2016A Christmas Day III

The Rev. Nancy S. Streufert

Christ Church

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and lived
among us, and we have seen his glory . . . (John 1:1,14)

The Christian faith teaches that God in the fullness of time became a
man, Jesus of Nazareth, who was fully God and fully human. More
specifically and to get technical the classical formulation of the
person of Jesus Christ was decided at the ecumenical Council of
Chalcedon in fifth century AD: Christ is declared to be one Person in
two Natures, the Divine of the same substance as the Father, the
human of the same substance as us, which are united unconfusedly,
unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.

How can this be? How could it be that the essential attributes of both
God and humanity could reside in a particular person, Jesus, without
diminishing the natures of either? If Jesus was also God, what
happened to Gods divine properties while Jesus walked the earth?

This is one of the many paradoxes of our faith. Its a mystery. With our
finite minds, we can only know what has been revealed to us in nature
and in Scripture. But thats not a very satisfying answer, is it?

The first Christians knew Jesus as a man, but the early witnesses of his
earthly ministry began to realize that he was more than that. They
wrestled with the question of Jesus nature, his humanity and the
growing understanding that he was also divine.

There is ample evidence in the New Testament for both Jesus divinity
and his humanity. From Colossians: Jesus in his divinity as the Son of
God was the image of the invisible God . . . for in him all things in
heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible . . . all
things have been created through him and for him. (Col 1:15-16)
From Hebrews: He is the reflection of Gods glory and the exact
imprint of Gods very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful
word. (Heb 1:3)

As to his humanity, the New Testament narratives tell us that Jesus

wept (John 11:35), that he thirsted, that he increased in wisdom
(Luke 2:52), and that he learned obedience through what he suffered
(Heb 5:8). We can point to Marks testimony that Jesus did not know
the hour that heaven and earth will pass away not even the Son,
but only the Father (Mark 13:31-32) as evidence that he seemed to
lack total omniscience, at least in this instance.

The activities of Jesus, the God-man, included both human actions and
divine power, miracles that go beyond Gods normal activity in the
world along with human words and gestures. Examples include the
multiplying of the loaves and fishes or when Jesus spit on the blind
mans eyes and laid hands on him to heal him (Mark 8:23)). And then
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 2016A Christmas Day III
The Rev. Nancy S. Streufert
Christ Church

there are his purely human operations in his humble servant role, as
when Jesus washed his disciples feet at the Last Supper (John 13:5).

Our faith tradition teaches that God as all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-

present, everywhere. It also teaches that God is love and that we
humans are made in Gods image and likeness.

We can speculate all day long whether the infant Jesus was able to
command the universe from his cradle or whether he was able to read
the thoughts of others as an adult or whether he could be in two places
at once. But the one divine attribute we can be certain that the earthly
Jesus possessed in common with God was his capacity to love. Jesus in
his humanity shows love for the people on earth: [h]aving loved his
own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end. (John 13:1)
He urges his disciples to love one another, that [n]o one has greater
love than this, to lay down ones life for ones friends. (John 13:1)

One of the most beautiful expressions of the notion that God became
human out of love for his creatures is Kierkegaards parable of a king
who loved a humble maiden. Instead of being filled with happiness, the
king was sorrowful in his heart, for if the maiden were to marry him,
would she be able to forget that he was the king and she was once a
lowly maiden? Or would she secretly wish that she had married one of
her own kind?

Kierkegaards king and the humble maiden in the parable represent the
relationship between God and human beings. How can such a
relationship be established on equal terms so that when God reveals
his love we can understand him and know it is real? One way,
Kierkegaard says, is to elevate the disciple to his level and clothe him
in glory as an equal. But like the maiden, the disciple would be
deceived, For no deceit is so terrible as when it is unsuspected, when
a person is, as it were, bewitched by a change of costume.
Alternatively, God could achieve unity with us by appearing directly to
us in all his splendor and receive unhindered worship. But God
desires not his own exultation, but ours.

The fourth century bishop, St. Athanasius, evokes a theme similar to

Kierkegaards in describing Gods condescension: that God, out of
sheer love for us, became embodied, not willing merely to appear
as one of us. For had he wanted to, he could have revealed His divine
majesty in some other or better way.

A helpful metaphor that picks up these themes of Kierkegaard and

Athanasius describes Gods self-emptying as the act of a man of
wealth who deliberately abandons the prerogatives of possession to
enter upon the experience of poverty, not because he thinks it a better
state, but in order to help others up through real fellowship . . . . Jesus
so truly entered into human life so as to grow and live under properly
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 2016A Christmas Day III
The Rev. Nancy S. Streufert
Christ Church

human conditions. He voluntarily limited his exercise of those divine

functions and powers that were incompatible with a truly human
experience, out of His own self-limiting and self-restraining love.

From the earliest days of the church including the time that Jesus lived
a human life on earth, his followers and non-followers alike have
sought to understand who Jesus was and is. As rational beings of faith
we will always seek to understand how Jesus could be both God and
man with two indivisible natures, and yet retain the essence of both.

Whether God emptied himself of his omnipotence, omniscience, and

omnipresence or somehow limited their exercise while he walked the
earth as a man is open to scholarly and reasoned speculation. More
important to understand (and bask in) is his purpose for doing so: it
was out of love for us, for love is an eternal attribute of the divine that
is shared by humanity.

In the beginning the Word was God and the Word, the Son of God,
became flesh in Jesus, who dwelt among the people of first century
Palestine. And after his earthly life, Jesus the Son returned to the
Father. And then He sent His Spirit to dwell in those who believe.

Through that one man, the Word made flesh, Jesus who lived at a
particular time in history in a particular place through that one man,
Jesus, God lives in the many, those who believe that Jesus is Lord.

Its a mystery a great mystery a beautiful mystery