The Glory Of Flesh And Blood
Sermon
Love's Pure Light
Christmas Candlelight Sermons and Service
A few springs ago, I installed a small pond in the side yard of our home. I dug the hole; leveled it; set the vinyl liner; surrounded it with rocks; filled it with water; neutralized the harmful chemicals; installed a filtration system; planted water lilies, hyacinths, and irises; then stepped back and said, "Not bad for a city boy." There was evening and there was morning -- the first day.
Then I introduced four small fish into the pond. They seemed to like their new home and they have thrived there. All four are still alive and healthy and considerably larger than they were over three years ago. (Sadly, that can also be said of some of us in this room.)
To my fish, I am a god -- a deity who does not hesitate to intervene. I clean the filter routinely, battle algae relentlessly, feed the fish faithfully, and skim dead leaves and debris from the surface. When the water freezes, I make sure the pond is still aerated.
Sometimes I wish I could communicate with these small-brained pond-dwellers. Because no matter what I do, no matter how much I care for them, they perceive me as constant threat and a deadly menace. How can I convince them of my true concern for their well-being and the health of their environment?
To change their perceptions would require, I think, an incarnation. I'd need to become one of them. Not a bubble blowing scuba diver decked out in wetsuit and aqua-lung, but one of them.1
All things were created through God's word, the prelude to the fourth gospel says, and that word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory -- the glory of human flesh and blood.
"God came among us as one of us at Christmas." We say and hear those words each year at this time, but do we -- can we -- even begin to comprehend the paradoxical nature of the event that Christmas celebrates?
* The ancient of days becomes a mortal baby.
* The Spirit who dwells in light inaccessible assumes human flesh and blood and plunges into our darkness.
* The omnipotent Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, coos and nurses at his mother's breast.
"Cur Deus homo?" Anselm of Canterbury asked that question a thousand years ago. Why did God become a human being? Among the answers I would suggest:
* to change our perception of God as constant threat and deadly menace;
* to persuade us of our Creator's concern for our well-being, and the health of our environment; and
* to demonstrate the length and breadth and height and depth of God's love for the world God made and continues to sustain.
God's word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christmas can never, you see, be a purely spiritual event. The opening chapters of Luke's gospel are rife with pregnant women and labor and delivery and babies and mangers and shepherds and flocks -- and even a city boy knows what they smell like! The sheer carnality of the whole fleshy affair seems calculated to offend the sensitivities of the more spiritually refined among us.
I could wipe out the burgeoning national debt if I had $100 for every time somebody has said to me, "I'm not very religious; but I'm a very spiritual person." Whenever I hear that, I want to say, "Really? That's fascinating! I myself am mostly chemical and biological." The Holy Spirit usually grabs hold of my tongue and I say something like, "I'm happy for you. Thanks for sharing."
It's not that I have anything against being spiritual, though I'm never quite sure what people mean when they say that. Do they mean that they've watched a lot of episodes of Touched By An Angel? It's just that the gospel that forms the core of my being relentlessly calls me back to life in the flesh. Christians, you see, have this messy doctrine of the Incarnation. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God's glory is located there!
For Christians there can be no dichotomy between the spiritual world and the physical world, between spirituality and religion. Any spiritual energy that may flow in this world is embodied, practiced, worked out in flesh and blood. When the angel appeared to Mary, the spiritual invaded the physical and forever more, the two came together like child and womb.2
If all that physicality and carnality and equating of flesh with glory weren't enough, the babe whose birth we celebrate grows up, and indicates the precise locus of his divine presence: not in the rarified air of higher learning or the incense-perfumed air of mystical experience, but in flesh and blood human beings who are hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, sick, ill-clad, and unfamiliar to us. Real-life human beings, in other words, with real lives and physical and bodily needs. In them, Jesus says, we encounter not only our peers and fellow inhabitants of this planet, we encounter the God whose glory is revealed in human flesh and blood.
That God is adored in services of worship such as the one for which we gather -- in the body -- offering the best we have in art and music, speech and singing. And that same God is served
* when SUN Council organizations gather food for hungry people in the Susquehanna University neighborhood;
* when students, faculty, and staff conduct free medical clinics, caring for the bodily ailments of those who live in underserved communities in Costa Rica and Nicaragua;
* when study buddies and Big Sisters and Big Brothers and members of a half dozen other organizations on campus spend time, in the flesh, with young children who need a friend; and
* when a member of the senior friends' volunteer project holds the hand of a frail elderly person, smoothing lotion on the paper-thin skin of her hands.
There, my friends, is the locus of God's glory. There God's love is made manifest in ways that make sense to flesh and blood human beings. There the distinction between giver and recipient, lover and beloved, is dissolved as all are caught up in the unifying mystery of love incarnate.
Holy Child within the manger, long ago yet ever near;
Come as friend to ev'ry stranger, come as hope for every fear.
As you lived to heal the broken, greet the outcast, free the bound.
As you taught us love unspoken, teach us now where you are found.3
God's glory is revealed in human flesh and blood, in our neighbors' bodily needs. Would you seek and find the living God? Then don't look up; look to your left and your right. Look across the hall at that lonely student who has difficulty making friends. Look in the barrios and precarios of crowded cities. Let God's love once more take on human flesh and blood and invade the world God made and continues to sustain.
In so doing, we give new dimensions of meaning to the ancient invitation that draws us, in the flesh, this holy night: "O come, let us adore him."
____________
1. I acknowledge my debt to Phillip Yancey for his ruminations on the fish in his saltwater aquarium for this illustration.
2. Craig Kocher, "Incarnation," a sermon preached at Duke University Chapel September 12, 2004.
3. Marty Haugen, "Carol At The Manger," GIA Publications, Inc., 1987. With One Voice hymn #638. Used by permission.
Then I introduced four small fish into the pond. They seemed to like their new home and they have thrived there. All four are still alive and healthy and considerably larger than they were over three years ago. (Sadly, that can also be said of some of us in this room.)
To my fish, I am a god -- a deity who does not hesitate to intervene. I clean the filter routinely, battle algae relentlessly, feed the fish faithfully, and skim dead leaves and debris from the surface. When the water freezes, I make sure the pond is still aerated.
Sometimes I wish I could communicate with these small-brained pond-dwellers. Because no matter what I do, no matter how much I care for them, they perceive me as constant threat and a deadly menace. How can I convince them of my true concern for their well-being and the health of their environment?
To change their perceptions would require, I think, an incarnation. I'd need to become one of them. Not a bubble blowing scuba diver decked out in wetsuit and aqua-lung, but one of them.1
All things were created through God's word, the prelude to the fourth gospel says, and that word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory -- the glory of human flesh and blood.
"God came among us as one of us at Christmas." We say and hear those words each year at this time, but do we -- can we -- even begin to comprehend the paradoxical nature of the event that Christmas celebrates?
* The ancient of days becomes a mortal baby.
* The Spirit who dwells in light inaccessible assumes human flesh and blood and plunges into our darkness.
* The omnipotent Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, coos and nurses at his mother's breast.
"Cur Deus homo?" Anselm of Canterbury asked that question a thousand years ago. Why did God become a human being? Among the answers I would suggest:
* to change our perception of God as constant threat and deadly menace;
* to persuade us of our Creator's concern for our well-being, and the health of our environment; and
* to demonstrate the length and breadth and height and depth of God's love for the world God made and continues to sustain.
God's word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christmas can never, you see, be a purely spiritual event. The opening chapters of Luke's gospel are rife with pregnant women and labor and delivery and babies and mangers and shepherds and flocks -- and even a city boy knows what they smell like! The sheer carnality of the whole fleshy affair seems calculated to offend the sensitivities of the more spiritually refined among us.
I could wipe out the burgeoning national debt if I had $100 for every time somebody has said to me, "I'm not very religious; but I'm a very spiritual person." Whenever I hear that, I want to say, "Really? That's fascinating! I myself am mostly chemical and biological." The Holy Spirit usually grabs hold of my tongue and I say something like, "I'm happy for you. Thanks for sharing."
It's not that I have anything against being spiritual, though I'm never quite sure what people mean when they say that. Do they mean that they've watched a lot of episodes of Touched By An Angel? It's just that the gospel that forms the core of my being relentlessly calls me back to life in the flesh. Christians, you see, have this messy doctrine of the Incarnation. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God's glory is located there!
For Christians there can be no dichotomy between the spiritual world and the physical world, between spirituality and religion. Any spiritual energy that may flow in this world is embodied, practiced, worked out in flesh and blood. When the angel appeared to Mary, the spiritual invaded the physical and forever more, the two came together like child and womb.2
If all that physicality and carnality and equating of flesh with glory weren't enough, the babe whose birth we celebrate grows up, and indicates the precise locus of his divine presence: not in the rarified air of higher learning or the incense-perfumed air of mystical experience, but in flesh and blood human beings who are hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, sick, ill-clad, and unfamiliar to us. Real-life human beings, in other words, with real lives and physical and bodily needs. In them, Jesus says, we encounter not only our peers and fellow inhabitants of this planet, we encounter the God whose glory is revealed in human flesh and blood.
That God is adored in services of worship such as the one for which we gather -- in the body -- offering the best we have in art and music, speech and singing. And that same God is served
* when SUN Council organizations gather food for hungry people in the Susquehanna University neighborhood;
* when students, faculty, and staff conduct free medical clinics, caring for the bodily ailments of those who live in underserved communities in Costa Rica and Nicaragua;
* when study buddies and Big Sisters and Big Brothers and members of a half dozen other organizations on campus spend time, in the flesh, with young children who need a friend; and
* when a member of the senior friends' volunteer project holds the hand of a frail elderly person, smoothing lotion on the paper-thin skin of her hands.
There, my friends, is the locus of God's glory. There God's love is made manifest in ways that make sense to flesh and blood human beings. There the distinction between giver and recipient, lover and beloved, is dissolved as all are caught up in the unifying mystery of love incarnate.
Holy Child within the manger, long ago yet ever near;
Come as friend to ev'ry stranger, come as hope for every fear.
As you lived to heal the broken, greet the outcast, free the bound.
As you taught us love unspoken, teach us now where you are found.3
God's glory is revealed in human flesh and blood, in our neighbors' bodily needs. Would you seek and find the living God? Then don't look up; look to your left and your right. Look across the hall at that lonely student who has difficulty making friends. Look in the barrios and precarios of crowded cities. Let God's love once more take on human flesh and blood and invade the world God made and continues to sustain.
In so doing, we give new dimensions of meaning to the ancient invitation that draws us, in the flesh, this holy night: "O come, let us adore him."
____________
1. I acknowledge my debt to Phillip Yancey for his ruminations on the fish in his saltwater aquarium for this illustration.
2. Craig Kocher, "Incarnation," a sermon preached at Duke University Chapel September 12, 2004.
3. Marty Haugen, "Carol At The Manger," GIA Publications, Inc., 1987. With One Voice hymn #638. Used by permission.
