There are many levels of meaning
to Christmas. Christmas can mean many different things to people. But I really
think that in today’s gospel St. John expresses the deepest meaning of Christmas
when he says so profoundly but yet so simply, “The Word became flesh” - that
is, God became human, flesh-and-blood, like us – “and dwelt among us.” This is
why the prophet Isaiah said so many years before, “They shall call him
Immanuel, which means: God is with us,”34 God, flesh, human, like us,
among us, with us. The words are so simple and so easy to say, and we have
heard them so many times. And yet, these few words express the deepest meaning
of Christmas, the deepest meaning of our whole Christian faith. They are
telling us that the infinite, all-knowing, all powerful, all-perfect God gave
up, surrendered God’s infinite power, absolute knowledge, and eternal,
unchanging perfection, and came into the finite world, came into changing human
history, came into the flesh-and-blood condition of a human being. That means that
God put aside, God relinquished all the unlimited attributes and perfection of
being divine, and took on instead all the limitations, imperfections and
deficiencies of being human. God did not stay being God and just play at being
at being human. But rather,
God actually became a helpless
baby, completely without knowledge and completely dependent on its mother for
everything; and then a child and a youth who had to struggle, as we all did,
with the uncertainties and hesitancies of growing up; and then a mature adult whose
life was not pre-ordained and neatly laid out for him but who had to seek and choose
among many possibilities and decide on his own individual life according to his
own historical circumstances. That is, God was born, grew up, and lived life
just exactly as we all do - not as an infinite, almighty God but as a plain
flesh-and-blood human being, really and truly like us all.
Do you see what these words -
God became flesh; God is with us - really mean?
They mean that our religion must
not lead us to seek God someplace outside of this world, someplace outside of
our human history. They mean that the Christian religion, right from the very
beginning with the birth of Jesus at Christmas, specifically teaches the direct
opposite - that God came into the world, that God is right here, with us, in
the world, in daily human history with all of its good and bad, with all of its
ambiguity; that for us this is the only place where we can find God.
This is the special, particular
message of Christmas; this is the one single reason why God became human; in
order to show us that our salvation is found only and simply by living our
human lives here in the world according to our own particular historical circumstances,
just as Jesus lived his. I want to repeat that because it is so important: the one
single reason why God became human was in order to show us that our salvation
is found only and simply by living our human lives here in the world according
to our own particular historical circumstances. That is it; that is all; that
is the whole story. And that is the kind of understanding to which Christmas
calls us in these simple Scripture words:
God became flesh; God is with
us.
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