The Word Became Flesh
John 1:1 – 3, 10 – 18
A few years ago, as I was going through certification to receive my Local Pastor license, part of the process was to sit before the District Committee on Ministry, DCOM for short. In the Methodist Church, they, both ordained pastors and laity, are the entity that ultimately decides when and if someone becomes a pastor. In this meeting you sit in a big room, with all of them asking theological denominational and personal questions. It feels as though you are going through an inquisition. They have the power, authority, and responsibility to give one of three answers to candidates: yes, not now and no. The “not now” is the response that most candidates get in the first go around.
They have all of the information that the Conference has asked you to provide; personal and educational background, a statement about your perceived and discerned, call to ministry, answers to Wesley’s historic questions, your salvation statement, information about you from your sending church, mine was Bexley UMC.
Additionally there is a months long candidacy program that starts with a weekend retreat where you are placed into a cohort with other candidates, meeting regularly with ordained elders as mentors and finally a complete psychological assessment report. The response that I received that first time before DCOM was a “not now”. They suggested that I work with a mentor and to focus on developing a “incarnational faith statement”. My first reaction was, why after all this time, through all of those meetings and conversations, did I not know what incarnational faith means and why is it important? Friends our message lesson unpacks the importance of that understanding of the Incarnation for us today.
The first line of the Old Testament is short and simple: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Think of that as God, the artist, has a blank canvas upon which He creates anything and everything, including His most prized possession, Man!
Two of the four Gospels, the stories of the coming, mission and ministry of Jesus, start with the arrival of angels a to mankind begin with angels coming to man to announce impending births to unlikely women, cousins in fact, Elizabeth the mother of John, we know him as John the Baptist, and Mary the mother of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark skips over those births altogether and opens with the ministry of the aforementioned John.
But the Gospel of the Apostle John, one of the 12 disciples, extends his story all the way back before the births, back to the beginning of time, to make sure that we understand the completeness of Jesus’ story, His purpose and position within the Godhead and to underscore the enormity of His coming to us. As you may remember, John begins his Gospel with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
So, what does John mean by the “Word”? To put this into the context in which John is writing his Gospel, the “word” is a term used by theologians, both Greek and Jewish, in many different ways. In the Hebrew scripture, the Word was an agent of creation, the source of the revelation of God’s message to his people through the prophets, and the law His standard for holiness. In Greek philosophy, the word was the principle of reason that governed the world. While in Hebrew thought the word was another expression for God.
John’s description shows clearly that he is speaking of Jesus, a human being that as a Disciple he knew and loved, but at the same time the co-creator of the universe, the ultimate revelation of God, the living picture of God’s holiness and the one to whom all things are held together.
While saying that Jesus was Word may seem confusing and misdirecting to us today, both the Jews and the Greeks, in whose language John is writing, know exactly what John is talking about. Jesus is part of “God”, He is the Word or as the Greeks said “logos” which means not just the language of communication only but also thought and understanding.
Jesus is the Word because he comes to communicate God’s mind to us. He is a messenger of God. He speaks of what God is like. So, we know what Jesus’ place in the Triune God is, but the revelation of how He is to fulfill his purpose comes from John, verse 14, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John tells us that Jesus, the Word of God comes to mankind as flesh and blood something that no other part of the Triune God ever has. It is something that He did have before nor was He in need of it before this point. Jesus the spirit, assumes human form and nature, he is incarnated. Incarnation theology is the doctrine that the second person of the Trinity, assumed human form in the person of Jesus Christ and is completely both God and man. He becomes the Word Incarnate.
The adjective “incarnate” is formed from the Latin word ”in”, meaning “into,” and “carn”, meaning “flesh.” So it literally means to put something “into-flesh” to make something in the form of a human being. In Christian theology it is the word used to describe the coming of Jesus to be one of us. He becomes God Incarnate, God into the flesh.
Dr. Gregory S. Neal – In Christian theology the area of study dealing with the coming of God to be with us in Christ Jesus is known as Incarnational Theology. Theologians enjoy tossing around great big words that have very simple meanings, and this is one of those words.
The doctrine of the incarnation states that Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the dusty roads of Galilee, cleansed the Temple of the money changers in Jerusalem, wept at the tomb of Lazarus, celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples in the Upper Room, and died on the cross for our sins — this same Jesus was also God, come to live with us and as one of us, in human flesh. The Word, God himself became flesh and lived among us. Jesus is the eternal Word, the creative agency through whom the Father created all that is or ever shall be. (Dr. Gregory S. Neal)
Incarnational theology teaches us that God has always revealed Himself to us through the “normal,” the physical, the temporal, the mundane things of this life, just look at Jesus parable teachings. You see, God’s ultimate and eternal self-revelation for us is in and through the form of a man: Jesus of Nazareth. In this man we see not only ourselves as God calls us to be, but we also see God Himself.
The only begotten Son of the Father didn’t stop being God in order to become human but, rather, took upon Himself our human nature, almost as if He were putting on a garment, and in so doing He purified our humanity and made it possible for us to become one with Him. As Charles Wesley’s wonderful Christmas hymn Hark the Herald Angels that we will be singing in moments proclaims:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity. Pleased as man with man to dwell Jesus, our Emmanuel! God with us!
In the incarnation, God veiled Himself in humanity only the unveil, to reveal it on the Cross, thus revealing his gracious, life-transforming nature to us. Thanks to the veiling nature of the incarnation, hiding His true divinity, the disciples were able to be with the God, without fear, to learn from him, to enjoy time with him, and to come to know God through him.
Friends, we, too, have that same privilege; we, like the disciples, have the joy of coming to know, to understand God in and through Jesus’ words and action. This is a critical point within the Incarnation: all that we need for our salvation can be experienced in and through our relationship with Christ Jesus, our Lord. (Dr. Gregory S. Neal)
So going back to the start, here is why DCOM went out of their way to point out to me that all of us, certainly a pastor, needs to have a clear understanding and significance of what happens on Christmas morning. Friends there isn’t a single element of Christian worship; scripture, prayers, teaching, singing and sacraments, like the one we are about to celebrate, that isn’t impacted by understanding that Christ was God and became God Incarnate to reconcile the world to Himself.
The Word Became Flesh and lived among us. It is God giving God’s own life to his people. It is as if God said, “I want humanity to see my face. I want them to hear my voice. I want them to touch me. I want to live their life. I want them to live my life.” “And the word became flesh and lived among us.”
The Incarnation is God entrusting God’s self and the spreading of His coming and the acts of salvation to other human beings, entrusting that to you and to me. It is God’s reaffirmation of humanity’s holiness. It is the sharing and exchanging of life experiences between God and you and me. God became human so that humanity might become closer, nearer to God. Divinity was clothed in humanity so that humanity might clothed in divinity.
Michael K. Marsh writes can you see what that means for us? It means we are holy and intended to be holy, not as an achievement on our own but as a gift of God. We have been given the power to become children of God. This happens not by blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of people, but by God. “And the Word Became Flesh and lived among us.” God is still living among us! Amen.