GOD IS ONE OF US

 

The Canonical Gospels begin their narratives in different ways. Mark begins with an adult Jesus who is baptized by John in the Jordan. Matthew has a birth narrative that features Magi who spent about two years searching for the child. Jesus was already a toddler when they reach Bethlehem. Luke's has shepherds who visit Jesus as a baby lying in a manger. John's origin story, which is Sunday's lection, begins in "The Beginning."

Incidentally, a lot of people who memorize Bible verses know John 1.1 (with Genesis 1.1 and, almost everyone's favorite, John 3.16). The Word became Flesh and lived among us. God has stopped watching from a distance.

Stories of Gods taking on human form abound in many of the world's mythologies. Many of the heroes of ancient peoples were demigods or super humans. For the Gospel of John, when the Word became Flesh, the Word was totally and fully Flesh. In other words, God was not Superman disguised as Clark Kent. God was Clark Kent.

For the Gospel of John, God Incarnate gets tired and thirsty; eats and drinks with family and friends; experiences love and loss, and cries, like all of us. God Incarnate takes the side of the poor, feeds the multitudes, experiences betrayal, and suffers torture and crucifixion by empire. Like many among us.

God bleeds. God dies. God is one of us.

My Friends, to believe in the incarnation is to embody justice, accompaniment, solidarity, and life-giving, like Jesus did. The incarnation required a warm body: Jesus’s. The incarnation still requires warm bodies: yours and mine.


*"Christ Child" by Mike Chapman (relief sculpture at Westminster, London), photograh by Diane Brennan. Vanderbilt Divinity Library image collection.