The Word made Flesh

Trinity Episcopal Church (Christmas Sermon 2019)

In the beginning was the Word.

For when all things began the Word already was.

That Word dwelt with God. And What God was, the Word was.

That Divine Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be. No single thing was created without him.

All that came to be, was alive with his Life - And that life was the light of humankind.

The Light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.[1]

There was a time when everything (and everyone) we have ever seen – everything we’ve ever touched, tasted, smelled, or heard - was not.

When reality, the cosmos, the atoms and energy that make up our universe (our bodies) simply were not (did not exist).

Whether one subscribes to the idea of the Big Bang (proposed by Catholic Priest George Lemaitre), or Stephen Hawkings’ idea that the substance of the universe just kind of emerged out of no-space and no-time, or any of the vast array of creation myths which characterize creation as coming forth ex nihilo (out of nothing)…

In the beginning there was no-thing.

There wasn’t even space. There wasn’t even time.

In the beginning there was nothing.

But the Word already was.

For the Word (here) is not just speech.

The Word is God’s perfect expression of God’s own Self - God’s own Perfect Image of God - and there was never a time when that Word was not. For what God is – the Word is.

As God is Timeless and Infinite, so is that Expressive Word.

As God is always more (than one could ask or imagine), so is that Eternal Word.

Meister Eckhart (a German mystic) once posed the question:

“So what does God actually do all day?” (What are God’s hobbies?)

And the reply is:  God gives birth.

Eckhart writes: “From all Eternity god lies giving birth on a maternity bed.”

And we know from nature that like gives birth to like.

And so from Eternity, God is gives birth to God.

God begetting God.    (Begotten, not made.)

God giving birth to God’s own Self - Infinite, Timeless, Eternally Loving, Eternally Good.

Therefore, let it not be said that God made the world simply because God was lonely and needed a fan-base… God was pretty content with God’s own company.

In fact, God was more than content because that Image (that. expression) which God delights in, is always more, and always more wonderful.

Like an eternal fountain of life and light and love and goodness, springing up out of the very depths of the Divine Mystery.

So then why create a universe at all?

Why is this cosmos the reality we experience?

Why is it all not just God staring in blissful contemplation of God’s own Self (as Narcissus gazed lovingly at his reflection in the pond)?

God’s eternal Love – God’s Self-offering Love - is so intense that it takes that which is not God and turns it into God.

In the beginning, before there was even time or space, here was nothing apart from God.

And since there was nothing to begin with… then nothing would have to do. And so from nothing our universe was made.

We read in the Genesis Creation Narrative that God spoke the World into being - that, while once there was no-thing, the Divine Word (who perfectly Expresses Who-God-Is) rang out through the Void and brought the Cosmos into being.

Every star, every planet, every moon,

every plant, every animal,

          Every mountain, and desert, and sea…

Everything that is (everything that has being) has its origin in that Divine Word. All of creation is in some way saturated with God’s Expression of God’s own Self, because all of Creation has its origin in that Word.

That’s the story that the Genesis Creation Narrative was telling.

And it goes on:

After making the stars, and the sun, and the sea, and the earth; after making all the varieties of plants and animals…

God says (to God’s Self)

“Let us make Humankind in our Image and in our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26)

Let us create a Living Being that can perceive and respond to God’s Creative Word at work the world, a material creature that can willfully and lovingly respond to God’s activity in the world and become co-operators with God.

Creatures with the Divine Gift of Reason who can shepherd other created beings as God shepherds all of creation - not for the sake of domination but for the sake of a Divine Flourishing in Creation - not as Lords, but as Gardeners.

And sometimes we’re actually not awful at doing just that, but a lot of the time we’re also not great at it.

We are fallible creatures made of the same dust as the rest of this world. We are, essentially, Creation made conscious of itself.

So telling us to govern our corner of creation as God orders all things is a bit like telling an eye to turn and see itself, or asking someone to lift themselves up off the ground by tugging on their own shoelaces.

We’re in creation and we’re a part of creation.

We’re subject to hunger and (as Adam and Eve found) unhealthy appetites. We’re prone to cold and heat, and even suffering and death.

So how was this supposed to work out?

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

There is an ancient theory of the Incarnation - of the Eternal Word of God being born as Jesus Christ - which says that the process of creating humanity “in the Image of God” was not complete until Christ was born of Mary.

Yes all human beings who preceded him were just as much human we who are gathered here - but making humankind in the “Image of God…”

That was a slow (some might say evolutionary) process of human beings attempting to respond to the Eternal Word of God at work in the World from the very beginning.

Sometimes getting it… sometimes not-so-much… Generation upon generation.

But all the while, the Spirit of God was moving in creation, nudging things along until the right moment…

Until a young woman (just as human as you or I) was able to say with willful consent: “Let it be unto me according to Thy Word.”

And by the Power of the Holy Spirit, Mary conceived the Eternal Word of God in her womb. God’s Eternal Expression of God’s Self took on human flesh and was born of a Virgin (just as he was Born of God from before all time).

Suddenly the Human story (of struggle and triumph, and suffering and overcoming), was bound to the Eternal Story of God. Our story and God’s story became forever intertwined. Our poverty and human frailty was taken on by Christ, while at the same time we were being granted a share in the richness of his Divine Life and the abundance of His Grace.

Jesus Christ was the unique revelation that God-is-with-us, here and now - in our humanity and here in the struggle.

In our midst the Word of God is still operating in the world - bringing health and wholeness and peace, where there had been suffering and chaos and death. “Bringing forth life and giving growth.”

God is still creating the world from nothing, and in Christ we see the power of re-creation. We see that God never stops caring for that which the Word of God has created – Ever.  Even those things which seem broken and worn down are being infused with Divine Life.

Because that’s God’s ongoing project: to give birth to the Image of God in creation.

We saw the “crowning” (as it were) with the First Coming of Christ, but to paraphrase another Meister Eckhart quote:

“What good is it for me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 2000 years ago and I don't give birth to God's Son in my person and my culture and my times?”

The Full Body of Christ is still being Born, (for Christ is the Image of God, and God is always more) - and as Saint Paul writes, all of Creation is groaning in labor pains waiting for the Children of God to finally be born and revealed as they are.

In Christ Jesus we saw what it means for God to be born in Creation - not as a Lord or a noble somewhere off in a fine palace, but a humble, ordinary human being – one born in the lowliest of circumstances, who’s first crib was a feeding trough among animals.

Christ’s unique power was that he Loved, completely and entirely. Every single cell of his body was love.  He is the Love of God incarnate.

He is the Eternal Love of God breaking into the world that all the world might be Loved by God - that all of creation might feel the wholeness, and healing, and Divine Life that God is pouring out.

In Christ Jesus, God became a human being, so that human beings might become God.

That we might bear the Image of God in our flesh (in our humanity), and coax that Image out of others when the world tells them it’s not there.

Christ is come and the world is changed forever.

The Eternal has entered Time.

            The Uncontainable God has been born as a child.

The Eternal love of God that brought worlds into being - the love of God that gives birth to God - is now known in and through the love that we share for each-other. The Love of Christ that binds us together as One Body.

And all the while, the Image of God continues to take on flesh in those who would receive it (in our person, in our culture, and in our times).

Christ is come. Christ is born.

Therefore, Joy to the World! For the Lord has come.

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room, and let heaven and nature sing.

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[1] Prologue of John (using the language of the “New English Translation”)