We have been fed this week on The Story, in all its glory – the human tale of a man and a woman and a baby, the political tale of census and intrigue, the earthy tale of shepherds, and the heavenly tale of angelic visitors. It is a feast for lovers of narrative and mystery, this tale which Madeleine L’Engle called “The Glorious Impossible.”
Then, on the Sunday after Christmas, as though we needed leaner fare after too much Christmas feasting, the church offers up the story of Incarnation told in symbols and ideas rather than folktales: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”
It may be great for those with a more abstract bent, but I find almost every sentence in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel can make my head hurt. Sometimes I'm best just throwing myself in and floating with the images – zeroing in on the ones that capture my attention: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Ah, light and darkness, that we can understand. And this: “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.”
That’s what all that fuss about the manger and Bethlehem was about – that the Word of God, the idea in the mind of God, what John calls “Logos,” has been realized – made real, given flesh, human flesh, a body and a human psyche AND (that’s not all, folks..) that this Embodied Idea of God has lived among us – and we have seen his glory.
Lived among us? (or more literally, “pitched tent with us”), come to hang out with us, God-With-Us?
That was a mind-blowing idea then, as it is today.
In what ways have you experienced Christ as embodied, God-with-you? We don’t have the benefit of meeting Christ in physical, limited life, living as we do on this side of the Resurrection – but we have the benefit of faith, our own and that accumulated by billions of believers for over 2000 years.
So it’s a fair question: In what ways have you experienced Christ as embodied, God-with-you?
In what ways have you experienced his glory? Do you ever see it/hear it/feel it around you now? When do those glimpses come? If they don’t, there’s a prayer….
Our passage ends, “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.” What we celebrate particularly in the season of Christmas is Jesus having made God known – once in a human body and family and place, and now through the working of His Spirit in, through and around us.
“Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing,” we sing… to which the only response we need make is:
"O come, let us adore Him, Christ, the Lord.”
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