And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

On Christmas Day and in Christ’s Church, we want to touch the heart of the truth and have it touch us. Therefore we go to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and especially to that most inspired word found in the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel. And there we find the affirmation which will forever define to the world the meaning of Christmas: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.”

I want to lead your minds into some of the deep places of that majestic truth. We must know what St. John meant by the ‘Logos’ or ‘Word’ of God. The word ‘logos’ has two meanings in Greek. It means reason or intelligence as found in the mind, and it also means this same reason bodied forth in spoken language. Jesus is called the ‘Word’ of God because he is one with the inner mind and thought of God, and because he bodies forth that inner mind and thought in creative action. Being one with God, he planned creation as God; and this Prologue says, “All things were made (i.e. through) him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” But then, in the fulness of time, he took on himself a part of the nature he had created, namely human nature; and came into our midst wearing a body like our own. This word ‘logos’ was a bridgeword. It was understood both by Jews and Greeks, and in the same sense. Jews, religious Greeks, and impious pagans with some education, would understand this noun in much the same way. It was already a familiar conception to them.

A Flash Of Insight

It was a flash of insight or genius which caused St. John to see in the already existing beliefs of these groups, to whom he wanted to commend the truth of Christ, a kind of forerunner of him, a belief on which could be built this new and startling truth. There were two differences in his conception of the Logos: (1) the Logos, with him, was not a principle, as with these others, it was personal; and (2) the thought that the Logos should become flesh was unfamiliar with them, and to the Jews at least would not be acceptable. He said to them in effect, “The reason which you find about you in creation has been bodied forth in one human life—Jesus of Nazareth.” Thus, building on what was already there, he added this superb faith which was new to them.

This Word “was made flesh.” When you think of the materiality into which all religion tends to degenerate, you do not wonder that the Jews and the Spiritual pagans tried to get away from all materiality and make religion a purely ‘spiritual thing.’ But they were on the wrong track. For creation itself is both a spiritual and a material thing. God is the Source and Creator of it, but God spun it out of nothing because it was his will that a material nature should increasingly show forth his glory. Therefore the final word had not been said when religion had been rescued from materiality: the final word had not been said till religion got right back into the middle of materiality, and rescued it also. Men would divide God from his creation, as long as they thought that the more purely spiritual religion was, the better it was. It is true, “God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” But we live in earthen temples while we are in this world; and they are meant to serve and glorify God, too. True religion is intense in its spiritual conviction, but it is concerned with the redemption of the body and of all nature. It is for us, not so much to despise material things, as to seek to make them glorify God by right use. No material thing is evil in itself, but by its wrong use. Atomic energy can turn the world into a grave-yard, but it can also help turn it into a garden, if the men who control it use it for the right ends.

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“… and dwelt among us.” It really means “dwelt in a tabernacle among us,” and this would make Jews think of the Shekinah of old, which meant as much of the presence of God as was compatible with contact with the ancient tabernacle and with man—remember their conception of God was definitely transcendent and separate from sinful man. Now the Shekinah was Jesus’ own body, born of Mary, a body physically like our own, knowing weariness and thirst and impulse and temptation and hurt. Here, really, was the test. God might have momentarily created a life that was also the Logos, and then quickly withdrawn it. The Resurrection body did not remain long in this world, and the Incarnation might have been brief. But you and I know that we feel differently about Him because he ‘tarried’ here, as one translation puts it. He came, but he also lingered. Only so would he fully know what life on this earth was like—the long stretches, the empty places, the continued trials, the unresolved problems. Those are what he assumed, exactly as we must assume them, when he “dwelt among us.”

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Man Looks At Jesus

“… and we beheld his glory.” Now the subject shifts to us. We have been watching the divine action of God, the outward thrust of his love man-ward: the action has been his. Now this action sets up a reaction. Man begins to look at Jesus. At first he saw nothing very unusual, a Man much better than other men; outwardly like them. And then there began to unfold a purer truth, a mightier deed, the aura of something mysterious and beyond ordinary life altogether. The ‘glory’ of the best life that could be lived was a degree of glory; but this was not all. When God began pouring through Him such healing of sick bodies as they had never seen, and such truth as they had never heard, and then when the great dark mystery of the Cross was followed by the great bright mystery of the Resurrection, and then this body born at Christmas was drawn away entirely at the Ascension, they knew they were in the presence of such ‘glory’ as could be only the glory of God himself.

And so St. John says, “glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” And this means that His was no reflected glory. In a prophet or saint, in any good and Christian spirit today, you will see something of the glory of God. The difference between that and Christ is like the difference between the moon and the sun: one has the glory of reflected light, and the other is the light itself. Jesus was the “only-begotten” of the Father. That is St. John’s phrase: it is the God-ward side of his divinity—he does not reflect God, He is God’s Son, his very Self. Jesus was not created once and then sent off into an independent existence, as we are: but he continually emanates from the Father in a co-existence with him that means identity.

“… full of grace and truth.” Grace is the mark of divine favour and power. Truth is more than honesty or even the power to see and manifest the truth in life and in word: it really means, as used by St. John, something more like holiness. Here seems to be the attestation in life of His true and divine nature. The mystery about Christ, which cannot be resolved at all except on the basis that he is of “one substance with the Father,” has a simple base for credential. He expanded human life as far as it could be expanded while still remaining human, on the side of his human nature; he lived out the essential elements of divinity, on the side of his divine nature. Anybody could recognize the “grace and truth.” ‘Grace’ is God active, the Holy Spirit seeking out human lives to guide and strengthen them. Already in the very word itself is implicit all that God did for those early Christians, and all that he has done for the world, and all that he has done for us.

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For it would be of little help to us if we only knew that once, on the plane of history, God had appeared. We should have questioned it, and even if we had come to believe it, it would just be another ancient wonder, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The wonder was a miracle, but it is a continuing miracle. For Jesus is more alive in the world today than he ever was. He is alive in the movement which he began, and in the hearts of the millions of people who look to him in faith. As Jesus was and is “begotten” of God, continually sent out from him in an organic and unbroken relation, so the Church was and is “begotten” of Christ, continually sent out from him in an organic and unbroken relation. God’s life poured out in Christ, Christ’s life poured out in the Church—that is exactly what we have all experienced who call ourselves Christians. It is all important and essential to us because of what it means to us to discover these things in Christ, in the Word made flesh.

Marvelous Meaning

And so, what does it all mean to us now—the ancient story we read in St. Luke, and the ancient interpretation we read in St. John? Three great and simple things it means:

It means that the universe is personal. It is personal because God is in it. The vast spaces and the infinite stars and planets seem sometimes so impersonal and indifferent. They are not the heart of the universe. God is the heart of the universe, and God is our Father. What does it mean to be personal? It means to be capable of relationships. So far as we know, next after beings of the supernatural order, like angels, men are the highest things God ever created. Men are personal because they can have fellowship with one another, and with God. Christ made the whole summary of the moral law a matter of relationships: of love towards God and towards our neighbor. Life means much or little to you and me according to the intensity or questioning with which we believe in and appreciate its personalness.

It means that God broke the tension of estrangement between him and man. We are always trying to do that without a Mediator—just to jump the infinite space, and the still more infinite moral distance, between us and God. Insofar as we manage to do it, we become inflated with pride; and insofar as we fail to do it, we become bitter with despair, and call it all too mysterious for us. God sent Jesus into the world to dispel most of the mystery with revelation, and to cancel the pride by the manifestation of his infinite mercy, and so to make the despair utterly unnecessary. The way between heaven and earth is open now. No wonder angels appeared at his birth, and no wonder men sing and fairly caper for joy that they are now the conscious sons of God.

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And it means that now we know what life here on this earth ought to be. We were in the dark before, knowing somehow that there was a God, and that he demanded rightness of life from us. Now no longer need we fumble and miss the way—he is the way. Now no longer do we need to grope for the truth—he is the truth. Now no longer do we need to wonder what constitutes life as life ought to be in this world—he is the life. Because of the completeness of his revelation, because there, in that one life, is all that we need to know about the fundamental nature of our human existence, it is all very simple. Accept this faith which has been the faith of the believers from the first, and the great issue of life is settled. There is much to work out. Our world is still in strife and confusion. We might blow ourselves and our civilization and our planet to pieces. We would not if we took his way. But in the vaulted arches of the universe, in the uttermost confines of space, in the infinite reaches of time backward and forward, this is eternally true. Jesus has come. And God is like Jesus. And life must be made like Jesus. As Bryan Green said one night at the cathedral, “Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth—and the Child of Bethlehem is that God!”

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Samuel M. Shoemaker’s gifts range from pen to pulpit. His contribution above is a sermon which he has delivered at Pittsburgh’s Calvary Episcopal Church where he serves as Rector.

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