Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο
And the Word became flesh.So important are these words in our Christian Tradition that in the olden days we used to kneel down when we heard them. It was not only at Christmas. In a slightly different form they occur in the Nicene Creed, which we say, or sing, at every Sunday Eucharist.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.
Each time we came to that part of the Creed in the olden days, we used to kneel down. Maybe some of you, like me, were brought up in the High Church Tradition, and remember that, at the end of every Eucharist, the priest or deacon would read the last gospel, the same passage, each day, as we read this evening, and we would kneel down again.
And the Word became flesh.
But what does it mean? To get at that, I am afraid we have to learn a little Greek. Logos (λόγος) gives us our English word logic and even part of the French word logicel. In Greek it has a wide range of meanings. In our Christian Scripture alone it can mean a spoken or written word, or a speech. It refers to prophecies, to doctrines, and to instructions. It can refer to the teachings of Jesus, and can simply mean the Gospel. In some texts it means the reason for an action or a financial accounting. In one text it used as we would use the phrase “licence to preach”. It means a message, a statement or an argument. But when John uses it in the prologue of his Gospel it carries a meaning not found elsewhere in the Christian Scripture, but common in secular and philosophical Greek. Logs there can mean the thought, the intention behind the word, and from there it comes to mean the fundamental meaning behind the appearances of every day, the creative power, the ground of being, to use a phrase of Paul Tillich.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 1
σὰρξ, flesh, likewise bears a variety of meaning in the Christian texts. It means flesh, the very meat of our animal bodies, and is used generally as a synonym for humanity. It is used to speak of the physical human body as something good, something to be taken care of. It is used to refer to sexual activity in a morally neutral sense. But is also has a more somber meaning. It means self indulgence, the physical body and sexual activity as morally negative, contrasted to spirit. It refers to the physical body as the locus of defilement sin and death.
St John the Evangelist says;
… the Word became flesh
The creative power of the universe, the ground of all being, becomes human, shares with us all that is best and all that is worst in our humanity. Much later on in the Gospel, John uses the word σὰρξ, flesh, of the body of Christ received in the Eucharist.
I want to suggest some reasons why these words are still of the greatest importance for us today, and these same reasons are why this festival of Christmas is of the greatest importance, for the word becoming flesh, the incarnation, is the heart of what Christmas is about.
The word was made flesh,
After 500 years of the exponential growth of human and scientific knowledge from the time of Copernicus to the present, it is just no longer possible for us to think of a God somewhere up there, landing on earth as Jesus of Nazareth like some alien visitor. But though we have had to let go of that idea of God intellectually, it is much harder to let it go emotionally and spiritually. It still informs the way we feel about our faith and the way we pray. But when St John tells us that the word became flesh, he is almost two thousand years before his time. When he speaks of God the word as creative power, light and life, he asks us to focus on the God within, the hidden God who is at the heart of the universe, not outside or above, the God who is found in the heart of our own existence, the ground and source of all being. In this phrase John offers us, I believe pointers to a way of faith and a way of praying which we can hold, and practice and speak about, with intellectual integrity, in our 21st century world.The word was made flesh (1).
St John’s words tell us that this ultimate meaning and reality become present to us in ordinary human life and action. Despite John’s understanding, there has been a tendency in the Christian tradition to extricate Jesus from ordinariness and make him a holy, spiritual person. This process had already begun by the time of the writing of the Gospels, even in the yet earlier thought of St Paul. But in as far as we can recover the earliest levels of the tradition, and the historical Jesus, we find a deep involvement in the tumultuous society and politics of his time. Jesus is not only really human, but a human being with compassion for the oppressed and marginalised people of his time, whose social place was also his. He stands with them and against the people and authorities, both religious and secular, who deny justice, freedom and humanity to the ordinary person. He brings not just healing to individuals but the restoration of community. If we seek to be the followers of Jesus in the 21st Century, then this is our task too.The word was made flesh (2).
Flesh, we remember from out Greek lesson a few minutes ago, is not just ordinary humanity, but humanity in all its – well – humanness. One of the dominant features of the religious sensibility of Jesus’ community and time was a deep concern for purity and for excluding the impure. Again, in so far as we can recover the historical Jesus, both in life-style and teaching, he stood against the purity tradition and legislation, seeking to overthrow it. If there are Christians and Churches today which seek to maintain their purity by excluding and denying humanity to those who are different in faith, in race, in life-style, sexual orientation, politics or social status, then they are, in my understanding about as far away from following Jesus as I can possibly imagine.
All this has been quite heavy going for Christmas Eve. You may be beginning to think that I am the Grinch who stole Christmas. So let me clarify. Among the many things the Gospels tell about the Word made Flesh is that Jesus enjoyed parties. I am sure that this is a real memory of the historical Jesus, which left its traces, not only in several party stories in the Gospels, but of course in the practice of the church down through the ages. When we come together we share a meal of bread and wine. The Eucharist has, over time lost some of its party feel and become rather holy, perhaps too holy, but the other stories of Jesus at parties tell us of much more exuberant affairs. Think about the story of the Wedding feast at Cana which forms part of the Epiphany tradition, and all the great wine that Jesus provided for the guests. Enjoying parties at Christmas is part of our Christian faith and witness, So tomorrow, like the reformed Grinch, I shall carve the roast beast 2 , and I hope you will too. But if you have heard something tonight which sparks an interest in a different way of being a Christian in our day and age, then please come back, and we’ll talk some more.
Happy Christmas.
[1] John 1:1-3 NRSV
[2] How the Grinch stole Christmas, Dr Seuss, Random House New York 1957
The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts, Dean and Rector