Musings for Christmas II

St. John 1:1-18

We are ‘Dualists.’  We live in a world that separates body from soul, spirit from flesh.  A Platonic spell has been cast on the Western World and has distorted the Christian faith.  We prefer the comfort of a simple dualism, rather than the discomfort of a messy good creation that is whole.

Such separation has led to dominion and the taking of land and the taming of nature.  Body /soul separation has led us to disregard the rhythms of the earth, the cycles of the seasons.  Body is inferior, soul is superior, flesh is filthy but spirit is pure.

The Incarnation is a slap in the face, a ‘wake up’ call.  God blesses bodies.  God embodies bodies.  Matter matters and in fact God does nothing without matter.  The world of matter is not corrupt.  God’s creation is not fundamentally broken, but groaning.  The world is not a place to escape from and something to be overcome.  It is good and God’s world.   Matter matters to God!

God is sensual.  John bears witness to a sensual God.  Jesus washed feet, smelled perfume, and tasted abundant wine.  Christ prayed a gut wrenching prayer over the plight of Jerusalem.  He raised a stinking Lazarus from death.  He told Thomas to touch his wounded side.  He ate grilled fish on the lakeshore.

The Incarnation tells us that matter matters.  The experience of the spiritual comes through the physical.  Intimacy and touch are sacramental. 

We so often prefer a ‘spirit’ God – one that does not enter our messy lives.  But the flesh is the key to salvation – not escape from the world.  John’s Gospel is the integration of God and humankind.  There is not an either/or of either body or spirit – but rather a both/and – a oneness.  Our Hebrew sisters and brothers never framed the human experience in such a dichotomy.  Human beings are an integrated whole.  God made us whole.  Spirituality is physiogenic!

 Incarnation

The Christ escaped from oblivion,

He was the first authentic man.

The Artist now art,

The Potter now sand.

 

Floating in silence,

Suspended, confined;

Bleeding his mother,

Tearing through the bind.

 

The lonely trauma,

The naked God

Made way a corridor

Blasted our facades.

 

God is a God of all of life.  God is a God embedded in the human genome.

“Now the feast and celebration all of creation sings for joy,

to the God of life and love and freedom,

praise and glory forevermore…for God has come to dwell with us…” [Haugen]

 Rev. Kenneth R. Storck

12/28/20