This Advent, we’ve given you a weekly gift from Darrell Johnson’s new devotional, Awaken Wonder: Daily Devotions for Advent. This final reading is Darrell's Christmas Day meditation: "If The Real Story Be Told." Merry Christmas to you on behalf of Darrell and the team at The Pastorate!
One of the ironies of modern history is that the majority of people who celebrate around the Christmas story have never really heard the story! Oh, many have heard the basic storyline. Many can even name some of the characters in the storyline: Mary, Joseph, an angel named Gabriel, some shepherds, some wise men from the East, Caesar Augustus, Herod the King, and, of course, the infant Jesus. But the majority of those who benefit from the storyline have never really heard the real story in the storyline.
The story is told in narrative form by a tax-collector named Matthew and a medical doctor named Luke. Churches regularly read portions of Luke’s narrative on Christmas Eve. If you have not read the story recently, I encourage you to do so—Luke chapter 1, followed by Matthew chapter 1, followed by Luke chapter 2, and then Matthew chapter 2. This is the story in narrative form.
The story is re-told in poetic form by a fisherman named John, in the opening section of the Gospel that bears his name.
John 1:1-18 is usually called the prologue to John, and it goes like this:
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 apart from Him
nothing came into being
that has come into being.
In Him was life,
and the life was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.
There came a man sent from God,
whose name was John.
He came as a witness,
to testify about the Light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the Light,
but he came to testify about the Light.
This was the true Light which,
coming into the world,
enlightens every man.
He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him,
and the world did not know Him.
He came to His own,
and those who were His own
did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him,
to them He gave the right
to become children of God,
even to those who believe in His name,
who were born,
not of blood
nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man,
but of God.
And the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us,
and we saw His glory,
glory as of the only begotten
from the Father,
full of grace and truth.
John testified about Him and cried out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me
has a higher rank than I,
for He existed before me.’”
For of His fullness we have all received,
and grace upon grace.
For the Law was given through Moses;
grace and truth were realized
through Jesus Christ.
No one has seen God at any time;
the only begotten God
who is in the bosom of the Father,
He has explained Him.
Wow!
I have often wondered if any of the people who played a part in the story understood what was really happening. Did the angels who announced the birth even begin to grasp the magnitude of what was taking place in Bethlehem? Did the shepherds, who ran to the stable in response to the angel’s announcement, realize how utterly appropriate it was for grown men to fall in adoration before the Baby? Did Mary, who gave birth to the Baby and held Him in her arms, know what had really taken place through her womb?
Luke tells us that after the shepherds left the manger scene, Mary “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Did she get it? And if she did, how was she able to handle it?
This is what happened:
The One who made the world had entered the world in person!
The One who created the world had become a creature—a human being!
God became a man!
That is the real story that seldom surfaces in the holiday celebrations. That is the good news worth printing on the front page of every newspaper in the world. That is the arresting news that ought to be sweeping across the internet tonight. Every person on the planet ought to hear the news at least once. Tweet it around the globe: “The Living God has become one of us!”
Now, I do not know about you, but all I can say is “unbelievable!” Not in the sense of “no way, not true,” but in the sense sportscasters use the word: “Oh, wow! Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think that could happen! Did you see that? Unbelievable!”
That there is a God, a Living God, I cannot prove…but I can handle. That the Living God created this universe “out of nothing,” I cannot prove…but I can handle. That the Living God did all kinds of miraculous deeds, as the Bible claims God did—like parting the Red Sea…I can handle. I can get my mind around such deeds; I can imagine such things happening. But this? What the Living God did on Christmas Eve?
When Caesar Augustus was Emperor of Rome, and when a certain Quirinius was Governor of Syria, the Living God entered into the full orb of human existence…and did so as a Baby! “This will be a sign for you…you will find a Baby.”
Have you ever heard anything so fantastic? The Creator became a creature! God became a man! Forgive me for saying it again, but “unbelievable!”
Do you see now why I said that most people who celebrate around the Christmas story have never really heard the story? Oh yes, most have heard about the special little Jewish boy born to a special Jewish couple on a starlit night. And yes, many have heard that the special little Jewish boy is claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Millions even flock to hear and sing Handel’s “Messiah.”
But most have not heard that the little Jewish boy was in fact, as Dorothy Sayers put it, “in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God ‘by whom all things were made'” (Dorothy Sayers, “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged” in The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 12).
In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God.
And the Word was God.
All things come into being by Him….
And the Word became flesh…and dwelt among us.
The Word “moved into the neighborhood” (The Message), and took up residence as one of us. Unbelievable!
The word John uses, which we translate as “Word,” is logos. It comes into the English language in words like “logic” and “logical.” One is logical who lives by logic, who lives according to the logos.
Now, why does the fisherman use this word? Why begin his story about Jesus by calling Jesus the Logos? Why not use the term “Son”? John will make much of that term in the rest of his Gospel. Why not use it in the opening poem?
In the beginning was the Son.
And the Son was with God.
And the Son was God.
All things come into being by Him….
And the Son became flesh…and dwelt among us.
Why not say it that way?
Or, why not use other titles people were using to refer to Jesus? Like Son of Man, or Messiah, or Lamb, or Lord?
In the beginning was the Lord.
And the Lord was with God.
And the Lord was God.
All things come into being by Him….
And the Lord became flesh…and dwelt among us.
Why not say it that way?
Because John wants to reach as wide an audience as possible. He wants to begin his story about Jesus on a note that will hook into as wide a scope of humanity as possible. And the word logos does that. Logos rings chords deep within every culture John knows.
Not that John is affirming everything every culture means when it uses the term logos, it’s just that logos gives him an entry into the minds and hearts of the full scope of the humanity of his time. John ends up saying a whole lot more than anyone meant by logos. But this term enables him to meet people on common ground.
For example, the Greeks of John’s day used the term logos a lot. For the philosopher Heraclitus, the logos is the rational principle behind the universe, the source of life, that which gives life its “reason-ableness.” For the Stoic philosopher, the logos is the integrating principle behind the universe, that which makes for the laws of nature, that which maintains nature and gives it unity and dynamism.
In the beginning was the Rational-Integrating Principle.
And the Rational-Integrating Principle was with God.
And the Rational-Integrating Principle was God.
All things come into being by Him….
And the Rational-Integrating Principle became flesh…and dwelt among us.
Whoa!
For the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, the logos was “the agent of creation…the medium of divine government in world” (George R. Beasley-Murray, John (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), 6). Even though, for Philo, the logos is impersonal, he called the logos “the captain and pilot of the universe” (Ibid.).
In the beginning was the Captain and Pilot of the Universe.
“I agree,” says Philo.
And the Captain and the Pilot of the Universe was with God.
“I agree,” says Philo.
And the Captain and Pilot of the Universe was God.
“What?” says Philo.
And the Captain and Pilot of the Universe became flesh…and dwelt among us.
“What?”
For most of the Jews of John’s day, the logos is that by which the Living God communicates with humanity. The logos is not personal, by any means, but is the vehicle by which the Personal God communicates and creates. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…and God said…” (Genesis 1). The Logos, the Word, is the means by which God acts in the world, creating (Psalm 33:6), revealing (the prophets often say, “the Word of the Lord came upon me”), and redeeming (Psalm 107:20; Isaiah 55:1). In short, the Logos, the Word, is God’s way of expressing God’s Self.
In the beginning was the Self-Expression.
And the Self-Expression was with God.
And the Self-Expression was God.
Of course, how could it be otherwise? God’s Self-Expression can be nothing other than God’s self! When we express ourselves, the expression is us. When the Living God expresses God’s Self, the expression can be nothing other than, and nothing less than, God!
In the beginning was the Self-Expression.
And the Self-Expression was God.
All things come into being by Him….
And the Self-Expression became flesh…and dwelt among us.
Unbelievable!
What if we had been chosen to write the prologue, the poem that tells the real story of Christmas? What term would we use that has affinities with logos? What about “Higher Power”? Now, we might not mean what everyone who uses it means, but it might be a good place to start.
In the beginning was the Higher Power.
“OK,” say the majority of people today.
And the Higher Power was with God.
“OK, ok.”
And the Higher Power was God.
“Well…”
All things come into being by Him.
“Him? Personal?”
And the Higher Power became flesh…and dwelt among us.
“What?”
Or maybe we would use the term “Grand Unified Field Force.”
In the beginning was the Grand Unified Field Force.
“Of course,” the majority would say.
And the Grand Unified Field Force was with God.
“Well…”
And the Grand Unified Field Force was God.
“Whoa…”
All things come into being by Him.
“By Him? The Force is personal?”
And the Grand Unified Field Force became flesh…and dwelt among us.
“What?”
Unbelievable!
John began on this mind-boggling note to make sure that we read the rest of his story correctly. He wants us to realize that Mary’s child, the Man from Galilee, who walks with, eats with, and plays with real flesh-and-blood people is none other than the Maker of the Universe. The Man who laughs so hard that the religious establishment accuses Him of being drunk, the Man who weeps so deeply at the grave of his grown friend, is nothing other than “the Ground of all Being.”
The Man who gets so tired and thirsty that He has to ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water is the One who “in the beginning” made the first hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and determined that two hydrogen and one oxygen make water!
Nothing in all of human literature, nothing in all the myths by which we have sought to understand reality, can compare with the real Christmas story.
When Caesar Augustus thought he ruled the world, the One who spoke all the galaxies and all their stars into whirling space lay speechless in a cattle trough. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, the Star-Maker entrusted Himself to the care of a teenage girl. When Herod the Great was strutting his supposed power, God the Logos needed a mother to feed Him and change His diapers! Unbelievable!
The term the theologians use for this grand miracle is “incarnation.” It means “enfleshment.” Christmas is all about the enfleshment of the Creator! And this is the sign: “You will find a baby lying in a manger.” I have to say it again: Unbelievable!
Many people have tried to express the wonder of the real story. Saint Augustine of the fifth century tried:
That Lord through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3), and who was himself made among all things;…the maker and placer of the sun, made and placed under the sun;…producer of heaven and earth, appearing on earth under heaven; unspeakably wise, wisely speechless as an infant (Augustine, Sermon 187 (“On the Incarnation”) in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Vol. III/6, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993), 27).
Saint Ephrem the Syriac of the fourth century tried:
The Word entered her [Mary], and became silent within her; thunder entered her, and His voice was still; the Shepherd of all entered her; He became a Lamb in her (Ephrem, “Hymn VIII on the Nativity,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. 13:2 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, [1890], reprinted 1976), 242).
Charles Wesley of the eighteenth century tried:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate Deity.
Pleased as man with us to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel. (Charles Wesley (altered), “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” written 1739).
C.S. Lewis of the twentieth century tried:
In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 140-141).
Sonny Salsbury has tried:
Those hands that formed the universe,
created you and me,
have now come down in human form…
for us God’s love to see…
Come and see the five little fingers of God (Sonny Salsbury, “The Five Little Fingers of God”).
Keith Getty and Stuart Townend of Ireland have tried:
Hands that set each star in place,
Shaped the earth in darkness,
Cling now to a mother’s breast,
Vuln’rable and helpless (Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Joy has Dawned,” © 2004).
Margaret Clarkson of Canada has tried:
Lord of the universe, hope of the world,
Lord of the limitless reaches of space,
Here on this planet You put on our flesh,
Vastness confined in the womb of a maid,
Born in our likeness you ransomed our race.
Lord of the universe, hope of the world,
Lord of the infinite eons of time,
You came among us, lived our brief years,
Tasted our griefs, our aloneness, our fears,
conquered our death, made eternity ours (Margaret Clarkson, “Lord of the Universe,” © 1973).
Luci Shaw has tried. She has Mary say:
Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before. …
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended,
I must see him torn (Luci Shaw, “Mary’s Song,” in A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation (Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1984), 43).
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable!
The implications of the real story are many…and staggering! Let me name just a few of them.
First, if the real story be told, then we humans have been granted unbelievable dignity. Our flesh and blood have been granted royal dignity. God did not become an angel. God did not become an eagle, or a moose, or a whale. God became a human being, forever dignifying our bodily existence. God so loved us that God became us. Us!
Second, if the real story be told, then we discover the unbelievable depth of God’s love. God so loved us that God changed! God altered the mode of His being. Before Christmas, the Living God was pure spirit—all three persons of the Trinity, pure spirit. In the Incarnation, One of the Three—the second person of the Trinity—changed His mode of Being, taking up our humanity, changing the form of the relationships within God. God became what God was not!
As cute as penguins are, I would never become a penguin to help penguins out of their predicament. As majestic as whales are, I would not become a whale to help whales out of their predicament. For that would mean becoming what I am not at a fundamental level.
God became what God was not! God the Logos changed the form of His existence forever so that we might be freed from all that keeps us from being fully human. The unbelievable depth of the Creator’s love!
Third, if the real story be told, then we have unbelievable comfort in our suffering. Christmas expresses the unbelievable empathy of God. Most humans who believe in God believe that He is aware of our pain, but many wonder if God feels our pain. God might sympathize, but can God empathize? “The Word became flesh….” God became humanity-in-pain. God became humanity-in-grief.
Song-writer Sydney Carter (author of “Lord of the Dance”) imagines the thief who was crucified on the cross next to Jesus speaking to Jesus:
It’s God they ought to crucify
Instead of you and me.
I said to the carpenter
A-hanging on the tree (Sydney Carter, “Friday Morning,” written 1960).
“I wish the carpenter had made the world,” I said to the carpenter a-hanging on the tree. But what does the real Christmas story proclaim? The carpenter did make the world! God was a-hanging on the tree. God knows first-hand what it means to be human in a violent, unjust world. Indeed, no one knows human suffering more than the “humanized” God.
Fourth, if the real story be told, then we have unbelievable hope for the future. We have unbelievable certainty that we shall be made whole. For in the stable on Christmas Eve, God forever wedded Himself to our humanity. God forever tied up His future with our future. The future of humanity is as secure as the future of God! The enfleshed God is the guarantee that one day all flesh will be fully redeemed. Jesus would later say, “Because I live, you will live also” (John 14:19).
Fifth, if the real story be told, then the unbelievable claims of Jesus have unbelievable believability. If Jesus, Mary’s boy, is indeed the Living God in our humanity, then it is quite logical, quite rational, for Him to claim what no mere human can claim.
Of course He can say, “I am the bread of life.”
Of course He can say, “I am the light of the world.”
Of course He can say, “I am the way, the truth, the life.”
Of course He can say, “Before Abraham was, I am.”
Of course He can say, “If you are thirsty, come to me and drink and out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
If Mary’s boy is the God to whom we must all give an account for our lives, and He says, “Your sins are forgiven,” then they are forgiven!
If Mary’s boy is the Creator wrapped in our flesh, when He cries out from the cross, “It is finished,” it is finished!
If He is the Almighty come to earth as one of us, and He says to us, “Follow Me,” we can be sure He knows where He is going…and we can be sure that following Him is the smartest thing anyone can do!
Sixth, if the real story be told, then we realize how unbelievably right it was for shepherds to fall down before the Baby and worship Him. If the real story be told, then we realize how unbelievably right it was for wise men from the east to leave their work, spend their time and money crossing the Arabian Desert, 164
and then fall to their knees before the Child and worship Him. If the real story be told, we realize how unbelievably right it is for millions upon millions of people in every corner of the globe to follow the lead of the shepherds and wise men and worship Jesus.
One of my favourite Christmas cards says it best:
The Word did not become a philosophy to be discussed, a theory to be debated, a concept to be pondered. The Word became a Person to be followed, enjoyed, and loved!
One more time:
In the beginning was the Logos.
And the Logos was with God.
And the Logos was God.
And the Logos became what we are…flesh.
God became a man.
Unbelievable.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand.
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand.
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand (“Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” Words from the Liturgy of St. James, 4th century; trans. Gerard Moultrie).
If you enjoyed this reflection, consider getting yourself a copy of Awaken Wonder to continue your journey through Advent in the years ahead, or to gift to a friend.
