The Word Became Flesh

Wordle image from this weekend's sermon on John 1:1-18.

Last weekend I skyped Christmas morning with my family back in California. Skype is a computer program that offers free computer-to-computer video conferencing. All you have to do is download the free software to your computer and you can see and talk in real time to anyone with skype and a web cam. My parents discovered skype while my brother was living in England last year, and my mom loved it. She likes being able to see us when we talk, to see our faces, to see where we are. It makes her feel much more connected to us, that we are less far away.

So this year for Christmas I sat in my living room in Syracuse with a cup of coffee, and my family sat in my parents’ living room in California with their cups of coffee, and we opened presents together, just like we do every year. 3,000 miles and three time zones away I still got to be part of the festivities. Granted, they frequently forgot about the computer and would leave me staring at the tree for long periods of time, but given the circumstances, pretty good.

Modern communication technology is amazing. You may not be familiar with skype, but I think email and even the telephone is pretty equally amazing. Pick up the phone and you can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly. With cell phones, you can even talk to someone now in the middle of the woods, or the grocery store, or from your car.

We have cousins in Sweden that my great grandmother used to communicate with by mail. She would write a letter in California, and it would travel by train across the United States to the east coast, and then take a boat to Stockholm, and then a truck to their apartment in the north part of the city. Now my cousin and I communicate instantaneously over email, sharing pictures, jokes, and quips in real time. A relationship that was built over a hundred years ago through bi-annual letters continues at a speed that my great-grandmother could not have even dreamed about.

The relationship continues, but it is not deep. My great-grandmother wrote careful, pages long letters, to send to this family. My cousin and I shoot back jokes, pictures, not insights into one another’s lives, we don’t really know one another. When I was a kid, we traveled to Sweden to meet these relatives. We sat on their sofa and looked at old family photos. We discussed just how it was that we were related, their plans for the future, our plans for the future, our respective lives. We drank thick Scandinavian coffee and ate ham sandwiches on rye bread and got to know one another. It was in seeing one another, in being in one another’s presence and sharing in one another’s stories that our relationship was formed, not so much in a series of emails with funny pictures of cats.

Skype, whose virtues I was extolling earlier, is really similarly limited. Skype is nice, email is nice, the phone is nice, but it does not replace being in the presence of another person. Technology is not a substitute for face-to-face community. I want more than a glimpse into someone's life. I want to sit and linger over a cup of coffee, or share a meal. I want to see them when they talk about challenges, hear the intonation in their voice, watch their facial expressions, and I want to be seen. I want to be a presence, not a voice or a phrase or an email address. We are social beings, we are relational beings, we were created to be in relationship with one another.

Today’s text from John is one of the earliest and most complete theological treatises of the Christian faith. In it we can hear Christology, theology, creationism, eschatology, ecclesiology, and a whole host of other theological doctrine. But holding together all of these various –ologies, is one of the central tenants of the Christian faith, the incarnation. The Word became flesh and lived among us. God loved us so much and wanted to be in relationship with us so much that God sent Jesus Christ to become one of us. To walk among us as fully human, to hear our stories, to know our lives, to experience our joys and our struggles. Jesus Christ did not come as a virtual human, a skyped God, looking real but not really being real. No, Jesus Christ came in the flesh, to be with us.

John’s Gospel first introduces us to Jesus Christ as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Entire theological libraries have been written trying to explain precisely what is meant by those little words “with” and “was.” But even after two millenniums, numerous theologians, and countless pages, our language always falls short.

Instead of trying to understand or explain what exactly this means, I think it is enough to marvel in the relationship between God and the Word. A relationship that is intimate, mutual, co-creational. One being is not greater or more powerful than the other, rather they exist together, supporting and explaining one another. The whole of creation is born out of this relationship of love and trust.

And then the Word, who was with God at creation, through whom all creation came into being, left God to take on human flesh and live among us. This word “lived” dates back to a time and culture where people were nomadic and moved from place to place, setting up tents as they traveled. Rather than simply “lived” it really means “set up a tent among us.” This isn’t a “Christ is born in our hearts” idea; it has more flesh to it than that. It is a communal experience. In the middle of our human community, Christ came to dwell with us. Not in some ethereal, spiritual, way, but in the flesh. Jesus Christ, who was in intimate relationship with God, came down to be in intimate relationship with us. Jesus Christ came to sit and share a meal at table with us. To see us when we talk about our challenges and be seen. To be in relationship with us, just as he is in relationship with God. And through that, to bring us into relationship with one another, with creation, and with the creator.

The Christ event, the incarnation, that time that we celebrate in this season of Christmas, has been described as being like dropping a stone into the pond of the timeline of history. We know it is true today not because we can see and touch Christ in the flesh, but because the event that was the Word became flesh created ripples back and forth in the pond of time, and those ripples wash up upon us still today. We see the ripples backwards in our reading from Jeremiah this morning, where God promised to gather God’s people as a shepherd gathers his flock. A people who once were scattered, will be brought together into relationship under the watchful care of a God who knows them intimately. And we see the ripples forward in the promises of baptism and in the faces of one another as we gather around the table to share the meal that is Christ’s body broken and blood shed for us.

The one who was with God at the very creation of the universe came to this earth in the flesh, still comes today in the promises of the sacraments, and promises to come once again to bring the whole creation into fulfillment. This is the promise of the incarnation, this is the miracle of Christmas, this is the dance of relationship which Christ invites us into. A relationship which John describes as the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. A relationship through which we are promised grace upon grace. Amen.