Word made Flesh
John 1:1-18
The Rev. Sara Fischer
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
John’s version of the birth story connects Jesus intimately with the whole cosmos and with us, all at the same time. If there were a pageant made from this first chapter of John’s gospel, there wouldn’t be a manger or any farm animals, but there would be a lot of lights, and whole a lot of the glory of God. I don’t think music would be a problem—we could surely sing some of the hymns we’ve got today. The problem would be acting out the glory of god walking around on Glisan Street or 181st Avenue.
The Message interpretation of this Gospel says “The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. The mystic and teacher Evelyn Underhill wrote that “the Word has spoken, and spoken in the language of every day life.” This everyday-ness of the Word of God changes our reality, and changes the potential for how we move through the world. That God became human and dwells among us adds a dimension to our understanding of God and also to our own identity. Not only does God abide with us as promised through the ages, God is us.
John offers a trinity of information about the Word of God: its origin—the Word was from the beginning of all things; its relationship to God—the word was with God; and its identity—the word was God. From.With. Is. Think about these three aspects of our own humanity: our origin, our relationship to others, and our identity—a trinity of overlapping circles. From. With. Is.
I was born in California in 1959, grew up in New York and then Boston in a mostly atheist-agnostic household. My parents marched on Washington for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. I went to a small prep school where I nearly flunked out, and attended a large state university. Twenty years later I attended General Seminary—All of this is where I’m from, my origin. I’ve always been a people-person, the more the merrier (especially in church). I depend heavily on a handful of close, longtime friendships. My husband and son are at the center of my life. Those are relationships that shape how I move through the world, who I’m with. What I am is Christian, Episcopalian, an American, a daughter, a mother, a priest, a Portlander. Origin, relationship, and identity.
I say all this not because I think I’m so interesting because I hope that all of you will think about your origin, relationships, and identity. It is how we understand the world and our call within it.
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When God moves into the neighborhood, God lives in all of this threefold experience. God becomes part of our origin, relationship, and identity, dwelling in our individual and corporate humanity. God infuses our from, with, and is with divine life. God moves into our arena, pitches a tent in our midst. Not only does God go with us wherever we go, God who dwells among us as flesh is us wherever we go. Us, not me or you, not some but not others, all of us. From God’s fullness, as the gospel says, we have all received grace upon grace.
The glory of God walking around looks like us walking differently and acting differently. With the incarnation, God animates us in new ways.
What the glory of God looks like walking around is you and me being light that the darkness cannot overcome.
The word becoming flesh and dwelling among us calls us to be our true selves and shifts our relationships and our identity from our selves to the other, just as God moves God’s divine identity from God’s self into us.
God dwelling in us helps us to recognize God in the stranger, the foreigner, and the outcast. What the glory of God looks like walking around is seeing God dwelling in the other. All others, grace upon grace.
There is no limit to what we can do with God’s fullness and grace. In our humanness, it is easy to focus on our limitations and our fears. We can’t expand our ministry to the poor because we need to protect our beautiful spaces. We can’t do this or that ministry because we need to balance our budget, or because we are short on volunteers. We cannot seriously commit ourselves to bold new initiatives because of too many barriers, perhaps because we cannot yet understand what God is up to, in us as a community. But all of these “can’t”s are not what came to dwell among us. They are not the fullness God gives us and calls from us by sending Jesus to dwell in our midst. As the angel said to Elizabeth, nothing is impossible with God.
In our Christmas blessing we pray: May God, who in the Word made flesh joined heaven to earth and earth to heaven, give you his peace and favor. Let us pray that God’s peace and favor call forth from us the divinity that God intends for each one of us, that we might seek and serve the poor and downcast, and thus join the Word made flesh in drawing back the curtain between heaven and earth.
