Word Made Flesh
Sermon
Love's Pure Light
Christmas Candlelight Sermons and Service
Object:
Two observations about language: In the academic world, this is what we might call "the season of verbal imprecision." Professors seek to craft exquisite questions to make examinations not merely evaluations but vehicles for teaching and learning. Students write papers, struggling with an insistent awareness that what you say is inseparably wed to the manner in which you say it. In both cases, the frustrating vagaries of language threaten to confuse, confound, and obscure the intended meaning. Professors and students alike understand once again what T.S. Eliot meant when the poet wrote about "... the slimy mud of words ... the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions."1
It's hard to get it exactly right, to communicate your meaning efficiently, effectively, and with a modicum of grace. Yet every day, we use dozens of hundreds of words in our never-ending attempt to do precisely that.
A second observation about language: There was a time of innocence, I think it was, when we believed that language merely reflected realities that already existed, independent of the words that described them. We know better now. When, for the first time, the lover says to the beloved, "I love you," that utterance does not merely describe an already existing state of affairs. It calls into being a new reality. Suddenly, the lover and the beloved inhabit a new world, a world created by a word, a world inhabited by the speaker and the one spoken to. We know all this instinctively; it is why emotionally mature people do not utter such words in a rash or casual manner. Nor is romance the only situation in which this is true: an insult; a racial, religious, or homophobic slur; a declaration of hatred; a declaration of war -- each creates a new, and often an ugly, reality.
To Jews and Christians, none of this should be surprising. The opening chapter of the book of Genesis tells us that God spoke, and by speaking, called the world into being: "In the beginning, God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." God spoke, and the world became a reality.
The Aramaic for "I create as I speak" is avara k'davara, or, in magician's language, abracadabra. It is an unfortunate appropriation, for words are not mere make believe, the illusionist's misdirection, or sleight of hand. Words call new realities into being. We create as we speak.
Saint John knew all this. And so, when he penned the fourth gospel, he intentionally began it with the very same words as Genesis, "In the beginning...." John had a new reality in mind. A new world God was calling into being through a new divine word. This time, it was a word made flesh.
Spoken and written words are wondrous tools. They are a university's stock-in-trade. We revel in their texture and nuance and the myriad ways in which they can be strung together, like lights on a Christmas tree. The problem of which the poet spoke persists: "the slimy mud of words ... the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions."
So this time, God's word was taking a new form, the form of human flesh and blood. In the beginning was the Word. The Word became flesh, John writes, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory: the glory of flesh and blood.
I am drawn to this part of the Christmas gospel this year, I am sure, in no small part by the events of and surrounding September 11. Those events have confronted us, perhaps as never before, with the vulnerability of human flesh: its fragility, its exposure to all sorts of attack, and no one is more vulnerable than a newborn.
Right from the start, as Saint Luke tells his story, the Christ Child is exposed to harm -- his mother's labor is induced by an exhausting eighty-mile journey by donkey or on foot. Look at his birthing room -- if you are worried about sterile conditions, you won't find them in a stable. You'd be hard pressed to think of a more septic, less inviting labor and delivery room than a barn at a bed and breakfast in a backwater burg called Bethlehem -- a fetid, nasty place. Mary's babe was born amid such odors. That's where God's eternal Word took on mortal flesh and dwelt among us; his delicate, newborn skin laid in a rough bed of hay and straw. It wouldn't be long before Herod, in a fit of jealous rage, conspired to kill the baby boy. Herod failed at first, of course. But another Herod, thirty or so years later, will succeed where his father had not.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
the cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail, the Word made flesh,
the Babe, the Son of Mary.2
The candlelight of Christmas and the soldiers' torchlight of Good Friday must be held in the closest of possible unions.
Nevertheless, or perhaps we should say, "precisely therefore," God chose to clothe divine majesty in a humble garb of human flesh and blood. Not from afar, in omnipotent imagination, but up close and personal, God wanted to know the glory of what it means to be a flesh and blood human being; wanted us to know the glory of a God who stoops to us and shares this life with us.
The glory of the Lord has been revealed in human flesh and blood. You know it -- you see it -- you feel it each time a small child wraps his pudgy, chubby, sticky fist around your finger or throws her arms around your neck.
You behold it as your family, despite whatever differences may exist, gathers this holy season, to share, to talk, to laugh, to eat and drink together, to have no other agenda for once than simply to be with one another, to be there for one another. The glory of flesh and blood was revealed to me in the words of a homebound member of the congregation I used to serve. As my visit with her ended, we hugged one another, after which she said with misty eyes, "I can't remember the last time anybody hugged me." The unadorned glory of flesh and blood.
Simple things. Utterly unremarkable things. Yet in precisely such things, God couches the glory of love:
* in a very pregnant unmarried young woman;
* in a baby born in a barn;
* in shepherds wide-eyed at glad tidings borne from above; and
* in flesh and blood human encounters through which we come to know and trust and love the eternal God who stoops to lift us and press us to the cheek.
These encounters avoid "the slimy mud of words ... the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions" because they wrap God's love in a garb of flesh and blood.
You and I have the power to incarnate that love once again in our compassion for one another, for those outside the margins of power and privilege. If we follow the teachings of the one whose birth we are here to celebrate, we have the power to incarnate that love in the more difficult deeds of love toward our enemies and those who hate us. Jesus did not come to call admirers; he came to call followers.
By means of incarnate words, we create the world we live in. Words call new realities into being. We create as we speak. This night, God's Word made flesh speaks peace and good will to all. Through a newborn babe, the divine lover says to the beloved humankind, "I love you." Thereby a whole new world is created, a world God invites us to inhabit.
How shall we respond? What shall we say? What language shall we borrow? What words shall we employ in response to such a heavenly invitation -- mindful as we are that we create as we speak?
____________
1. T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock," 1934.
2. "What Child Is This?" words by William C. Dix (1837-1898).
It's hard to get it exactly right, to communicate your meaning efficiently, effectively, and with a modicum of grace. Yet every day, we use dozens of hundreds of words in our never-ending attempt to do precisely that.
A second observation about language: There was a time of innocence, I think it was, when we believed that language merely reflected realities that already existed, independent of the words that described them. We know better now. When, for the first time, the lover says to the beloved, "I love you," that utterance does not merely describe an already existing state of affairs. It calls into being a new reality. Suddenly, the lover and the beloved inhabit a new world, a world created by a word, a world inhabited by the speaker and the one spoken to. We know all this instinctively; it is why emotionally mature people do not utter such words in a rash or casual manner. Nor is romance the only situation in which this is true: an insult; a racial, religious, or homophobic slur; a declaration of hatred; a declaration of war -- each creates a new, and often an ugly, reality.
To Jews and Christians, none of this should be surprising. The opening chapter of the book of Genesis tells us that God spoke, and by speaking, called the world into being: "In the beginning, God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." God spoke, and the world became a reality.
The Aramaic for "I create as I speak" is avara k'davara, or, in magician's language, abracadabra. It is an unfortunate appropriation, for words are not mere make believe, the illusionist's misdirection, or sleight of hand. Words call new realities into being. We create as we speak.
Saint John knew all this. And so, when he penned the fourth gospel, he intentionally began it with the very same words as Genesis, "In the beginning...." John had a new reality in mind. A new world God was calling into being through a new divine word. This time, it was a word made flesh.
Spoken and written words are wondrous tools. They are a university's stock-in-trade. We revel in their texture and nuance and the myriad ways in which they can be strung together, like lights on a Christmas tree. The problem of which the poet spoke persists: "the slimy mud of words ... the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions."
So this time, God's word was taking a new form, the form of human flesh and blood. In the beginning was the Word. The Word became flesh, John writes, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory: the glory of flesh and blood.
I am drawn to this part of the Christmas gospel this year, I am sure, in no small part by the events of and surrounding September 11. Those events have confronted us, perhaps as never before, with the vulnerability of human flesh: its fragility, its exposure to all sorts of attack, and no one is more vulnerable than a newborn.
Right from the start, as Saint Luke tells his story, the Christ Child is exposed to harm -- his mother's labor is induced by an exhausting eighty-mile journey by donkey or on foot. Look at his birthing room -- if you are worried about sterile conditions, you won't find them in a stable. You'd be hard pressed to think of a more septic, less inviting labor and delivery room than a barn at a bed and breakfast in a backwater burg called Bethlehem -- a fetid, nasty place. Mary's babe was born amid such odors. That's where God's eternal Word took on mortal flesh and dwelt among us; his delicate, newborn skin laid in a rough bed of hay and straw. It wouldn't be long before Herod, in a fit of jealous rage, conspired to kill the baby boy. Herod failed at first, of course. But another Herod, thirty or so years later, will succeed where his father had not.
Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
the cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail, the Word made flesh,
the Babe, the Son of Mary.2
The candlelight of Christmas and the soldiers' torchlight of Good Friday must be held in the closest of possible unions.
Nevertheless, or perhaps we should say, "precisely therefore," God chose to clothe divine majesty in a humble garb of human flesh and blood. Not from afar, in omnipotent imagination, but up close and personal, God wanted to know the glory of what it means to be a flesh and blood human being; wanted us to know the glory of a God who stoops to us and shares this life with us.
The glory of the Lord has been revealed in human flesh and blood. You know it -- you see it -- you feel it each time a small child wraps his pudgy, chubby, sticky fist around your finger or throws her arms around your neck.
You behold it as your family, despite whatever differences may exist, gathers this holy season, to share, to talk, to laugh, to eat and drink together, to have no other agenda for once than simply to be with one another, to be there for one another. The glory of flesh and blood was revealed to me in the words of a homebound member of the congregation I used to serve. As my visit with her ended, we hugged one another, after which she said with misty eyes, "I can't remember the last time anybody hugged me." The unadorned glory of flesh and blood.
Simple things. Utterly unremarkable things. Yet in precisely such things, God couches the glory of love:
* in a very pregnant unmarried young woman;
* in a baby born in a barn;
* in shepherds wide-eyed at glad tidings borne from above; and
* in flesh and blood human encounters through which we come to know and trust and love the eternal God who stoops to lift us and press us to the cheek.
These encounters avoid "the slimy mud of words ... the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions" because they wrap God's love in a garb of flesh and blood.
You and I have the power to incarnate that love once again in our compassion for one another, for those outside the margins of power and privilege. If we follow the teachings of the one whose birth we are here to celebrate, we have the power to incarnate that love in the more difficult deeds of love toward our enemies and those who hate us. Jesus did not come to call admirers; he came to call followers.
By means of incarnate words, we create the world we live in. Words call new realities into being. We create as we speak. This night, God's Word made flesh speaks peace and good will to all. Through a newborn babe, the divine lover says to the beloved humankind, "I love you." Thereby a whole new world is created, a world God invites us to inhabit.
How shall we respond? What shall we say? What language shall we borrow? What words shall we employ in response to such a heavenly invitation -- mindful as we are that we create as we speak?
____________
1. T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock," 1934.
2. "What Child Is This?" words by William C. Dix (1837-1898).
