Incarnatio

[AI translation] There could not be a shorter, more condensed way of expressing the majestic miracle in remembrance of which we celebrate Christmas than the way the Apostle John described it in the Word we read. What Luke the Evangelist tells us in a beautiful long story of the great, happy event: the birth of the Saviour, the exultant singing of the angelic hosts, the astonished shepherds at Bethlehem, the miracle of the divine Child in the manger, the tremendous mystery of God's appearing on earth, is put so classically succinctly by the Apostle John: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us". The word 'Christmas' itself is the shortest way of expressing the holy mystery, the happy miracle, because it is a word that has been translated 'Christmas' from the Latin incarnatio, which literally means 'incarnation'. Yes, this is the essence of Christmas: the great fact of incarnatio, the incarnation! I don't want to go into a long explanation of this Word. I know that you are tired people who do not need theories, but concrete help. Well, that is the great thing about Christmas, that it is not about theory, but very practical things. So let me get straight to the point!Let us think, who is the one who became flesh in that little newborn baby in Bethlehem? Well: the Word, says John. This strange word was better understood by people at the time than by us, because John said it as Logos, and this was a common expression in Greek. That was the name given by the Greek philosophers to the divine intelligence that created the world. Logos, the so-called world-self, is something ultimate, intangible reality that stands behind and above the universe. Human science today also speaks of the so-called natural order, that there is something primordial in this world, some principle that orders the world, some lawfulness at work in it, something that sustains and animates the universe. Now, says the apostle John to the Greek literate readers, "We know personally this eternal divine intelligence, the Word, whom you have shunned with all kinds of scientific words: for it is none other than He who also became our Saviour in the person of Jesus, dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory. He became flesh in Christ."
Isn't this great: while science is skirting around the issue and talking about primordial power, natural order, the law of the world, the great mystery is revealed to us, that behold, the eternal Logos is there, beyond all that exists, Who was made flesh in Bethlehem, Who dwelt among us as man: Jesus Christ! Behold then the majestic miracle: that Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate, is not a man who was born, lived, died, like all other men, but One Who, before He was born, was already alive. In fact, when there was nothing at all of the created universe: He already was, and having died here on earth, He still is! That is, in a sense, in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God became man when "the Word became flesh!"
Strangely enough, the implications of this statement began to dawn on me as the theories of recent atomic physics began to be known. What happened at Christmas is almost the reverse of what happens in the atomic explosion. Because what happens in the atomic explosion is that matter becomes energy, and at Christmas energy became matter, the love energy of God became embodied! What is an atomic bomb? It is nothing else but matter turned into energy! And Jesus? Logos made matter, Word made flesh! But while matter made energy is fear, sadness, destruction, death for hundreds of thousands, the divine energy made matter, the Word made flesh, is joy for millions, brings life, creates resurrection from death. So, we are talking about something unheard of! The idea of God made flesh in Jesus is to help us, human beings, because we are incapable of doing even the little things on our own, such as reconciling with each other, with the one who has hurt us or the one we have hurt... or reconciling with our fate, unable to live or to survive death! That is why God himself came into our lives.
I was visiting someone the other day here in the mountains. I comforted him, I encouraged him, I encouraged him with many words... Finally, at the farewell, he said, "Reverend Lord! It meant a lot to me, not what you said, but that you came, that you sensed that I was in trouble, that I needed someone..." Well, that's the essence of incarnatio: God came because you're in trouble, because you need Him, because you can't live without Him! He has become our brother, our friend, our comrade-in-arms, God has come alongside us! "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
If this is true, then everything is good, then there is a solution to all our problems, then it is worthwhile, because it is possible to start a whole life that has gone wrong all over again, to live it differently, then it is even worth dying, because then eternity is true. But is it really true that God came among us in Jesus?! The disciples say they saw His glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, but that was nearly 2000 years ago. We want to see it too, to be sure! Is it not only the pious conceit of the religious man, is it not only the projection of our own desires and dreams that the living word of God has been embodied in Christ? Is it not only ourselves who delude ourselves that God has so stooped down to us, so much at our side? The Greeks understood the veil as the appearance of the rose-fingered goddess Eos. This poetic image persisted long after it was known that the hairpiece rested on a certain refraction of the rays of light. Are all the biblical statements about Jesus not just such poetic expressions by which one interprets one's own religious experience?! Do not be shocked that I have raised these questions so openly, but I know that they lurk in the depths of all your hearts, and I also know that our faith must not shrink from any question. How, then, can we prove that in Jesus the redeeming love of God, the being of God, has truly been incarnated on this earth? Well, reason cannot decide this question. But let me tell you that the only things that can be proved by reason in this life are the banal. For example, this statement that 2x2=4, that can be proved. But the really serious, big values of life are unprovable. Think, for example, of a mother's love. How can you put it into a formula that is provable? It can neither be seen nor touched, yet I know it exists! I know it exists simply because I myself was once a child in front of a woman.
Or, for example, can it be proved that a Beethoven symphony is anything other than a regular succession of sound waves? Using the tools of reason, it really would be impossible to decide who is right: is it the person who is lifted up to God by the experience of music, or the dog that pulls you along when you have to listen to it?
Some things, then, can only be known in a certain personal, intimate encounter. There are truths that only prove true when we lay our lives upon them. So it is with Jesus. Whoever does not dare to put himself into the communion of life with God, which he offered in Jesus, to receive God's redeeming love into himself, and to love him in return, however thinly, can never prove anything about God, about Jesus, about salvation!
You might say now that we are back to that again, that we must believe. Well, well, you have to believe. But to believe means to try His word, to do His word! I'll do what he says! Just like Peter did there on the Lake of Galilee when, after toiling all night in vain, he said to Jesus, "At your word I will cast down my net", and the result was unimaginable! Or as the man with a withered hand did, when at the word of Jesus he stretched out his hand and - he succeeded, in that movement of obedience to the divine word - his hand was healed, and so he realized that the One who spoke was God...
So whoever does the will of God, whoever dares, whoever dares to accept Jesus as God into his life, whoever dares to make a sacrifice in His name, whoever dares to forgive his enemies through Him, whoever dares to decide against temptation by the power of Jesus, whoever dares to walk with Him, to live with Him: he, but only he, is convinced that he is really dealing with God and not with the pious imagination of men. God can be known only in the boldness of obedience to Him, of doing according to His word, that is, by giving ourselves to Him! The Word, the divine Word, Who became flesh in Jesus, never fails us. Every time one obeys Him, he finds himself on the right path, and every time he disobeys Him, he finds himself at a dead end. And the Word, the Word Who became flesh in Jesus, is a life-giver to the living, a consolation to the sorrowful, a cleansing to the guilty, a mercy to the dying! Try it, and then it will prove true, so that it will become flesh in you, and then you too will see His glory shine forth!
A sailor once said to his former drinking companions, "You can say whatever you want to me. You can make fun of me! But I tried it, and it's been six months. The pub won't see a penny more of me, and besides, my head is clear, my eyes are clear and my heart is happy. And all because I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour!" This sailor understood more about the mystery of the body-sentence than many great scientists who wrote volumes about it.
I know a woman with four little children. The other day, she went over to her non-believing, non-Christian neighbor's house and did the heavy laundry as a favor while the neighbor woman was working in her office. Behold, here too the eternal Word was made flesh in such a way that even others saw His glory.
I know a man, a conscript in the war, who went through a lot of hardship, suffering and loss before he finally came home. He started looking for his parents. He found his father's grave in the former ghetto. He heard that his mother was on her way back from one of the death camps on one of the transports. The boy waited at the station with flowers every day for a week until someone recognized him and told him: Don't wait for his mother, she hadn't even arrived at the camp at that time, she had fallen ill on the way, she had been thrown out of the train somewhere on German soil, dying... What do you think this man is doing now? Is he lying in wait somewhere, desperate and bloodthirsty? No! He lives in a small village and burns his life in the fire of redeeming love for the salvation of Hungarian peasants!
Behold, so truly is the Word made flesh, so truly is the incarnatio, Christmas! Do you feel that this is the very essence of Christmas, that it is no longer a matter of reasoning, of discourse, of explanation, of theory, but of love lived, of physical service: of all the beautiful Christian theories made flesh?! Christmas is not only about our souls, but also about our bodies. It is not enough to have a little spirit, which then fades away as the holidays pass. God gave Christmas for the incarnation, so that the Word can be seen in our actions! That the Word may be a strength, a blessing, a light in our lives and in the lives of others! Jesus is not looking for admirers here today, nor for critics, but for a "body" that carries Him, that puts His love into practice, that lives His ministry! And so radiating the glory of God! Let us therefore offer ourselves to Him:
My Saviour, you cannot refuse me one request:
That I may carry you in my heart, I hope,
And be thy cradle and thy shelter:
Come, then, and fill me
With thee: with great joy!
Canto 329, verse 5
Amen
Date: 25 December 1959 Christmas.