Word Made Flesh

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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. 11 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 1: 9-14 (NRSV)

This week’s passage from John’s Gospel is all about the body – specifically, Christ slipping into a human body to become the person we know as Jesus. If the prospect of God taking on flesh sounds bizarre to you, it’s because it is. Theologians call this unique part of the Christian story “the mystery of the incarnation,” because that is about as close as we can get to understanding the whole thing. It’s a mystery and part of our story that forces us to admit that faith doesn’t always make logical sense. 

Claiming the “word became flesh” is also what sets us apart from the two other major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam. The tension surrounding the incarnation stems from the belief that for God to be God, a Being far greater and far more benevolent than ourselves, God must be something wholly other than human. Surely God would not choose to be tainted or restricted by human flesh. 

Even for those of us who take on it faith that Jesus is who he claimed to be -the Word made flesh - there is still some discomfort around this idea. I would argue our disease comes from the issues we have with our own bodies. I mean, are there any among us who can honestly say they are 100% content with their body, as it is? To answer my own question: NO.  Believe it or not, some of the most body insecure people in the world are super models. Apart from the feelings we have about how our body looks, is the paradox of the human body itself — our bodies can be beautiful and disabled and strong and fragile all at the same time. 

         One of my favorite illustrations of the conflicted relationship we have with our bodies comes from Tina Fey’s book, Bossy Pants.  I assume most of you know who Tina Fey is, but for those who may have been living without cable television in an underground bunker for the past fifteen years, Tina Fey is an actor and humorist famous for her work on Saturday Night Live and her show, 30 Rock. In Bossy Pants, Tina talks at length about the intense pressure put on women in show business — the pressure to got the extra mile to prove they are funny, easy going, gorgeous, hardworking, and practically perfect in every way.  At least, most of the book is about the pressures of show business. The rest is really just about the pressures of being human. 

         In a chapter about her daughter and the challenges of instilling self-worth in children, Tina describes — in hilarious detail — the laundry list of characteristics a woman must have in order to be considered “beautiful,” or more accurately, the infinite number of things that can be “incorrect” about a woman’s body.  She asks herself,  “How do we survive this? How do we teach our daughters… that they are good enough the way they are?”  She decides that perhaps the best way is to model a positive body image, which she does by taking a personal inventory of all the healthy body parts for which she is grateful. Here is that list in her words: 

• Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked will grow straight across my face and onto yours.

• Droopy brown eyes designed to confuse predators into thinking I am on the verge of sleep and they should come back tomorrow to eat me.

• Permanently rounded shoulders from years of working at a computer.

• A rounded belly that is pushed out by my rounded posture no matter how many sit ups I do. Which is mostly none (it’s as if I wrote this).

• A small high waist.

• A wad of lower back fat that never went away after I “lost my baby weight.” One day in the next ten years this back roll will meet up with my front pouch, forever obscuring my small high waist, and I will officially be my mother.

• Good strong legs with big gym teacher calves I got from walking pigeon toed my whole life.

• Wide German hips that look like someone wrapped Pillsbury dough around a case of soda.

• [And finally,] my father’s feet. Flat. Boney. Pale. I don’t know how he even gets around, because his feet are in my shoes.    

 These are the body parts she is grateful for! Humorous as it is meant to be, how Tina describes her physical appearance gets at the internal tension we all feel when it comes our bodies.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this tension as of late. At the beginning of October, I started a Hospital Chaplaincy program at Georgetown Hospital. I’m assigned to patients in the orthopedic units - people going into or recovering from surgeries on their hearts, spines, limbs, and other parts. However, the resident I often shadow covers the maternity ward, so recently I have been spending my mornings visiting meeting the brand new babies.

On Wednesday I got to bless two sets of twins! They were so cute with their miniature fingers and nose and ears. I love it when the nurses have them swaddled real tight; they look like little baby burritos! Sometimes I just want to bite one, but you know, they don’t let you do that. 

 On the mornings when I get to visit the maternity ward I look at the babies and these incredible women who just gave birth to a living, breathing, human beings, and I think:  our bodies are amazing! Our bodies are strong and beautiful and perfect exactly the way God created them. I especially feel this way when I meet moms whose babies are in the NICU; babies born 1, 2, and 3 months early. These little beings fight with strength they shouldn’t yet have and most of the time goes on to thrive. The human body is incredible. 

         Then, maybe an hour later, I am visiting someone in the Intensive Care Unit; someone who is desperately trying to hang on to life, or who is actively dying.  Not just old people either, there are men and women of all ages barely clinging to life for a whole bunch of different reasons. Their bodies are failing them. They have betrayed the person’s desires and plans for a long, healthy, life. Half the time the people I visit are being kept alive by machines. Their bodies have given up a long time ago and if it weren’t for ventilator breathing for them, they would already be experiencing the life beyond this one. 

         Which brings me back to Word made flesh: given the reality of human life, why did God choose to take on a body? How might this change how we see our bodies? And, how can we use these sometimes-beautiful, sometimes-disappointing bodies to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world? 

         Well, in response to my first question, there are an infinite number of ways religious people have understood the reasons behind the incarnation. But it seems clear to me that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are about standing in solidarity with the best and worst of the human experience. We have a God who wants so desperately for us to know we are loved that God is willing through whatever it take to prove it to us. I can imagine God asking humanity, “What’s the worst that could happen? You could die? Then I’ll go there too.” And he does and then he shows us that even death cannot conquer love. Jesus is not a magnificent savior in spite of his body, but exactly because of it. He bears it all and as a friend of mine once said, “promises not that he will make all new things, but that he will make all things new.” 

         I think part of what we can take from John’s insistence that the “Word became flesh” is a new appreciation for our flesh. Yes, we are flawed and at times out bodies may fail us, but they profoundly good-- not only because God made them, but because God chose to have one. Jesus used his body to bless and heal and pray and speak words of life to the people around him. And we know his body was human because it ate, and cried, and bled, and eventually gave way to death.  Yet, the power of his miraculous acts came from within his limited human body. 

         At the end of her body part inventory, Tina Fey says: “I would not trade any of these features for anyone else’s. I wouldn’t trade the small, thin lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn’t even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that reoccurring zit spent more time with me in college than any boy ever did. At the end of the day I am happy to have my father’s feet and my mother’s eyes with me at all times. If I ever [take my daughter to the beach] I want her to be able to find me in the crowd by spotting my soda-case hips. I want her to be able to pick me out of a sea of high-lighted blond women with perfect tans because I’m the one with the thick ponytail and green undertones in my skin.” In her own quirky way, Tina helps us see that there is something holy about the way God made our bodies – in form and purpose. 

         Eugene Peterson’s translation of today’s scripture passage reads, “the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” A few decades before these words were being written, Paul wrote this in his letter to the church in Rome:

^“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” – Romans 12:2 (MSG)

God calls us to offer our bodies as vehicles of God’s love and grace to the very people in our neighborhoods — no matter their condition or how we might feel about them. And because we are all unique, with different gifts and concerns and abilities, how we respond to this call will look different. But what I want to assure you of today is that what you need to be God’s body in this world is already within you. 

If you are someone who looks in the mirror and thinks, “If I only had XYZ then I’d have something to offer,” I encourage you to open your clenched hands and offer all that you are, just as you are, to God. God can and will use it to bless the people around you in ways you could have never imagine – whether it’s modeling body positivity for your children, visiting the sick, laying hands on a baby, or simply offering a listening ear to a friend in need.

With open hands, raised to the God who wastes nothing, may the Word become flesh in our bodies and dwell among us once more.