The Word Became Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.John 1:1-18

Our words can become distant from our reality. We can use concepts and constructs to imagine how the world came into being and how we all were created. Yet, when we push come to shove, none of us was there at the beginning of time and space. We can wonder and speculate but we eventually have to live within the flawed bodies, the complicated communities where we have been planted.

John's Gospel opens with this amazing passage about Jesus, the word made flesh, who was with God from the beginning. The Nicene Creed calls Jesus, begotten, not made, yet one being with the Father. All wonderful ideas of how to understand Jesus. Yet to me, the flesh, which walked the earth, which felt as each of us does, who lived and ate and cried...that is what I can understand and how I can live, with my arms outstretched to my fellow beings, with my life given for others.

Today, I ask God to help me be a little bit like Jesus, loving my neighbor and rejoicing in serving. May we all be like Jesus, fully human and living for others today.