First Sunday after Christmas: Experience of the Word

Isaiah 61:10-23
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1.1-18

 “And the Word became flesh.” (John 1:14) It is this simple statement which separates Christianity from all the other religions of the world: the belief that God became fully a human being. Five simple words – five in the Greek too: “And the Word became flesh.” But if we believe this so strongly why have we spent the most part of the last 2,000 years making the flesh word? Let me try to explain. Christianity is founded not on words or creeds, but on an experience – the experience the first disciples had of Jesus. They kept no journals that we know, nor did they at first feel especially inclined to write down their experience in order to explain it. The oldest writings in the New Testament are not the gospels which tell the story of Jesus’ life, but the letters of Paul. The oldest of these, the first letter to the Thessalonians, was written some twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The oldest of the gospels, the Gospel of Mark, was written about forty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Clearly the Jesus experience did not initially move people to record it. It was only as the new faith expanded and letters were needed for communication, or as time passed and the original witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus began to die, that a need for recording that experience came about. 

 But, here is where the problem begins, because words are always limiting and can rarely capture in fullness the impact of a profound experience. People who are in love know this. Are there really words capable of expressing the experience of being held in the lover’s embrace? Those who have borne children, know this I am sure. Are there words which can adequately name the experience of giving birth? Those who have suffered deeply know this. Are there really words to give voice to the tragedy of watching your world fall apart around you, whether through losing a job or losing a loved one? Joy as well as tragedy are experiences which words cannot completely describe or convey. Words are only pointers to the experience. We use words to somehow capture the experience and to share it with others, but anyone who has had a profound experience, whether of joy or tragedy knows that words always fall short. If we can understand that, then we can begin to understand the situation which the early followers of Jesus faced. In Jesus they encountered something completely new and completely ineffable. In the person of Jesus they encountered the power of God unleashed and available in an unspeakable new way. The Word of God was not only made flesh in the person of Jesus, but in their own lives, in there own selves. The abundance of God’s spirit was poured out on them and new things began to happen. How does anyone have words for that? Well, the reality is that we don’t have words for it. We have language only for what we already know, for what we have already experienced — the Jesus experience had for those early followers no precedent. 

 When people sat down to write the Jesus story they were not writing history the way we would think, they were not writing science books or biographies, like we would today. They were trying to put into words the amazing experience they had had, an experience embedded in their encounter with Jesus. The writers of the gospels chose to write their experience in the form of stories about Jesus: stories which illustrated their experience of a Jesus who brought life out of death, who freed people from the demons which oppressed them, who lived in such a way that through him others experienced the loving generosity and bounty of God. But at the core of those stories was their ultimately indescribable experience. In writing them they hoped these stories would allow people to have their own experience of Jesus. They hoped that these stories would be the vantage point from which people could see that the word had been made flesh and was still living among us. 

 But what did we do? We made the gospels, and the rest of the Bible for that matter, a rule book. We took the writings of those first disciples attempting to put into words their experience of Jesus, and used them not necessarily to encounter Jesus, but all too often as something to beat our brothers and sisters over the head with. Instead of the gospel narratives being the way through which we can experience the Word made flesh in our own day, in our own way and in our own lives, they have become quite literally the Flesh made word. Perhaps that is the progression of events with human beings: we have an intense experience; we attempt to express that experience as best we can; and then as time passes we forget the experience and put more and more emphasis on the description of the experience or worse yet we confuse the description of the experience with the experience itself. Many Christians today put more emphasis on the description of the Jesus experience, that is the Bible exactly as it is written, rather than on the Jesus experience itself. The results of this convey little of the original liberating experience of Jesus. 

 And so we come back to the Gospel of John. Because of today’s gospel reading, Christmas is a good time to reflect on our own experience of Jesus. Christmas gives us the opportunity to open ourselves up again to a deep experience of Jesus. We have all had experiences of Jesus. Everyone of us can remember a moment when our experience of Jesus moved us to say. “Yes, I believe. Yes, I want to follow this Jesus of Nazareth.” The reminder that the Word was made flesh should move us to experience that Word, Jesus, in the daily encounters of our lives, in the day to day fleshiness of our existence. The Bible, holy pictures, and even church services may point the way to Jesus, but they are no substitute for Jesus himself. Once, some Greeks came to Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples and said to him plainly, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” (John 12:20) They had had second-hand accounts of Jesus, but now they wanted to see him for themselves. They did not come wanting to read a story about Jesus, or to look at a picture of Jesus. They wanted an experience of Jesus for themselves. The shepherds likewise, after seeing the heavenly host of angels, did not say to themselves: “Well, we’ll catch the full story tomorrow with the morning gossip.” They said “Let us go now to Bethlehem and this thing that has taken place.” (Luke 2:15) Even the magi came to see Jesus for themselves and offer their gifts. Is anything less expected of us? I don’t think so. We too should long to see and experience Jesus for ourselves. Like I said, second-hand accounts – even the gospels – are not enough. We must go out and search for Jesus in our world, and set aside time to encounter him in our prayer. If we do not, then we become like the person who has read every book on sailing, but has never actually been sailing herself. Is she a sailor? For all her knowledge, she has never had the experience of being on the open sea, an experience which no book can fully convey. 

Like advertisements used to say: “Accept no substitute.” God did not send a book from heaven to reveal the divine love. God sent God’s only begotten Son to reveal that love and to share our human condition. God did not send a book to read or a picture to look at or a service to attend. God sent God’s own Son with whom we can have a relationship, whom we can know, whom we can experience. As Christians we must be committed to knowing Jesus, not just knowing about Jesus. The Word became flesh for our salvation, let us not make the flesh word for our convenience.