Merry Christmas!

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.   John testified about Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'"   For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.  For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.  No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.  (John 1:14-18 NASB)

While what has been said so far is overwhelming, this is not all John has to say about my Master.  The Incarnation was for Paul an “emptying”, and for John, the Eternal Divine Word becomes flesh.  Having described the power and majesty existing before all else, existing with God, and being God, John turns now to the “pitching of tents”.  “The Word became flesh…”  He wasn’t before, but now He is.  All the glory and majesty described earlier lay contained in the baby resting in a feed trough in a stable, in a small town, in a small region of a small country, of a wide wild world which took no notice; we missed the whole thing. 

The Word with, being, and from the very breast of the Master of the universe shows up unannounced…oh wait, He was announced.  Well, He shows up in a strange place…oh wait; no, it was supposed to be in Bethlehem.  Okay, then He shows up to the lowest of parentage… but wait; no, they were still descendants of King David.  It happened as was announced, where it was supposed to happen, through whom it was supposed to happen, and even the part about a young virgin turns out as it was supposed to.  The Master of the universe enters human history as one of the human creatures and no one notices; well, almost no one.

In the star-lit heavens angels announce to local herdsmen, and in the East, the heavenly bodies reveal an Israeli King born of a virgin.  The shepherds take off to see, and so do the astronomers in the far off country.  One arrives that night, and the others take a few months, to years.  Why only them?  Why not the priests in Jerusalem, or the king in his palace?  The shepherds most likely worked for the wealthy priests or possibly the king.  But the important could not be bothered, and only the obscure took notice.

How often is my Master relating something to me so profound, it could change my life, and my face is buried in a book or computer screen, or television, and I miss it?  This cosmos swirls about at the beck and call of my Master, and He speaks through it to all His human creatures.  I should be one who hears, who sees, and who answers the message.  But am I?  Do I seek to hear His messages?  Scripture records His announcement of what will come, but do I look for those things?  Am I focused on the things of my Master, or things of my own?

The Word became flesh and camped in us.  How different is that today?  I don’t think it’s all that different.  Today, the Spirit of my Master lives within me, so, in a sense, He is still “camped” just in borrowed “flesh”.  Yet, I’m not permitting Him to have much control over this meat suit.  And it’s not just my suit, but of those I worship with and minister with, we all have this incarnation of the Master of the universe within us.  The Word is still flesh, still pitching His tent with us, just a lot closer than it was.  Now I am brought into God Himself through His Spirit.  And I’m MISSING IT!  I’m living my life, but it is NOT mine to live!  What am I doing?

The Baby resting in the smelly hay two millennia ago has brought the Creator and Master of all matter to live with His human creatures.  A helpless, yet fearless, baby lies forgotten by the world He came to save, and everyone’s okay with this?  Ironically, He seems to be.  He seems to want it that way or at least expect it.  Only the astronomers from the East bring royal gifts, everyone else ignores the event all together.  The shepherds come, but only briefly, and no one really believes them anyway, crazy old shepherds.  Jesus is content to sleep in complete obscurity.  Perhaps this is part of His selection process; another parable?

Still, this day, the minds of those around me and me are on the packages, the food, the kids, and the fun we have together.  Unless we work at it, the story is lost in the background, like the small stables and figures lost among the lights and pine needles.  The commercialism may not overtake the holiday for us, but sometimes the gifts outshine the Giver for me and my family.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  The story can be told first, of the best Gift of all.  Prayer of thanks can be said for what is received, thanking the One who truly gave, and has given every good and perfect gift.  It can happen, but only intentionally.

The Word has become flesh and lives within me, but the question remains, “Will I behold His glory, the glory of the Unique One from the Father full of grace and truth?”

In the Beginning...

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (NASB)

This is one of the most beautiful passages for me.  It carries hope and peace for me because it takes me to when there was nothing but my Master, and He begins creation.  J.R.R. Tolkien depicts creation as a symphony concert.  But I can also imagine it as an unaccompanied solo by the greatest Tenor with boundless range and richest timbre.  I am carried there and the first impression given is the presence of my Master, described as a duality at this point in order to introduce the Word as the Leading Character. 

John demonstrates technical mastery in his description here.  The verbs to be are all in the imperfect tense.  What that means is that he has brought the eternal quality of the existence of God to the forefront.  This tense is explicit in the ongoing nature of the action (here existence), and as it is imperfect, it is left open at both ends.  This is exactly as it should be describing the existence of God, leaving no room for a time when this existence is not going on.  Only the verbs relating to creation of anything are left behind in the past; the existence of God transcends the past entirely.

Much is made of the term John uses for Jesus, Logos.  I like best the connection he draws between both Gentile and Jew when using this term at the point of creation.  For the Jews, creation happened through the word of God.  For the Gentile, “the word” is the rational structure underlying the world.  John ties both to Jesus and posits both philosophies in the Person being introduced.  I am immediately given the background of this Character as the Creator God, yet also in the presence of God ("with" used here does not mean "among" but "before" or "in the presence of"), and like any understanding of God, having no beginning or end. 

It is a rational problem for a human mind to regard anything to be distinct pieces yet singular, yet John does not shrink back from this conundrum, but places it squarely before me.  God is what and Who He is, not merely what or Who I can comprehend.  This is comforting because it is consistent with this immense and immensely complex universe I live in.  It answers the paradoxes, the ironies, the dilemmas, and overwhelmingly offsets the abundance of evil I see in others and myself.  It’s going to be okay because my Master is even more incomprehensible and complex than this life.

And in this passage, this infinite God, the Word, carries the light of the life of humanity, shining in the darkness.  Hope based in the Person I worship is brought immanently to me and is the life given to me as a gift.  I have light and life, and that in the Word.  If this light and life is in the Word, then this Word is also in me, or rather I am in Him since I live in the sphere of this life and this light.  John loves the preposition in.  It is a preposition that unmistakably conveys a position within something else.  I am in my Master wherein both life and light are.  But this light and life is the light of men, of people.  It’s more than my sphere.

The light, the Light of men, means that I don’t live in this sphere alone, and I don’t live with just those who recognize this sphere.  The darkness cannot grasp (with both the idiomatic and literal meaning that conveys) this light, but that does not mean it is any less the light of men.  The Word is Master, and I recognize Him as such.   But that does not make Him any less the Master of those around me.  He is Master regardless of the submission of others.  He is not threatened by the rebellion of His human creatures any more than He was of the deceiver, the accuser, Lucifer.  The Master retains mastery in the midst of apparent chaos.

And so I have hope.  And so I have peace.  As Jesus enters the world in a stable fearlessly, so I enter my day carrying this assurance that my Master remains Master over all; even the numbskulls I will encounter today.  My response should be love because I am freed to fearlessly love, even numbskulls.  I am a numbskull loved by the Master of the universe, the Life and Light of His human creatures.  What chaotic event should cause me fear?  What expectation should I have that I can control anything, but rather I should expect my Master’s control over all to be complete.  I have peace and I have hope because the Word is infinitely eternal.