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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Infleshing of God |
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Colossians 2:9 Second
Sunday after Christmas January 4, 2009 You have heard me say that the first half of the Church Year or Church Calendar emphasizes the major doctrines of the Christian Faith. In saying that I must also say that no doctrine exists in isolation. To paraphrase John Doan, no doctrine is an island entire unto itself. All doctrines are vitally interconnected like the ingredients of a cake. Any adjustment of one affects all the others and the finished product. A wrong understanding of the doctrine of God will result in a faulty understanding of the Fall, which will cause a faulty understanding of human nature, which will cause a faulty understanding of sin, which will cause a faulty understanding of the work of Christ, which will cause a faulty understanding of salvation, and on and on it goes. Nor or we talking about mere academic speculation, irrelevant to life in the real world. Doctrine is inseparable from life because doctrine is about the source of life and the ground and being of our existence. It is about God in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), and who defines life by His very nature and character. So any flaw in doctrine causes a corresponding flaw in living. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). Christmas is about the doctrine of Christ. Specifically, it is about the incarnation of Christ, which is a combination of the Latin words for “in” and “flesh.” The Incarnation, then, is the infleshing of God. It is God becoming human in a tiny child, born of a virgin in an animal shed more than two thousand years ago. I wonder if we really “hear” that message at Christmas. We sing it. It is implied or directly stated in the Christmas hymns. We read it. It is on Christmas cards, in the Bible, on posters. We hear it on television and at Church. In fact we are so overexposed to it that we are no longer struck with the significance of it. God became flesh! The Eternal One locked Himself in time and space! We live in an information overload society. We are difficult to shock, and we quickly forget yesterday’s news. Yet, if President Bush came to Powhatan today, it would be news. It would catch our attention. If a Hollywood celebrity came to town today it would be news. But here is the most shocking, incredible, newsworthy, historic event in history; God became flesh! God became one of us! And we have a hard time staying awake when we hear it. We have lost our ability to be surprised at it. What is man that God should be mindful of us? What are we that He should even care about us? How odd of God that He should bother with us. But odder still, utterly incredible, God became one of us. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, “Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God ‘by whom all things were made.’” Again she wrote, “He was not merely a good man so as to be ‘like God’- He was God” (Letters to a Diminished Church, p. 2). He became fully one of us. I do not mean that He ever stopped being God. That would be impossible. When the Word became flesh, He did not cease to be The Word who was with God and who was God (Jn. 1:1). As our reading in Colossians 2:9 tells us, “in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” But He became fully and completely one of us as well, and He experienced humanity just as we experience it, with no special privileges and no exceptions made for Him. Again quoting Dorothy Sayers, “He has himself gone through the whole of human experience from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death” (ibid., p. 2). The Bible states this eloquently and simply in Hebrews 4:15, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” This means Christ was tested and tempted, and that He experienced humanity as we experience it, but He did not sin. Therefore, He is not placing any burdens on us that He has not also carried. Are we tempted? So was He. Do we grow weary? So did He. Do we suffer disease and death? So did He. Do we fear? Do we become discouraged? Do we have to give ourselves to God in simple faith because there are many things we do not know or understand? So did He. That was part of His being human and sharing our humanity. It was part of His being “in all points tempted like as we are.” How incredible that God would become human; a helpless infant who had to be potty trained and learn to talk and walk, who experienced fear on dark, stormy nights when Roman soldiers marched through his village. Why did He do it? To fulfill the Law. To experience all of the human situation and yet do it all without sin. He knew no sin. Why did He do it? He did it to teach us about Himself. He came to reveal God perfectly. If we have seen Him in the Scriptures, we have seen the Father (Jn. 14:9). If we have known Him in the Word and Sacraments, we have known the Father. Why did He do it? He came to give Himself as the ransom for our sin. He came to die and be raised again to pay the price for our sin. The Incarnation all comes down to something like this; we would not and could not come to God, so God came to us to bring us to Himself. Thanks be to God. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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