Christmas Eve, 2007
St Mildred’s
It all begins with the Word. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ God wants to communicate; to express himself.
We live in a very wordy world and words can sometimes seem cheap. These days with mobile phones, we can even have several conversations at the same time – half talking to the person next to us, and half talking to the person at the end of the phone; not being fully present to either person. Sometimes our words can become empty phrases with little meaning, a quickly tossed out text message.
But the Word of God is different. When God speaks, something happens. God’s Word is creative and life-giving. In the beginning, God said ‘let there be light’ and there was light. It may not have taken 6 days, but rather millions of years, but God created all there is through his creative word. As John puts it in his Gospel ‘All things came into being through his Word, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people’. The Word brings light and life.
God didn’t need to create the universe but he wanted to communicate his life, his love, beyond himself; so he spoke the world into being. Then He called a people to be his own and communicated with them through a long line of messengers and prophets. One of these was John the Baptist who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. He wasn’t the Messiah, but he pointed ahead to him. He wasn’t the light but he came to testify to the light. The same light that God had spoken into being in creation; that he had sent through his Law and prophets, was now coming into the world in a totally different way.
God’s true light, his true Word now comes into the world as a human being. God doesn’t just send a message through a human being but his very Word becomes a human being. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God wants to communicate with us and has found the most effective way possible to express himself. Not by sending messages of wisdom and law, but by coming himself as a human being to live amongst us. In this particular man, Jesus, we can see all the fullness of God, we can see God’s nature. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.
The Word made flesh. For many of the ancient world and perhaps for many today this is a shocking message. Surely what we need is a spiritual tonic; techniques to liberate our souls from the messiness of flesh and blood. ‘Flesh’ can represent sickness, frailty, corruption, suffering and decay. As I was preparing this sermon I was recovering from flu and feeling very weak and tired. I was also aware of the large number of people I know who are sick or facing operations or frail and elderly and it hit me afresh: ‘The Word became flesh’; what a shocking thing for God to do! The Christian message isn’t that God whisks us away to a perfect, painless spiritual realm (though we may sometimes wish that) but rather that He comes into the world of flesh and blood, suffering and death.
The Word became flesh; God becomes a human being. This means that from beginning to end, throughout his life, Jesus’ words and actions are the words and actions of God himself. He doesn’t speak and act on his own authority. As one writer puts it: ‘What the Father is and does Jesus is and does, and what Jesus is and does the Father is and does. There is in fact no God behind the back of Jesus, no act of God other than the act of Jesus, no God but the God we see and meet in him.’ We need to keep that in mind as we read the whole of the Gospel. God doesn’t come as a cute little baby at Christmas time and then disappear again. The whole ministry of Jesus, his tortured death on the cross and his resurrection are all the action of God himself in our world.
The Christian gospel isn’t that we need to find our way to God, but that He makes his way to us. The initiative is all God’s. The holy, awesome God comes to us in a vulnerable baby, born in poverty to insignificant parents in a dirty cowshed; he grows up to know pain and suffering; joy and friendship; betrayal and isolation; torture and death. He comes as God with us; longing for us to respond to his love.
Of course, in Jesus’ earthly ministry, some people responded to him and some people didn’t. As John says, ‘he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.’ This is the purpose of God’s coming among us, of God’s sending his Son into our world; that we too might know the love of the Father and become his children.
God has come to us; how do we respond to him? Like the people of Jesus’ day, we too can choose to accept him or reject him. Will we choose to receive him, not as a simple sentimental story for this time of year, but as the holy, fearsome God in our midst; the source of all life, all light and truth?
In the beginning was the Word. God wants to communicate with us and has chosen the most intimate, effective way possible to communicate with us, as a human being; the Word made flesh. We have heard God; we have seen God as He is, in Christ. The Word has spoken; are we listening? The Word has come to live among us; will we welcome him?