
2 min

Love Daily Advent Devotional
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- Religion & Spirituality
Love
John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
“In the beginning was the Conversation and the Conversation was with God.”
When the Gospel of John was translated into Latin from its original Greek, translators of the first few centuries used the Latin word sermo for the Greek word logos in this passage.
There’s a perfectly good Latin word that denotes a single linguistic utterance—it is verbum, word in English.
Sermo, according to Victoria Loorz in her book Church of the Wild, “means not ‘word’ but ‘conversation.’ Sermo indicates not a one-way sermon but a lively discourse, a dialogue, a manner of speaking back and forth: a conversation” (p. 109). Sermo, more than verbum, connotes the riches of meaning in the word logos. For this is a relational word full of all the words of the divine life-force that holds all of life together.
“In the beginning was the Conversation and the Conversation was with God.”
I imagine Mary having a conversation with the infant in her womb much as I did when I was pregnant. “Shush now and let me sleep,” I murmured, and the baby kicked back: “I will not be ignored.” Conversation. The baby’s father leaned toward my full belly, “Daddy to baby, daddy to baby,” he chanted; and the baby squirmed, in delight I imagine. Conversation. The baby emerges from Mary’s body into the dimness of a manger and cries. Mary hugs him close and soothes him, “it’s alright, you’re alright.” Conversation.
Christmas Eve is a night of remembering holy conversations, the speaking of holy words from one to another, between infant and parent, between God and humanity, between and among one another. This eternal, life-giving, embodied and re-embodied, conversation was in the beginning. It is now. And it will be our end.
Dr. Nancy Claire Pittman
President
and Stephen J. England Associate Professor of the Practice of Ministry
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Love
John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
“In the beginning was the Conversation and the Conversation was with God.”
When the Gospel of John was translated into Latin from its original Greek, translators of the first few centuries used the Latin word sermo for the Greek word logos in this passage.
There’s a perfectly good Latin word that denotes a single linguistic utterance—it is verbum, word in English.
Sermo, according to Victoria Loorz in her book Church of the Wild, “means not ‘word’ but ‘conversation.’ Sermo indicates not a one-way sermon but a lively discourse, a dialogue, a manner of speaking back and forth: a conversation” (p. 109). Sermo, more than verbum, connotes the riches of meaning in the word logos. For this is a relational word full of all the words of the divine life-force that holds all of life together.
“In the beginning was the Conversation and the Conversation was with God.”
I imagine Mary having a conversation with the infant in her womb much as I did when I was pregnant. “Shush now and let me sleep,” I murmured, and the baby kicked back: “I will not be ignored.” Conversation. The baby’s father leaned toward my full belly, “Daddy to baby, daddy to baby,” he chanted; and the baby squirmed, in delight I imagine. Conversation. The baby emerges from Mary’s body into the dimness of a manger and cries. Mary hugs him close and soothes him, “it’s alright, you’re alright.” Conversation.
Christmas Eve is a night of remembering holy conversations, the speaking of holy words from one to another, between infant and parent, between God and humanity, between and among one another. This eternal, life-giving, embodied and re-embodied, conversation was in the beginning. It is now. And it will be our end.
Dr. Nancy Claire Pittman
President
and Stephen J. England Associate Professor of the Practice of Ministry
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2 min