Word made Flesh

 

 John 1:1-18 is the text for Christmas I on Sunday, December 26.

    Into every lectionary year, a little John must fall.  This is, without a doubt, my favorite passage in John’s Gospel.  It ties it all together in a nice package with beautiful words.  This is what it is all about.   God.  Jesus is God.  He is God from the beginning.  He is the Word of Creation, the Word of Power and the Word of Life.

   Until He was in the flesh, the world did not know Him as God, even His own people.  John was sent to prepare the way for God’s light to shine in the darkness of the world of corruption, occupation and oppression.  Something inside us is stirred to believe in Him and His Way.  It gives us determination and hope.  Those who are born to believe in this Way of God are spiritually born and live spiritual lives.

   The Word, creative, powerful and life-giving became flesh.  God is incarnate.  God has reached into these lives of hopelessness and sent the Word made Flesh to live among us, identify with us and deliver us from our oppression, physical, political, economic and spiritual. 

   His glory is not in wealth or power, but in Grace and Truth.  The fullness He has come to share with us means Grace upon Grace for us.  The Law of Moses was God’s first covenant to bring us together with God and one another.  In Jesus we have a new covenant built on Grace and Truth.  It is upon this that our lives with God will be restored and upon this that our lives of Shalom will be built. 

   Make no mistake.  This is God.  It is of God.  Jesus, the Word made Flesh has dwelt among us to reveal to us the Will of God in our lives, here and now. 

   And for all who believe, this Good News of God with Us means a different way of life in the new covenant.  It means living the Good News of Jesus – living Jesus’ Way in the world.  We are to be the Flesh Made Word as followers of Jesus, in that we live Kingdom-minded and work to bring agaph and karis to bear in a world that has lived in darkness and needs this light of God.  We are to be Jesus’ hands and feet, Jesus’ Word of creation and power and life in a world that has destroyed the creation, abused power and threatened the lives of countless of God’s children.  We have the opportunity to be the children of God here and now and lift up the lives of others of God’s children here and now.

   Messiah has come.  It means the transformation of the world from one of death, destruction and despair to a world of Love and Grace and the Shalom that comes from living those values of the Kingdom in the world.

   This is what Jesus is all about.  This is now what we are to be about – the work of building Shalom community, full of Grace and Truth, full of Life and Love, full of Shalom, here and now.

Pastor Jamie