6 Dec 2009 - "The word became flesh"

Diane Whittaker
John Ch1

A couple of weeks ago, the children performed for us an alternative nativity play that reminded us in a humorous way that the Christ child can often get lost in the preparations for Christmas. We dress the story up with angels, innkeepers, shepherds and a multitude of animals in a stable: adding details that just aren’t in the original stories as recorded by Luke and Matthew.

Today, if you like we get to the kernel of the story – John’s take on the events of that first Christmas Day. Here there are no angels, no Mary and Joseph, no stable, no shepherds, no animals – just God and what God did on that fateful day so many centuries ago…

The word became flesh and dwelt among us..

You get the sense with John’s gospel that the author has pondered for a long time on the events that took place in Palestine so many years earlier. His prologue sets the scene for the rest of the gospel as he tries to explain how Jesus could be both God and man.

His summary of the gospel, the good news of Christ, takes us right back to the beginning of Genesis – recalling how God spoke and the world began. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.

That Word spoke light and life into the world – all things were created by God. Life and light come from God.

For John, Jesus was the Word – so the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

In some mysterious fashion, Jesus was both Man and God.

As Robert Southwell’s poem, the Nativity of Christ begins:

Behold the Father is the daughter’s son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein
The old of years an hour not outrun,
Eternal life to live now doth begin,
The word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.

Somehow we need to hold on to that tension – humanity and Godhead. Not easy – whole sections of the church have fallen out over the putting into words of exactly who Jesus was. The first split between East and West hinged mainly on the importance of Jesus within the Godhead….

If we concentrate too much on Jesus the child, the boy, the man and forget God, then we get an inspired prophet and no more.

If we make Jesus too Godlike – as in “too heavenly minded to be any earthly use”, then we miss the whole point of our faith – and incidentally have a rather poor image of God to boot.

Jesus was really human – he cried as a baby, I’m sure. He had tantrums as a child, I bet. He got lost in Jerusalem as a 12 year old. He upset many with his forthright judgements when grown. This was not some meek and mild Godly person, this was someone who was a true man, someone who wept and laughed, someone who partied and prayed, someone who raged and loved and yet also in some mysterious way someone who was a true incarnation of God.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

And why – so that God could be reconciled with his people.

For to those who did accept Jesus, he gave the authority to become Children of God also. People who were born not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Think about it – Jesus may be the first born Son of God, but those who have faith – those who believe in Jesus are also Children of God. Now that is awesome.

And John’s punch line – before he goes on to describe in the rest of his Gospel just how Jesus was the Son of God? Jesus’ mission was, through loving God his Father to make him known to the world.

No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known.

By looking at Jesus and his nature, we too can know God.

By loving as Jesus loved, we can make God known to the world.

That is the gospel – the good news that we are celebrating at Christmas - the core behind all of the stories of angels, miracles, stables and shepherds.

It seems to me that the world, more than ever needs that good news, that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son so that all who believed in him might not die but have eternal life.

The world needs us and all those of faith to continue loving: To continue bringing light into dark places, to continue revealing God.

If we make no other resolution this New Year, let it be to continue to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives and communities so that we can show the world around us how much God loves it. So that we can, in our own small way help to bring light into darkness.