Christmas Day C2022
John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the first chapter of John tells us. At the very beginning of all things, before Earth and sun, moon and stars, God and Word, capital W. The Word is in the beginning, with God, is God. Trying to capture the majesty and wonder of John chapter one is like trying to capture the tide. All we can do is roll the drum and repeat. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Cosmic. Majestic. Full of wonder and awe. Worthy of European cathedrals, cavernous spaces mimicking the magnificence of our creator. Reminiscent of photographs taken from space, our blue and green planet suspended in an infinite, growing light and darkness. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We breath in together (breathe) a collective astonishment at the greatness, the splendor, the glory of God.
…and then, John proclaims: 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.
Slow down. Hold on. What? This cosmic, majestic vision of wonder and awe culminates in verse 14 when John proclaims that this Word becomes flesh and lives among us, full of grace and truth. Flesh. Like, our hands. Our legs that take us from one place to another. Like our backs that hold us upright. Like our feet that dance and walk, run and skip and leap for joy, you know, in church on the third Sunday of Advent. The magnificent word, in the beginning, with God, as God, becomes flesh. Like us sitting in this room. Real flesh, that hungers and needs to sleep, that cries and aches. Flesh and bone, veins and arteries. Jesus had a blood pressure and a heart rate and a blood sugar.
This, too, is hard to take in.
For me and maybe for you, God seems to be a spiritual being out there somewhere, something, someone in whom I live and move and have my being. But not really something or someone right here, in the flesh. And since we in US culture have embraced many ancient Greek ideals, we—as a culture—have denigrated what is fleshy and earthy and lifted up what is intellectual and spiritual, logical and rational. As a culture, we have valued those who work with their minds over those who work with their hands, valued the work outside the home, usually seen as more logical and rational, over the work of raising children, a decidedly fleshy series of endless tasks.
Christmas, with its fleshy God, challenges the notion that flesh is of lesser value than the mind or the spirit. And challenges the notion that flesh needs to be escaped in order to be redeemed. Indeed, if we skip to Jesus’ ministry thirty years later, it is flesh that feeds loaves and fish, flesh that forgives sin, flesh that brings sight to those blind and healing to ailing bodies, flesh that sits at a table, laughing, eating, and drinking with fishermen. If we cut to Easter, it is flesh that dies and is raised and redeems us, not a bodiless, heavenly spirit.
This past Friday, I began my day holding a baby, newly born, just one day old. As I said to her parents, I forget how small a baby is! I fit her in the crook of my arm, her head at my elbow, her toes reaching just beyond my fingertips. To quell her crying, I gently bounced her, subtlety shifting from foot to foot. Hungry again, she demanded an audience with her mother, the source of her very life.
Again, this past Friday, towards the end of my work day, I held in my hand the hand of a 91-year-old saint. We discussed the joys of this life and the freedom of being forgiven, raised our voices in a Christmas carol and strained our eyes and ears to read and hear the Christmas story, prayed the Lord’s prayer and took into our bodies the body and blood of Christ.
We are more than minds and spirits. We are flesh, and God enters the world, not in spirit alone but in flesh. Just like how calling on the phone doesn’t quite cut it when meeting a new baby, just like how sending a card doesn’t express our love as well as sitting on the couch next to our loved one, God comes to us not simply in words on a page. On Christmas, God comes here, takes the kid in his arms and bounces, clasps the hand of the elderly saint, meets us in our actual world. Even now, two thousand years after Jesus lived and died and was raised, when we gather at this table, the altar, we receive Christ again not just in spirit but in flesh. Perhaps our eucharistic theology, meaning our theology of Holy Communion, makes us squirm. Perhaps while we respect the Lutheran tradition, we don’t fully buy it on this point. But when we raise up the bread and the wine in community gathered, we not only remember Jesus; we take his body into our bodies. (It’s wild, friends!)
John proclaims: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. On Christmas, we not only hear of grace and truth; we taste it. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Amen.