The Word Became Flesh ~ OMG!
The Rev. Robert P. Travis
Christmas 1 - Year A RCL
Episcopal Church of the Ascension
December 26, 2010 8 and 10:30am
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 and John 1:1-18
Sermon Text:
“And the word became flesh and lived among us.”
My daughters like to cuddle,
in case you don't know them,
they are 6 and 4 and ¾.
Annalise, is 4 and ¾ and she will tell you that.
She has liked cuddling ever since she was a baby.
I remember when my dad held her
in her early months of life.
As a newborn she laid her head down on his shoulder,
and he said, “Aw, she cuddles!”
She has a bed full of cuddle toys,
but Annalise has been known to say
that she needed a special cuddle toy
or else she could not go to sleep.
So it struck me as a pure expression of love,
this week, when Annalise told me this about God.
She said, “God is a great big cuddle toy
who all the children of the world can cuddle at once.
He cuddles with us every night,
even though we can't see him.”
She said that to me with the confidence
of a biblical truth.
She knows it to be true,
and as one who really loves cuddling, it is an important truth about her experience of God.
That seems to go well with the Christmas story
we know so well, with the simple Christmas story
we heard so recently,
and today we have a very different understanding
of the birth of Jesus Christ.
The interesting thing, about having
the first Sunday after Christmas
the very next day,
Is that we get to see how paradoxical
the gospel writers were
in their understanding
of the birth of Jesus.
A paradox,
is when two true statements
coexist, though they don’t
agree with one another.
They seem opposed to each other,
but they are both true.
John presents us not with a little
cuddly baby, as he introduces
the good news about Jesus,
but with the Word of God,
The Logos become flesh.
The Logos was understood as a concept,
both to Jews and pagans.
Many believed that the world,
the whole universe in fact,
was spoken into existence,
and that Word, Logos in Greek,
was what caused all creation.
We know this most clearly
from the beginning of the Bible,
where it is passed down to us,
that “In the beginning, God said,
‘let there be light,’ and there was light.”
The whole creation is a series of statements.
One translator simply translated
the Hebrew as,
In the beginning God said, ‘Light!’”
That does a better job of conveying that Logos idea.
The Logos, The Word of God was ‘Light!’
The Word of God was behind every work of creation,
every Word of Creation.
So when John writes, “In the beginning was the Word,”
He wants us to remember the Genesis account.
You could just as easily understand,
the Big Bang that ways as well.
In the beginning, God said “Bang!”
And the Big Bang Happened.
The Word spoken by God, is the Word of God.
So when the evangelist says
the Word was with God,
that goes without saying.
When he says, the Word was God,
that’s good news.
Behind all that creation, light,
darkeness, galaxies,
stars,
worlds,
the earth,
the ocean,
mountains,
trees,
plants,
animals,
people,
tiny living things,
behind all this is life,
and that life started as light,
and that light was a Word,
and that Word is part of God’s own self.
Here’s the paradox,
that cuddly baby,
that Cuddle toy my daughter and children
everywhere love,
was that very Word,
the creative force behind everything,
became the very flesh he created.
How can both of those things be true
at the same time?
God often shows us,
that either/or is not sufficient,
With God it is often both/and.
Jesus Christ is both a cuddly baby,
and the cosmic reality behind all life
in the universe.
Whoa!
I think that should give us all pause,
That is what Isaiah’s talking about,
“my whole being shall exult in my God;”
Not just a little warm feeling
that we get from seeing an adorable baby,
but a great big Whoa!
From your head, to your heart,
to your toes,
to the depth of your soul and Spirit.
This would be the right time to say,
“Oh, My God!”
a phrase used way too vainly these days,
but that Oh, My God! is what
exultation really means.
Why does Isaiah say that,
beyond pure awe?
He writes, “my whole being shall exult
in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
...as a bridegroom decks himself,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
This is prophecy,
Isaiah had not met Jesus,
he is writing hundreds of Years before
that birth in Bethlehem,
but he sees what God is doing,
he feels clothed with the garments of salvation.
That same Word from the very beginning,
the Word light,
the Word Life,
was also the Word,
Man, and the word Woman.
And as if it was not enough,
because of our own neglect,
our squandering the right way,
and then forgetting what we really are,
that Word, actually
became one of US.
To bring us back, to what we were made to be.
That is why Isaiah exults,
that is why we say,
Oh my God!
This Sunday after the incarnation.
Because of his coming into the world,
condescending from being greater
than the whole universe,
to become a single human being,
he gives us the power to become
Children of God.
Isaiah prophecied,
we will be a crown of beauty
in the hand of the Lord,
a daughter and son of the King.
So yes,
as Children of God,
as my own child realized,
even though we don’t see Him,
he cuddles us every night.
But we know that,
only because God the only Son,
the Word who spoke the everything into being,
became fleshed and lived among us,
because he made God known to us,
in the flesh,
incarnated,
And while in the flesh,
he showed us Love,
strong love,
scandalous Love,
Love that cuddles us,
no matter how prickly we have been to Him.
This is one of the great paradoxes.
And Christmas is a season to reflect on that.
What does that make you think about yourself?
Our Brotherhood sent this reflection out
that helped me,
(by Br. Kevin Hackett),
a priest with the Society of St. John the Evangelist,
an Episcopal religious order says:
When the Eucharist is celebrated at the Monastery,
the Bread and the Cup are sometimes presented
to the congregation from the altar as the presider says,
"Behold what you are."
Which is to say, look closely,
this is who and what you really and truly are,
the Body of Christ, made up of grains of wheat ground so fine that it would be impossible to separate them now.
"Behold what you are."
To which we respond, "May we become what we receive."
May we indeed.”
Fr. Howard and Brett preached
on Christmas eve,
that the incarnation is about how we are Christ to one another,
in community.
As we share in the flesh of Jesus,
fed by his presence in the Eucharist,
reassured of his presence in the world,
may we become what we are always
made to be, what we were spoken into being.
As if we never lost that awareness.
“May we become willing to embrace the other,
to serve the other,
to wash the other's feet,
to suffer with the other,
to suffer in place of the other.
That's what the Body of Christ in the incarnate Lord Jesus did. That's what the Body of Christ
[The Word made flesh]
incarnate in us is still called to do.”
Christmas 1 - Year A RCL
Episcopal Church of the Ascension
December 26, 2010 8 and 10:30am
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 and John 1:1-18
Sermon Text:
“And the word became flesh and lived among us.”
My daughters like to cuddle,
in case you don't know them,
they are 6 and 4 and ¾.
Annalise, is 4 and ¾ and she will tell you that.
She has liked cuddling ever since she was a baby.
I remember when my dad held her
in her early months of life.
As a newborn she laid her head down on his shoulder,
and he said, “Aw, she cuddles!”
She has a bed full of cuddle toys,
but Annalise has been known to say
that she needed a special cuddle toy
or else she could not go to sleep.
So it struck me as a pure expression of love,
this week, when Annalise told me this about God.
She said, “God is a great big cuddle toy
who all the children of the world can cuddle at once.
He cuddles with us every night,
even though we can't see him.”
She said that to me with the confidence
of a biblical truth.
She knows it to be true,
and as one who really loves cuddling, it is an important truth about her experience of God.
That seems to go well with the Christmas story
we know so well, with the simple Christmas story
we heard so recently,
and today we have a very different understanding
of the birth of Jesus Christ.
The interesting thing, about having
the first Sunday after Christmas
the very next day,
Is that we get to see how paradoxical
the gospel writers were
in their understanding
of the birth of Jesus.
A paradox,
is when two true statements
coexist, though they don’t
agree with one another.
They seem opposed to each other,
but they are both true.
John presents us not with a little
cuddly baby, as he introduces
the good news about Jesus,
but with the Word of God,
The Logos become flesh.
The Logos was understood as a concept,
both to Jews and pagans.
Many believed that the world,
the whole universe in fact,
was spoken into existence,
and that Word, Logos in Greek,
was what caused all creation.
We know this most clearly
from the beginning of the Bible,
where it is passed down to us,
that “In the beginning, God said,
‘let there be light,’ and there was light.”
The whole creation is a series of statements.
One translator simply translated
the Hebrew as,
In the beginning God said, ‘Light!’”
That does a better job of conveying that Logos idea.
The Logos, The Word of God was ‘Light!’
The Word of God was behind every work of creation,
every Word of Creation.
So when John writes, “In the beginning was the Word,”
He wants us to remember the Genesis account.
You could just as easily understand,
the Big Bang that ways as well.
In the beginning, God said “Bang!”
And the Big Bang Happened.
The Word spoken by God, is the Word of God.
So when the evangelist says
the Word was with God,
that goes without saying.
When he says, the Word was God,
that’s good news.
Behind all that creation, light,
darkeness, galaxies,
stars,
worlds,
the earth,
the ocean,
mountains,
trees,
plants,
animals,
people,
tiny living things,
behind all this is life,
and that life started as light,
and that light was a Word,
and that Word is part of God’s own self.
Here’s the paradox,
that cuddly baby,
that Cuddle toy my daughter and children
everywhere love,
was that very Word,
the creative force behind everything,
became the very flesh he created.
How can both of those things be true
at the same time?
God often shows us,
that either/or is not sufficient,
With God it is often both/and.
Jesus Christ is both a cuddly baby,
and the cosmic reality behind all life
in the universe.
Whoa!
I think that should give us all pause,
That is what Isaiah’s talking about,
“my whole being shall exult in my God;”
Not just a little warm feeling
that we get from seeing an adorable baby,
but a great big Whoa!
From your head, to your heart,
to your toes,
to the depth of your soul and Spirit.
This would be the right time to say,
“Oh, My God!”
a phrase used way too vainly these days,
but that Oh, My God! is what
exultation really means.
Why does Isaiah say that,
beyond pure awe?
He writes, “my whole being shall exult
in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
...as a bridegroom decks himself,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
This is prophecy,
Isaiah had not met Jesus,
he is writing hundreds of Years before
that birth in Bethlehem,
but he sees what God is doing,
he feels clothed with the garments of salvation.
That same Word from the very beginning,
the Word light,
the Word Life,
was also the Word,
Man, and the word Woman.
And as if it was not enough,
because of our own neglect,
our squandering the right way,
and then forgetting what we really are,
that Word, actually
became one of US.
To bring us back, to what we were made to be.
That is why Isaiah exults,
that is why we say,
Oh my God!
This Sunday after the incarnation.
Because of his coming into the world,
condescending from being greater
than the whole universe,
to become a single human being,
he gives us the power to become
Children of God.
Isaiah prophecied,
we will be a crown of beauty
in the hand of the Lord,
a daughter and son of the King.
So yes,
as Children of God,
as my own child realized,
even though we don’t see Him,
he cuddles us every night.
But we know that,
only because God the only Son,
the Word who spoke the everything into being,
became fleshed and lived among us,
because he made God known to us,
in the flesh,
incarnated,
And while in the flesh,
he showed us Love,
strong love,
scandalous Love,
Love that cuddles us,
no matter how prickly we have been to Him.
This is one of the great paradoxes.
And Christmas is a season to reflect on that.
What does that make you think about yourself?
Our Brotherhood sent this reflection out
that helped me,
(by Br. Kevin Hackett),
a priest with the Society of St. John the Evangelist,
an Episcopal religious order says:
When the Eucharist is celebrated at the Monastery,
the Bread and the Cup are sometimes presented
to the congregation from the altar as the presider says,
"Behold what you are."
Which is to say, look closely,
this is who and what you really and truly are,
the Body of Christ, made up of grains of wheat ground so fine that it would be impossible to separate them now.
"Behold what you are."
To which we respond, "May we become what we receive."
May we indeed.”
Fr. Howard and Brett preached
on Christmas eve,
that the incarnation is about how we are Christ to one another,
in community.
As we share in the flesh of Jesus,
fed by his presence in the Eucharist,
reassured of his presence in the world,
may we become what we are always
made to be, what we were spoken into being.
As if we never lost that awareness.
“May we become willing to embrace the other,
to serve the other,
to wash the other's feet,
to suffer with the other,
to suffer in place of the other.
That's what the Body of Christ in the incarnate Lord Jesus did. That's what the Body of Christ
[The Word made flesh]
incarnate in us is still called to do.”
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