Christmas Day, 2007

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. So St. John says in today’s Gospel. These are familiar words, overly familiar perhaps – and I sometimes think we don’t hear them in the full richness of what John means. At Christmas time, especially, I assume that we do understand them at least to mean the coming of the Divine Word to live among us as a human being in Jesus. The eternal Son of God was born as a human son to a human mother. He shared our human nature, he lived and died as one of us. In that sense, at the very least, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

But the Word becoming flesh means more than that. In the later chapters of John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of coming to live within those who follow him. He speaks of abiding, of dwelling, of making a home in his disciples. Jesus promises that he will come to live within each one of us. The Incarnation, it turns out, is not just about a single human being in whom God chose to live. Rather, because the Word became flesh in that one human being, the Word also becomes flesh in other human beings who are joined to him in Baptism. The Incarnation is, as it were, contagious! To say that the Word made flesh dwells among us is actually to say the Word mad flesh dwells within us.

“Oh, of course,” I hear you saying to yourselves: “He means that Jesus comes to dwell in our hearts.” Well, yes, I do, but such language always makes me a bit nervous. It can easily get very sentimental – especially around Christmas. We can think Jesus’ indwelling is primarily an emotional thing -- a feeling we might have when we become aware of something good or holy in or around us. It can be that – but it is much more.

“OK, he must mean that Jesus comes to dwell in our souls – whatever they are.” Well, yes, but that language makes me nervous, too. It can tempt us to a kind of disembodied spirituality; in which Jesus’ presence is just some vaguely invisible thing floating somewhere inside us, but not rooted in us; not grounded, not real.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word became Flesh.

The Word of God, comes to dwell not just in our hearts; not just in our souls, but in the whole of our person, including our flesh, our bodies. It is in our bodies as well as our hearts, souls and minds that Christ comes to live. In Baptism, the Word who became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth has come to make a home in us, heart, soul, mind and body. Christ is infinitely closer, and more intimate with all of our being including our physical selves, than we imagine.

This can be an overwhelming reality whenever we catch a glimpse of it. This is how Nikos Kazantzakis portrayed it in the Last Supper scene in his novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. After Jesus gives the disciples bread and wine, Kazantzakis describes their experience in these words: “Each of the disciples ate his mouthful of bread and drank his sip of wine. Their minds reeled. The wine seemed to them thick and salty, like blood; the portion of bread descended like a burning coal into their very bowels. Suddenly, terrified, they all felt Jesus take root within them and begin to devour their entrails. Peter leaned his elbows on the table and began to weep.”

Like the disciples, we may well find ourselves ambivalent about such intimacy with the Word made Flesh – of having Jesus that close to us. Such closeness is a challenge to our sense of independence; to our imagined capacity to live life on our own terms without reference to the God who is our constant companion. And that is a sobering truth.

But it is also a great joy. What a wonder to know that every breath we take Christ shares; every movement of our body is Christ’s movement; that no matter how hard we may try, we can never separate ourselves from the Divine love that has come to live in us, to transform us and make us whole.

To get a glimpse of what that might be, listen to these words of St. Symeon the New Theologian; words that were as radical when he wrote them in the 11^th century and as they are today.

We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
he appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? –

Then open your hearts to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and he makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed ugly, irreparably
damaged is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
we awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.