During these Breathing Space
talks we’ve been thinking about that famous phrase from the beginning of John’s
Gospel “The Word became flesh”. We’ve thought about what kind of Word Jesus
might be. We’ve thought about flesh and what that means to us. So there’s not
much left to think about, just that word in the middle – became. But actually that is a word full of meaning
for us too in this context.
The Word became flesh.
At a specific time, in a
specific place, something happened, says the word “became”. I became a priest when I was ordained.
I became a mother when I gave birth. We become successful if we
manage to achieve a goal. “Becoming” can be a sudden event. All in a moment
things change. Or “becoming” can be a more gradual process. However long it
takes, though, we can look back and see that things have changed and that there
is no going back because of what has happened.
When that change is a
dramatic one there is one reaction which is very common. It is common whether
the event in question is tragic, like the shooting this week in Liege, or
happy, like a lottery win. “Who would have thought that such a thing would
happen here and now?” people tend to say. “In this place, at this moment, in
our neighbourhood, to me, to us…who would have thought it?” There may be no real
logic to this. Such events are essentially random – as likely to happen to us
as to anyone - but somehow we don’t expect it. Unless we have delusions of
grandeur, most of us tend to think of ourselves as basically ordinary, living
ordinary lives with broadly predictable courses. Why should anything specially
good or bad happen in our neighbourhood, here and now?
The Christmas story, with its
assertion that “the Word became flesh” challenges that though. If God
was going to become flesh, it had to happen in one particular place and
one particular time. That’s the nature of flesh. Human beings, no matter how
hard we try, can’t be in more than one place at a time. We are here, where we are, or we are nowhere.
Biblical scholars argue about the historical accuracy of the nativity stories
in the Bible but one fact is indisputable. Jesus was born. He grew up in
the Galilean town of Nazareth in the early years of the first Century. As our
Gospel reading tonight told us, he was born in the reign of the Emperor Augustus,
when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke pins it down in time and space very
deliberately. There and then this thing happened. He knew it was true –
whatever the details – because Luke knew those who had known Jesus, and he had
seen the impact of his life on their lives. They had spread his message around
the Mediterranean, at considerable personal cost. Many had been martyred. If
Jesus hadn’t been real, none of that would have happened. What they had
experienced in knowing him had convinced them that this was the work of God
among them, that Jesus was God’s message, God’s word. Much to their surprise, I
am sure, God had shown up in their world, in their lives, through Jesus, and it
had changed everything.
In the Old Testament reading
Moses is confronted by the same amazing fact, that God is where he is. He meets
God in a burning bush out in the desert, while he is minding the sheep one day.
Who would have thought it? Moses had long ago abandoned any idea that he could
help his people, and had run away.
Whatever God might be doing to rescue his people – if anything – Moses
was convinced he wasn’t part of the plan. But God had other ideas, and out
there, in the middle of nowhere, God makes his appearance.
William Blake wrote, in his
poem Jerusalem, “and did those feet in ancient time/ walk upon England’s
pastures green?” He was referring to the old legend that Jesus had come with
Joseph of Arimathea, who happened to be his uncle, on a trading visit to
Glastonbury when he was just a boy. Legends like that reveal that, despite our
scepticism and our disbelief, deep down we long to feel that God might just
show up where we are. That legend isn’t terribly likely to be true – though I
wouldn’t say that too loudly in Glastonbury – but ironically the story of the
birth of Christ tells us that our yearning isn’t really so far-fetched. Turning
up where we are, in the nitty-gritty reality of human lives, is precisely what
God is about, whether that is in a scandal hit young mother in Bethlehem or in
the muddle and the mess of our lives now. All we need to do is open our eyes
and our hearts a bit wider so we can see him.
The Word – God’s own
expression of himself – turned up and dwelt with us in human flesh in
Bethlehem. That is the Christian Gospel, and it is truly good news, because if
he came there and then to ordinary people in ordinary places then there is no
reason why he can’t come here and now to us. Wherever and whenever we are, God
is with us. In the silence tonight, let us think of the places in us where we
might least expect to find him, and let us ask him to be born in us here and
now, just as he was there and then.
Amen
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