A Child Is Born For Us This Night

All our vulnerability embodied
in so compact a time and space,
a child is born for us this night —
for the twisted tongue and limb,
and the harrowed heart and soul,
for the nameless none have marked,
and the countless come to pass —
born to sinew faith, hope, love
from dark to light, death to life,
this passion laid to earth, for us.

Not Despite But In Our Suffering

Because God came to us fully, tenderly, and lovingly in the mystery of the incarnation -- in Jesus crucified, dead, and buried -- we can trust that God is fully, tenderly, and lovingly with us not despite our suffering but in our suffering.

Some Thoughts on Substitutionary Atonement

Reading a book of essays on NT Wright's thought, and coming out of reading Wright's "How God Became King" and participating in the Good Friday liturgy ....

It seems to me that much of substitutionary atonement thinking is highly individualistic. In this thinking, Jesus substituted for me, for each one of us. That is, Jesus the one man or one person substituted for the one man or one person. In this sense, Jesus capitulates Adam for me, for each of us. Now NT Wright, without denying or dismissing this, contends as well that Jesus capitulates Israel, the nation or people. This would broaden substitutionary atonement to corporate identity and action, not simply individual identity and action. That is, it would broaden it from a narrow emphasis on the sacrificial system alone to encompass the fullness of a people and a body politic (in the broad sense, not simply the political sense); otherwise we reduce the identity and history and formation of Israel, and God's saving action therein, to merely the sacrificial system. What if we then take all this further to recognize that Jesus capitulates not only Israel and humanity but creation itself, the whole of creation. Thus Jesus substitutes for creation in his life, death, resurrection, and even in his ascension (in the sense that God created humanity to rule in creation). That is, Jesus had to die because creation was dead, and only by taking on creation's death could Jesus (God in Jesus) take away creation's death. Thus: sacrifice, substitution, atonement; but not narrowly or solely construed and enacted within the meaning and mechanism of the sacrificial cult as seen in the temple.

Some Thoughts on Philippians 2:1-13 and Lent

We have in this reading one of the great passages in Scripture. Here Paul tenderly yet passionately urged Christians in Philippi (in Macedonia) to follow the example of Jesus by experiencing and practicing a deep, humble love among themselves. We do well to mine the ore of this passage with a strong desire to possess its riches. In it we will find not the world’s riches but heaven’s.

Philippi was a significant city in the first century A.D. With a wide diversity of people, ideas, and religious practices, it straddled a major road between the western and eastern spheres of the Roman empire. In this swirl of forces, the Philippian Christians suffered because of their allegiance to Jesus. Such pressure on them raised the specter of ill will and conflict in their community. Paul, aware of this, exhorted them to be united with each other in love even as they were united with Jesus.

The pattern for living out this unity is found in Jesus himself. With a stark beauty, today’s passage describes this pattern in the divinity and humanity of the person and life of Jesus – what in theology is called Christology. Now Paul primarily wrote this passage not to instruct in theology or Christology. He wrote to instruct in life. However, the life instruction depended on the Christology.

The Christology is this. Jesus was fully divine. Yet he did not “grasp” divinity such that he felt no compassion toward sinful, broken humankind. Rather, he humbled himself to enter human life truly and fully – what we call the incarnation. He so humbled himself (the Greek in verse 7 can be translated “slave” as equally as “servant”) that, to love God and us faithfully, he willingly suffered the most excruciating and abasing death the ancient world knew.

The life instruction is this. If Jesus so humbled himself in love to bind himself to us and us to God, and if we say we are united with him, we should live specifically, concretely in love as he did. We should live in such deep, humble love for others that we turn our back on all self-centeredness and selfishness in order to serve others first, to put others’ interests before our own. If this passage does not turn us from the pursuit of worldly ambition, wealth, and self-importance, what will?

As we set our faces toward Jerusalem this Lent, may we – “through self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (Ash Wednesday liturgy, Book of Common Prayer) – lay aside ourselves to love and follow the example of our savior and lord, humbled and crucified for us.

Some Thoughts on Hebrews 1:1-14

Some of us may be familiar with the “Mr. Bean” series from British television in the early 1990s. A truly odd yet often hilarious character, Mr. Bean appeared at the opening of each episode by dropping from the night sky in a beam of light and landing on an empty London street. This entrance onto the scene only heightened Mr. Bean’s singularity.

Many may view Jesus as something like Mr. Bean: a singular point in history; strange and rather out of touch with the world and regular life. In this perspective, Jesus seems to have come out of nowhere. His brief life flashed through Palestine under Roman occupation. Then he cruelly died through the collusion of Jewish and Roman authorities. A vague brightness lingers as an after image in the history of the world and perhaps in our personal lives, but otherwise he seems largely irrelevant to daily life.

The author of the New Testament treatise we call “Hebrews” knew differently. He knew Jesus to be crucial in the plan of God and the meaning of our lives: both in the day to day and in the end; then, now, and ever. Jesus focuses and culminates all that God has done and will do in loving and restoring people, first in Israel, then in the church, and finally in the entire world.

Jesus is singular, but not because he dropped out of the night sky on a beam of starlight one December long ago. Born of the Holy Spirit, he is singular because he expressly images and radiates the very being of God in the world. Born to a young Jewish woman in a Palestinian stable, he is also singular because he completely identifies with us in our living and our dying. When we see Jesus, we see God, and we see ourselves. He is truly divine and truly human. Hence, the opening of Hebrews soars with God’s grandeur and Jesus’ significance for the world!

So we cannot reduce Jesus to an irrelevance. We may choose to ignore or reject him. Yet we may not relegate him to a vague point in time long ago, or at best to just another in a set of good people in the history of the world. All things hold together in Jesus. He sustains all things. Or they fall apart. What will it be for our lives and our world?

Sin, Death, and Christ: Some Thoughts

It is implied or even expressed in the teachings and beliefs of Christians in certain quarters that true and spirit-filled Christians find themselves exempt or healed from distresses and sufferings, whether financial, emotional, or physical. They suggest or outright teach that God supplies all need – and more! – in order to prosper his true and holy people. For real Christians then “need” need not exist, because God wants to rain prosperity down on them like an ever-rolling stream. In this conception God becomes the consummate celestial trust fund.

Reading Romans 5 and 6, especially the transition from the one to the other, provides a radically different truth of the work of Christ. Saint Paul makes manifest the pervasiveness and dominance of sin. And more, he makes clear the pervasiveness and dominance of death as sin’s subordinate. He puts the matter most succinctly: “…sin established its reign by way of death…” (Romans 5:21; REB.) Therefore, it is sin’s death that grips and overmasters us all, so that we vainly curse or despairingly stoop our way through life under the shadow of death’s inexorable doom.

Yet Christ came to save us. Thanks be to God! However, we mistake the work of Christ if we conclude or expect that this salvific work wipes away all our tears and exempts us from suffering and death. Ah, were it so…. But it is not – not yet. First we must know death.

The great grace of Christ is that in him the death we must know becomes his death, not sin’s. We die, but we die in Christ. “Have you forgotten that when we were baptized into union with Christ we were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3; REB.) Death is conquered by being wrested from sin by Christ, who overmasters sin and death even as he submits to sin’s death. Thus he makes death his own, thereby transforming the character of death. Death remains for us; it is not done away. Yet it is radically transformed in and by Christ – in and by his death and resurrection – from an instrument of doom to the most blessed instrument of hope and life!

The Word Made Flesh

“And the Word became flesh…” This text means many things, but let us focus on one profound meaning. The Word made flesh – God’s gift to us – makes it possible for us to become children of God. As God created all things through his Word, God re-creates us through his Word made flesh. When we believe in Jesus – when we give our self to him in trust, allegiance, and devotion – God spiritually remakes us in Jesus. We become new people, at the very core of our being.

This new life is a rich life – rich with the splendor, love, and goodness of God; and rich with the beauty and goodness of God’s creation. The opening of John's gospel (chapter 1, verses 1-18) overflows with a sense of the fullness that comes to us from the Word made flesh, from God with us. “And the Word became flesh…we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth.” “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Jesus gives us life, abundant life.

We may not experience a sense of fullness of life every day in every way. Life can seem little else than boredom, disappointment, struggle, or sorrow. Sometimes this is because of circumstances around us; sometimes because of habits, dispositions, and characteristics within us. Too often life simply does not feel full of the fullness of divine grace and truth.

This is hard, but is it so strange? The Word did not become flesh as a fully formed adult. The Word did not live the successful life touted in popular culture as the life we deserve, as the life we can achieve. The Word became flesh like we did – as a baby, small and vulnerable, needing to grow. The Word suffered like we do – longing for a better world. Is it so strange that, in Jesus, we are spiritually born as babies, needing to grow, and continuing to suffer the ills of this life?

Yet the claim in John 1, the claim at the heart of Christmas, the claim that Jesus makes by his words and actions, is clear and true: the Word made flesh, the Word crucified, the Word raised from the dead brings new life. Mysteriously yet truly we can become new people in Jesus and begin to live in the fullness of divine grace and truth. We may not be perfectly able to do this today in every way. The question is, “Are we better able to do it today than yesterday?” In the power of the Holy Spirit, are we better able to experience in our mind and heart, in our words and deeds, in our self and relationships, the fullness of grace and truth in Jesus, the Word made flesh?

In the power of the Holy Spirit, let us commit to living in the fullness of grace and truth better today than we did yesterday, and let us commit to do this every day, that next year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh, we are more like Jesus, as individuals and as a community of Christ, than we are today.

First Sunday after Christmas Day: John 1:1-18

Why do we read this passage – John 1:1-18 – during the Christmas season?

When we think of Christmas, we tend to focus on a single day, on the celebration of the birth of a special baby on that day. There are good and natural reasons for focusing on that day. Yet historically, Christmas has also been celebrated as a season, as a period of time beginning on Christmas day and lasting for a number of days. And there are good and natural reasons for celebrating Christmas as a season. Hence, here on the First Sunday after Christmas Day, we find ourselves still in the season of Christmas.

We come back to the question then, “Why do we read this passage during the Christmas season?” This passage from the gospel according to John is a significant text. It is often described as the prologue to the rest of the gospel, though one commentator remarks that it is more like an overture in a piece of music. Like a musical overture, all the themes that will be developed later in the gospel are beautifully introduced and summarized in this opening passage. This passage is a text worthy of much study, and asking the question why we read it at Christmas detracts not at all from the significance of it.

Rather, the question arises because it is quite different from the gospel passage most familiar to us in relation to Christmas, the gospel passage we most closely and naturally associate with Christmas – namely, the story in the second chapter of the gospel according to Luke. In words of great familiarity and comfort, the narrative in Luke tells us about a father, a mother, a baby born in a stable, shepherds in their fields guarding their sheep. The elements of the story are simple, straightforward, concrete, accessible, close to our minds and hearts. Many common symbols, images, and practices come from the narrative in Luke: Christmas carols; paintings of the nativity; crèches and pageants; and Christmas cards. Even when the story gets more exotic – an angel and a multitude of the heavenly host – we still have elements that we can picture in our minds and hold warmly and dearly in our hearts.

Compared to the narrative in the second chapter of Luke, the passage from the gospel according to John may be less familiar and comforting, particularly as a text for Christmas. As noted above, it is a sublime passage – worthy of long and deep study and meditation. Yet it may seem abstract, philosophical, complex, even remote, especially as a Christmas text. It is not a story or narrative in a conventional sense. It may be difficult to picture it in our minds, to warm to it in our hearts.

Why then do we read it in church at Christmas?

We read it in church during the Christmas season because of this astounding statement more than half way through the passage: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us….” In our Bibles with verse numbering, this is verse 14, or rather the first part of verse 14. The Word became flesh and lived among us. This statement constitutes the reason we read this passage from the gospel according to John at Christmas. This statement connects this passage in John directly with the narrative in Luke that is so familiar and heartwarming to us at Christmas. This statement – the Word became flesh and lived among us – connects directly with the baby in the manger. The baby in the manger is the Word made flesh, the Word made incarnate. Therefore, we read this passage from the gospel according to John during the Christmas season.

To grasp the astounding significance of this statement, and more importantly to grasp the astounding significance of the baby born in a manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, we need to examine the two parts of the statement: (1) “the Word”; and (2) “became flesh and lived among us.” In other words, we need to go back in the passage to see what is meant by “the Word,” and then we need to go further in the passage to see what is meant by “became flesh and lived among us.”

What is meant by “the Word”?

What is the Word that is the subject of the statement, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us….”? This gospel, like the rest of the New Testament, was written in a form of Greek that was common in the Mediterranean region at that time in history, approximately 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Greek word for “word,” used in this passage, is “logos.” We find it today in English in various forms – for example, geology, meteorology, archeology, and theology. Even our word “logo” comes from this Greek word.

In the Greek language, “logos” can mean ordinary, individual words. Yet when used at that time in Greek religious and philosophical thought as “ho logos” – the Word – it refers to a profound concept. It means a fundamental, essential, eternal reality or principle of existence, of the universe, of the cosmos. It signifies that reality or principle of reason, of rationality, that underlies existence, that holds existence together so that it is a cosmos and not chaos. This “logos,” or the Word, also resides in human beings, so that the universe is intelligible to us, so that we can understand the universe. In other words, the Word is an abiding, divine or divine-like, essential, fundamental, reality without which the universe would not make sense, without which human existence would not make sense.

The Jewish people at that time also had a profound concept of the Word. For Jewish people, the Word refers to the Word of God. The Word of God indicates God’s creative power, God’s life-giving and life-sustaining power. God said, “Let there be light.” And light came into being. This notion of God’s Word is repeated throughout the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. The Word of God also indicates God’s truth being revealed or made known. The Jewish prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, commonly refer to “the Word of the Lord.” The Word of the Lord consists of God’s truth which the prophets declare to the people of Israel. Through his Word, God gives them truth and moral law. Through his Word, God reveals himself, makes his character and his purposes known to the world, particularly to his people, the people of Israel. The Word of God then is a rich, vibrant concept and reality to the people of Israel, and it is intimately, inextricably connected with the very being and presence of God himself.

We can see then that the start of the gospel according to John, which we read this morning, is packed with meaning, for behind the use of “the Word” in this passage are these profound Greek and Jewish notions. And for Jewish people especially the opening of the gospel would call to mind direct associations with the creative, truth-giving and law-giving Word of God in their religious tradition. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This clearly echoes Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Word in the gospel according to John is the life-giving, life-sustaining foundation of the universe, and of each of our lives. This Word is from God, and of God. This Word is divine.

What is meant by “became flesh and lived among us”?

What we have discussed about the meaning of the Word in the first few sentences of the gospel according to John would not have been that strange for Greeks and Jews. It would not have been that difficult for Greeks and Jews to understand. In many ways, the description of the Word in the first sentences of the gospel according to John would have been relatively familiar and generally acceptable to Greeks and Jews.

But then, in verse 14 in our modern Bibles, the gospel according to John presents this bold, startling claim which is the key to the prologue or overture, and the key to the entire gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us….” The eternal, essential, divine Word entered the world in human form. The Word that created all things took on created form and lived among us as one of us. The baby in the manger was the Word of God in human form. The person encountered throughout the gospel according to John – Jesus of Nazareth – was the Word of God. Not just a good person, not just a brilliant teacher, not just a deeply pious man – but the very Word of God. God with us, in flesh and blood like ourselves. In this passage and throughout his entire gospel, John presents us with a Jesus who must be accepted entirely on his own terms as God-with-us or rejected entirely as a dangerous egotist or lunatic. There really is no middle ground.

This is why this passage from John is so important for us to read at Christmas, just as important as the passage from the second chapter of Luke. At this time of the year, we regularly hear declarations about the true meaning of Christmas. In the end, many meanings get attached to Christmas, some closer to the truth and some farther from it. Often a great amount of sentimentalism is embedded in those meanings. This is understandable because Christmas is a time for celebration, for joy and hope. Yet the baby in the manger of our Christmas celebration is not just a warm and fuzzy idea, although babies sometimes are warm and fuzzy creatures. The baby in the manger of our Christmas celebration is the divine Word in human flesh and blood. This is why we read this passage from the gospel according to John at Christmas, because the Word became flesh and lived among us. This is good news, great news, the absolute best news! – that God loves us so much that he came to us and lived among us in Jesus of Nazareth. And we must not let this news get confused or obscured by any other meaning, however heart-warming it may be. We must hear and receive this news clearly for what it is, for it is the most wonderful gift in the world, the baby born in a manger in Bethlehem – the Word became flesh and lived among us.

What then does all of this mean for us?

In concrete terms, what does it mean that the Word became flesh and lived among us? In a real sense it means many things, but we will focus on the fundamental meaning as found in this passage.

It means new life. The gift of the Word made flesh – God’s gift to us – makes it possible for us to become children of God. As God created all things through his Word, so God re-creates us through his Word made flesh. When we believe in Jesus – that is, when we give our lives over to him in trust, allegiance, and devotion – God spiritually remakes us in Jesus. We become newly born. We become new people, at the very core of our being.

And this new life is a rich life, a life rich with the splendor and power of the divine being, a life rich with the love and goodness of God. Today’s passage overflows with a sense of the fullness that comes to us from the Word made flesh, from God with us. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth.” “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” “[G]race and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Jesus gives us life, abundant life.

We may not experience this sense of fullness of life every day and in all aspects of life. Sometimes life seems little else than boredom, frustration, disappointment, struggle, trauma, or loss. Sometimes this seems to be the case because of circumstances around us. Sometimes this seems to be the case because of habits, emotions, tendencies, and characteristics within us. Too often life simply does not feel full of the fullness of divine grace and truth.

In one sense, is this so strange? The Word did not become flesh as a fully formed adult. The Word did not live the successful life portrayed and touted in popular culture as the life we should strive for, as the life we deserve, as the life we can achieve. The Word became flesh like we did – as a baby, small and vulnerable, needing to grow. The Word suffered like we do – longing for a better world. Is it so strange that, in Jesus, we are spiritually born as babies, needing to grow, and continuing to suffer the ills of this life?

So it may not be that strange in a certain sense that we do not know fullness of life in grace and truth everyday and in all aspects of life. Yet because of the lack and the contradictions we sometimes know in life, it is often not easy to understand and experience what it means to have new life in Jesus, to live in fullness of grace and truth in our selves and in the world around us.

Nevertheless, the claim in this gospel passage, the claim that lies at the heart of Christmas, the claim that Jesus himself makes by his words and actions, is clear and true: the Word made flesh, the Word crucified, the Word raised from the dead – Jesus of Nazareth – brings new life for us and for our world. In whatever ways it often may not seem like it in our selves and in the world around us, mysteriously yet truly we can become new people in Jesus and begin to live in the splendid fullness of divine grace and truth. We may not be perfectly able to do this today in every way. The question is, “Are we better able to do it today than yesterday?” In the power of the Holy Spirit, are we better able to experience and express in our minds and hearts, in our words, and deeds, in our selves and in our relationships, the fullness of the grace and truth given to us by God in Jesus, the Word made flesh?

In the power of the Holy Spirit then, let us commit ourselves to live in the fullness of divine grace and truth better today than we did yesterday, and let us commit ourselves to do this every day, so that next year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh, we are more like Jesus, as individuals and as a community of Christ, than we are today.