And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.
Now we are a few days away from Christmas. We have travelled to Bethlehem and seen the child lying in the manger. We have felt the stirrings of hope and joy in our hearts. Now, though, a few days after that silent holy night, it’s beginning to sink in. {See the readings for this Sunday}
The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory. These are the beautiful words of St. John’s gospel. They are how St. John explains Christmas. But St. John also tells us another truth about Jesus, just a few verses earlier: He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.
Jesus was here, and yet people didn’t know it. His birth was promised and proclaimed and expected and announced and heralded and yet, somehow, we missed it. We missed the point. Not all of us, of course. Some people saw who he was right away. Some learned only in time. Some met him and found him disturbing, or confusing, or difficult, or even evil.
There are many things that are confusing about our Christian faith, and above everything else, I believe the most confusing is this Christmas thing, this thing we call the incarnation, this strange poetic unfolding that John has told us: The Word became flesh.
Oh, I believe that God exists. I believe that it’s important for me to have the right relationship with God. I believe that Jesus lived, that he was a good and decent man, that he died a horrible death. I even think it’s possible that God did raise him from the grave. But I can’t quite see how he can be fully God and fully man, both, at the same time.
But you see, everything hinges on that. It might seem too befuddling to worry about these days, but once upon a time, it was vitally important in the Christian world. People argued and debated it. Some time, you might open your prayer books to page 864. There you will find a short document that was composed by the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451. The Council of Chalcedon was one of a series of church-wide conferences that wrestled with big issues and small issues affecting our shared life as followers of Jesus Christ. And perhaps the biggest issue of all was the question: “Who is Jesus Christ?”
This incredibly dense paragraph is their answer, and it remains the definitive answer for most Christians in the world today: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and those Protestant churches that still cling to the ancient Creeds. Try reading it out loud sometime. It seems almost absurdly detailed to our modern ears – and yet it matters. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.
Nearly all of the heresies that have persisted down through the centuries have been distortions of this balance. Some of them acclaim Christ as God, but deny that he could really be a human being. Some of them acclaim Jesus as a man, but deny that he is God. You can easily find these imbalances around today.
I’m sympathetic to it. I wanted to be a priest for a long time, but I really had to work this through – I couldn’t be a priest until I could say the prayers of the church with integrity, and the prayers of the church assume that Jesus is perfect God and perfect man, the Word made flesh. I wrestled with it all through my twenties. I still work to perfect my understanding, both through study and through contemplation of this great mystery.
Everything hinges on this: that Jesus Christ is God and man, the Word made flesh.
Since the Word became flesh, we could be saved and reconciled to God through him. God made man became the bridge across the divide that separated humanity from God. The 1st Letter of John puts this the most clearly: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Since the Word became flesh, we were able to experience the reality of God’s love for us. We are people of the senses, after all. We know the world through touch and sight and sound, and through our interactions with the people around us. God reached to us as we were able to experience God, through Jesus’ hands and voice.
Since the Word became flesh, we have a model and example of the life we are to lead. Jesus commanded the disciples to love one another, and how? As he loved them. Take my yoke upon you, says Jesus, and learn from me. He is the Good Shepherd, the way, the truth, and the life. How could we follow what we could not see? And yet Jesus has come to meet us where we are, and lead us to where we belong.
Since the Word became flesh, the divine was woven into the human, the immortal was woven into the mortal. Christ became man, so that men and women and boys and girls might become like Christ. This is what it means when St. Paul tells us that Christ lives in us, and that we have put on Christ. He became like we are so that we can become like him.
As we heard in the letter to the Galatians, because we believe in the Word made flesh, we are no longer slaves, but children, and if we are children then also we are heirs, through God.
Since the Word became flesh in Jesus, I know that humanity and divinity can live together. And that’s good news for me, because sometimes humanity seems so far from God. We are capable of so much that is bad that maybe we start to wonder if there’s any chance of good in us. That’s true for the human race, but it’s true for me personally — times when I have been ashamed of myself, times when I have fallen short of who God has created me to be.
And yet the Word became flesh, and proved that these two can coexist, and so I begin to understand how it can be possible that Christ dwells within my own soul since my baptism, and how it can be possible that I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. I begin to understand how this is true for you as well. I begin to understand that our destiny is more than simply to “be a good person”, whatever that means, but to become saints, to become like Christ, and in doing so to become our truest and most sacred selves.
There are times when Christianity is the easiest, the simplest thing in the world. But this is not one of them. Trying to wrap our minds around how this can be true, that Jesus Christ is completely God and completely human, this can take a lifetime of contemplation or study, or probably both. But perhaps you will start in on an exploration of this great mystery, and perhaps you in turn will teach others what you discover.
It is not required, of course, but it can be an exciting adventure. The more we search for the truth of God with our minds, the richer our prayers can become. For the word did become flesh, and if this is true, then it has saved us, and if it is not true, then we must wonder what we are doing here. But one day an Angel spoke to Mary, and she uttered those powerful words: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” In that instant, the Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory, and the world has never been the same.