And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
Christmas 2, 4th January, 2004
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
What an astonishing theological statement is this prologue to the gospel according to John! So familiar, so seminal and yet, because of its complexity, almost impossible to turn into a cliché. John's story of the birth of Jesus – for that's what this is – is completely devoid of fluffy lambs and babes in a manger. Instead, we are confronted with ontological, hermeneutical and theological complexities embedded in disarmingly simple poetry. When I was a first year theological student this was the very first passage of Scripture we were required to learn in Greek: "En arche hi ho logos." It used in some traditions to be read at the end of every mass. We know it so very well, it is embedded in our tradition. What then, I wonder, might it have to say to us, today, at St Peter's, as the Christmas tree begins to droop and we embark upon a new calendar year? How might this most familiar text challenge us?
So much could be drawn out and drawn upon – the eternal nature of God, God's relationship with the eternal Word; the consubstantial nature of God and the Word (the Word was God); the presence of that Word at creation itself, and thus its role in bringing life into being; the metaphor of light and its relationship to life; of light triumphing over darkness, of life over death. So many themes, and so rich! But as we sit here, still in the Christmas season, surely the most apposite remains that key verse – "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Such an extraordinary thing. The Word, that which was and is consubstantial, coeternal, giver of life, and so on; that Word, so easily made into a kind of gnostic, other-worldly spirit; that Word instead becomes flesh, "sarchs", that most corrupted of natures – just read St Paul, he goes on and on about it! But here in John quite explicitly God becomes like us, lives among us as one of us, and we are vouchsafed to see his glory and to receive the fullness of his grace.
This is remarkable stuff, but it is all terribly theological, so let me be a little more blunt.
In taking on human flesh God did a new and remarkable thing; a thing which by every tradition of Judaism was impossible. In the incarnation, God broke the most fundamental rules about how God was supposed to behave. God, in Jesus Christ, becomes a radical, a ratbag, the one whom the authorities criticise as a rabble-rouser, a trouble-maker. The Word – in that pure sense of being which was and is God, became flesh – bone, sinew, skin, organs, fat, blood, guts, even, dare I suggest, sexuality. God did the impossible – or at least what God's followers had thought was impossible – and that is why there was so much resistance not only in Judaism but in the earliest Christian communities to accept that Jesus was himself God, that the Word had indeed become flesh. It had been thought impossible, if it had been thinkable at all. And even today, 2000 years later, how hard so many in the Church find it to accept that flesh has been visited, inhabited and redeemed by the incarnate Word.
How much neater it would have been, for example, for those who find the enfleshment of God hard to take, if Jesus had been a kind of super-human whom God adopted as his Son. Or how much neater if Jesus had been pure spirit, and only appeared to be human. So much neater, but wrong, and heresy. If Jesus the human being, fully enfleshed, was not God, then his sacrifice was merely a human one, and we are not saved. If Jesus was pure Spirit only, and not human, then God did not take on our nature, but continues to keep his distance, and once again, salvation becomes a cruel joke. But, thanks be to God, he was both. The Word was God, and the Word became flesh. God broke all the rules so that we might have a share in his glory, offered as a free gift. God, in Jesus Christ, did a radical new thing, and we, his followers, are called to follow that radical, enfleshed God.
But what does that mean? Surely, as Catholics, at the very least it means we rejoice in the fact that God is not tied down by the rules we create for him; we rejoice that with God all things are possible. For as Catholics we know that God acts through history, and reveals his saving power in the traditions of the Church and the action of the Spirit, as well as in the set texts of Scripture. How important it is that as Catholics we are open to the ongoing revelation of God, that we continue to allow God, even through us, to do new and remarkable things.
Thus, as we look forward to the coming year we must ask ourselves, and continue to do so over and again, "What is God calling me to do? How may I be God's agent here in the flesh? What are the signs of God at work in my world, and how might I show those signs to others? What is the new thing in my life that is of God, and how might I discern and grow that seed of revelation?" These and similar questions can help to ensure that we live out the dynamic religion of the incarnate God, rather than becoming bogged-down in the rule-laden religion which requires that God never do anything new. Because new life comes when we are open to the possibilities of God, rather than closed to the excitement of ongoing revelation. New life, and new growth, as individual Christians, as a parish and as a Church, are all possible – indeed it is the thing to which we are called. The birth of Jesus, the enfleshment of the Word, gives us not merely hope, but certainty, that God is with us. All that we need now do is allow God the freedom to act in our lives.
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