Sermons
"The Word Became Flesh"
John 1:1-14
“The Word Became Flesh”
Christmas Day
The ancient world had no problem with the idea that people could become gods. The emperor Augustus insisted that temples be built to himself all over the Roman Empire. He never had himself formally declared a god, but he did have Julius Caesar made into one, and since he had been adopted by Caesar, well… you draw the conclusion. The pagans did not balk at naming Caesar a god because it was, as they saw it, a natural continuation of the way he had lived his life. Someone who had accumulated ultimate power in life could keep on going, accumulating divine power on top of worldly power, rewarding his worshipers with blessings the way he had rewarded his soldiers and his political cronies for their support in this life. Granted, the Jews did not agree, but they were marginal to the Romans. The rest of the world, if they disagreed, knew not to say anything, if they knew what was good for them.
No, the ancient world had no problem with the idea that people could become gods. The notion that a god would become human was ridiculous to them, though. A god might take on human form as a disguise, but it was temporary. In The Iliad, the story of the fall of Troy, gods and goddesses show up in the camps of the fighting armies all the time, and as soon as they are recognized for who they are, they disappear. That was normal, in pagan thought. But for a god actually to become human would be to give up so very much that it was more than just nonsense. It was an impossibility.
Then out of nowhere, the Romans found themselves dealing with the followers of an obscure Jewish carpenter whose followers made exactly that claim. They said that a god (or the God, since they only had one) had been born on earth and had become one of the thousands of upstarts that they had, for reasons of state security, to crucify. These people, his followers, were a problem.
Because they said that their God had given up total power, they were not impressed with Roman might and glory at all. His followers had everything backward, and did everything backward.
They said,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
That was a problem, because if God became human, that reversed the process where the powerful become gods. These people refused to worship the emperor, and they refused even to enjoy the simple spectacles of power like gladiatorial games where you put armed men into a ring, and maybe add a few hungry animals to the mix, and see who comes out alive.
It’s still a problem, because once there’s a movement like Christianity in the world, it means that all power structures can be called into question and the people at the bottom, who are often inconvenient to deal with, may be the ones closest to God. In India, the greatest number of Christians are to be found among the dalits, the “untouchables”, whose shadow is considered by some Brahmins to be defiling. Those are the people who understand that God himself was born in a stable and buried in a borrowed grave, and that if God can live that way, it gives dignity and holiness to every single human life regardless of social station.
There’s a tradition that the stable in Bethlehem made us of a cave, and the British writer G.K. Chesterton made use of that tradition in his book The Everlasting Man, where he wrote:
“There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace. …Indeed the Church from its beginnings, and perhaps especially in its beginnings, was not so much a principality as a revolution against the prince of the world. It was in truth against a huge unconscious usurpation that it raised a revolt. Olympus still occupied the sky like a motionless cloud moulded into many mighty forms; philosophy still sat in the high places and even on the thrones of the kings, when Christ was born in the cave and Christianity in the catacombs.”
There are still places where the mighty claim divinity outright. We’re waiting to see what title Kim Jung Un will assume as dictator of North Korea; his father, Kim Jung Il, was called “The Dear Leader” because his father had gone from being president of North Korea to being named “Eternal President”. He’s just more obvious about his attitude than most. Dictators and powerbrokers all over the world, large and small, all assume that power is just to be taken and built up, that wealth is just to be accumulated with no limits. To them, it is only the weak who insist on checks and balances, and the weak do that as a power-play of their own, because that protects their own interests for the moment.
But we worship a wholly different God. We worship one who had it all, and I mean all, and didn’t hold onto it. We worship a God who took on our own humanity in every way, and lived it out perfectly, getting right all that we so often get wrong, steering away from all those traps where we set ourselves up as smarter than our Creator, as wiser than the Lord of the universe. He didn’t get caught up in any of that. He lived a life, not of power-seeking, but of love.
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
The only Son of God,
Eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
True God from True God,
Begotten, not made,
Of one Being with the Father;
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
He came down from heaven,
Was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
And became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered death and was buried. …”
That kind of God will never make sense to the world, and with any luck neither will his followers.