The Word Became Flesh

Reflection

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." With a single sentence John announces the most staggering claim in all of Scripture. The eternal Word through whom the world was made — the one who was with God and was God — did not stay at a safe distance. He became flesh. He took on skin and bone, hunger and tiredness, laughter and tears. He moved into the neighbourhood. The word John uses for "dwelt" literally means "pitched his tent." It recalls the tabernacle in the wilderness, where God's glory came to rest among a travelling people. Now that glory tabernacles not in a tent of cloth but in a human life. If you want to know what God is like, you no longer look up into an empty sky. You look at Jesus. This is why Christianity is not merely a set of ideas about God. It is the announcement that God came near. He did not send a message and remain aloof; he came himself. He entered our weakness, our ordinary days, our suffering — "full of grace and truth." Whatever you are facing, the incarnation means you do not face a God who watches from the clouds, untouched by your experience. You face a God who has worn your flesh, walked your roads, and knows from the inside what it is to be human. He came close, and he still does.