The Incarnation of the Word
I love the accounts of the nativity, the birth of Christ that we find in the gospels. I love the story, I love lingering with the story, I love its innocence, its directness and its simple beauty.
I also love it because I love understatement.
Before going to seminary I was trained as a jazz musician and composer and one of the things you learn repeatedly and have to apply consistently is the idea that ‘less is more’;
that you say more musically when you keep it simple and subtle, as simple as it needs to be, when you cut out the fluff, when you understate rather than overstate.
Now I see the Birth of Christ, or the Nativity, as the grandest understatement of all time.
I say that because at one level what occurs in the manger is what has happened at some point in the life of every human being.
We were all born, present company included! And Jesus is born to a mother and a step-father in a way that we could say was also understated in terms of the dignity we would expect such a birth to occur in.
Peel back the simple melody of that story of the birth of Jesus just a layer or two and you get the true story, the story that hints at ‘why’ of the extraordinary importance of this thing that we call the nativity, or the Incarnation.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This is another telling of the Nativity, but different of course from the Nativity passages found in the other gospels.
This is what is really going on in the understated events in the manger.
St. Augustine said: “He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute”.
“The Word” here in the koine or ancient Greek is “Logos". And what the word “Word” means is at the heart of the matter.
The Word, or Logos means the communication, the sayings and the moral teachings of God.
It means the personal wisdom and power in union with God, it means God’s minister or agent in the creation of and the governing of the universe, the cause of all the world’s life both physical and ethical.
It means the self-revelation of God. In describing Jesus as the word, St. John’s gospel presents Jesus not only as the One Who gives God’s Word to humans, He IS God’s Word given to humans.
He is the true word-ultimate reality revealed in a Person. The Logos is God.
And, John states, the Word became flesh. The Logos of God, which previously existed somewhere humanly undefinable, un-enfleshed, un-embodied, much as God the Father is…the Logos of God actually clothed Himself in human skin.
He bound Himself to human bones, and all the physical inner parts, the muscle and skeletal system.
Not to mention all the complex emotions that define what it means to be human.
God’s whole and complete person was given birth on that starry, night in Bethlehem in the infant Jesus.
Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form NIV, Colossians 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. KJV
That is why the Nativity is the grandest understatement of all time.
And the pathos of this understatement is unpacked just a few verses late in John's gospel: John 1: 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The truth is that the child born in the manger 2000 years ago made the universe we live in.
But when that child came to us, when the Logos, the Word came to earth as a helpless infant, and when that child grew to manhood, very, very few would recognize Him.
By and the large, the world wouldn’t even notice, and when it did finally, as it sorted through its various reactions to the Logos, to this Presence, we see that the world He was born into, the world that was made through Him, was somehow blind to Him.
Even among His own particular tribe He wasn’t received by and large. He was not accepted.
There is great sweetness and pathos in the story of the Incarnation of God, the story of the Christ event, both as Matthew and Luke’s gospels convey it and as John’s gospel elaborates on it.
JI Packer said that:“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation”
We find also in Paul’s letter to the Phillipians more on what was really going on during the incarnation.
Philippians 2:6 (Christ) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross.
This too reveals the glorious understatement of the Nativity. Jesus, possessing in Himself the fullness of the attributes which make God God, did not cling to or seize hold of for Himself His equality with God the Father.
To do that would have preempted or prevented the Incarnation. Jesus let go of some aspects of what it means to be God…even just to be born in one manger in one town in one country is to limit divine omnipresence or the ability to be everywhere at the same time.
He let go of some of His attributes of divinity, but of course He remained fully God.
Paul then says that Jesus made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. The word ‘nothing’ really is more of a comparing word.
Compared to being God in all His limitless glory, Jesus limited himself in some ways.
He took on our nature, the human nature of a servant, or one is who devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests.
And he was made in human likeness. Like you. Like me. Amazing! And all this is us standing at another vantage point, looking at the baby in the manger.
This season calls us to look at Jesus. The first look we have of Jesus is a very safe one. God Incarnate, God-in-the-flesh is a baby. Just a baby. That’s no threat. That’s not offensive.
True, that’s a little weird that the Maker of heaven and earth is bound up in swaddling clothes.
But, He’s the Maker of heaven and earth, so He can do as He pleases, no matter how it may assault or comfort human senses.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.
In his paper on the Incarnation, former YSM Staff Member Bill Ryan wrote some very salient things, things that he lived for the 35 years he was with us.
He said: “The work of the staff members of YSM often places us on the frontlines of the battle against poverty and oppression. On the streets, in the drop-in programs, classes, in community meetings as well as one-on-one appointments we are exposed to the whole range of joy and suffering, celebration and mourning, victory and loss. In following the Incarnational approach we are expected to get as close as possible to people in need. Compassion itself literally means “to feel the pain of others”.
As we each continue to grow as disciples of Jesus, as we each draw nearer to Jesus through worship, the reading of God’s Word, fellowship and the practice of spiritual disciplines so central to Christian faith...
As we move closer to Jesus internally, changes appear externally that others begin to notice.
John Perkins, known as the grandfather of the modern-day Christian community development movement in the U.S.A. states, “When God’s love inhabits us… every aspect of the way we live will be reshaped according to the new life that is inside us.
“The Spirit challenges our old ways of thinking, reshapes our direction and goals for our lives, rearranges our priorities, softens our hearts and makes them responsive to human pains and suffering, and replaces our selfishness with love for others. We are gradually made an incarnation of the love of God.”
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was a monk and bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He once said, “We should try to live in such a way that if the Gospels were lost, they could be re-written by looking at us.”
To talk about the Incarnation is talk about presence - being present. Incarnation is letting people know that by our presence with them, God has not forgotten them.
Bryant Myers, Fuller professor of transformational development said “An incarnational spirituality is one that draws near and listens before it speaks, one that loves before it acts… This kind of spirituality is based on being present – present to God, present to the poor, and present to ourselves.”
So may we enthusiastically celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ - the reality of the presence of the everlasting and ever-living God Who was born into this world in helpless infancy and in great love, and for great purpose.
May we always live the reality that our incarnational purpose as the Yonge Street Mission is so directly connected to the Christ event - the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to Whom be honour and glory forever and ever.
God we thank you that in Jesus Christ we are invited to share in Your life. May we each honour the Christ Child this Christmas as we linger with him in the manger.
May we draw near to You. As we do we know from Your Word5 that you will draw near to us. And may we also seek to share with many others and in many ways this love that you have shared so graciously with us. We ask this for Christ’s sake, in whose name we pray. Amen
