Dr. Rodney Plunket

"The Word Became Flesh"

John 1:17

People have forwarded to me an above average number of e-mail messages during the past several weeks.  The number increased because so many people have received Christmas messages that they wanted to pass on to me, and for that I am grateful.  I am actually married to the person that sent this one to me.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the sum­mer each year . . . , male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid December.  Female reindeer retain their antlers until after they give birth in the spring.  Therefore, according to every historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, every single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen . . . HAD TO BE A FEMALE.

We should’ve known.  Only women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit around the world in one night, and not get lost!

One of the things I like about messages, either as e-mail or through the Post Office, is that it is like the coming of someone into your life.  When I read this e-mail from Margaret, I imagined her delight at receiving and sending it.  It was not just a message, it was Margaret entering my office and shar­ing “a funny” with me that someone had shared with her.  It felt almost like Margaret had come and was there with me.

God wanted to come.  God wanted to be with us.  God wanted to enter our world.  God wanted to let us know more of what God is like.  We had so many false conceptions; how could they be addressed?  How could God deliver the truth and the power we needed so that we could move toward the fullness for which God created us?  How could the Father make us children of God again?  God did it by sending the unique Son of God, Jesus.

And Jesus was an awful lot for God to send.  In John (Jn) 17:23-24 Jesus asks God through prayer,

that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

“You loved me before the foundation of the world.”  When God sent Jesus, Gold sent to the world a divine person whom he had loved before the beginning of time.  God loved His Son with the whole of God’s infinite heart.  God loved His Son, but God sent Him to us, according to Jn 1:1-18, so we might have “life” and “light,” “one gracious blessing after another,” and “the right to become children of God.”  God sent God’s beloved Son to fight a war with the forces of evil and darkness.  God sent God’s Son because of God’s great love for us.

Verses 1-18 of the first chapter of John put in a nutshell the unique value of the coming of Jesus.  That passage starts off, in verse (v) 1, by referring to Jesus as the Word and by declaring Jesus’ divinity.  Verses 2-3 tell us that the Word “was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  Verses 4-5 communicate the force of Jesus’ person by referring to the life which was in Him and which gives light to everyone––a light that can never be extinguished.  In verses (vv) 10-11 we read of a painful reality associated with Jesus’ coming:  many in the very world which Jesus had made did not believe in Jesus; many even in His own land and among His own people did not believe.  But vv 12-13 tell us that belief in Jesus makes a person a child of God, and that becoming a child of God is more than having one’s name added to a list of family members.  It is even more than being heaven bound.  Becoming a child of God is effected by a birth from God.  John 3 will tell us that it is a new birth from above, a new birth generated by the Spirit of God.  God’s power impacts the one who believes and makes that person a child of God.  That person is born again from above.

Verse 14 of Jn 1 in the New Revised Standard Version says,

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.

God’s glory was once housed in the tabernacle, the sacred tent of Israel.  The Hebrew word that we translate as “tabernacle” is misûkaœn, and it is translated in the ancient Greek version of the OT as skeœneœ /.  When John says that “the Word . . . made his dwelling among us,” the verb meaning “to make a dwelling” is the verb form of skeœneœ /, that same Greek noun used to refer to the tabernacle.  Charles L. Campbell, writing concerning this verse, says,

The allusion is to the tabernacle or tent in which God met Israel in the wilderness . . . .  Through this image, John affirms that God now meets and journeys with people in Jesus Christ.  Believers now see God’s glory . . . uniquely in Jesus Christ (Charles L. Campbell, “John 1:1-14,” Interpretation 49 [October 1995]: 396).

The Word became flesh.  The Word “tabernacled” among us.  The Word let us see God’s glory.  Just as the tabernacle once housed the glory of God, just so was that glory housed in the human body of Jesus Christ.

The coming of Jesus was the coming of God’s glory in the taberna­cle of a human body.  The all-powerful Word that spoke the world into exis­tence was now in the world to give it new life, the life intended when the world was first made.  Just as the Word once brought light into primeval earth’s darkness, so now the Word alive in Jesus has brought light to the lives of all who believe, to all who trust in Jesus.

Sisters and brothers, at Christmas time, when even our worldly culture encourages our minds back to the coming of the Word, may we be pro­foundly aware of what that coming means.  It means that God’s glory has been revealed in human terms, in a human body, in a human life and a human death.  And the divineness of that coming has been confirmed in the Word’s resurrection and ascension to the right hand of our God.

Truly, in Jesus, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Jesus, the Word of God, was born of a virgin; and that Word brought to us new birth and new life.  Praise God for His Word.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass published in 1971 well captures the force of Jn 1:1ff as it captures the force of Jesus the Word of the Lord.  Listen and be moved by the coming of the Word.

You can lock up the bold men

Go and lock up your bold men

And hold them in tow,

You can stifle all adventure

For a century or so,

Smother hope before it’s risen,

Watch it wizen like a gourd,

But you cannot imprison

The Word of the Lord. . . .

For the Word

For the Word was at the birth of the beginning

It made the heavens and the earth and set them spinning

And for several million years

It endured all our forums and fine ideas

It’s been rough

It’s been rough but it appears to be winning! . . .

For the Word

For the Word created mud and got it going

It filled our empty brains with blood and set it flowing

And for thousands of regimes

It’s endured all our follies and fancy schemes.

It’s been tough,

It’s been tough, and yet it seems to be growing!

O you people of power,

O you people of power, your hour is now.

You may seem to rule forever, but you never do somehow.

So we wait in silent treason until reason is restored

And we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord.

We await the season of the Word of the Lord

We wait . . . we wait for the Word of the Lord.

(Quoted in Ibid., 394-96).

The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.  We rejoice in the coming of the Word.  But, even at Christmas, we should rejoice, not only that the Word has come.  We should also rejoice that the Word is coming again and the final victory will be won, and the children born by the will of God will be in the brightness of God’s glory forever and ever.  May our Christmas season shine with the joy of Jesus’ coming, and may it also shine with the joyful anticipation of His return.

Our theme this morning is “Welcome To Our World.”  That theme is taken from the title of a song that we sang earlier.  And that song is based on the message of Jn 1:14.  Please open your worship bulletin and look with me again at the words of the final two verses of that song.

Fragile finger sent to heal us, tender brow prepared for thorn.

Tiny heart whose blood will save us, unto us is born, unto us is born.

Wrap our injured flesh around You, breathe our air and walk our sod.

Rob our sin and make us holy, perfect Son of God.

Welcome to our world.

Are you welcoming Jesus to your world?  Let me read you a story found on the Internet that beautifully conveys the power of welcoming Jesus to our world.

Two Babes in a Manger

In 1994, two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on biblical principles) in the public schools. They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage. About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage. They relate the following story in their own words:

It was nearing the holiday season, 1994, time for our orphans to hear for the first time, the traditional story of Christmas. We told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. Finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word. Completing the story, we gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each child was given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins I had brought with me. No colored paper was available in the city.

Following instructions, the children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel, cut from a worn-out nightgown an American lady was throwing away as she left Russia, were used for the baby's blanket. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt we had brought from the United States. The orphans were busy assembling their manger as I walked among them to see if they needed any help.

All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project. As I looked at the little boy's manger, I was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger.

Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger. Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at this completed manger scene, the child began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy, who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately-until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger.

Then Misha started to ad-lib. He made up his own ending to the story as he said,

"And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don't have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn't, because I didn't have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, "If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?"

And Jesus told me, "If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me."

"So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him---for always."

As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed.

The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him––FOR ALWAYS.

(http://www.inspirationalstories.com/09/3_09_025.html).