“And the Word was made flesh”
Christmas Eve! And yet, not a mention of the name of Jesus or Christ either in the great epistle reading from The Letter to the Hebrews or in the great gospel reading from the Prologue to The Gospel according to St. John! Plenty of mention in the carols, of course, but doesn’t seem a bit strange that on Christmas Eve, there is no mention in the Scripture readings of the name of Jesus Christ? No mention of Santa Claus, either, I suppose! And yet, this text is the great and definitive Christian Christmas message. “And the Word was made flesh.”
Christmas means the Mass of Christ; in short, the celebration of Christ. We celebrate the birth of Jesus in the simple and lowly scene of little Bethlehem. What does that mean? Why all the fuss and bother about another birth of another child from another time and in another world; long ago and far away, as it were? “What mean ye by this service?” Moses, in The Book of Exodus, asks in relation to the Passover. A question that defines the worship of Israel, it carries over for us, I think, into this and every service. What do we mean by the celebration of Christ and his nativity?
We could respond historically to say that His Birth quite literally changed the world, which is quite true. It placed the world upon an entirely new foundation, shaping cultures and generations yet to come, including even our own, despite its rage and spite against all things religious, despite its demand that religion, if it is to be allowed at all, serve our own immediate and practical concerns and interests. Whether His Birth will change you, make you look at yourself and one another in a new way, is another question. The answer is really up to you in the sense of either pondering this mystery in your heart or running away from it in disgust, dismay, and denial. But the mystery remains. But what is that mystery?
It is the mystery of love, the divinum mysterium, the divine mystery of love. Christmas proclaims that God cares for you. That is an astounding statement. It makes, quite literally, all the difference in the world. It turns life, quite literally, from being a dark and grim tragedy into a joyous and delightful comedy. It speaks to the pagan darknesses, ancient and new, and all around us in the folly of our technological exuberance, which turns us from being the masters to becoming the monsters of our humanity. The birth of a child? Aren’t there too many children in the world today? Why can’t I have as few children as I wish, without or without sex, please? We have the mastery, after all, with reproductive technology, don’t we? And we have the monstrosity. Twins? I’ll take one; just destroy the other or others. It is inconvenient to me. I am God, the master and mistress of my own destiny, and of others, too, it seems, and sadly so.
A bit disturbing, all of this, I am sure. And yet, it all goes, not to the posturings of self-righteousness and judgmentalism, but to the holy mystery of this holy night, to the mystery of Christ’s birth, which challenges all of our contemporary assumptions, both yours and mine. “How shall this be,” Mary had asked, “seeing as I know not a man?”
Joseph, too, was no doubt more than a little troubled to find his betrothed already with child. “Of the holy Ghost,” Matthew tells us, but did Joseph know that at first, let alone understand it? “Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example,” he “was minded to put her away privily.” The sub-text is powerful. A public example? Yes, of adultery, and therefore, subject to stoning. We still see something of that sadly in our own day. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” Jesus will say in a later Gospel story about a woman accused of adultery. A commentary on the miracle and the fragility of his own human birth, perhaps? Joseph, of course, is told by the angel of the Lord in a dream that “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost” and so on.
Mary, Virgin and Mother, the very two things, perhaps, we don’t want to be, I once heard someone say! What does this story mean? It offers a larger view of our humanity that signals the redemption of the physical and the sensual. A holy birth that confounds our expectations, dreary and dismal as they really are. A holy birth that conjoins purity and fruitfulness in an ecstasy of joyfulness at God’s will for us.
This is all part of the Christmas story. And yet, it is not what we hear tonight. No mention of Jesus or Mary in our lessons. What we hear tonight is the wondrous pageant of God’s Word resounding down through the ages in The Letter to the Hebrews and becoming flesh in John’s Gospel. The Word. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
These are amazing statements that sum up the ancient wisdom of Greek and Hebrew thought. Amazing statements that argue for the priority of the intellectual and the spiritual, the great legacies of those ancient cultures in their deepest truth. And yet, they are as nothing in relation to the much more amazing statement in this Gospel, namely, “And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” This is what turned the world on its head. This is what has the power to turn our world on its head, yet again, if we will let it take flesh in our hearts and lives. This is the mystery of Christmas.
We have the hardest time with these amazing statements. For the world of antiquity, it was the matter of the Word becoming flesh that was so perplexing and not the idea of God as Word. For us, the flesh – meaning our sensual desires and sexual identities – is something with which we are much preoccupied. Got an urge, fulfill it. God as Word is the dark mystery for our culture, let alone the radical meaning of God becoming man, let alone the enlightening mystery of God as Word becoming flesh, meaning human. To reclaim this mystery for our imaginations and lives is the meaning of this service.
God, the architect and master of the universe “without whom nothing was made that was made;” God who is the All powerful and Almighty, the All-knowing and All-seeing, has willed to enter into the human condition. Why? Because God cares. God’s care is love. God wills to engage our humanity in the intimacy of Christ’s holy birth. It changes everything. Will it change us? Will it help us to understand the deeper dignity of our humanity that celebrates the redemption of all things truly human, including the sensual and the sexual, the material and the physical, and, therefore, all suffering and death, too? How else can we make sense of all the fuss and bother of this time and season? ‘Is it true?’ you may ask. That is one question. The greater question is to ask, ‘how is it true?’ and be willing to stay for an answer or, at least, a way of thinking the question, being like Mary hearing all the things that were said in word and song about her child and “keep[ing] them and ponder[ing] them in her heart.”
Word, Light, Son – these are the things we hear in these readings. Mary, Virgin and Mother, is understood, too, in the meaning of the Word made flesh through her.
Christmas is the great Christian counter to the contemporary culture of nihilism. For without the idea of God as Word, without the idea of an intellectual and spiritual principle that governs the world, without the idea that the material and the sensual ultimately find their place and meaning in God’s engagement with the world and with our humanity, we find ourselves in an utterly meaningless and empty world and we are nothing, too. Our choices really mean nothing if there is no difference between good and evil and no difference between truth and falsehood. At best, we live the lie of the illusion of our choices, the lie of our relativism. It seems good to me, at least now, “whatever.” Therein is the shrug of our emptiness which leads only to disillusionment and destruction.
Christ’s holy birth is about the great care of God for our humanity. The great celebrations of Christmas open us out to all of the astounding wonders of God’s engagement with our world and our humanity. Peace and good will among human kind, the harmony and unity of God and the world, of men and angels, of heaven and earth, of all humanity – all of these are set before us in the fullness of the rich pageant of Christmas, concentrated for us in the lowly scene of Bethlehem. It was, to be sure, long ago and far away, but it is about “the Word made flesh” and that speaks to all and everywhere. It is the great good news of this holy night. God cares. Love is the mystery of Christmas. Live it and love it.
“And the Word was made flesh”
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Eve, 2010