Preached at Holy Cross, Seend
Readings – Isaiah 9. 2, 6-7; John 1. 1-14
“the Word became flesh and lived among us”
Jose y Maria, Everett Patterson, 2014.
“I’m only human.” It’s a phrase we usually offer by way of an apology—as if being human was something inadequate or second rate. Humans aren’t perfect. What torments us is that somehow we think we’re supposed be perfect, so when we can’t manage to be the perfect people we think we should be, we think we’ve failed.
We’re supposed to be good at our jobs, to run a perfect home, to be a cheerful friend and companion while also being capable of giving frank and realistic advice if needed, a wonderful spouse or partner, an absolutely perfect parent, to give regularly to charity, to feel deeply for a range of worthy causes and always say the right things about them, to never hit the credit card too heavily, never drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week, never smoke, and have a clean driving licence and a Body Mass Index below 25 – or, if we’re Black or Asian, a Body Mass Index below 23.
Of course we don’t manage to achieve all that. We’re only human. Although there are always Instagram influencers and people in the lifestyle magazines who claim to manage it all, and tell us we all could too if only we tried hard enough. Maybe they’re not human—better than human?—superhuman?
We’re so negative about the idea of being human – but being human was good enough for God. That’s what that strange mystical passage from St John’s Gospel that I read a moment ago is saying. I freely admit that it is strange stuff, and I don’t see that as a problem. After all, if God is real, then any human attempt to describe God must strain the limits of human language. The passage writes of two beings, the Word, and God who created the universe. The Word, it says, was God, every bit as much as the creator of the universe—somehow these two beings while being distinct, were one. The Word was with God before time began. And then the Word became flesh—God became human. That is the unique and distinctive point of the Christian faith
Now, we have much in common with Jews, something I think we all know, and we also have quite a lot in common with Muslims, something that is quite difficult to say with being latched on to as a Culture War point by one side or another. But it is a simple statement of fact. Like Muslims and Jews, we believe that there is a God, one God, who created the universe. This is very different from what atheists believe about the universe, or Buddhists, or Hindus. And like Muslims and Jews we believe that God will judge us at the end of our lives for what we have done on this Earth: which is a pretty scary prospect; we’d better hope that God judges us with more mercy than the lifestyle magazines and the folks on social media.
But one belief that separates Christians dramatically from Jews and Muslims is that we believe God actually became human. He did so in the person of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ was truly God, then God got the cold and blew His nose, went to the toilet, told jokes, ate breakfast, and was so fond of eating and drinking with the wrong company that his enemies called him a glutton and a drunkard. If this festival we celebrate tonight is true, then God got so exhausted by the crowds who mobbed Him like a modern celebrity that He fled to the hills for peace, and God was perceived as such a threat by powerful men that they had Him executed. That’s very different from what Jews believe, and very different from what Muslims believe.
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