Today’s lectionary includes the wonderful prologue to John’s Gospel: a reminder of the heart of Christmas, that God himself, the Word, “became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.” I love to read the prologue in the Authorised Version of the Bible. The language is beautiful.
I’ve been challenged by what Max Lucado has to say in “God became near.”
“The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became piercable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo. And he who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping in a womb. The creator of life being created. God was given eyebrows, elbows, two kidneys, and a spleen. He stretched against the walls and floated in the amniotic fluids of his mother”
"It’s not something we like to do; it's uncomfortable. It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer. He's easier to stomach that way. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged, predictable. But don't do it. For heaven's sake, don't. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.”
It’s mind blowing that God chose to enter his world as flesh. One of us. Not throned above, remotely high, untouched unmoved by human pain but daily in the midst of life. Our God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man. Into the muck and mire of the world. Paul reminds us in his letter to Timothy that this coming down is part of the nature of God: “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
I remember preaching on John’s prologue one Christmas morning in the little chapel I grew up in. After the service, Christine, a lovely Supernumerary minister who worshipped there said something to me I’ve never forgotten: “thank you for giving us theology this morning not thrills.” I guess today I want to say if Christmas is really real, it takes some thinking about. There’s a wow factor. God is no longer out there, he is right here.
No comments:
Post a Comment