“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

That’s the Christmas story St. John tells in today’s gospel (John 1:1-18) and it’s very different from the one we heard from St. Luke on Christmas Eve (Luke 2:1-20). One is not better than the other. They’re just different and we need both. 

Luke tells us what’s happening. John tells us what’s going on in what is happening.

For Luke it is about Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, Mary giving birth to her firstborn son, an angel announcing “good news of great joy for all the people,” the birth of a Savior, “a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger,” and shepherds going to “see this thing that has taken place.” Luke’s story takes place “in those days” and “in that region.” It tells us that Christmas happens in the particularities of each of our lives.

For John the story is cosmic. It’s an “In the beginning” kind of story, a story of creation. It’s about the divine dwelling in flesh, life coming into being, light shining in the darkness, becoming children of God, and grace upon grace.

This beginning, however, is not just a historical point in time, it is an eternal beginning. It tells us that Christmas is larger than and not limited to the particularities of our lives, and it’s always happening. The Word is always becoming flesh and living among us.

This “festival of re-creation” (St. Gregory Nazianzen) is God’s celebration of humanity. It is God entrusting God’s self to you and to me. It is God’s reaffirmation of humanity’s goodness. 

It is the sharing and exchanging of life between God and you and me. That’s why the early church could say that God became human so that humanity might become God. Divinity is clothed in humanity so that humanity might be clothed in divinity. That’s what’s going on in Christmas.

The Church calls that the incarnation. In my last few sermons (Advent 4C, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day) I’ve been calling it our original blessing.

Where and when have you seen that in another? Do you recognize it in yourself? What has been your experience of our original blessing in yourself or another?

• Have you ever marveled at a newborn child? I’m not talking about how cute she or he is. I’m asking about the recognition that there is more before you than a baby. There is a mystery, a holiness, a greatness, an “I-don’t-know-whatness” about the moment. You know what that’s like, right? “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
• A couple of weeks ago a woman came by the office and asked for help unloading her car. I went out and found six or seven large boxes filled with food. I didn’t catch her name but I wouldn’t be wrong if I called her Generous, Compassionate, or Concerned for the Hungry. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
• Tell me a story about love in your life. Maybe it’s about your spouse or partner, a child, a friend, the environment. Maybe it was a time when someone believed in you and helped you to believe in and rediscover yourself. Maybe you committed and gave yourself to another and it went way beyond your feelings. It was a choice and you held nothing back. Who is someone that has always been there for you? In what ways has she or he shown up over and over? Who have you done that for? “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
• When have you experienced beauty not as something to look at but as a presence holding you? Recall a time when you thought to yourself, I never want this moment to end. Everything is just right. Have you ever lost yourself in a sunset, heard the wind singing a song to you, or felt the forest, the beach, or the hills welcome you home? “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Everyone and everything carries and is carried by the image and likeness of the divine. The divine life lives not only in Jesus but in us too. No exceptions. 

The question isn’t whether the Word became flesh in you, me, or anyone else. The question is whether we have eyes and hearts to see and trust that the Word is becoming flesh and living in, through, and among us.

Too often we use our humanity as an excuse. “I’m only human,” we say, as if we are somehow inherently defective or deficient. God, however, chooses our humanity to reveal God’s self. That sounds to me a lot like a sacrament.

Do you remember the definition of a sacrament? It’s an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. What if humanity is God’s first sacrament? 

Have you ever thought of yourself as a sacrament? Have you ever looked at someone across the street and said, “Hey, look! There is the sacramental image of God?” No? Why not? Why do we not see that in ourselves and each other? And what would it be like if we did? 

It just might be a beginning that “clears away the crass, the irrelevant and the complicated” so that we might find what is beautiful, essential, and necessary in each day. (Whyte, “Beginnings,” Consolations, 23) Today’s gospel calls that “grace upon grace.”

Self-criticism, guilt, shame, violence, and judgment would have no role in or power over our lives. We’d look to the future with hope, expectation, and the possibility of the impossible. We’d be more gentle with ourselves and one another. Love, compassion, peace, and justice would determine what we say and do. We’d be a light shining in the darkness, and the darkness would not overcome our light. We would become the children of God we’ve always been.

Listen.

Do you hear that? 

“Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: ‘A procession of angels passes before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, “Make way for the image of God!”’ (Devarim Rabbah, 4:4)

Can you hear them? They’re talking about you. 

I wonder how the Word of God is becoming flesh in you today. I wonder in what ways the life of God wants to enter the world through you.

Merry Christmas.

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Image Credit: By ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.