Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, but my other hats as husband, dad, pastor, high school teacher and volleyball coach have just been eating my time up. By the way, please check out my church’s new website at http://newdirection.ws. There is a lot of really interesting material, audio, visual as well as written, that will help you on this great journey with the Father, Son and Spirit.

It is the Christmas season and we have endured all kinds of challenges regarding what was meant to be a joyous occasion for the world. You remember the scene in Matthew: “For I bring you tidings of great joy. For to you this day is born in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the King.”

Yet this message of the fact that a Savior is born is lost in the cacophony of, “Secularists are trying to destroy Christmas,” or “There is no gods or angels,” or “Christmas has become too commercial.” I love that last one because it assumes there can be a level of commercialism that is acceptably attached to the birth of the Savior.

I don’t want to add to the cacophony, but I do want you to know somethings about what early Christianity (and some still do today) called, “The Incarnation.” It was in the Incarnation that early Christians found hope, joy and peace, which is why the Angel Gabriel declared, “Peace on Earth!”

 ”Incarnation” is a funny way of repeating what was written about Jesus in the Bible and taught in the creeds of the early church, that Christ became man. Often this story of the Incarnation gets lost in the birth of a baby. That is not to say that Christ wasn’t born a baby, but it is the identity of that baby that so often gets lost. We proclaim the son of God, but that story gets lost in the myriad of other stories, chief among them being stories from pagan mythology where the gods come down, have sex with a woman and the child borne is said to be the son of a god. By the way, I use the word pagan solely as a means of separating the source of the stories from the story of Jesus. But more on that in another post.

Let’s start the story of Christmas in another place. Let’s start the story at its literary beginning. Let’s start at the beginning of the Bible, in the Pentateuch or Torah, in the first line of Genesis where the first words hit us like a ton of bricks. “In the beginning God created.” (Genesis 1:1)

The beginning of the story tells us a few things: 1) There was a beginning. This is something that scientists have proven. At some point there was nothing and then there was something. There was no pre-existent mass as the law of half lives of matter would beg to differ. But a beginning there was.

2) God was there before the beginning. Note that it doesn’t say, “stuff was about to happen and then God showed up.” This is poignantly portrayed in the New Testament in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God (Theos) and the Logos was God (Theos).” The Greek here denotes a time of existence in which the Logos and Theos and Pneumos (Spirit) existed, but there was no physical creation. This is an important point to remember as we get into the story.

3) This God that was before the beginning created. Again, the first chapter of John’s Gospel gives us another view of this same story: “All things were made by him (the Logos) and there is nothing in existence that he didn’t make.” (John 1:3) By the way, this is my paraphrase of the text, so don’t freak if your bible doesn’t say exactly that.

This Logos was the Creator we meet in Genesis 1:1. But the Creator is with God. OK, what gives here? Two Gods? Well, this is the beginning of the doctrine of the Christian Trinity, but let’s not get sidetracked except to say that the Father, Son and Spirit have always existed in love (1 John 4:8) such that it is part of their character. The point is that whoever this Logos is, he created everything. Not only did he create everything including you, but He is the one who sustains you keeping your heart beating and your brain waving. (Acts 17:28)

Let’s now continue the story of Christmas. You know the part where Gabriel tells Mary she is going to have a baby? This is where things get mixed up. Did Jesus become God’s Son when he was conceived, when he was born or what? To understand this you have to pay close attention to the storyline here. 

We know there is God. We now know there is this other God or part of God known as the Logos. We know that they existed before there was a Creation, and we know that this Logos was the one who created everything. Now notice John 1:14, “The Logos (Word) became flesh and dwelled among us.”

What is this saying here? Well first we have the Word, the Logos, and he became flesh. It doesn’t say he became a man, it says he became “flesh” which is even more important. It is saying that not only did the Logos become man, but he became man as you and I are man (human). He put on all of our limitations. He could die. He needed to eat. He needed sleep. He even needed to take a dump. 

What!! That’s disrespectful! That’s sacrilegious! But that’s true! He was every bit human as we are, subject to pain, sorrow, laughter, joy, anger and pooping. If he is not that way, and later theologians would paint a picture of him that was less than truly human, then we cannot be saved.

Now comes the part where the Incarnation should make us happy: When the Logos also becomes human, he the creator becomes part of His own creation. Creation now becomes permanently interlinked with its Creator. Jesus isn’t half god and half man, he is fully God and fully human.

That is why the Incarnation is great news! That is why the life of Jesus is great news! That is why his death and resurrection are great news and why his ascension into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father is amazing news!

Listen to the words of Athanasius of Alexandria from the 4th Century: “He, the Mighty One, the [Creator] of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelled. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.” On the Incarnation of the Word,” Chapter 2:8

The Logos became flesh that he would permanently abolish the death and corruption we all face because of our sin, our disobedience, our inability to follow God as we were planned. He who made us “in his likeness” planned all along for us to live like Him for all eternity. The Incarnation is the beginning of the end for death. It was the beginning of the end for all the negative parts of our creation, the destruction, the disease, the mental illness, the war and hunger and arguments and pettiness that causes us to separate ourselves from each other. In Jesus’ body is the beginning of a fulfilling life that was always the plan of the Father. (John 10:10)

That is why the news of Christmas is “joy to the world,” because “the Lord, the Logos, Jesus, the Messiah has come! Let Earth receive her King.” 

- Merry Christmas to you all!

Frank