The late author and Episcopalian Madeleine L’Engle once explained how the characters in her novels came to life in a way that surprised her. In the process of writing, she found that the characters, which were figments of her own imagination, took on a life of their own. They were not simply marionettes held captive by the strings of her mind. Her imagination was actually prompted by the characters themselves as her writing unfolded. Characters started off as one thing and ended up as something wholly different.[1]
This may explain why some authors, when writing a series of novels, go on to write prequels. In the author’s chronological time, prequels are written later than the novels they precede in fictive time. The characters in a novel have expanded beyond the bounds of the author’s creative impulse, and so the prequels become necessary to flesh out these fictional characters who seem to have come alive and leapt off the page.
Something like this is happening on Christmas Day when we hear the Prologue from John’s Gospel, but in this case, the character is real, more real than our reality. Only last evening, we heard the birth narrative from Luke’s Gospel, which focuses on Jesus’s birth to Mary and Joseph in a stable in Bethlehem. We know that this mysterious birth happens in a historical moment in time.
But the morning after, St. John, writing after St. Luke, takes us back to the beginning. Indeed, John takes us back before the beginning. Before the beginning is eternity, when the Word was with the Father and the Spirit, before anything was. Eternity is life off the page, and it can hardly be expressed in writing. It’s as if John is compelled to give greater depth to this person called Jesus of Nazareth.
St. John takes us off the page, before there even was a page. Off the page, the eternal Word who would take on flesh in Jesus, existed in loving relationship with the Father and the Spirit. And John tells us that the Son wasn’t simply with the Father; he was towards the Father, positioned in love and relationship towards the One he would later, on the page, call Abba and who, by the power of the Spirit, we can call Abba, too.
John knows that only by understanding the Word off the page can we truly understand him on the page. On the page, we can so easily imagine the Word made flesh as a superhuman or mere ethical model for our own lives. On the page, Jesus can appear to be a mere pawn of the Father, masquerading as having true freedom but really designed to be protected from the temptations and finitude of true humanity. But John assures us that in Jesus, God’s pen hits the pages of this life as Jesus, the author of our salvation, enters human time. The mind of God plays itself out on the pages of human history. And then, John takes us off the page, because only off the page can we fully learn who Jesus is and who we are called to be.
Off the page, our true home is in the eternal heart of God. John reminds us that when there was nothing, all that exists came into being. God spoke a word, and there was light. From out of darkness, light came forth to illumine the world. Light doesn’t drown out the darkness. Light comes to us in the darkness. In the beginning, when all things came to exist from the creative heart of God, God called it good. No, God called it all very good. And for those of us who live on the pages of this world, where there often seems to be a gaping absence of this good, John reminds us of our origins. In the beginning it was good. It was very good.
But it might seem that John’s Gospel is encouraging us to jump off the page before our time. In the horrors of life on the page, it may very well be tempting to leap off the page into the goodness of eternity, to be done with this life on the page and to enter a better life off the page. But that is not John’s way. John tells us that when the eternal Word takes on human flesh, eternity hits the page. And when eternity hits the page, the perfectly creative life of God exists in human time. And when this happens, our flawed and sorrowful existence on the page is imbued with the possibility of another story, God’s story. Our story is not signed, sealed, and delivered. Our story is still being written in the mind of God.
And this changes our future forever. This makes the impossible possible, and heaven breaks into this life. When eternity hits the pages of this world, its dull edges begin to shine again, and goodness appears amid evil. When eternity hits the pages of this world, the limitations of our skeptical imaginations are shattered by the infinite possibilities of God. When eternity hits the pages of this world, our fatalistic pessimism is expanded into a hopeful story that is taking on a new, creative life of its own. In ages past, before the Word became flesh, God’s holy word came to humankind through the prophets and in the reading of the Scriptures. But when the eternal Word hit the pages of this life, our existence and our story were changed forever so that one day we could leap off the page into the eternal heart of God.
On this quiet, intimate Christmas morning, I wish all who are not here could see that their own stories are so much more than the unwrapping of presents and the fleeting comfort found in the giving and receiving of gifts. Their stories are far more than broken relationships, despair, and hopelessness. For those who cannot see the light this Christmas, there is a deeper message that St. John is offering them, too. Off the page, there is abundant life that is ours to receive, and in Jesus, that life has also touched the page. That life is here, now, available for the taking. It’s as if, in this life on the page, mere words have become eternally infused images and sounds, as if the characters and scenes are coming alive and made present in our reality. Off the page, in the mind of God there are still possibilities for our life that have not yet been realized. And on the page, those possibilities still remain for us to discover so that we may be fully alive.
The Son of God has leapt onto the pages of this life, bringing with him eternal life, and because Jesus has come to save us, because he has lived among us and died and risen for us, the story on this page is always being written. We are not victims of fate. We are carefully crafted pens in the hand of the creative author of our salvation, who enables us to find light and life in our own unfinished stories.
On this Christmas morn, rejoice with me that there is a prologue to the dreary frustration of life on the page, a prologue that shows us our origins and our destiny in goodness. Rejoice with me that even in the shadow of death on the page, true life is ready to burst forth in radiant light. Rejoice with me that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. His skin hit the skin of the pages of this earthly life. Rejoice with me that one day we, too, shall leap off the pages of this life and into the eternal arms of God, where our song will go on forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 25, 2025
[1] In Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1980). This image is also taken up and developed in Seeds of Faith by Mark A. McIntosh and Frank T. Griswold (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022).