiness in the face of the Logos of Love.

Thus, while the disciples of Heraclitus declared that the god of "War is the father and king of all things; he has made some gods and others men, some slaves and others free," the disciples of Jesus went around saying that the only God is the God of Love, and that this God alone is the father and king of all. This God does not make some slaves and some free; the God of Love creates all people free; it is War that enslaves. If War is a king, it is a king by usurpation, not by right. If War is a god, it is a god of our own making, not the eternal Logos of Love which "was in the beginning with God," through whom "all things came into being."

This, according to John, is the true message of Christmas: that into the Kingdom of War was born the Prince of Peace, the Logos of Love. And no matter how violent the Logos of War gets in its striving against the Logos of Love, Love will win.

Today, we still live in a Kingdom of War, and we will likely spend our lives in a world governed in large part by War, a tyrant posing as the legitimate king of the universe. Yet we are told that there is another King, who is the God and Father of all, and that the true heir to the throne is not violence but the Prince of Peace.

At this time of year, when many of our troops are serving overseas and away from their families, many of us are feeling the stark contrast between the Logos of War and the Logos of Love most keenly. Yet even in the midst of war, we can rejoice that God sent the Prince of Peace to be with us, to be for us a light even in the darkness, a light shining with joy-inducing warmth. Thanks be to God that today we can celebrate the coming of the Logos of Love, even as we pray for the final defeat of the Logos of War.