In the Flesh in Particular

Stub a big toe on the bedpost , drop the mail in a mud-puddle, burn the family's favorite recipe which you have made every year for decades,...and we're brought down quite a few rungs.

And then the doctor gently informs you that the twinge you felt really is something worrisome and needs immediate attention from a surgeon...and all of those accomplishments pale into insignificance.

Our vaunted capabilities don't amount to anything.

Such a wintry thought.

We're neither infallible, nor indestructible.

If we are going to trust anyone or anything, we must put trust somewhere other than in ourselves.

There are two ways to deal with the situation:

1.We could choose to follow the eastern religions that counsel us to try to escape from this messy body that is falling apart.

All these things are merely an illusion, and what is really real is our mind rising to a higher place.

In ancient times, and again today, people are saying that we have a little divine spark within us that needs to be separated from the body and float off to rejoin the divine pleroma in the great beyond.

The most drastic, or the most depressed persons with this view would resort to suicide, I suppose.

2.The alternative is very different.

We could listen to the witness of the Bible and rejoice that this world with all of its limitations and wrongs is still a place for the actions of a loving God.

C.S. Lewis once said that God likes matter; because he invented it!

Genesis 1 says it memorably: And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was good, very good.

And that includes us.

Good, very good is God's intent for us.

Which will be stronger: God's promises, or our pitiful attempts to mess them up?

We think we need to get away from this body, these problems, this world, but right here in the midst of them all The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...flesh.

We cannot think our way up to heaven, or divide ourselves into body and divine spark so that that one part can float away on the tail of a passing comet, or whatever other scheme might be devised.

Instead, God comes to us; that is what the word incarnation means.

This is what Christmas means; it is the Feast Day of the Incarnation, the greatest gift possible.

This is what we announce to the world; God has at last done something about our troubled and troublesome flesh.

God has become flesh in Jesus.

But we're half-afraid to hear this, because if it is true, it changes our whole view of life.

God loves our life, all of it.

God loves the very beginnings in the womb; he was there, too.

God loves our most senior brothers and sisters, even the ones whom we know are slipping away from us because of dementia or other illness.

God loves the brashness and foolhardiness of youth, and the small measure of wisdom we accumulate as the years go by.

God loves us in our joys and our sorrows, when we have done things in accord with his will, and even those times when we thoroughly exasperate the Lord.

Remember how Jesus dealt with the eager and the reluctant, the accepting and the dismissing, the young and old, experienced and novices..

“Follow me,” he continues to say.

“Oh, but God couldn't be like that” some protest.

They think that they are protecting the holiness of God by saying that God couldn't become human, that maybe it just seemed like Jesus was God and man, or that he came close to being both,

Some will say that Jesus is God pretending to be human; others the opposite, that he is just a really, really nice man claiming to be God.

Neither of those things are satisfactory.

There is nothing to celebrate at Christmas if any of those opinions are true.

In Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, says the book of Colossians.

And to what end? ...that through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. [Col.1:19]

If we are going to meet up with God, if we are going to be reconciled with God, it is going to be right here, now, in the flesh.

If we are going to worship God it will begin right here, in the flesh and blood of Christ.

God came not to deliver us from our flesh and all that flesh demands, but to redeem our flesh, and in his good time to completely re-make our flesh, to prepare it for the eternal banquet.

Because Jesus the Christ is born in Bethlehem, we can say with William Temple that the Christian faith is the most materialistic of all religions!

God cares that much about his raw material, which includes us!

Even with all this brashness and boldness, this declaration prepares the way for the tenderness of this night also.

At the earlier service this evening, the youth led us in singing Luther's family Christmas hymn, From Heaven Above to Earth I Come, Hymn #51.

First, the angels make their announcement:

1. From heaven above to earth I come,

To bear good news to every home.

3.This is the Christ, God's Son most high,

Who hears your sad and bitter cry;

He will himself your Savior be

And from all sin will set you free.

Then he asks us to go along with the shepherds to Bethlehem

6.To see what God for us has done

In sending us his own dear Son.

And we begin to reflect on this gift:

8.Welcome to earth, O noble guest,

How can our thanks such love repay?

And the wonder and the joy becomes very personal:

12.O dearest Jesus, holy child,

Prepare a bed soft undefiled,

A holy shrine, within my heart,

That you and I need never part.

You see, this Christmas is not just historic remembrance, reminding us of things 2,000 years ago.

A history lesson is not enough.

This story is exactly contemporary with us.

Christ is born for us; Christ is his own gift to us now!

What a joy, what a wonder, the most profound delight,

for you and for me, and for all of us together.

So we are called upon to join the song of all creation, with angels and archangels, with saints old and new, with the church of all times and places...

13.My heart for very joy now leaps;

My voice no longer silence keeps;

I too must join the angel-throng

To sing with joy his cradle-song:

14.”Glory to God in highest heaven,

Who unto us his Son has given.”

With angels sing in pious mirth:

A glad new year to all the earth.! Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.