John 1:1-14
Who here can remember the last time they saw a sunrise? How would you describe it? I'm more of a night person than a morning person, although these days I'm neither, so I don't see the sunrise very often, but I love those moments in a movie when they show a fast-motion shot of the sun coming up over the horizon, all shimmering, and then they track it getting higher and higher in the sky, and they show the shadows on the buildings disappearing until everything is all bright. Of course, the thing with sunrises, and with the sun in general, is that you can't actually look directly at it. It's too bright - there's just no way to face it directly. But we can all appreciate the beauty of the sun by looking at it indirectly - by seeing what it does for the world - bringing light, getting rid of the darkness and shadows, making us feel warm, making plants grow. Even in the middle of the winter, there's nothing like the feeling of the sun on your face. But like I said, we can never look at it directly.
The same is true of God. We could never, in a million years, face God directly or ever see God as God really is. Nobody ever has - Moses asked, before God sent him off to Egypt - and God only showed him the divine backside. Elijah tried, and God came to him as silence. God has come to us in pillars of fire, or in awesome silences, or in thundering voices, but never directly. But that's for our own safety, because we couldn't handle it. God is too different, too glorious, too much like the sun - bright and powerful - for us to stand it. I imagine that if we were in the direct presence of God, we would probably spontaneously combust, like a space vehicle that gets too close to the sun.
But that does pose a bit of a dilemma for God and for us. After all, what kind of relationship can you have with someone who can't actually be with you? Sure, there's respect, and awe, and even a distant kind of love, but that's it. You can't touch the sun, or hug it, or feel its hand on your shoulder when you're upset. And that's how it is with God - we can't touch God, or hug God, or feel the divine hand on our shoulder. While God can and does love us, we have a hard time feeling that love in any real way, since we have never experienced God in any real way. We have a hard time believing that God is really with us, or for us, or even among us.
Well, our Gospel reading for today tells us what God did about this problem. God sent the light into the world so that we could see who God really is. The Word became light as a reflection of God's light, so that we could see God's glory and all the wonderful things that God does for us - but, and here's the key thing - God sent the light into the world as a human. "The Word became flesh and lived among us."
I want to take a minute and just reflect on what that means, that the Word became flesh. Take a look at your hand. What do you notice? Can you see the veins running underneath the skin? Does anybody have blisters? Paper cuts? What about calluses? I have one on my right hand, on my middle finger where the pen rests when I'm writing. What about hangnails? Scars? I have a scar where a wart was burned off when I was a kid. Our hands are probably the most human part of us, and when we talk about the Word becoming flesh, we're talking about the Word, the light of God, becoming someone with hands. God became Christ who had hands - probably blistered and cut, probably scarred and with hangnails. No doubt, as a carpenter, Jesus had banged his thumb more than once with the hammer, or sliced himself with a plane. Perfectly normal for a human, although not very dignified for a god.
So why would God do this? Why would God send Christ to become flesh among us? Why would God want the light that reflects the divine to become solid and able to be damaged? The first reason is that it's the only way to limit the divine light so that we can look at it. When God's light becomes contained in human flesh, then we can look directly at it, and see how amazing it is face-to-face. We aren't stuck watching the side effects anymore - we don't have to watch the disappearing shadows or the scenery getting brighter. We can look straight at the Son and see the light directly. It's true it's dimmed, like looking at the sun through welder's glass, but it does help us to see God directly. That's one reason God did this miraculous thing.
The second reason is because in Christ, in the Word made flesh, the world can finally touch and see and be held by God. We can finally experience God in a very real way, and know how much God loves us by how God is with us as one of us. God, in Christ, sat down and ate with people, went fishing with them, danced with them at weddings, cried with them at funerals. The Word made flesh touched them, walked side by side with them - small things really, but the things that we do with the people we love, the things that make a difference. It's amazing really, that God would go to all this trouble just so we would know that God loves us, and so that we could see God for ourselves, but that's God.
Now, you might say that's all well and good, but Jesus isn't around anymore. We can't see and touch and hug Christ anymore. We can't see the divine light before us anymore. Well, yes and no. It's true - nobody has walked with Christ for generations. On the other hand, though, the miracle that Christ became flesh at Christmas isn't over. It's continuing as Christ comes to be in us - as God makes us the flesh that shows God's love to the world, and as God makes us the ones to reflect God's light into the world. Our hands, our scarred and earthly hands, are made to become the hands of God, reaching out to others, to one another, to touch and hug and offer comfort. It's remarkable that God would come to be a human at all, but that God would become so humble and limited as to come to be in us - living in us, never leaving us, never abandoning us, that is why Christmas still has meaning for us today.
It's a little bit weird that God would dim his own light just so that we could see him, or show his greatest act of divine power by becoming human. That's not how gods usually operate. But that's how our God operates, coming to us in humility and vulnerability and love, so that we would know that God is truly Emmanuel - God-with-us - and God for us and God among us. Amen.
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