Dec. 24, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

The common theological tenet associated with Christmas is the proposition that the (or a) deity became human, or, as the Gospel According to John puts it, that the eternal creative wisdom of God became flesh and dwelt among humankind. For some Christians, that is an out-and-out literal truth. For others, a metaphorical one. Either way, the idea is that one reality went through the process of becoming another.

I am one of those for whom what is called the incarnation is a metaphorical proposition, inasmuch as no one knows for sure about any deity, while elementary biology and chemistry have explained a lot about what the gospel calls “flesh.” The process of becoming flesh, that is to say, a living human being has to do with the very thing the Christian gospel avoids where Jesus is concerned.

The gospel wants you to believe that Mary and Joseph were not actually together the biological parents of Jesus, and that he became human, was conceived in Mary’s womb quite without the help of Joseph or any other male partner. The gospel wants you to believe that Jesus’ becoming was different than yours or mine. But it was a becoming nevertheless. The gospel does not expect you to believe that Jesus materialized deus ex machina – as in a sudden and inexplicable appearance.

And so our topic for this Christmas Eve is “becoming.” The word is wonderfully tentative, strongly suggests process and invites anticipation. When something is in the process of becoming, one is not entirely sure of what it will turn out to be, how it will look and what it will mean. When a couple is expecting a child, neither future mother nor future father even with amniocentesis can know very much about what the nascent being will become.

I could not have guessed that my elder son would become a musicologist or my only daughter a lawyer, just as my own parents could not have guessed at the trajectory of their only son’s life, that he would seriously flirt with becoming a railroad man before he decided to become a journalist before he decided for the ordained ministry and then again for journalism and finally back to ordained ministry.

Tonight I am exactly 41 days away from celebrating my 69th birthday, and only half-humorously a friend asked me the other day what I thought I would be when I grew up. With the beginnings of this sermon already simmering in my mind, I replied, “I don’t know. I am in the process of becoming what I shall turn out to be.” So “becoming” is really what “being” is. No one of us is any one thing. Our body chemistry produces new cells in every instant. We will not be tomorrow quite what we are today.

I have on my desk at home a photograph of some of my high school classmates who recently gathered for our 50th reunion. So real is the process of becoming that I could not recognize some in that small group of survivors with whom I grew up. They could probably say the same of me.

Tonight, though, we are concerned with the idea of a possibly timeless power and wisdom, which most human beings in one way or another think is responsible for the existence of the universe, actually becoming part of the universe for which it was or is responsible. On the face of it, the idea is preposterous. On second and third thought, though, one is not only able but maybe even anxious to embrace it as the possible explanation for the phenomenon of human love.

Out of his theistic appreciation of life, Bishop Jeffrey Rowthorn wrote this hymn text 30 years ago:

+Creating God, your fingers trace the bold designs of farthest space;

Let sun and moon and stars and light and what lies hidden praise your name.

+Sustaining God, your hands uphold earth’s mysteries known or yet untold;

Let water’s fragile blend with air, enabling life, proclaim your care.

+Redeeming God, your arms embrace all now despised for creed or race;

Let peace, descending like a dove, make known on earth your healing love.

+Indwelling God, your gospel claims one family with a billion names;

Let every life be touched by grace until we praise you face to face.

With apologies to him, I would add this stanza to his remarkable verse:

Becoming ones, our lives evolve responding to divine resolve;

Let us, in league with all that’s fair, devote ourselves to love and care.

That’s the “becoming” for which Christmas stands and of which it is a celebration – the reaching out of one hand to another, of one life to another in genuine love of the kind that, as St. Paul said, bears all thing, believes all things, endures all things – a love that never ends.

What this world is in too many instances is a mess in which our fellow human beings suffer from war, cruelty, poverty and injustice. What this world may become is a peaceable kingdom. Those who celebrate Christmas cannot do so in good conscience apart from commitment to a “becoming” process that will put the concretion of human flesh upon the abstraction of divine love.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.