And the Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Ephesians 1:3-14 and John 1:1-18
Here we are on the 2nd Sunday of Christmastide, and the lectionary has offered us two readings that can only be called “big picture” readings.
First up we had a reading from the opening of the epistle to the Ephesians, which included these words:
[God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
From before the foundation of the world, this epistle insists, we have been chosen, adopted, given new identities and a new home. Step back from that assertion for a moment, and it is hard to not be in awe. Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Can you get any more “big picture” than that?
Maybe… consider these words from the prologue to the Gospel according to John:
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.
The Word was with God, John says, and in fact was God. And who exactly is this “Word”? John makes that more than a little clear as he proceeds, landing on this most remarkable of phrases:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us…
Or as Eugene Peterson rendered it in his translation, The Message:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.
Ah, but you say, that seems so remote from what we’re facing these days. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into a neighbourhood filled with masked people who sanitize their hands when they walk into the grocery store, stand in long lines to get a COVID test, watch as all manner of things get cancelled, face a Christmas in which many of us couldn’t gather with family because someone was positive or waiting for a test or whatever? We’ve been chosen “before the foundation of the world”, named as the beloved sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ, and yet the kids’ winter activities have been placed on hold and visits to an aging parent may not be possible if they live in a personal care home or assisted living facility? Every time we turn on the news there are even more troubling numbers of positive infections, and now we’re being told that we maybe shouldn’t even go for a test if we can ride things out at home?
The other day I listened on the radio to the owners of both The Grove and the Amsterdam Tea Room—two good solid local restaurant options—who announced that they have opted to close because of the high infection rates of their staff, and are wondering why the heck the province isn’t taking steps to close down all restaurants to stave off this variant’s incredible spread.
Given all that, what do you do with “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood” or “God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” Those writers must be naïve, out of touch, and clearly unaware of anything like the mess we’re in, right?
Wrong. The usual date set for the writing of Ephesians is somewhere between 65 and 80AD, while for the Gospel according to John it is generally agreed that it landed in its current finished form by 90AD, with earlier versions produced probably a decade earlier. To think that either writer didn’t have any experience of something akin to our current struggles is simply wrong.
For instance, Paul’s “collection for the saints in Jerusalem” which figures quite prominently in both Acts and his epistles was in part fuelled by a need to deliver aid from the Gentile churches to the famine starved church in Jerusalem (Acts 11:27-30). Not only that, but in a very recent book by Rosemary Margaret Luff titled The Impact of Jesus in First-Century Palestine, the author covers the evidence generated by an analysis of the human bones from Palestinian tombs, in particular the ones relating to the urban sites of Jerusalem and Jericho, uncovering what she calls “a high level of subadult deaths especially of infants.” In the abstract for the book, the following is summarized:
Those socially and economically advantaged were equally at risk with those less well off when faced with an aggressive and persistent pathogen, as evidenced by the Akeldama tombs containing the remains of the wealthy. In one tomb… both leprosy and tuberculosis were identified in a high-class man, possibly a priest, [while] Malaria is described by Josephus with reference to a Hasmonean king in the first century BCE.
Think of all the times in the Gospels where Jesus encounters and heals leprosy, deathly ill children, and even Peter’s own mother who is struck with some disease that threatens to take her life.
And then spin ahead to the years 165 to 180AD, when the Empire was hit with what is called the “Antonine Plague”, most likely smallpox, measles, or both. The death toll of that plague is now estimated at 5 to10 million people, accounting for 25–33% of the Roman population. That number is staggering, but what was even more staggering was the Christian response to the plague. Rather than fleeing the cities to seek refuge in the hills like most affluent Romans did, they stayed. They stayed and they nursed those who had fallen ill, providing water and food and the basics of care. Not that the Christians were magically immune to catching the plague and dying—in fact many died—but their acts of care and kindness spread this faith like wildfire. The ancient writer Tertullian, who lived right through that whole plague, famously wrote, “It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another.’” And notably, those Christians didn’t just care for one another, but provided that same care for their pagan neighbours. Love indeed.
So no, this is not the first time the church has faced a pandemic, as even the quickest of online searches will show. In the past century the world faced what was called the Spanish Flu, which killed well over 25 million people in a context in which the world population was under two billion people, compared to the 7.9 billion of today. Later in that same century the Polio outbreaks here in North America—here in Winnipeg—killed or crippled people at a ruthless rate until the vaccine was developed and it was effectively stamped out.
So what do we think of this as people of faith? That the world is a broken and sometimes ruthless place, that we would be best to escape into the “sweet by and by” of death? Or do my best to protect me and my family, while we see this all through? Or just ignore the best evidence, don a mask, and carry on as before, confident that it won’t be—can’t be—me who will get ill? Or maybe just imagine that if we’re faithful enough God will protect us? In different ways, of course, various people have chosen each of those paths in the name of Jesus, but I’d largely beg to differ.
I believe that one of the things that the advance of medical science and research reflects is the best that we have to this point in keeping people safe from the worst that is thrown at us. And it is not—categorically not—thrown at us by God, any more than smallpox was thrown at the world by God in the 160s or polio in the 1940s and 50s. The world is let to have a life of its own by our God, and things like viruses do mutate for the sake of their own survival and spread. The cause is not the interesting question, but rather the response, just as the Christian response to leprosy, tuberculosis, hunger, loneliness, polio, and the Spanish Flu were what mattered.
If we dare to hunker down when that is the best course, resorting to an online platform for Sunday eucharist, and being carefully respectful one of another, that’s the starting point. If we do what we can to support our nurses and doctors and other caregivers, perhaps being especially grateful for those who do that work as an extension of their Christian faith, that’s a great second step. And if we do all we can to love and care for one another, whether that might be through phone calls, email, online prayer, zoom format for gatherings while that is necessary, delivered meals, quick check-ins, or whatever else we might be able to imagine would be a source of strength for a brother or sister, that’s another step. It is step by step, and not narrowly for the sake of keeping me safe, but for the sake of you, you, you, and you. All of us.
For now, it is our path, because we affirm—we must affirm—that [God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world [and] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, becoming flesh and bone with us, and moving into the neighbourhood.
In that there is both a challenge, and the reception of good Christmas news indeed.
