John 1:1-5, 9-14
1 In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with
God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing
came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was
the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not overcome it…9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming
into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through
him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his
own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in
his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of
blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the
Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as
of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
“The Word became flesh and lived
among us…” Matthew’s gospel employs language from the prophet Isaiah to speak
of the same truth: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they
shall name him Emmanuel," which means, ‘God is with us.’” We will most
likely say that this season is to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child, the
birth of a savior—and that is true, but the deeper meaning to those words is
captured in Matthew’s use of Isaiah and most-poetically in the prologue to
John’s gospel. You see, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we are
celebrating the Incarnation, the arrival of God God’s-self in the flesh and
blood and bone of a baby. When we gaze into the cradle at Christmas, we are
viewing the Creator of the universe, vulnerable and helpless, small and
fragile. When we proclaim the birth of Christ, we are proclaiming the arrival
of God as one born in the most unexpected circumstances, to the least likely to
wield power, in the most obscure of places.
Of course, the Incarnation of God in
Christ isn’t about the birth of a super-child who will go on to become a
super-man, nor is it the story of a child born to be some sort of demi-god with
herculean strength and human mortality. The Incarnation of God in Christ is a
deep mystery with which we may be too reluctant to wrestle, for after all, if
God has been born as a helpless baby who needs to be burped after he’s been
fed, changed several times a day, and put down for a nap or two, who is
steering the universe? If God is a child being cared for by a mother and
father, who’s making sure the sun comes up? Who’s making sure time ticks
onward? Who’s answering all those prayers about rain, money, and someone’s
favorite team winning the game? If God comes to us as a child, as a adolescent,
as a teenager, as a man, walking the very ground we walk, what does that really
mean for our understanding of God? After all, if God has come to us, what are
we supposed to do with him?!
To get at where I’m going, I want to
share some words with you from one of my patron saints, Clarence Jordan. This
is what Clarence said once about the birth of Christ and the Incarnation of
God:
What the virgin
birth is trying to say to us is not that a man became divine, but that God
Almighty took the initiative and established permanent residence on this earth!
Now we, today,…have
reversed the incarnation. Instead of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among
us, we turn it around and we take a bit of flesh and deify it. We have deified
Jesus and, thus, effectively rid ourselves of him even more than if we had
crucified him. When God becomes a man, we don’t know what to do with him. If he
will just stay God, like a God ought to be, then we can deal with him. We can
sing songs to him if he’ll just stay God…. We can build our cathedrals to him.
This is the bind we get in today. We reverse the action—from heaven to
earth—and we turn it around and build it from earth to heaven. And salvation
becomes something that we will attain someday, rather than God coming to earth
to be among us. So we build churches, we set up great monuments to God and we reject
him as a human being.
A church in Georgia
just set up a big $25,000 granite fountain on its lawn, circulating water to
the tune of 1,000 gallons a minute. Now that ought to be enough to satisfy any
Baptist. But what on earth is a church doing taking God Almighty’s money in a
time of great need like this and setting up a little old fountain on its lawn
to bubble water around? I was thirsty…and you built me a fountain. We can
handle God as long as he stays God. We can build him a fountain. But when he becomes
a man we have to give him a cup of water. So the virgin birth is simply the great
transcendent truth that God Almighty has come into the affairs of man and
dwells among us [emphasis mine].[1]
Tonight, we come to
gather around the Lord’s Table, to eat the bread and drink from the cup that
remind us of the ultimate reality of God’s Incarnation—that God has endured the
pain and cruelty of crucifixion, that Christ (in the words of the Apostle
Paul): “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as
something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” Tonight, we
are reminded that we serve a God who has refused to simply “stay God,” but has
come to be among us, to share in our pains and our joys, to dwell among us in
the midst of all that life throws at us. Tonight, on the eve of Christ’s birth,
we celebrate the arrival of God and the great mystery of God’s love and eternal
presence among us.
So may we be encouraged
in knowing that God is indeed with us. May we be strengthened in believing that
God is not cloistered in the out-of-reach corners of a heaven beyond the sky.
May we rejoice in knowing that the love of God that became real all those
centuries ago in a stable in Bethlehem still lives among us and is forever
calling us deeper into itself, deeper into that love that compels us to welcome
the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, heal the
sick, and strive for justice and righteousness for all people. May we celebrate
God’s coming to us—though we may not fully comprehend all that it means for us,
and may we rejoice in the truth that “the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace
and truth.” Amen.
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