Christmas I: The Word Made Flesh

Borrowing the language of Genesis, the final editor of the Gospel of John has attached the text of a liturgical hymn to the gospel-proper as a prologue.  It is a magnificent poetic theological reflection, evidencing considerable development in Christological thought in the seventy-five or so years from the crucifixion of Jesus in 30 C.E. to the completion of this fourth gospel in.the early second century.

This Prologue, which came to constitute the first eighteen verses of the first chapter of John, speaks about a "word" just as Genesis does.  In Genesis, God speaks words and creation happens.  Here in Johannine depiction, we learn that this Word was present with God from before time and was the divine agent through whom creation occurred.  This entity is referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures as Wisdom -- a female figure described both in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon.  Also, in extra-biblical Jewish writings, there is reference to God's Wisdom being sent from heaven to earth from time to time on special missions to do God's will.  Now the author of John's hymn borrows a term from Heraclitus, logos, and substitutes it for Wisdom.  The Greek logos is appropriately applied to Jesus, as it is a male term and refers to  the rational principle behind the Universe.  Thus the Word of God, which is all divine, creative, and eternal, is seen as sent from heaven to fully inhabit the person of Jesus so that God may express in a human life everything God has to say to us!   Christ, not the Bible, is the Word of God.

When the One fully possessed of the Word enters human life, he will be misunderstood and rejected.  And, because his life will be infallibly conformed to God's will, he will be crucified by the minions of wealth, influence, and imperial power.  But to those of us who trust in him he gives, through our Mother Church, the sacred sacrament of baptism, a new "birth from above" into a new family in special relationship with the Divine.  And so we begin to be like him,  redeemed people of a new covenant "full of grace and truth."

In other words, the Incarnation is the means by which we become incorporated in God through the mission and ministry of Jesus.   As the great composer Oliver Messiaen said, "The Word became flesh and dwelt in me!"  Jesus has saved us, so we can save the world.  That is what Jesus and the coming of the Kingdom mean for us.