God Made Known in the Flesh - Lectionary (RCL) Reflection for Christmas 2C (John 1)

Adoration of the Magi - Stefano de Verona 

John 1: (1-9) 10-18 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹ The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

 

**************

                If no one has seen God, how do we know that God exists? There have been many attempts to prove that God exists using philosophical speculation to find the answer. Consider Anselm’s “Ontological Proof” (“So true is it that there exists something than which a greater is inconceivable, that its non-existence is inconceivable: and this thing art Thou, O Lord our God!” [“Proslogion,” Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, p. 151].)  God is that which none greater can be conceived, and this, according to Anselm requires existence.  But surely there is more to God than this. If that doesn’t work for you then perhaps Aquinas’ turn to Aristotle’s “first cause.” Or, perhaps proof is something beyond our ability to produce. It is a matter we take by faith. Yet, according to the Gospel of John, there is one proof that might speak to our hearts, and that is the message that the Word (Logos) of God became flesh and dwelt among us.

                If the heart’s desire is union with God, then how do we know who and what God is? The truth, as I understand it, is that God’s essence lies beyond our comprehension. However, that does not mean we have no access to God. What is required, if we cannot, penetrate God’s essence, is to know God as God has chosen to reveal Godself to us. On this Second Sunday of Christmas, we have a word from John that offers us a point of contact. That is the incarnation.

                The word we hear in the prologue to John’s Gospel might at first seem overly philosophical— “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (vs. 1) —but if we look deeper, we may find something more tangible to hold on to by faith. The Greek word we translate as “Word” here is Logos. Jewish philosophers such as Philo made use of the idea of Logos to envision points of contact with the invisible God. The same is true for early Christian theologians such as Origen and his successors. 

                The opening declaration is that the Word (Logos) is God (vs. 1), and then when we drop down to verse 14, where we learn that the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. Thus, the Word of God is revealed in the one who took flesh and lived a human life. In doing this the one who became flesh has revealed the true nature of God. While we cannot know the essence of God, we can know God as revealed as Trinity in the economy of salvation. When we move from a focus on the mystery that is God’s essence to how God is revealed in the economy of salvation, we discover that the God revealed in Jesus is a relational God.

                The message of the incarnation involves an invitation into union with God, in that God became human so that we might become divine, as Athanasius put it. In the Eastern Church, salvation is understood not in a legal/juridical manner, but in terms of divinization or theosis. As Catherine Mowry LaCugna puts it: “Theosis means being conformed in our personal existence to God’s personal existence, achieving right relationship and genuine communion in every respect, at every level” [God for Us, p. 284]. While this reality will reach its fulness only in the age to come, as Vladimir Lossky Writes: “This deifying union, has, nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in the present life, through the transformation of our corruptible and depraved nature and by its adaptation to eternal life” [The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 196]. This results from our cooperation with God.

                The “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  In the person of Christ, we have seen the glory of God revealed, and according to John, this glory is reflective of the Father, who is the fount of this Word. I am very aware of the limitations that accompany the use of masculine language in the description of God as Father and Jesus as Son. This usage can leave the impression that God is male. If God is male, then is not the male god?  Nevertheless, while recognizing the scandal of particularity and the nature of first-century thinking, the focus here needs to be on the parent/child relationship described here. John didn’t need to know about modern genetics to know that children will reflect their parentage. You can look at pictures of me and pictures of my father and see familiar features. Indeed, some would even say that I have some of my father’s personality quirks. You can also see reflections of my mother in me, though perhaps more in my brother. Still, we reflect our parentage. Such is the case here. The Son reflects his origins as the son of the Father, and so as we encounter Jesus, we encounter the Father.

                With this in mind, we come down to the closing statement of this passage.  So, while “no one has ever seen God,” at least not in the mystery of God’s essence, we can encounter God in the person of God’s “only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” We may not have conclusive proof of God’s existence, but in answer to the question of who God is, we can look to the one who is close to the heart of God.

                And what do we know about God as we look to Jesus?  First and foremost, God is relational.  While John doesn’t offer us a fully developed Trinitarian theology, the seeds are present.  If God is relational, then this relationality is part of God’s essence, and as LaCugna asserts, “the doctrine of the Trinity emerged in the assertion that God is essentially relational.”  While the Latin West located that relationality within the Godhead – in the divine essence – Greek theology located it in the manner in which the Father reached beyond God’s self toward Son and Spirit and then to the World [God for Us, p. 289].  Either way, the witness is this—God is relational, and therefore, the one closest to God’s heart, the Logos, the Christ, has taken flesh and revealed what is on the heart of God to us. And what is on the heart of God is “grace and truth.” While Pilate might ask “what is truth,” we can know the truth as revealed in the person of Jesus. This includes Jesus’ life, his teachings, the manner of his death, and finally the resurrection.  In him, we learn as LaCugna notes, that “living as persons in communion, in right relationship, is the meaning of salvation and the ideal of Christian faith” [p. 292].  In other words, in Christ salvation occurs on two planes—the horizontal (reconciliation with one another) and the vertical (reconciliation with God). The latter occurs as we are joined in union with Christ and therefore in union with God. 

On this second Sunday of Christmas, in an age that is increasingly focused on the individual, it is revelatory that we find our true humanity in relationship to the other.  Of course, these relations are often broken, but in Christ, the one closest to the heart of God, we can begin to experience the healing of this brokenness as we draw closer into the heart of God ourselves.  

And for one last time, may this be a blessed Christmas season!