Last Day of Christmas Wonderings: Word Incarnate When?
 |
| Circles in a Circle, Kandinsky, 1932 |
There are many surprising things going on in John’s Gospel that we might not notice if we don’t read it carefully. We need to set aside all the things we assume John is saying and how the other three Gospels tell the story in order to hear what John is actually saying. And one thing that may surprise us is this: John does not tell us when the incarnation, the Word made flesh, actually happens.
Most of us read the first chapter of John and assume John is talking about Jesus’ birth. But unlike Matthew and Luke, and like Mark, John never mentions Jesus’ birth. John mostly uses the words “birth” and “born” to talk about people becoming children of God through Christ, as when he says:
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. (John 1:12-13)
In John 3, during Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, we learn that people come into a new life in God through believing Jesus is God’s full revelation and presence, which John calls being “born from above” and “born of water and Spirit.”
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:1-8)
The only time John’s Gospel mentions Jesus’ birth is when Jesus says to Pilate:
You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. (John 18:37)
This tells us Jesus’ purpose in being born, but not the story of his birth or a clear explanation of the Word becoming flesh.
Surprisingly, John, like Mark, never mentions Jesus being born of a virgin. He only refers to Jesus’ mother as “mother” and never names her as Mary. He does mention Joseph in these verses:
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” (John 1:45)
They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:42)
Strangely enough, unlike Matthew and Luke, who hesitate to call Joseph Jesus’ father because of the implications of the virginal conception of Jesus, John has no problem calling Joseph Jesus’ father.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus is clearly born of normal human parents. There is nothing remarkable about them or the conception and birth of Jesus. So what is John actually saying about Jesus?
John begins his Gospel telling us about the beginning of all things:
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 overtake it. (John 1:1-5)
And then immediately, instead of telling us about Jesus’ birth as we might expect, he tells us about John the Baptist (though John’s Gospel never refers to him as “the Baptist.”):
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. (John 1:6-9)
John the Baptist, of course, is not part of the story of Jesus’ birth (at least not the adult John the Baptist – only Luke connects the birth of John with the birth of Jesus). The Gospel writer makes clear that John is not the light, and the true light (which we must assume is also the eternal Word) “was coming into the world.” This odd verb tense doesn’t sound like John is saying the true light “was already born in the world” which is what you would expect if the birth of Jesus is the moment of the incarnation of the Word. No, it “was coming into the world,” something happening then and enduring into the future, an ongoing event.
Then we get the rest of the incarnation story:
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 the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1: 14-18)
The key phrase “and the Word became flesh and lived among us” is the incarnational centerpiece. But again, it does not say when this Word became flesh. If it happened at Jesus’ conception by the Spirit and the virgin Mary, wouldn’t John think that was important enough to tell us? If it happened at his birth, wouldn’t John tell us something about the birth of Jesus? If John wanted us to know exactly when the Word became flesh, wouldn’t he have given us more details and less ambiguous verbs and timing?
Notably, John also never calls Jesus the incarnate Word or Logos again after this prologue to his story. This leads New Testament scholars to think that John is quoting an earlier Christian hymn or creed and adding in the verses about John the Baptist – take those out and it flows much better. John seems to find this Christian hymn about the Divine Logos becoming flesh in Jesus a fitting beginning to his story, but he finds many other ways to say who Jesus is throughout his Gospel. So the incarnation of the divine Word may not even be John’s main point about Jesus.
My assumption in all of this enigmatic and inspiring language John uses is that John wants the incarnation of the divine Logos to be a mystery that cannot be pinned down to a specific moment. He also wants us to see that those who believe in Christ are born anew as children of God. The meaning of this may be that the same incarnation of the Word that came in Jesus is now the ongoing process of the Word becoming incarnate in the life of believers, through the community of the church, in the church’s life of servant love. This is the eternal life that believers in Jesus participate in now. They are not the full and complete incarnation of the Word that Jesus was, but they are becoming the Word through Christ.
In the Orthodox churches, this process of believers being transformed by Christ from sinful humanity to being fully united with God is called “theosis.” This is what is understood as salvation in the Orthodox churches. Ultimately, this process of theosis is only completed in the resurrection, but this life now is when it is happening. We are becoming one with the divine.
I’m not trying to make any firm claims here. Some would consider it a heresy to say that the incarnation didn’t happen at Jesus’ conception – an issue the early church fought over and decided strongly in favor of incarnation at Jesus’ conception. It’s clear that in the first few centuries of the church’s life, the virginal conception of Jesus in Matthew and Luke was connected to John’s Word becoming flesh. I’m not trying to dispute that or resolve it. I’m just pointing out that John’s Gospel doesn’t say what we think it says, and maybe John is being mysterious and open-ended for a reason. Maybe that reason is that we see the ongoing incarnation of the Word in our own lives. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel:
“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23)
Anyway, Merry last day of Christmas.
Comments
Post a Comment