Early January always feels like a fresh start. The Christmas whirlwind has settled down. We still have a fighting chance to keep our resolutions for the new year. Cartoons always depict the New Year as a baby, full of possibilities and innocence. We hope that with a new year we can leave the baggage behind us, stretching toward a brighter future.

The gospel of John begins when everything was new, before the creation itself had any baggage. John begins when the only thing that existed was the Word. We cannot do full justice to the complexity of John's thought just in this opening sentence. We could spend all of our sermon time for this year trying to bring out all of the nuances of this opening phrase from John, "In the beginning was the Word." John drew here on Greek philosophy, in which …