Christmas Eve II 2009

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.

Throughout the Advent Season you and I have been preparing for the coming of Christ to us. First we have prayed that he would come to us in order to lead us to repentance, to initiate the cleansing of the temples of our souls, to tear us away from passing things, to prepare us for his enduring and lasting Word, and to do so by generating humility in our hearts. Second we have prayed that the coming Christ would commence our acquisition of virtue and good habits. We have prayed that the coming of Christ in Advent would stir up and awaken in us the urgency of his coming, that he would lead us to prayer, to meditation upon his Holy Scriptures, to a just dealing with one another and to humility. This is the reality that we prayed about during Advent, and now we come to welcome Christ’s coming in a deeper way.

Christ comes unto us this night as “his own” and he comes unto us this night that we might receive him, who knows us as “his own.” He comes unto us, “unto his own”, that we may find that “in our end is our beginning.” We hope to see this night that we have come out from God, who is our beginning, and will return to Him, through his Love and Word.

We have read the great first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which is called the Prologue, and we are assaulted with some very heavy philosophy. This is much talk about this Word, its nature in the beginning, its emergence out of itself into time and space, men’s rejection of it, and its final journey into the world as “made flesh” and what “dwelt among us.”  What we have read and what we have heard seem too distant to our imaginations. How can we unravel all of this? And besides, it all happened so long ago; it is history. What relevance does this history have for us some two thousand years later?

We do well to remember that the author of these words was St. John, the Apostle whom the Lord loved, and who by tradition, unlike the other Apostles, alone survived as one who did not see martyrdom. At the end of his long life, having lived with Jesus, walked with him, listened to him, and learned who Jesus truly was and is, he looks back to write his Gospel. Having been with Jesus through to the end, being the only male at the Cross, and having experienced his Resurrection and Ascension, having gone out into the Roman world to convert the nations, he looks back to write his Gospel. And he writes from experience. He knows what he experienced of the miracle of Jesus’ life, he knows what he has experienced of the descent of the Holy Spirit into the womb of the early and new church, and he writes. He lives in the accumulation of his own present experience, and he writes. So he moves back in time from his own old age, back through the churches’ growth, back through the Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost, back through the earthly life of Jesus, and he finds his beginning. He has come to the end of his life. He is an old man. And now at the end of his life, he finds his beginning, the true meaning of who Christ is. In his end, he finds his beginning.

John leaps back through time past to the beginning of Jesus Christ’s life “and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” But he cannot stop there. For the Jesus whom he knew and loved, who never left him even after his Ascension back to the Father, was that Word which was before all beginnings. Jesus Christ was one, he came to see, with the Father or with God. He was so united with God that John sees now that he was with God even before the Incarnation, before he became “flesh and dwelt among us. For he was in the beginning with God.” He was that Word, Articulation, Expression of the Father’s Mind from before all times. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”. Christ was in the beginning with God.

And then, John tells us, He was the Word, that Wisdom, that Love, “God expressed and communicated” in creation and all that was made. “All things were made by him.” John cannot remain in the distant presence of the eternal Trinity. For this Word, this Articulation, this Speaking, could not contain itself. For it was also Love, and Love makes and creates, and so the Word as Love created all that lives and moves and has any being. God’s Word, His Love, was spoken into creation, spoken into all forms of life. He was the Word that made all living things, because he was life, and he was also the light or meaning of God’s expressing himself through all that he had made. At one point the Word, God’s Love, was rejected and not loved, and so ill will or darkness entered the world. But this darkness could not interrupt the flowing of God’s Wisdom and Love. “The darkness overcame it not.” Even human beings, the Adam and the Eve, would reject the Word, Christ, his life and his light. But he would persist in his mission to express himself to and for his creation and “his own.” He even enlisted the services of a messenger and emissary, John the Baptizer, to announce his coming as the light and life of all reality. John the Baptizer was not that light but would come “to bear witness of that light.” And the light that came after him was “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” That light, the Word-Christ, had come before, speaking as Word and Love to his people, to Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets. “He was in the world,” as the spoken Word and Love of God, “and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.” He came unto his own, and “his own received him not.” But as Love and Word would never abandon the man that he had made in his own image and likeness, “he came unto his own.” But mostly they rejected him, God’s Word, Christ. “But unto as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” The Word and Love of God was spoken to all believers at all times, instilling in them the hope of his coming and his reconciling power.

And finally, John tells us that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea of the Virgin Mary. The Word, Christ, was joined to human nature through the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. But before all of this, he was God’s Word and Love, the expression of his will and the articulation of  his intention to befriend and save those who would believe on his name. “Love is made flesh.” The Word which was spoken but not heard, expressed but rejected, persisting in the face of man’s sin, would take its form, and try once again to be uttered and heard, now, on this night, beginning in the life of a newborn babe.

John tells us of this Word and this Love, its origin and source, and then the lengths and depths it would travel for man in order to be spoken and heard. John comes to the end of his life, and in his end, he finds his beginning. The beginning which he finds is one that does not end. The beginning is the speaking of God’s Word and Love, by making and remaking, by creating and redeeming, by desiring and yearning always that men should be saved and become his friends.

John records his vision of the Loving Word’s journey down and out of Himself and into the world because he wishes that we too should come to know and experience that in our end is our beginning. With John this night we long and desire that the Word and Love, Christ, who was “made flesh and dwelt among us” long ago, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, should be born in our hearts and souls. With John as our guide, this night, we thank and praise God for that continual coming unto us, throughout all the ages, most chiefly at the great point of intersection and communion, at the crossroads of heaven and earth, where we began to see God and man meeting in the life of the newborn baby Jesus. God and man meet most explicitly in a way that is close to us. It is so close to us that it is of us, and of our nature and condition. “He came unto his own.” He comes unto his own as one of us, that we might know “that we are his own,” of him and for him. In our end, the end of all our wonder and quest, journey and pilgrimage, we come to our beginning, and perhaps begin to know it for the very first time. Tonight the Word, Christ, made flesh long ago, comes to us, to be near, and yet more than near, to be at one with us and for us. He comes to live in us.

Let us end with the words of Arthur Edward Waite:

With a measure of light and a measure of shade,
The world of old by the Word was made;
By the shade and light was the Word concealed,
And the Word in flesh to the world revealed
Is by outward sense and its forms obscured;
The spirit within is the long lost Word,
Besought by the world of the soul in pain
Through a world of words which are void and vain.
O never while shadow and light are blended
Shall the world's Word-Quest or its woes be ended,
And never the world of its wounds made whole
Till the Word made flesh be the Word made soul!

© W.J. Martin†