Christmas (25 Dec 2007)

John 1:1-18

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron OH

THE REAL REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

Thirty-nine years ago last night the Apollo 8 astronauts traveled on an orbit that passed around the moon and were the first human beings ever to see its other side. They were going to speak to the inhabitants of the earth that evening – but what would they say? Something about the triumphs of science or the heights humanity had climbed during its long evolution? That might have seemed natural. Instead, they began to read: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void ...”. It was the first creation story from Genesis.

That was a very moving event – something I and many others will never forget. Of course there were objections – the astronauts were employees of the U.S. government and shouldn’t promote any religion, and so on. Well, the Genesis story of creation is accepted by Jews, Christians and Muslims, the great majority of all the people in the world. It’s not a story told exclusively by one religion.

It’s interesting though that the first words that the astronauts read might have been from our Gospel this Christmas morning. “In the beginning – was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And it’s not any accident that John calls up memories of Genesis. And like Genesis, those very first words John’s Gospel are not distinctively Christian. Back around the time that the Gospel was written, other philosophers and religious thinkers had speculated about a Logos, the Greek word that’s translated “Word” in our text but which can also be translated as “Reason.” Philosophers talked about a “World Reason” that underlies creation, a pattern of our world, the “logos” or “logic” of reality. In fact, some modern scientists like Jeans and Heisenberg have used ideas like that in connection with the laws of physics. There’s a lot to think about there. But – with all that it’s not “beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

St. Augustine said that in his study of philosophy before he became a Christian he had found in Plato and his followers the idea that “In the beginning was the Word.” But he had never found there that “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” And with that latter idea it is “beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” “The Word was God,” and without ceasing to be eternal God, The Logos of creation, he “was made flesh.” And as flesh he is the eternal Word, the Reason underlying creation.

When the Gospel says “flesh” it means the same flesh as that of babies lying in the maternity wards of Akron hospitals today. It was not some superhuman stuff. In fact, the Bible often uses the word “flesh” to emphasize the frailty of human beings, to speak of our weakness and vulnerability. It is because they are flesh that babies cry when they’re hungry or get stuck with diaper pins. The Word became the baby at Mary’s breast without ceasing to be very God of very God. The Word became our flesh. Which means – quite a lot.

It means that we may need to change our way of thinking. The old philosophers considered the Logos to be beyond the world in a changeless heavenly realm. It couldn’t be a denizen of our world of change and decay by becoming flesh. God could perhaps visit the world, be disguised as a human, but couldn’t become anything. There is a gulf between God and humanity. And a great deal of religion is directed toward climbing up to heaven and escaping the flesh.

There is indeed a gulf between God and humanity, and God bridges that gulf. The baby is the bridge. Mary’s son is God’s son. And if your philosophical presuppositions won’t allow that, change your presuppositions.

Our fleshliness, our bodily makeup, is good. That’s one of the things that that creation story from Genesis tells us, and the Incarnation is God’s seal of approval on creation. That’s why the physical character of Christmas celebrations – candles and trees and food and music – are appropriate. The point is not that we need to spend a lot of money on these things but that they are expressions of God’s regard for the physical world. So turn on the tree light. Eat a cookie. Christ is born today.

I hope you don’t think that that’s trivial or flippant. There is a big and basic point there, that Christmas is God’s validation of creation. “God saw that it was good” and God continues to see that it is good.

Of course flesh can cause trouble. We misuse creatures and misvalue relationships. The whole problem of sin is that we put creatures ahead of God and use in wrong ways creatures of God like food, alcohol, sex and nuclear energy. At Christmas time food and drink are good but we easily overdo it. Giving presents is fine but we try to outdo others, just as we have to have the most elaborate display of lights outside. The flesh gets us into trouble so easily that Paul often uses the word to mean humanity turned away from God.” The Word “was in the world ... yet the world did not know him.” That’s the problem of flesh in the Pauline sense – of what John calls “the world.”

The Word became flesh “and we have seen his glory.” For us “glory” means - well, something “glorious” – splendor, triumph, bright lights, all the things that dazzle us.

The Gospel of John means something different. From its start John points us toward the “hour” when the Incarnate Word is “glorified” – the hour when he is raised upon the. And when we come to the middle of the Gospel Jesus says, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Human beings turn away from God. Jesus never turns from God – or from us. In our problematic flesh, prone to sin, he never sins. But God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” By becoming flesh and being lifted upon the cross and raised from death he turns us back to God. And “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.”

And with that it is not only “beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” It is, in a much overworked phrase, “the real meaning of Christmas.”