'In the beginning was the Word' we heard in our gospel reading. 'And the Word was with God and the Word was God.' Words are of course used to communicate – and this reading reminds us that God wants to communicate, to communicate with us.
We use words to communicate in all kinds of contexts; in person, on the phone, through emails and (very rarely these days) through letters, through Facebook, Twitter, skype and of course perhaps supremely at the moment through zoom. It seems many of us are communicating much of the time through zoom. A friend of mine wrote an email to me recently with all her news, and in a PS at the bottom she said 'who would have thought that an email like this could include the word zoom so many times!' Our words speak at different levels too; sometimes they convey significant meaning and loving relationship, but sometimes our words are careless, thoughtless or trivial and really conveying little at all.
The Word of God is different. When God speaks, something happens. God's Word is creative and life-giving. In the beginning, God said 'let there be light' and there was light. It may not have taken six days, but rather millions of years, but God created all there is through his creative word. As John puts it in his Gospel 'All things came into being through his Word, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people' The Word brings light and life. God didn't need to create the universe but he wanted to communicate his life, his love, beyond himself; so he spoke the world into being.
In our own lives we all know that sometimes words are not enough. Even when we use our words carefully to express love, solidarity and gratitude. There are some situations that are beyond words and we may try to communicate then through acts of kindness, through the touch of a hand, through a hug. At the moment, of course, in these strange and painful times, such simple things as a hug and a touch of the hand are off limits as it were. And we feel painfully their absence. Some people have been deprived of human touch for over nine months; and some people have not been able to touch their loved ones in the last weeks of their lives, which is unbearable to contemplate.
Many of us will not be with our families this Christmas time. Zoom has been a lifeline to many and even a blessing (who would have thought I would be saying that), as it does mean that we can in fact exchange more than words with our loved ones, at least we can have the joy of seeing them too. But it is not the same, of course, as seeing them in person. We are not able to celebrate Christmas as a church community in person, and grateful as we are to Hector and all who have put the online services together, we miss being with each other. Even though, as we all know, even if we were together it would be in a socially distanced and masked fashion.
Sometimes words are not enough. It seems that words are not enough for God either. God doesn't only communicate through his messengers and prophets from a high and lonely distance; his word to us is not simply found in a set of guidelines in a book, or in the teachings of the church. God does not speak to us from a safe distance or through a mask, as it were. God communicates with us in a far more radical way than that. The startling message of Christmas is that 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'
God doesn't just send a message through a human being but his Word becomes a human being. God wants to communicate with us and has found the most effective way possible to express himself. Not by sending messages of wisdom and law, but by coming himself as a human being to live amongst us. In this particular man, Jesus, we can see all the fullness of God, we can see God's nature. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.
'The Word made flesh.' For many of the ancient world, and perhaps for many today, this is a shocking message. 'Flesh' can represent sickness, frailty, weakness and decay. Yet, 'The Word became flesh'. Of course 'flesh' can also speak to us of intimacy, friendship, personal relationship and at the moment we may be longing for the simple touch of another person, for the touch of flesh.
Many people have a view of God as an impersonal force in the universe. But the Christian view of God is different: God is not an impersonal force but eternal love, and that love has come among us in Jesus Christ as a human person, involved in the messiness and suffering, the joy and intimacy of flesh and blood. We may sometimes find this comforting, but we may also find it rather scandalous. Surely God can send messages, light and life, or work as a force in our world, but he cannot come among us as a person! You may remember that last Sunday David quoted a Muslim scholar who said that incarnation would have been the best way for God to communicate with us, but that was impossible because it was simply too degrading and humiliating for God to do this. God, the holy, majestic, glorious God cannot possibly become a human being. He is far, far beyond us. Yes, he may well send wisdom, light, laws and instructions as to how we should live...but as to him coming himself to live among us as a human being...that is beyond belief. Yet, this is what Christians believe: the Word became flesh; the Word became a human being.
The Christian gospel isn't that we need to find our way to God, but that He makes his way to us in the most intimate way possible. The holy, awesome God comes to us in a vulnerable baby, born in grimy poverty to refugee parents in the Middle East (sound strangely familiar?); he lives as a man unafraid to touch even untouchable outcasts with tenderness, compassion and healing. He experiences pain and suffering; joy and friendship; betrayal and isolation; torture and death. God doesn't come as a cute little baby at Christmas time and then disappear again. The birth of Jesus, his ministry, his tortured death on the cross, and his resurrection are all the action of God himself in our world. This is our God.
In the Incarnation, God is revealed to us. Someone once said that being invited into the stable is like being invited into the 'engine room'; the place where we see the central working of God. 'This is how God works; this is how God is....the love we see in the cradle and the cross...is the engine room of the universe.' (Rowan Williams, Choose Life)
This is our God; the God of eternal love who humbles himself to come among us, who reveals himself in the cradle and the cross. This humble love is the engine room of the universe. In Christ, God shares our human life, from birth to death. Jesus comes as one of us; God with us, longing for us to respond to his love. God is not distant and uncaring, or even a detached force for good, he is in the midst of us, in the complexities and struggles, joys and sorrows of human life.
Can we be open to the 'Word made flesh living among us'? Of course, in Jesus' earthly ministry, some people responded to him and some people didn't. As John says in our reading, 'he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.' This is the purpose of God's coming among us, of God's sending his Son into our world; that we too might know the love of the Father and live as his children. And living as his children doesn't mean becoming like angels, or super spiritual beings detached from this earthly world, but becoming true human beings; living the way of Jesus in our ordinary daily lives as men and women of flesh and blood. This involves not only our words but the whole of ourselves.
In the beginning was the Word. God wants to communicate with us and has chosen the most intimate, effective way possible to communicate with us, as a human being; the Word made flesh. We have heard God; we have seen God as He is, in Christ. The Word has spoken; are we listening? More than that the Word has come in the flesh to live among us; will we enter the stable to worship the humble God of the universe and follow in his way.
Revd Helen Marshall