INTRODUCTION
So, it’s over! Christmas is finally over, right? The presents are all opened and the boxes and packaging is all picked up and put away. Another season of pictures and memories are all stored away so that later on you can bring them out again for a time of fond recollections. So tell me, can any of you remember your first Christmas day? I mean your very, very first Christmas? I would be surprised if you could sense most of us were probably still in the womb at the time. Few of us can remember any of the first times in our lives. So one might be skeptical when John declares, “In the beginning was the Word..” How do you know John? You weren’t there. No, John wasn’t there, but the Word that made it all has come to dwell among us in human flesh and John was there for that. There is an amazing drawing of John chapter one done by a Korean artist. This work of art took two years to complete. The artist meticulously drew the picture by hand with a very fine tipped pen. It is not a painting, but a picture created by writing thousands of words with shaded letters. The words written are the entire New Testament written out by hand from beginning to end. There are about 185,000 words on the scroll with an average of a thousand words per line. The letters are drawn, some thick and some thin so that they bring out a picture of Christ. In this drawing there are twenty-seven angels surrounding Christ and looking to him, representing the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The figure of Christ is not imposed onto the words, the words reveal the picture of Christ as they are inked light and dark to bring out the portrait of Christ. The words have become flesh, a person. If you would magnify a portion of the work, such as Christ’s hand, you could actually read the words. The message of the artist is that the New Testament reveals one thing the person of Jesus Christ.
Out of the Word arises The Word — Jesus Christ. The Word which became flesh. As E. Stanley Jones writes: “Out of the Gospels arises the Gospel. Jesus is the Gospel He did not come to bring the Good News. He was the Good News.” Our God has not remained remote and unapproachable, he has come to us in person. He did not just write us a letter. He did not just send us a representative. He did not just speak his laws from a mountain. He came to us as one of us. The Infinite became an infant. The Eternal One became a wee one. In 1995 one of the biggest music singles was Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us.” The song earned 7 Grammy Award nominations, and made a virtually unknown singer an overnight sensation. It’s a song of spiritual questioning and about conceiving of God in a modern age. These are some of the words of that song:
“If God had a name, what would it be, and would you call it to his face, if you were faced with him in all His Glory, what would you ask if You had just one question… What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home.
Well Joan, The Bible tells us that God did become one of us. But instead of coming that He might be a slob like us, Christ came to give us the power to become children of God. And though we may all be lost Christ has become the Way by which we make our way home. This is the Christmas story. “the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” God, so that he could help us, decided to walk among us and to live with us, as one of us - born of human parents, nurtured at a human breast, and working at human tasks until he died a human death. God among us, God made flesh, God for us - in Jesus Christ. What is remarkable about the Christmas story is not just that God chose to place all his glory, all his beauty, and all his truth in a human form, though that is remarkable enough - it is that he chose such a simple human being in which to take on flesh. God’s word, the Word that was at the beginning of all things, and without which nothing was made that was made, could have come upon a royal princess, but it did not. God’s word made flesh, could have taken on the form of a philosopher, wise and full of truth living in some imperial palace, but it did not. No - God’s word, the word made flesh, was a simple word - a word made manifest, a word made visible in a simple human being, born to a simple peasant woman, and cared for by a simple carpenter in a land that time still seems to have forgotten.
The Word made flesh. The Word of God, is found in its fullness in a babe who had to lay in manager because there was no room for him at the inn. The Word made flesh, the Word of God, is found in all its fullness in a child, who while obedient to his parents, still argued with his teachers, and got lost in the city at the time of his Bar Mitzvah. The Word made flesh, the Word of God, is found in all its fullness, in a young man who wandered the countryside, teaching the teachers, healing the sick, eating with the sinners, and forgiving those who needed forgiving. Jesus was the word of God in its fullness, and yet, consider, it was a word that had no home to call its own, it was a word that was denied, and betrayed, and finally killed in the hope that it would not be seen or heard again. God’s word took on flesh, and dwelt among us - it lived among us first within the body of a simple woman and then in the body of a simple man. and that word was both accepted, and rejected, but IN rejection, and then later IN death, it could not be destroyed. In the Hebrew language the term for Word is “Dabar.” Dabar means both to speak and to act. So in Genesis One where God said, “Let there be..” In speaking God was acting and in acting God was speaking. Word and Action forever fussed as one. This is what John is trying to tell us here in John chapter one. Genesis One and John One. Get It? In the beginning... and the Word became flesh. Divine Word and Divine Action forged as one in human flesh.
This is the Christmas story, and it is a story that continues today, because the Word of God is an eternal word, it is an ever lasting word, it is an undefeatable word. Jesus - the word of God is still among us, He is here as spirit, teaching his followers that which they need to know, comforting his disciples with a comfort that they need, and leading them to the truth that they need to know. And what is that truth we need to know? Where is the word for us today? It is in the same place that it was when Jesus walked among us. It is in the acts of love that his followers perform. It is in the mercy that his disciples give to others. It is in the truth that they utter, the justice that they struggle for, and in the forgiveness that they bestow. Several years ago I saw a painting of a collage of faces of every race and type. What amazed me about this painting was that as you moved away the faces began to merge together until finally what you saw was the single face of Christ. God’s word is still made fle today, much in the way that it was made flesh in Jesus. God’s word takes on flesh when a woman brings food to the sanctuary of the Lord to share with the poor, and when a man delivers groceries to the local food bank. The Word of God took on flesh in a unique and tremendous way in Jesus of Nazareth, and it takes on flesh today, wherever the word is believed and done. God’s word wears human flesh, in those who follow the risen word, those who obey the risen Lord, and heed the living God.
And as it was in Jesus, where the word was found in a simple man, so the word today is found, in the embodied acts of Christ likeness, in simple acts of love and kindness. The word takes on flesh in those who heal, in those who forgive, in those who seek justice, in those who share, and in those who show mercy. Where our Word and our Action become one and the same thing.
Not Just for Christmas…
by Peter J. Blackburn
You came, not just for Christmas, but for always.
You lived, and healed, and taught, and died,
not just for Christmas, but for always.
You live again, not just for Christmas, but for always.
You seek our trust, our allegiance, our life,
not just for Christmas, but for always.
The divine Word Spoken in Human Flesh
Special thanks goes to Rev. Rosemary Dawson
for her contribution to this sermon.