The Word Becomes Flesh
Dr Iain Jamieson
December 25, 2019
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John 3: 16 (NIVUK)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Merry Christmas!
The super-duper toys the kids play with this morning might well be replaced by the boxes they came in by the afternoon. We humans like boxes. We celebrate Christmas at the time of the year that we do because it ties up nicely with the much older and more pagan festival it replaced.
I’m pretty sure God doesn’t sit up on a cloud with a big white beard (I’m equally sure that Angels don't play harps with anymore likelihood than they play electric guitars, although…). It’s a disappointment in some ways, because a God like that, man made, predictable and understandable would be mighty but far more easy to put in a box! Easier, I suppose to quantify.
But there is more, much more to our world and experience.
When we look out into the universe we used to think there was nothing between the stars, a vacuum. Now we know there are quantum particles, strings and waveforms, dark matter and a physics that tell us that stuff is just more likely to be there than not. Wow.
So... God.
If we accept God as fact then we accept a being of such infinite complexity that it would be impossible to for us to understand with minds limited by time and space. We can however sense his presence. God communes with his creation in everything. Every experience, the light and heat of the sun on our skin and the rattle and splash of the rain in our ears.
All.
God.
But when you create something as beautiful as man, with an eternal soul, existing somewhere in time and space and sometime outwith...
Communication through representation.
Jesus.
The Word made flesh.
Emmanuel, God with us.
God (everything in the microcosm and macrocosm)
With (in deep communication and harmony)
Us (you and I, everyone who has ever lived and everyone who will ever live)
Merry Christmas — we are a miracle of stars and physics; we are gathered in the person of Christ to commune with the eternal of God.
PRAYER:
Today it is Christmas
Here is my miracle:
Jesus
You came in vulnerability
Son of the Father
To see the world through mere human eyes
No sight of the infrared or the ultraviolet
No sounds of the highest frequency and only a feeling of the low.
Not like some of your creatures.
Dogs hear their invisible whistle
Whales in the depths sing songs in a bass I can never learn
But I can commune
In your living presence
Hear what you hear
See what you see
Feel the ground beneath my feet just as you walk before me
In you is the way
The truth
The light
This Christmas let me truly see, let me truly hear, and let me walk in your way in the coming year.
Amen.
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